THE LACK OF SERIOUSNESS.
By T.
A LITTLE more than two years ago David Starr Jordan, President of the Leland Stanford Junior University, said, through the columns of the New York Independent: “As a people we have a very ‘fine sense of humor, and it is exercised impartially ‘in all things. In our journals, corruption and inefficiency appear as a joke. A newspaper cartoon ‘tells us the story, and with this it ends. As cartoons are easily made, and may be as unjust as any ‘other form of criticism, they cease at length to be ‘taken in evidence at all. An administrative crime ‘has no adequate punishment. We do not know ‘whether it has taken place or not, and in the hopeless good nature of the American people, whether it ‘has taken place or not, it is equally and speedily ‘forgiven.” This “hopeless good nature,” will not be aroused until it is forever too late for a general reform. God has given warnings in His Word, and these warnings have been sounded widely, and in very many ways. God has led men who did not particularly view the threatening evils from the religious standpoint, to sound the note of warning. Others who have seen the situation from the viewpoint of the prophetic Scriptures have given the alarm. Thus has the Lord provided that every class of mind might be reached. But by the great mass of mankind these warnings are not taken seriously. As Professor Jordan says, the whole matter is treated “as a joke.” The world has fallen into the habit of putting intensity into its furious drive in business and excitable pleasures, and as a relaxation, serious problems are made the foundation for joke and caricature. All who can be induced to give thoughtful consideration to these conditions, must see that the unvarying rules of human philosophy are sufficient to make it plain that the world is approaching not merely a crisis, but a crash.