Uncertainty and Gloom by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Feb 10, 1909

Uncertainty and Gloom.

By Editor

The noted writer, Max Norden, says:

"We seek in vain to-day among the rich a feeling of security in regard to their wealth and of simple enjoyment of it; neither do we find among the poor that patient acquiescence in the poverty which appears so inevitable and unchangeable to human eyes.

"An undefined fear of approaching danger haunts the man of wealth; he sees a menace in the present condition of men and affairs, indistinct but none the less real, so that he has come to look upon his possessions as a loan that can be demanded from him without reprieve, from one moment to another.

"The poor man is consumed by envy and greed of the wealth of the privileged few; neither in himself nor in the existing arrangement of the world and society, as he has learned to understand it, does he discover any convincing reasons for the fact that he is poor, and hence excluded from the table of life's pleasures. He listens with fierce impatience to a voice within him which whispers that his rights to the blessings of this life are as good as any man's.

"The rich man is dreading, the poor man is hoping and working to bring about a change in the present condition of property ownership. The faith in a continuance of its present state has been rudely shaken in the minds of all, even in those who will not acknowledge their secret doubts and anxieties.

"This universal mental restlessness and uneasiness exert a powerful and many-sided influence upon individual life. A dread of examining and comprehending the actualities of life prevails to a frightfully alarming extent, and manifests itself in a thousand ways. The means of sensation and perception are eagerly counterfeited by altering the nervous system by the use of stimulating or narcotic poisons of all kinds, manifesting thereby an instinctive aversion to the realities of appearances and circumstances. Individuals and society try to drown their sorrows in the flowing bowl, and hand in hand with this instinctive self-deception and attempt at temporary oblivion of the actual world goes the final plunge into eternal oblivion. Suicides are increasing in all the highly civilized countries."

It is all too true. Yet there is hope, told by "the old, old story," found in "the old, old Book." That hope is in Christ Jesus and the Gospel of God. It is an anchor which will hold in the roughest sea. It is a star which will shine brighter in the darkest gloom. It is a power which will strengthen the hearts to bear the worst of ills. It tunnels the dark river of death, and all earth's calamities, and emerges into immortality in the resurrection morning. Soul, that refuge and hope is for you.