The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1896-09-20
THE VOICE OF THE PULPIT
MENTAL REsTLEssNEss AND skEp-
TICAL TENDENCIES OF THE DAY.
Rev. $. s. Mitchell. ID. d., of First
Presbyterian Church, Buffalo, ON
s.The Craze for NOncontinuance."

IL timothy i'll. !.
Such an expression as this, taken in
nection with other similar words of the
same apostle, is conclusive proof that the
mental restlessness of our day and its skep-
teal tendencies new thing. They
at least nineteen centuries old.
We are apt to imagine have come
upon a day such as the world never saw
before-a day which threatens to make an
end of faith and the supernatural. But
just such days world has been ever
more seeing. The fact is faith is moral
rather than intellectual in it's inspiration,
and until there comes the end of the reign
of sin there will always be this aversion to
the verities of revelation, and this follow
ing after the novelties and inventions of
the human mind
But although no new thing has happened
unto us it is well to note and keep clearly
before us the strands of delusive assump-
ton that are braided into this passion for
moral noncontinuance.
The first delusion is the unfounded as
sumption that the spirit of the age is it's
own jus ification. 1t is true that the spirit
of our day is one of restlessness and I'M
faith but the existence of this spirit and
its justification are two widely different
things. For we must consider that the at
mosphere in which our day is plunged is
it breathes in is something that it first
breathed out-the inspiration of to-day is
the expiration of yesterday. Where else
did the Inspiration of our day come from?
The external universe has not changed
the ordinances of nature are what they
We're fifty, one hundred five hundred years
ago. and the Infinite One is surely
changeable-''the same yesterday, to-day
and forever, and the Bible has received no
new editions for centuries.
Whence, then, this new atmosphere that
our souls have reached? 1t is the product
of the combined exhalations of our genera
ton. But is it a pure and invigorating at
mosphere, such an that the more we
T breathe of it the better for US? To reply 1T
is the spirit of our day. is not to answer
this, question. So might answer the in
matestof a foul and crowded room A man
slips in from without and no sooner gets
the first wbin of the poison-ladened air
than he cries, This is awful! Whether
you know it on not my friends, you are
breathing deadly gases" That its exist
ence is its justificatiofs-iS ridiculous. -
Had any in Neros day risen to cry
out, TT is the spirit of the day in which
we live" would this voice have licensed
rapine, dissoluteness and butcheEy? So
the day of the French revolution had its
spirit; so had TIE seventeenth century In
England; but in both cases it was a Apirit
to be exercised and not wor SHIPPED. SSo--
many of the homes of the great city have
their peculiar atmosphere, and many
of the offices have the same but this does
not necessarily make these homes beautl-
full these offices wholesome. In the
one case the spirit is often that of sem
sual indulgence and in the other that of
| constituencies greed. What is needed in
both cases is not glorification, but >deodor-
ization.
1t may be that the spirit of our day is
against the old things of human sin and
human danger against the old things of
repentance and faith, against the old
things of the crucifled Redeemer and JUS
LITIGATION through His blood; but If so. so
much the worse for the spirit of the day.
SO much the worse for it if it oppose the
verities and MUNICIPALITIES of the moral
realm So much the worse for 1t If 1t
fights against the stars in their courses
and feeds with poison the lungs of immcr-
| tai men.
1t is a pitiful sight to in every direc-.
ton the children of sense ignorant of moral
law or willfully blind to it, unconscious of
deity, forgetful of immortality, eagerly
guping down the carbonic acid gas which
an unbelieving generation has exhaled, and
evermore shouting 1T is the spirit of the
day"
A second delusion is that the old things
of faith and practice have been superseded
and abolished. Great harm has often come
to the world through the circulation OF a
glittering generality that held within 1T but
a half truth Leaders of unbelef have
given a watchword of progress and this
has been taken up and repeated and re-em-
phasized until there are many who imagine
that this progress" has sounded the death
.lJ rNfr 1ierin Il.af
indeed it has not so much touched them.
Undoubtedly the day in which we live has
witnessed too, the results of marvellous
progress in many directions. The machin-
cry hall of the Columbian Exposition was
packed with what to the sixteenth and
even the eighteenth century would have
seemed so many miracles or as the conjury
of some black art. We do well to call our
age one of progress, and if we careful
to note the direction of this progress and
the spheres to which it is confined cam
not too often repeat the words of glorifica-
ton, but many in our day not careful
to mark the realm in which these new
born wonders have appeared. There has
been progress-there can be none--in the
spiritual world. There have been number
less specuIations concerning spiritual prob
lens, but no new discoveries Not a light
of all the thousands that sparkled in the
great exposition threw down a single ray
upon the path by which a human life goes
out of this world. There not in all that
forest of inventions a single to ex-
plain life make soft dying bed. Among
all the exhibits there was not one from the
world into which lives pouring at the
rate of 100000 with every passing day
And yet poor souls go on shouting prog
ress" as if by this course they declared the
adjustment of all the old things of the
spiritual world. About all these things
know just much and no more than did
the disciples to whom Paul addressed the
words of the text 1900 years ago.
A third delusion nromotive of this ten
dency is that mental restlessness 49, men
tai drifting are much progress. Men
think because they have cut loose from
their old anchorage that Therefore they are
making a voyage. But is drifting progress?
Haul in the anchor and the boat will begin
to move, ii is true, but motion is not neces-
sarily going into any desired desirable
haven. Such a boat may whirl round and
round in AN eddy of wave and foam, evil
dencing life. initiating progress. but the life
here Is aimess one. and the foam only
ha Of 10 81 Of he