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seating week-day programs. In a re cent convention of representatives of the •moving picture interests of the country, it was openly admitted that the moving picture theatres could not succeed unless there was an immoral taint in their exhibitions. There has been a large Increase of suicides all over the country. The sta tistician of the Anti-Suicide League Of New York has estimated that thé num ber of suicides in the United States dur ing 1920 was not less than 12,000. If to these are added the unsuccessful at tempts of people to destroy themselves, he says the number would be double. Of cases reported, 707 were children, the boys averaging fifteen years, the girls sixteen years, and the youngest child being five years of age. Our nation is said to possess the high est national divorce rate among the nations of the world. It is not to be marveled at that leading sociologists are looking upon divorce in America as a national calamity. A great deal of our modern literature reveals the wide diffusion of material istic thought. Even surface indications show that conduct in keeping with the prevalent materialism is common. One able observer has said that materialism without the name has come to be widely assumed as expressing the whole mean ing of life, the assumption being found in literature, in legislation, in social programs and in plans for welfare and amusement. Much of our current literature is trivial in tone and even when interest ing has a strong pull downward from Christian ideals. Weak and silly books have so greatly multiplied afi to lead America’s leading merchant, John Wan- amaker, who is a seller of large quan tities of books, to write and publish widely over his own signature, the fol lowing: “In one of Charles Dickens’ stories Mark Tapley says he would like to squeeze Mr. Pecksniff behind the door, because he was the sort of man
who would squeeze soft.” This is the way some of us feel about recent books and novels— they are beautifully bound, with pictures on the front, and almost all of them squeeze soft, thefe’s so lit tle to them. Do give us some strong books, solid, substantial and real; less whipped cream and souffles. A man wants books that won’t ‘squeeze soft.< ” None of the most widely circulated peri odicals of our time are openly and em phatically Christian in their purpose. One leading publisher maintained that the word “ Christian’,’ in the title of a publication was a severe handicap to a publisher’s financial success. Impiety and impurity are conspicu ous, especially in the life of our great cities. Exhibits of vice and of a de praved moral nature are found as read ily in the Christian atmosphere of the great capitals and commercial centers of civilization as in the desolated bar baric surroundings of Asia and Africa. Within an area of five blocks in New York eleven suicides are reported in one year. All the victims were young persons, lured, it is said, by a spurious Bohemia which ended in disillusion ment, accompanied by poison or pistol wounds. The press report, describing conditions which had become So bad as to lead to an appeal to the mayor, said: “ Jazz music constantly assailing the ears. Nights made hideous by raucous shouting of revellers on their way home ward from iniquitous rendezvous where morals are scoffed at. Drunkenness, cigarette smoking and worse character izing the conduct of women who, in passing houses of worship, kneel on the ■ steps of the churches and sacrilegiously mock the Divinity and glory in their adherence to atheism and free love.” That the drift of our modern civiliza tion is away from God and His Word is overwhelmingly evident. In the light of the signs of the times,’ we may well ask: What has become of the philoso phy of this world? What is the fruit age of the Christless philosophy of the
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