The Character of This Age.
By Editor
It is always a matter of interest to understand the nature of the times in which we live. But to the Christian it is more than a question of mere speculative interest. It is a religious duty to be fulfilled with the most impartial investigation and even with suspicious care and labor. It is essential to the well-being of society to know what are its demands in the age in which we live, and these cannot be known without an acquaintance with the character of the age that furnishes these demands. They only are properly qualified for present work "who have understanding of the times to know what Israel ought to do." The church is assigned her place in the world not to be conformed to it but "to testify against it because the works thereof are evil." The principle embodied in the exhortation of the apostle is never without a present practical application to the church, "Save yourselves from this untoward generation," because every generation is an ungodly one. The providence of God which is in the hands of Christ for the church's sake is uniform and concurrent with the teachings of the divine word. It never fails to testify its approval of purity and faithfulness—or its condemnation of unfaithfulness and corruption in the church. The Saviour refers the Jews and his disciples to the fact that the operations of providence are as uniform as the seasons, and as fixed as the laws and ordinances that govern them, as a reason why all generations of men should discern the nature of the time in which they live. In an age gilded with wealth and power and material progress we are easily fascinated with the external condition of things. In times of defection the church has always solaced herself with dreams of peace and progress. She congratulated herself with the abundance of her offerings and the perfection of her forms when they were loathsome in the sight of God. She substituted darkness for light and called evil good. We suppose no age has been lauded for its excellences more than the present one. On account of the vast change wrought both in the material and moral world, and the external and material improvements it has produced, it may be truly called the golden age in comparison with all the past. This condition is a dangerous one to the spiritual life of the church, and under no other circumstances does she need to be more on her guard against the influences that are likely to corrupt her. It is a question whether the spirit of this age is not the object of the admiration even of the church, rather than the providence that has conferred its achievements; whether professing Christians are not more disposed to yield their faith to the influence of the times than to the light of divine truth which needs to be followed most closely in such times, and whether as a consequence their eyes are not dazzled with this external and material grandeur so as to be unable steadfastly to behold the true glory of the spirit of the gospel. The church has access to the marvelous facilities of wealth, education, and material enterprise of the age, and she has availed herself of them in some measure to widen the field of her operations. But she has even more largely appropriated them to her material aggrandizement. She is seeking to keep pace with the age in all that constitutes the substance of its boasted progress. Her houses of worship and her administration of ordinances are conformed to that measure of refinement with which she is in contact. Yet she is not increasing in godliness. She does not use her material resources to increase her piety, or as an occasion of the self-denial that is an essential evidence of devotion to Christ. A wide door is open to her and the means are laid at her feet in the "handfuls." But in all her efforts in the use of them there is little of the cross of Christ. Her beneficence does not ordinarily reach the point of suffering. The rich reserve the bulk of their funds for worldly enterprises, and do not permit their giving to Christ to interfere with them. Their gifts, larger than those of the poor, and yet much less proportionately, are lauded as examples of liberality. Wealth and refinement have in a great measure gained the ascendancy, and have proportionally quenched the spiritual life of the church. Another characteristic of the age is its remarkable intellectual activity. Everything is subordinated to the judgment of the human intellect. Its discoveries, real or imaginary, are not subjected to the divine standard. Whatever does not come within the limits of its comprehension or is not deducible by its reason, or within the measure of its power, is discarded as false. What was settled by the labors and sealed by the blood of reformers, manifestly directed by the Spirit of God, is flippantly cast aside by this age as a dead issue or a relic of the darkness of an age of ignorance. It is the disposition to subject the Bible itself to the dominion of intellect that is seeking to break up the foundations upon which the faith of the believers has rested peacefully and safely for generations. Creeds or symbols of unity in profession are despised, and those who have by solemn sanctions accepted them, disregard and refuse to administer them. The rule of intellect has produced the denial by men of high ecclesiastical position of the accuracy of the canon of Scripture, and sought to unsettle that which has been the common faith of the church for more than two thousand years. It is this pandering to the behests of the intellect of the age that is accepting so readily what is proposed as an essential improvement in the divine economy—probation after death—a device in the morbid sympathy with the recklessness of him who chooses strangling and death rather than life. It holds up a divine character of its own devising, and calls upon all to bow down to it in rejection of the God and Saviour of the Bible. It exalts its own weak and partial deductions from "science falsely so called," or imperfectly investigated to a position of infallibility, and pronounces it the triumphant overthrow of Christianity. In short, the dominion of intellect has by its enchanting power led the church to believe that in the progress of the age consists her own life and power. Every institution and every item of the creed of the church must have its seal upon it to be accepted, and that church is held as the most advanced in all that is commendable that partakes the most largely of this spirit. A close adherence to the spirit of the gospel and the primitive integrity of its institutions is sneered at as narrowness, bigotry, traditionalism, fogyism. Intellectual tournaments and the contests of reason upon the principles involved in divine revelations are admired, and the champions on either side are heard with the utmost gratification. A Joseph Cook commands intelligent and refined audiences everywhere, who listen admiringly to his learned discourses upon the philosophy of theology and science. But conscience remains unaffected, and the spiritual man unsatiated. As an intellectual giant, he grapples with and exposes the fallacies of infidelity. But the precious influences from the pure fountain of life are not ministered as thousands of weaker vessels are capable of ministering them. The decay of vital godliness must be the inevitable result of dependence upon such power. The spirituality of the church must necessarily be quenched. As evidence of this, her privileges are shared freely and largely with those who in secret compact with the ungodly have accepted another gospel which has not in it the name of Jesus—with those who have accepted the vitiated standard of the world as the regulating principle of their secular employments and set at naught whatever principles of morality and religion come in their way. It is in vain that the church laments, as she does to-day, the want of spirituality while she continues to go with the current. Only a radical and thorough cutting loose from the spirit of this age and a humble return to the pure spirit of the gospel will save her from going into a captivity of darkness in which she shall feel the need of returning and seeking after her Lord. The enemy has indeed come in like a flood. But the church is yet too weak to hold up the standard which the spirit of the Lord has put into her hands to be lifted up against them.—Christian Instructor.