Note and Comment

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Nov 5, 1908

The Impending Peril

In the minds of many thinking men there is a feeling of unrest and of apprehension concerning the future. Some look for trouble arising from one reason, others from another, but all seem to agree in expecting trouble. One of our exchanges puts it this way:—

A few years ago we said that civilization could never again be imperiled by an eruption like that of the Goths and Vandals and other conquering tribes; but civilization is not yet so solidly established that it may not be imperiled by the uprising of seven or eight hundred millions of people who are getting the weapons and practical arts of civilization without its higher ideals.

We look for the cause of the trouble nearer home. There is no power in civilization, in itself, to restrain the forces of evil when the majority of the members of society have lost the power to control themselves. Roman civilization,

although brought to the highest degree of perfection, could not save the Roman state when the Romans themselves became corrupt. The peril of the present hour is not so much the peril of heathenism as the peril of apostate Christianity.