Breathless Scenes, Shocks, and Thrills
By A. C. Gilbert
Exciting and Intoxicating Entertainments — Similar Scenes in the Past “HERE!! Is the greatest mystery story of all time! The most wonderful of all photoplay serials by the World's greatest Fiction Writer. “Produced by the World's Greatest Director. “On the World's Greatest Stage. “The most vivid portrayal of crime and its detection ever known to man. “Swift and powerful action. Breathless scenes in every one of the fifteen episodes. Each a mental shock that brings you gasping to the edge of your seat. “Wonderful acting by the immaculate . . . the greatest detective character of modern fiction. “ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . “See the leap from the fast express, speeding at sixty miles an hour. “See the mysterious hands that tear the jewels from a woman's neck in a brilliantly lighted conservatory. “See the death-defying leap from a signal tower to the top of a mile-a-minute freight train.” These paragraphs are from an advertisement handed me on the street a short time ago. What a contrast between this “mystery” and the mystery of the gospel! What a change has come over the human mind when it will grasp with utmost eagerness for folly and fiction instead of seeking for the realities of this life, and of the life to come. This advertisement is a forceful announcement of the prevailing tendency that is undermining manhood and womanhood of to-day. The old-time standard of public entertainment and social joys has been forsaken. The imagination has become so perverted that to-day it cannot be satisfied except it is gorged with “shocks” and “thrills” that only extreme sensationalism can provide. The story of humanity before the Flood finds its counterpart in the experience of mankind to-day. “As it was in the days of Noe, so shall it be also in the days of the Son of man.” Luke 17:26. As the antediluvians drew nearer and nearer to their unexpected end, they grew more and more desirous of pleasure and fiction, till at last their sensitiveness to spiritual admonitions was gone, and they were lost in the cataclysm of the Flood. To-day men and women are hastening on to the end of the world and the coming of the Lord. Evil desires, corrupt imaginations, rule the majority of lives. Increasing disrelish for the deep spiritual truths that underlie the fact of individual salvation, marks the character of the present generation. With money and pleasure, with eating and drinking, the world at large is rushing on to the vortex of eternal destruction, heedless of the message that is warning the world of the coming of the Lord, and the end of probation. The greatest need of the world to-day is strong Christian characters, a demonstration of the Holy Spirit's power to regulate the inner life, to purify the mind, dignify the imagination, elevate conduct,—in brief, to let the line of distinction between the worldling and the Christian stand out in holy boldness, revealing the joy and pleasure there is in intimate friendship with God,—this is the supreme need of the hour.