SOUL-TRAPS OF SOCIETY

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Aug 3, 1904

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 30, No. 31.

SOUL-TRAPS OF SOCIETY.

It has been a cause of deepest regret to all right-thinking minds that the rising generation is having set before it so poor an example of moral rectitude. The curse of gold-worship is eating out the vitals of this age’s morality and producing a characterless existence where great moral power and high principles should dominate. The science of government has deteriorated into the confederacy of “graft,” and young men are taught to look upon politics as an open door to wealth, a machine which is to grind out for them stocks and bonds and double eagles.

Looking upon the evidence that is given from day to day in the court of the people, the many who long for good government, who desire to see right principles set before the rising generation, are beginning to question whether it will be possible for government by principle to win against government by price; whether it will be possible for the life of principle to hold its own against the constant assaults of the life of pleasure. And it must be confessed that the general prospect is not reassuring.

There are several million young men in the United States to-day who do not attend church, who never listen to the preaching of the Gospel, who have never learned to take an interest in the progress of evangelical work at home or abroad. All they see or hear of Christianity is what they see in the lives of the professing Christians whom they meet or hear in their conversation, and it must be admitted that the majority of professing Christians are not preaching Christ in public in a way to carry a very strong influence for the converting of souls. Thus that class fails to see the claims of such a religion upon them. This kind of society is proving a soul-trap of the adversary of souls.

The tendency now manifest in society to divide up into classes is another of the baneful influences against which rising manhood must contend; but it is a fact that a great portion of it is either not trying to contend, or finds itself unable so to do. Evil is bound to follow such a condition. Each class is coming more and more to stand apart from the others, to be more exclusive; and in this condition there is portrayed more and more vividly “man’s inhumanity to man.” This is making more pronounced the warfare between the classes, setting man against man, eliminating the spirit of brotherhood, and working toward the general deterioration of the race. The more fortunate preach contentment to the less fortunate, and the latter remind the former of the Golden Rule, and each grows to hate the precepts of the other. It is this very thing that is threatening Europe to-day, and is already coming to the front to a dangerous extent in this country. The lines of conflict between the rich and the poor, the ignorant and the learned, are becoming more and more marked, and the education thus received is bringing a heartlessness into heart and life that is proving a snare to souls.

Another deteriorating factor in the life education of the rising young men and women is the cramming of the mind with facts and figures while great moral principles are largely or wholly neglected. The twig is bent toward the low plane of material advantage, and grows in that direction.

Social influences are leading thousands of young men and women astray. The young life must contend against the evil influences of the ball-room, the theater, the billiard and pool room, the saloon and the immoral resort. The general drift of fashionable life is toward a compromise of morals. The spirit of reverence for chastity and virtue is being constantly assailed. The shades of evening open, in every city and in most large towns, clandestine resorts where boys and young men are made welcome and ruined. There is a social atmosphere about these places which capture young men wholesale. If it is true, as one has said, that more boys are ruined by questionable social resorts in our cities than by the saloons, what a multitude must be flocking into the downward road daily!

Now, all these evil influences are working in harmony. The way to evil is made easy—is made difficult of escape. Every fancy of a perverted sense is provided for; the taste for every forbidden fruit is pandered to. One author declares that “Temptations were never so abundant, never so subtle, never so powerful, as now, and perhaps young men were never so poorly equipped to withstand them. By inheritance, by birth, by education, and by experience, the young men of to-day are morally weak. They are, to a deplorable degree, willing prey. While this is true, there never was such a determined and persistent effort to ensnare them. More than ever before, capital is invested, energy enlisted, and business ability arrayed in schemes and enterprises to lure and ruin them. Young men have become a necessity—a staple commodity—in the markets of sin.”

All these soul snares are set by the evil one; the schemes invented by unscrupulous men to ruin the young are really instigated by the enemy of souls. Having debased the moral faculties of the race, he occupies a vantage-ground. He can pander to the very appetites that he has produced, and, in that pandering, he chains a slave. He gives what fallen nature craves. He sets pleasure before the eyes of youth, and, as she flees, he snares the feet of the pursuer. In every street and byway, in every city and town, these agencies are busy seven days in the week—busier than ever before, because they know that their time is short. The swift increment in this terrible business is a sign that the close of earth’s history is near; a sign that the forces are focusing their powers for the final fray; and these things should teach the young person of this age that his soul is being sought for with determined earnestness by the powers of evil as well as by the powers of good. He should also remember that the acts of his life are indications now of the side upon which he will finally take his stand.