THE MORAL WORLD | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jul 24, 1879

THE MORAL WORLD.

To distinguish between the different classes of elements by which the world is controlled, we speak of the physical world, the political world, and the moral world. In each of these divisions there was, according to prophecy, to be seen in the last days, an unnatural and abnormal condition of things, to indicate the approach of the last great catastrophe by which all three should be radically revolutionized, and a new order of things be introduced. The following is a description of the fearful condition of morals in Germany, where the glorious light of the Reformation first shed its cheering beams. What does it prove but that the Reformation has not been followed out, the advancing light of truth has not been heeded, and the inevitable moral declension has followed. We find the article in the Christian Statesman of June 19, 1879:—

“Crime has increased during the last six years in Prussia from fifty to two or three hundred per cent; the imprisonments in Prussia, Hanover, and the Rhine provinces alone, (the statistics from the southern States, as Bavaria, Wurtemburg, and Baden, not being yet published,) have risen from 102,077 in 1872, to 133,734 in 1876, and the number to-day is reckoned at 150,000. The prisons are all full, and patriotic men are urging the formation of a penal colony on some island of the Pacific or section of western Africa.

“A few months ago the chaplain of the Imperial family, Mr. Bauer, in a sermon preached before the emperor and princes, said, in words which we quoted at the time: ‘Affection, faith, and obedience to the word of God are unknown in this country, in this our great German fatherland, which formerly was justly called the home of the faith. On the contrary it really seems as if it were the father of all lies who is now worshiped in Prussia. What formerly was considered generous and noble is now looked upon with contempt; and theft and swindling are called by the euphonious name “business.” Marriages are concluded “on trial,” to be broken, if not found to answer. We still have a Sunday, but it is only a Sunday in name, as the people work during church hours, and spend the afternoon and evening in rioting in the public houses and music-halls; while the upper classes rush to the races, preferring to hear the panting of the tortured horses to hearing the word of God, which is ridiculed in the press and turned into blasphemy in the popular assemblies; the servants of God are insulted daily.’ The Berlin correspondents of English journals add: ‘The German clerical newspapers, Protestant as well as Catholic, are writing in a like strain.’

“The Christian Intelligencer says: ‘Berlin, with a population of a million, has only one hundred and ten ministers of religion, both Protestant and Roman Catholic, and the average attendance at each place of worship is below one hundred. House to house inquiries show that in the same city “in less than one house out of eighty is there any regular use or even possession of a Bible.” The state of religion and morals in the country is a cause of the greatest grief and anxiety to many of the best citizens. This social deterioration and increase of crime does not come from ignorance. Nor does the prevalence of immorality arise from a lack of artistic and æsthetic culture. Nor is intemperance the cause. The one chief reason for the degeneration of a once noble people is the substitution of skepticism for faith in the Scriptures.’”

On “the spread of skepticism,” The Alliance of July 19, 1879 says:—

“Rationalism is almost the national belief of Germany. France is full of infidelity. A large number of people in our midst will tell you that they do not believe in immortality. Skepticism is found on every hand. The fact no one, we suppose, will dispute. What has caused this state of affairs? Some thinkers tell us that Strauss and Voltaire and Paine and Ingersoll are responsible for it. That is nonsense. Strauss and Voltaire and Renan and Ingersoll are simply a part of the drift. Its causes lie deep in the history of religion. ‘What has been bears fruit in what is’—sometimes by direction, sometimes by indirection.”

After feeling about for the cause of this state of things, and attributing it mainly to “human creeds,” which is good for the Alliance, it remarks:—

“Be that as it may, the problem of how to deal with skepticism is the one that now most presses upon the Christian thinker.”

The same paper also prints the following, which, although on another point, does not present a very pleasing picture:—

“Chicago sits by her filthy river and pities Memphis because of its pestilence, and St. Louis because of its perspiration, but the day is not far off when the Garden City herself shall be pitied by the whole land, unless her sewer system be changed and her streets be cleaned. A plague more frightful than yellow fever is steadily marching across Europe. It is a disease that will grow apace on American soil. It is Asiatic cholera. We are building in Chicago a gigantic pile of masonry, buttressed by fraud and covered with criminal contracts, which will cost half as much as the whole expense of a sewerage system that would secure us health. But the stately pile will continue to rise, while our sluggish river becomes a Styx, and the very ground under our palatial architecture becomes a festering, pestilence-breeding mass. And by-and-by, when the violated laws of health revenge themselves, the religious press will record another visitation of Providence, while the more worldly and more sensible daily will chronicle the sad result of violated law.”