Camouflaging Sin by F.

Signs Publishing Co. · Melbourne, Victoria · Jul 5, 1920

FromAustraliasian Signs of the Times, Vol. 35, No. 27.

Camouflaging Sin

By F.

ALTHOUGH we are living in a period of “reconstruction,” too many of the forces at work in the world today are of the destructive variety. This old earth is facing a crisis, the import of which is little dreamed of by the average civilised man. Yet the careful observer is fully aware that sin, in all its hideous forms, is greatly in the ascendancy, and the candid thinker must admit that the pulse of our boasted civilisation is beating the reveille.

In every sphere is this condition recognisable. The Paphian Venus has been resurrected in Christendom and is flaunting her scarlet flag unblushingly in the streets of our cities. From men standing high in the educational and religious world come such teachings as, “there are no absolute evils”; “immorality is simply an act in contravention of society’s accepted standards”; “moral precepts are only passing shibboleths”; and “the sole effect of profligacy is to fill tiny graves.” From theological seminaries come the declarations that “the home as an institution is doomed” and that “there can be and are holier alliances outside the marriage bond than within it.”

In other words, “civilisation,” calling itself Christian, has camouflaged sin. As America for Feb. 21, 1920, puts it:—

One of the most contemptible forms of cowardice is that which, in order to salve the troubled conscience, puts a halo about wickedness. It is bad enough to see the evil and to confess lack of courage to resist it; it is worse to be so dishonest as to seek justification for committing the wrong by painting it as goodness. Such shallow hypocrisy is detestable sham. Nevertheless, this poor attempt to palliate degradation is a testimony to the inherent principles of right and wrong. Even when the moral sense, through much misuse, becomes so dead or atrophied as no longer to exercise strong control over action, it still retains clearness enough of vision to see the necessity of drawing a veil over moral ugliness and giving it the disguise, transparent though it be, of virtue or of beauty. Though men and women of our times who are lapsing into pagan ways, are not defying the vices nor calling them virtues indeed, nevertheless, they are tricking them out in fine phrases, and the public sense of right and wrong is being insidiously perverted. Shamelessness is growing more rampant, but is tolerated and even lauded under the plea that it is beautiful, for if a thing is beautiful, they argue, it cannot be harmful.

The chaste reticences of speech and the modest restraints of the eye, once universally recognised, are stigmatised as prudery, and those who dare see indecency in any spectacle are said to have prurient imaginations, diseased minds, and are recommended with a sneer to the psychopath.

The great enemy of souls has indeed revolutionised the moral ideas of a large portion of the world, so that what would have called forth the greatest indignation a few years ago is now accepted as conventionality. We are truly living in a world reeking with brutal outrage and hideous wrong; swept by the hot breath of Lust; reeling with wretchedness; patrolled hourly by the Prince of Darkness and his legions; and with faith in the Almighty slowly fading away. This old planet, in spite of—or because of—its vaunted civilisation, is quivering in the strangling folds of sin and vice like a dwarf in the grip of an angry Hercules. In its criminal indifference it is staggering forward on its death march, while Heaven’s trumpeters are preparing to sound the Last Post over the ashes of its tombless millions, as an echo of that great voice from the eternal throne, saying, “It is done!”

The motto for every Christian today should be, “Behold, the Bridegroom cometh; go ye out to meet Him.” F.