p. 9 | IRREVERENCE

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Mar 30, 1904

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 30, No. 13.

IRREVERENCE.

It is no new charge against the present time to say that it is irreverent. Parents no longer teach their children to say, "Yes, sir," and, "No, ma'am," or to display that deference for age and authority which did so much to beautify life a generation or two ago. The growth of the scientific spirit, with the stress which it lays upon individual investigation, and the methods pursued by the schools, all foster a spirit which, to put it mildly, is not the spirit of reverence.

There is, however, another and more offensive way in which this spirit shows itself; the habit of making sacred literature the source of ill-bred wit and parody; of twisting words or texts about which cluster the most solemn memories, until they do duty as headlines for a newspaper or title for a cartoon.

In a recent story the words, "Thy faith hath made thee whole," are used in a jocose way; a publisher calls attention to a book by heading his advertisement of it with the line, "Consider the lilies of the field;" and a dealer in small wares displays above his shelves the sign, "Ask, and ye shall receive," and most of his customers smile, and regard it as a good joke.

The newspapers are among the worst offenders. One of them, in an attack upon a certain religious sect, printed a suggestion for an amended Lord's Prayer; and during the coal famine last winter another displayed a cartoon which bore a variation of the question, "What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?"

It is not the Bible which suffers from this flippant treatment; it is the persons who make it the arsenal of their cheap wit and crude humor; and it is the spirit of reverence itself.—Youth's Companion.