The Hood River glacier. (Hood River, Or.) 1889-1933, 1922-11-02
WHY SKEPTICISM
AMONG YOUNG FOLK!

Excerpts from sermon by Rev. G.
R. Delepine at First Baptist church,
The causes of the prevalent skepti.
cism among young people are so many
that you hardly know where to begin
but they all cluster around one great,
eternal fact Jesus, who is the cor
nerstone of a truly Christian civillza'
tion has been amazingly ignored by the
builders in every department of ouI
so-called Christian civilization. 1t is
Christian only in name, but, alas, not
much in fact. The builders have re-
iected the cornerstone and now our
structures are falling around us on
every side.
We will begin right at home-with
the churches. If churches had preached
Christ more and themselves less, If
their membership had followed Christ.
making him the cornerstone of their
lives, things would not be today as
they are. For the lives of church
members would be the demonstration
of the gospel, and many young people
who are now skeptics would be devout
followers of the Lord Jesus. What the
churches have accomplished is truly
amazing when we consider how weakly
they have followed Jesus. What would
they have accomplished, had they fol-
lowed our Lord more faithfully, is be-
yond computation.
If we turn to the home life we find
another cause for the skepticism of our
modern young people. Most parents
have given themselves to materialism.
They have put the emphasis on the
body first. then on the mind but have
forgotten the spirit. They have and
do woefully neglect the souls of their
! ligent animals. The examples of the
parents have been to keep the young
from attending the places of worship
where the spirit is fed. The week
days have more and more encroached
on the Sunday and gradually parents
have more and more absented them
selves from public worship. The young
people have but followed the lead of
the parents. The parents, in the build
ing of homes, have increasingly ne
elected Christ as the cornerstone and
now the homes are tumbling down
around their ears.
The public schools have done the
same thing. The Bible has been ex-
cluded on the pretext that it is sectar-
ian. From the age of to 16 children
for five days of the week have nothing
to feed their spirits. Do you wonder
that their spirits do shrink under such
devitalizing process? You need not
shoot child to kill him you need
only to neglect to feed him. And SO in
our schools we attend to the body and
the mind and starve the spirit of our
children. Christ, the cornerstone of
all true education has been neglected
and our spiritually starved children are
turning skeptics.
The worlds present thought system
has added to this process of starvation
that of active, if covered, opposition
to the things of Christ | am far from
opposing evolution. To my mind it is
not proved. Neither can it be dis
proved. Evolution may be right. 1t
IS. however, an improved fact. The
danger is not in presupposing the fact
of evolution, but in the theory of evo-
luton (which has now such a sway on
the human mind. Much of what is
taught, insofar as it falls under the
scope OF evolution, is taught in accord
ance with the present theory of evolu-
tion. The result is that if facts agree
with these theories they are taught.
1t they do not agree they are passed
under silence. A strange time in
which we live, in which facts are
tested with theories, instead of testing
theories with facts. What is theory? |
1t is an attempt to account for facts. |
Theories of evolution are thus attempts |
to account for the supposed fact of |
evolution. That the present theories |
are incomplete. no one can doubt, for |
they do not account for all the facts. |
Hence, whether evolution is true or |
not, we know we have no satisfactory |
theory of evolution as yet.
Nevertheless our young people are |
with a system of education that is
fitted to theory of evolution, which |
is known to be imperfect, a theory ut
terJy unable to account for the Christ |
of the Gospel for His atoning death
and His resurrection, as well as for
the fact or regeneration. And there
fore our system of education, built as
1t is, In so many WAYS, on this incon-
plete theory of evolution, gradually
forces out of the minds Of the young
people, without them being aware of /
1t, the contemplation of all facts which
are not accounted for by this false
theory. l call it false because obvi-
ously incomplete, but the fact that the
theory is false does not prove evolution
itself to be false. only we must confess
that so far no satisfactory theory of
evolution has been formulated. Our
young people. however, are in the
midst of a transition period which
works nightly TO the unsettling of
faith in the Christ of the GOSPEL
1t is all the more so that we are now
the victims of psychological ideas
many of which are fundamentally
false. 1t is perfectly true that we
work at our best when we like our
work so far. so good. But it is also
true that there are many things. and
they are the noblest, that we come TO
like only as we climb to them bv the
hard and unpleasant way of duty
things that we can never know or an
preciate until we learn to do tbings
because we like to do them, whether
We like IT or not. This is too much
ignored IN our system of education.
Ne try to make things too pleasant SO
as to make our young people like their
studies and therefore study to better
advantage. Hence it is that we find a
tendency to 60 around hard places in
stead Of thinking them through at the
expense Of some hard work. This easv
going system Of education tends to .
make our young people mental and
moral mollycoddles, with the results
hat we now see and that all begin to
iepiore. IL sO-called Christian ma