Want of Reverence

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, Cal. · Sep 6, 1883

Want of Reverence.

THERE have been ages—history denomi- nates them dark—when men, enshrouded in supersti- tion, shuddering amid the shadows, recognized the working of supernal or infernal power in all the varied phenomena of nature, and, filled with dreadful awe, abased themselves not only beneath "the hosts of heaven," but before "four-footed beasts and creeping things,"—a lizard or a toad.

It is perfectly clear to any casual observer in America that we at least have got far beyond that. We have swung to the other extremity of the arc; and though the most of us profess to be- lieve in God Almighty, who is "glorious in holi- ness, fearful in praises, doing wonders," yet, so far from exhibiting such reverential awe as is be- coming in his august presence, it is the rarest thing to see him treated even in his own house with anything approaching to decent respect. We remember the awe which he formerly de- manded and inspired—Jacob at Bethel, Moses at the burning bush, Israel at the base of Sinai, when "so terrible was the sight that even Moses said, 'I do exceedingly fear and quake.'"

We remember the sudden smiting of Uzzah be- cause, in an unguarded moment, he touched the ark with forbidden hand; and how, for a similar offense against this sacred symbol of God's pres- ence, more than fifty thousand men of Beth- shemesh perished. We remember how Isaiah in his presence-chamber became as a dead man be- fore him, and how Daniel worshiped him as the "great and dreadful God," and how John was overwhelmed with the glory of his majesty, in the isle of Patmos; and then, with all these records fresh in memory, we repair on the Lord's day to the Lord's house.

It is the hour devoted to the study of the Bible lesson. We are at the threshold. But who are these that stand without? They must be the sons of Eli, or near akin to them, judging from their manners in the precincts of the sanctuary. You press through the group, your nostrils of- fended with tobacco smoke, your ears with jests unseemly. You might think this the entrance to a Bacchanalian club-house, if you did not know it had been dedicated to religious uses. You en- ter. "Holiness becometh thine house, O Lord, forever." Such is the motto inscribed upon the wall, but it seems to have made little or no im- pression on anything but the wall. Before the school comes to order, if indeed it ever does, there are loud and boisterous demonstrations, frivolous laughter, and general jocularity, which are often only slightly intermitted during the opening ex- ercises.

While prayer is being offered, many, even of the teachers, gaze vacantly around, as if the prayer were no concern of theirs, as is probably the fact. And the singing is done with a ring and a swing, and a jolly sort of sleigh-bell jingle, as if it were the glee of a carnival carousal, instead of a sacred song of praise offered up by grateful hearts unto the God of Heaven.

After the discussion of the lesson, in which things sacred and profane, things serious and ri- diculous, have been recklessly jumbled, the school is dismissed, and the scholars tumble about as though it were a week-day school just dismissed for a Christmas holiday. Nor are the scholars the only sinners against the sanctities of the day and place.

Even the officers think it not amiss to have a lit- tle "religious fun." If a Sunday-school address is to be made, the funniest man that can be found is the man to be sought; but such is his popularity, so great is the rage for fun, that it is difficult to secure his services unless you engage him months beforehand, in which case he will be likely to forget it, for which all good people ought to be thankful.

When even in circles professedly religious we listen to the quips and puns that are based upon the Scripture; when we mark the familiar and flippant way in which men pray, and the frivol- ous way in which they conduct themselves in the sanctuary of the Most High, and then think of the awful majesty of "the God of the Hebrews," the God of the Gospels, the God of the Apoca- lypse, we are ready to ask, Has God come down so much, or has man come up so much, in this nineteenth century of the Christian era, that the creature can afford to treat the Creator with such jocose familiarity, as if he were "altogether such an one as ourselves?" The fact is, this whole business of fun in religion is beginning to be seri- ous; and, unless we are wise enough to consider our ways and reform our habits, to "stand in awe and sin not," we have need to fear that God will come and smite the earth with a curse, such as will turn our unseemly merriment into dreadful mourning.—Selected.