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T h e K i n g ’ s B u s i n e s s
June 1932
many ways, a blessing; but what can atone for its sins ? “ Lo, this only have I found, that God hath made man up right: but they have sought out many inventions” (Eccl. 7:29). 4. In yet another article, “ surveying the past decade, Sir Max Pemberton, the novelist, declares” : While the American film producers dance a fan dango in the outer halls o f adultery, the novelist boldly takes the plunge and defies all authority. “ Prosecute me,” he says in effect, “ and you will make my fortune. Stop' my book because it deals with unnatural offenses, and the bookshops of the Continent will rejoice. Indeed, they will offer the volume beneath the flaming offenses, and ned in England.’ ” So the garbage is cultivated with im punity . . . The mirror . . . is not held up to nature; it is held down. The ashes o f the nether hell are turned with lantern and with muck rake; and everywhere there is the reeking odor that revolts. Prince George, youngest living son of King George, recently said before the Book Trade Provident Society of London: “ I have sickened of novels.” Whereupon, we read that The News Chronicle (London) takes his remarks as “ an interesting sign o f the times” and elaborates upon them as follows: What “sickens”—to use Prince George’s word—the ordinary decent public is not even the occasional blunt treatment o f an indecent subject) but the wearisome spate o f books whose authors never seem to think (or at any rate to write) o f any other subject; o f morbid works concerned with the lives and opinions o f sexual degen erates . . . and of pictures of violent, ugly passions. . . . It is no defense at all of this torrent o f mud to say that sex interest plays a great part in life. Manure plays a great and necessary part in the feeding of the human race; that is no argument for covering the walls o f the dining room, drawing-room, and study with nothing but pictures o f manure heaps. The ominous thing about it all is that these filthy, reeky, maggoty “manure heaps” are piled high by thousands on the main thoroughfares of our great cities, and no one any longer even seems to hold his nose as he passes by. Immature youths love to prod around in them, and their movie-mad parents care not. Is it any wonder that divorce courts work overtime, and that newspapers overflow with tales of marital infidelity, and that homes of refuge over flow with troubled girls? The moral forces that are still at work stand aghast at their tasks. Tremendous wealth and political power, im potent judges and imbecile juries, nullify all moral effort.- Man’s civilization sinks in the cesspools of his own de pravity. Religion permeated with the leaven of godless, bloodless modernism, losing its saltness, lacks all power to save. It may be said that such conditions are not new in human story. No, not at all! But be it remembered -that such conditions presaged the dropping of the curtain upon the stage of the age that tolerated them. “And God looked upon the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth. And God. said unto Noah, The end . . . has come” (Gen. 6:12,13). “ As the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be” (Matt. 24 :37). 5. Another article within the same magazine gives the figures of a poll on the prohibition question—“ For Con tinuance or Repeal o f the Eighteenth Amendment.” The headline assures us, according to the poll, that “ Bankers, Clergy, Lawyers,. Doctors—All Damper.” In other words, professional men all, except the clergy, are opposed to that which President Hoover calls “ the noble experiment.” The darkest part of the picture is that the ¡clergy is de serting “ the noble experiment,” now polling but 23,924 votes for it, and 9,684 against it. Is the clergy soon to
favor legalizing once again the traffic in rum ? Or does the clergy believe that the Constitutional law of the land, en acted by a vast majority, cannot be enforced? A dark pic ture, either way! I f the clergy is deserting the banners of civil and moral righteousness, themselves sinking into the quagmire of our postwar social degeneration, then who shall lift those banners aloft once more? Mankind Depressed by Fear More and more, as days pass, haunting fear continues to depress the spirits and activities of men. Picking up an other magazine as we write here in this Indiana home, we find that the first and leading article is from the pen of Bruce Barton. Our eye catches the following prargraph: The economists may continue to write long books, but the simple fact is this: Business is confidence plus ac tivity. Depression is fear and inactivity. Today we are depressed because o f Fear, the fear o f war, . . . etc. “ Men’s hearts failing them for fear” is an outstand ing sign, given by Christ Himself, that the hour draws near when He Himself must come and save by assuming the reins of earthly government (cf. Lk. 21:25-27). But what is the real source of this panic of fear that has gripped the nations? What, if other than moral collapse? Where there is moral collapse, confidence always dies. When na tions lose their honor, regard their most sacred pledges as “ scraps of paper,” snap their fingers at God and the moral law that is so enduring that He Himself wrote it in stone with His finger—when that happens, we can scarcely ex pect men or nations to have confidence in each other. Ra ther, their chief business will be, in fear, to arm against each other. It will take more than the fifty-five kindly old gentlemen at Geneva, each armed with a fountain pen and a few pieces of paper, to assure peace to a world that has forsaken the moral standards of the living God. Not until the eyes of men can be opened to see that the problem o f peace is a moral problem, and that moral problems exist only when men have forsaken God—not until then will men find the pathway out of depression and back to peace. Man must get back to God, or God must come down to man. Which is it to be ? capital city go into all corners of the republic ; often there are no others. In this way, the people read of the campaign in the capital, at the same time getting, in the articles spe cially prepared for that purpose, a vital, arresting gospel message. This means that in homes and offices, and in cir cles otherwise impossible to reach, the message is being read and discussed with results that only eternity will reveal. The outstanding feature, of these evangelistic cam paigns is that they have been carried out with the coopera tion of, and for the advancement of, the missionary groups in whose,territory they have been held. This has meant that the converts and interested people have been taken care of and follow-up work done on constructive lines. While decrying the tendency to “ count heads,” it would be entirely within facts to state that hundreds of thousands of people have heard the gospel during the last twelve years through these campaigns—people who would not otherwise have been brought face to face with its claims. O f these, who shall say how many will one day be among the number that, out of all kingdoms and peoples and tongues, shall hail the Redeemer? A NEW THING [Continued from page 259]
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