THE AGE OF LIGHTNESS by Editor

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jun 10, 1880

THE AGE OF LIGHTNESS.

By Editor

INSPIRATION has put on record that in the last days men, though having a form of godliness, will be "lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God." The present is peculiarly an age of lightness and trifling among professors of godliness. Many of our readers will remember the missionary meeting in Brooklyn, N. Y., wherein H. W. Beecher and Dr. Scudder vied for the mastery in clownishness; and one enthusiastic partaker in the churchly nonsense styled it a "pentecostal feast of jollity." This expression is evidence of the irreverence which prevails, if it is not begotten, even in such assemblies. Forty years ago platform jokes and public witticisms were confined to political or convivial assemblies. Now a speaker, to please, even though he occupies a pulpit, must tickle the ears of the giddy and the gay or be counted a failure. The curse of intemperance is a subject of sufficient solemnity to cause groaning rather than mirth, but a temperance lecturer is expected to keep the house convulsed with laughter.

We attended a "temperance" meeting not long since wherein a man told a very silly story, not at all related to the subject of temperance, and he was not only uproariously applauded, but his "speech" was commented upon as the "hit" of the evening. From such meetings the people retire in a state of mental and moral dissipation. If good impressions are made at all, they are lost beneath an overflowing tide of folly.

Once we attended a Monday morning meeting of Methodist ministers, in Boston. The subject for discussion was "Sanctification." A score or more of Methodist ministers, met to consider this subject, might be expected to present a scene of more than ordinary gravity. But even there it took but a small matter to elate them even to loud laughter and clapping of hands. Many Doctors of Divinity, and mostly Presbyterians also, we saw in the Annual Convention of the National Association to procure the "Religious Amendment" of the Constitution; and even here mirth seemed all prevailing. Only two prominent men of the large number there present refrained from joining in the noise of cheering and stamping.

The Presbyterian Northern Assembly has just passed through its session in Madison, Wis. The first business introduced set the D. Ds in a glee, and Dr. Grey, correspondent to the Christian at Work, reports: "I never saw an assembly of any deliberative kind start off with so much good humor and merriment."

And so they go. The whole world, religious and secular, is given to trifling, and is growing wild with sensational excitements. A Baptist paper, some time since inquired, "Where are we drifting?" That well expresses the situation—"Drifting." Where will these things end?

"From such turn away." 2 Tim. 3:1-5.