Frankfort Pilgrim College - Pilgrim Yearbook (Frankfort, IN)

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10r Ov REV. C. G. TAYLOR, President And the heart that is soonest awake to the Howers Is always the first to be t0uch'd by the thorns. . -191

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ADMINISTRATION BUILDING 4'The arehiteet Built his great heart into these sculptured stones And with him toiled his children, and their lives Were builded, with his own, into the Walls, As offerings unto God. QQ? , -is-

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,K- The Changing Of The Age OR AT THE END OF THE WORLD A MESSAGE FOR THE HOUR OT long ago a young man who in voicing his wishes exclaimed, 'KI wish I could have lived in the days of Christ. How clear would He make the perplexing religious problems, which I meet. The young man was a devout Christian and his mind was dealing with the fundamental ideas of life. He did not recognize two facts. First, that the Lord recognizes moral and in- tellectual freedom and that if he, the young man, lived at that time he would have. as today, many problems of his own to solve and decide. Second, that he would be living in a time when an old dispensation was ending and a new one beginning. in an era when the views of salvation by obedience to the law alone and salvation were shaken from their foundation and salvation by faith was taking their place. Some of the questions he would have to answer were, Is this the Christ, or look we for another? Shall we believe His teachings or shall we hold to the traditions of the Jewish people? Will Roman power con- tinue to enlarge, strengthen itself, and continue to hold the rulership of the world or shall we expect the kingdom of heaven to be set up and dispossess all other kingdoms? Can the Roman and the Grecian learning save or shall we look for our help in the present crisis? Can social life live in its present state of corruption? These and many other questions would face the thinker of that time. There was a changing' order of things, but few saw it and these few changed their thinking and their lives to harmonize with the coming era, that brought in the church and the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the saviour of life unto life or of death unto death. ' But what of today? Is it not true that again we have come to the end of another era and another age? Speaking of the world view. we are already entering a new order of thinking and a new order of belief. There is change in the trend of political order, in the social views of life and living, in the manipulation of powers for the letting loose of great forces in combinations and wealth, in religious things. The church has lost its hold on the world and in her efforts to maintain her past prestige, the church has allied herself with modernism and the unproven science and foolish philosophy of men. She is no longer that glorious church of power that she used to be when she stood iirmly on the simple and holy teachings of Jesus. Change is written every- where. but few are able to interp1'et it. Let us call your attention to a few things that need to be considered. First. There has been within the last few years a ouickening along the lines of intellectualism, higher standards and a kind of freedom that has brought on loose thinking. The so-called intelligent thinking of men has shoved away from the old moorings that held so strictly to the religious ideas and standards of the Scriptures and have crossed over to and are taken up with so-called scien- tific findings. From this, the intelligence of the world has made over an en- tirely new religious thought that has in a measure practically caught the churches and has led to an entirely new motive of religious life and practice. Religion is being made over from this viewpoint. It must of necessity, i11 order not to shock too much the religious world by its interpretatin, use much of the content of the old interpretation. But it is applied altogether differently, Until our people, i. e. those who want to take the true course of salvation, go with God and maintain a spiritual relationship to God and the church, are find- ing it notoriously difficult to detect the general changes in the intellectual at- mosphere. And as a consequence they are falling into snare upon snare. IVhen they hear the familiar statements as once used in describing religious experienco now used in the new concept of religion. its life and activities, they are deceiv- 3622 -20-