Frankfort Pilgrim College - Pilgrim Yearbook (Frankfort, IN)

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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-

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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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ed and led to believe that the meaning is that of the old concept of salvation. Again, it is not always easy to determine the rise, fall and change of thought when fundamentalists and modernists, agnostics, and believers, dis- ciples of Huxley, Darwin, and Freud and disciples of Christ in operation all dwelling together in the same atmosphere with but mild, if any, conflict. When fad succeeds fad with bewildering rapidity, strike relief funds and men of big business with changing conditions hurrying us on, we scarcely know at what point, in the change of one age to the next. we are in. Really then, what has been some of the characteristics of the last few years that reveal the temper of the times in which we live '? First, quoting from a recent writer, t'It has been an era of dissolution. The pumped up idealism and fervor of war times were followed by cynicism, by general smashing of idols, by skepticism of exalted mc-tives: witness reduction of man tin the thought of the sort of people who pride themselves in being up to datej from an immortal soul to a biological mechanism: the substitution of the idea of sex for the idea of romantic love: the vogue of throwing down standards particu- larly in biography, and emptying out of the best in ideals. Second. It has been 311 era of revolt and experiment in sex. The keen minded young people have forsaken radicalism in economics and politics and re- ligion for radicalism in sex and have shocked their fathers by their loud re- marks on the terrany of what the middle class hold sacred in marriage and on the dangers of being inhibited. Having thus left behind the Puritan idea of marriage, t'companionate marriage, furious interest in Freudianism, and a steady tendency toward more and mere frankness in speech and literature are being passed by into the more outright discussion of homosexuality and the more complicated sex perversions. Third. All around us from men of intiuence, we are hearing it stated that since the war it is an era of science enthroned and religion dethroned. A real struggle has been going on between orthodox religion and science, so- calleql. Never before has the public been so ready to accept uncritically new scientific doctrines and theories. While the churches weie losing in numbers and authority, the behaviorists and psycho-analygists have had thousands at their feet. Fourth. It has been an era of non-interference in the relation between politics a11d business and getting rich quick. One direction of the new free- dom has been freedom of the business man from governmental interference. The popular doctrine has been less government in business . The popular president has been the one who gave business its head, reduced the activity of the State to a minimum, did as little as possible to divert the public from its preoccupation with profits. The above analysis is well worth a consideration of Bible students. In every particular almost it agrees with the scriptural view of what shall obtain at the close of the present world age just before the opening of the next. And it gives us the view-point of the man of the world well-versed in the prevailing conditions of the times. But now a strange thing is taking place. VVhile the above mentioned lines of thought and actions have been the movements of the mass public, these activ- ities are now beginning to pass into the background and to give way for some- thing new. The world is in a state of unrest, of turmoil, and of perplexity. We cannot help but believe that Hod's hand is moving in the midst of these things and in general against them. VVith respect to the thought of dissolution and of the revolt of youth toward what they call freedom and of sex experiment the fickle public at la1'gc are again swinging in the first instance toward ideal- ism and toward humanism and in the second to extreme looseness, to sex domin- ation and ultra freedom. tCoutinued on Page 10-lj -Zir- V