p. 89 | PIOUS PROFANENESS

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Feb 26, 1880

PIOUS PROFANENESS.

"IRENÆUS," in the Observer, utters a needful word in rebuke of a too common habit. No habit, once formed, is easily laid aside, but the one here animadverted upon deserves the very serious consideration of Christian people:—

In a large religious meeting, where a high degree of spiritual life was apparent, a revival meeting it might be called—so warm, earnest and impassioned were the appeals and exhortations—there were some speakers who, having had large experience in Sunday-school work and young men's meetings, were very fluent and eloquent, rousing the feelings of the assemblies by their glowing addresses. With them the only name by which the Saviour of sinners was spoken of was Jesus; and this would not be the occasion of any criticism, if they had not employed it with such familiarity and frequency, and with the prefix of such terms of endearment, as to take from the name that association of reverence and respectful affection with which it is always invested in my mind, and that of many who have expressed to me their sentiments on this subject. It is not in good taste for a husband and wife, or parents and children, or brothers and sisters, to lavish, with great profusion, very strong terms of endearment upon one another, in the presence of company. The practice suggests to the hearer the possibility that such warm expressions are for the purpose of misleading those that hear, and that it is within the realms of belief that those who seem to be so extravagantly affectionate in public, may be just a little less so in the seclusion of domestic life. And when these burning and effective speakers were, in nearly every sentence, speaking of dear Jesus, sweet Jesus, darling Jesus, brother Jesus, friend Jesus and still more frequently "Jesus," as if he were no more than one of their own number, one to be spoken to and spoken of as a child, companion and every day person, I was asking, "Do they love him so much more than others?" It hurt me, as if one dearer to me than life was being lightly handled in the face of the world.