An Up-to-Date Ancient Letter by Martha N. Canfield, M. D.

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · May 4, 1915

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 42, No. 18.

An Up-to-Date Ancient Letter

By Martha N. Canfield, M. D.

Written 2,000 Years Ago — It Visibly Describes the Doings of To-Day

By Martha N. Canfield, M. D.

We frequently hear the expression, “It is the last word,” applied to something newly perfected in the light of these wonderful days.

Two thousand years ago, St. Paul, a Bible author, while in prison awaiting execution, wrote a “last word” in warning for our time. It was written to his spiritual son, and is found in the third chapter of 2 Timothy, a few paragraphs of which we read:

“In the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, traitors, heady, high-minded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof.”

Did He Read Our Headlines?

So accurately does he describe our social fabric, one almost feels that the great apostle must have been reading through the headlines of the twentieth century newspaper. The printing press is busy day and night confirming the truth of this letter.

“Men shall be lovers of their own selves” is everywhere manifest. It is the sentiment that keeps the smoking car on the finest train. In all but fifteen states, it maintains the saloon—the great factor in crime. It builds the “red light” district, and debauches both men and women. It is scuttling the home. The black shadows of easy divorce are gathering about the home. Because of some slight incompatibility of disposition, a divorce is procured, and each goes in search of the “soulmate” or “affinity,” forgetting, it would seem, that the Bible has never amended the one cause for divorce.

More to Be Pitied than Orphans

The children of such unfortunate unions are more to be pitied than are those orphaned by death. Their perspective of life is askew at the outset. Home! What does it mean? To them you cannot appeal from the standard of an honored father or a devoted mother.

Hasty marriage heads the list of causes of divorce. The couple were not sufficiently acquainted. They met at a gay ball, and began a wild, maniacal type of love-making, ending in a hasty marriage, and paving the way for a speedy divorce.

How different from the old-fashioned love match, that began with reading poetry together of an evening in the shelter of the girl’s home, or in a carriage ride through the beautiful country, thus quietly becoming acquainted under normal conditions. Discovering finally that life would not be long enough, they must have eternity together, and founded their home on this rock.

The pleasure-loving spirit has various phases. The dance craze at present has seized the public; and from “Castle-house,” with its mazes, to the folk dance of the remotest hamlet, we are filled with this mad craze.

Work of the Spirit of Greed

The covetous man of whom St. Paul wrote, finds a parallel in the swindle practiced by one who is in a position to know the bank account of his neighbors, and inveigles them, in behalf of a company out of sight, into a speculation by means of which scores of them lose the hard-earned savings of years. As soon as the promoters of the concern become prosperous, the business comes to a standstill. Upon investigation, the victims are informed that the agent required too large a salary to warrant further operations.

The same spirit of greed is seen in the fraud that is practiced in impoverished foods, by which “to the poor, chalk is sold for bread.”

Food robbed of its nutritive elements, colored with ribbon dyestuffs, flavored by chemical means, denatured, degerminated, demineralized, is sold under false labels.

Small wonder that in a recent survey of the teeth of New York City school children, ninety per cent were defective. Nature had not had the building material.

Guinea pigs and white mice fed on the same food as the school children, died in three days, as is proved by an experiment carried on at Bronx Station, New York.

The “high cost of living” slogan too often is a mask for extravagant and wasteful pleasure. A foolish little mother who finds it difficult to meet her grocery bills, half boasted that thirty cents a day would hardly pay for her children’s ice cream cones and nickel theaters. How were these children being educated?—Not in self-denial and economy, nor in purity; for in the obscene behavior of the “cabaret dance” and “whatnot,” with all the impressiveness of which the moving picture is capable, these children become acquainted with the city’s vice.

Debaucheries of Extravagance

The pretty young working girl wishing a good photograph, patronizes the photographer quoting prices for millionaires, and pays forty dollars a dozen for her pictures. A young man on a thousand-a-year salary invites the lady of his acquaintance to attend the opera, and expends twenty dollars, in the course of the evening, for supper, tickets, and taxicab.

Many young people begin housekeeping in too expensive apartments, and live up to the salary limit each month. Condemnation and dismay is theirs upon the advent of a child in their midst. Does this savor of race betterment? These parents could well enough afford to bring up children had they lived simply from the first, making provision in this way for the little lives that prove such blessing in the home of love.

The mother of Frances Willard, it is said, told her daughter to thank Heaven that she was a welcome child. May we not believe that the splendid life of this “uncrowned queen,” honored, as no other woman has been, with a place in statuary hall at the nation’s capitol, could attribute much of that nobility of character to the simple fact of having been loved and desired before birth by good and wise parents? Many children are unthankful and unholy by birthright.

The Doctor’s Inside View

From shattered homes and wrecked lives the doctor’s office is filled, men and women in middle life nearing its close, so fierce has been the struggle for wealth, pleasure, and position. Fortunate are these if the physician himself has learned that more than massage and electricity for these despairing souls, is needed the touch of faith upon “the robe that has no seam.” To this source he directs the man depressed because of the scarlet sins of his life. This hope brings cheer. The deserted wife hears of the betrothal of Hosea 2:19, and this “loving-kindness” stimulates a cold heart to beat warmly.

The physician goes home from his office wearied, but happy that through him some one has beheld the tender, compassionate Man of Galilee; and his own life becomes more abundant.

Paul Foretold It

We are living in the midst of the perilous, pleasure-loving age of which St. Paul wrote. The glamour that cast its spell over the world while Noah preached his message of warning, and that lured Sodom and Gomorrah to their destruction, is shedding its fateful light throughout the world to-day. It is the work of the prince of darkness. We need to recognize his work, else we become confused at the trend of events.

“Yet in the maddening maze of things, Though tossed by storm and flood, To one fixed trust my spirit clings, I know that God is good.”

Is it not comforting that the God of mercy and love who taught Noah to preach a message of warning, who sent the angel to save Lot’s family, still holds a father love over us, “not willing that any one should perish,” arresting our attention, if possible, by this letter from St. Paul, to see in the pleasure and sin and perils about our everyday life a call to watch and be ready, for “in such an hour as ye think not the Son of man cometh”?