AN AGE OF DOUBT TO PRECEDE OUR LORD'S SECOND COMING.
By D. T. Taylor
“I tell you that he will avenge them speedily. Nevertheless, when the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?” Luke 18:8. OUR Lord foresees and warns us of a period of infidelity, a faithless age, to be in full development at the instant of his last coming. Such a period is now upon us—already it is here. A wave of skepticism is rolling over mankind. From all quarters comes the loud alarm. False science, spiritualism, the death of conscience by the perverted use of intoxicants, the rejection of the fact and nearness of the advent, etc.,—all these have assisted to bring upon the church these sad days. There is danger of a general frenzied outbreak of the forces of evil, such as followed the general atheistic era in France, 1789–93. The existence of a time like the present forewarns the church to be on her guard. The Judge is at the door. Read the following array of testimony; and yet, but a third of what I have is here presented. Theodore Monod, of France, said in September, 1870, “We are surrounded by an atheistic, skeptical, and superstitious population. Materialistic atheism has shown what it is capable of;” i. e., ruining Paris.—Letter from Paris. DeWette says there is in Europe “a widespread, daring, fundamental unbelief; a more and more conscious hatred of the Divine; even in the better classes of spirits a deep, gnawing skepticism that undermines the lowermost foundations of divine and human truth and authority.”—Christian Union, Sept. 13, 1871. Count Z. Mamiani, of Rome, declares there is in all Italy but “superstition in the lowest populace, indifference in the other classes, and infidelity in the greater part of the thinkers and writers.”—Christian Union, Sept. 20, 1871. The Evangelical Christendom said, eight years ago, “A spirit of destructive infidelity has gone forth among the masses, and is possessing them.”—Christian Union, Jan. 1, 1872. Archbishop Manning, of England, in lectures on the “Evils of the Day,” said these many evils would culminate in a great atheistical apostasy and the Antichrist. And the Christian Union of Jan. 10, 1872, in which I find this statement, says, “One thing is clear, the atheistic element has very great power in Christendom, and is preparing for a conflict more fearful than most Christians anticipate.” “The infidel movement in religion is no longer hampered by poverty. Its organization extends throughout the United Kingdom, and touches the colonies.”—Edinburgh Scotsman, Jan. 13, 1872. President McCosh, of Princeton, said in the New York Observer, in April, 1872, “Infidelity, great at all times, is now worse than ever,” and he quotes 2 Pet. 3: 3, 4 as now fulfilled. “There is in England a rapid growth of skepticism of the worst kind going on. It is of a very aggressive character. Nothing but the gospel can save us from anarchy.”—British Messenger, March 1, 1872. Prof. Taylor Lewis declared: “The positive, aggressive character of irreligion is the peculiar feature of our age. An atheistical party is rising in this country. It can no longer be disguised that atheism, blank atheism, with all its desolating horrors, is becoming the characteristic of modern unbelief.”—Christian Statesman, Feb. 15, 1872. “The science of our age is intensely skeptical. It throws more and more doubt upon accustomed religion.”—H. W. Beecher, Aug. 23, 1871. Merl D’Aubigne, in a letter in 1872, declared: “There are now in Christendom two adversaries which menace the religion of the gospel,—Romanism on the one hand, Infidelity and Rationalism on the other. The latter is in the midst of us, intra muros, and it shows itself with increasing energy.” The Primitive Methodist (Eng.), in March, 1873, said: “We issue in England annually 3,000,000 Bibles, but then the Sunday newspapers number 26,000,000, while the issue of the prize-ring paper, The Sporting Life, numbers 26,000,000 more. The mischievous publications of our country amount to 42,000,000; while the number of publications morally beneficial is not more than 28,900,000, and infidelity is leavening the masses.” George D. Boardman said: “This is the age pre-eminently, of skepticism. It is the age of rationalism, of the authority of reason, as distinguished from, and opposed to, the authority of Scripture, and of the Giver of the Scripture.”—Baptist Quarterly, p. 182, 1873. Froude said in 1863: “At this moment a general doubt is coming up, like a thunder storm against the wind, and blackening the sky.”—Scribner, August, 1873. Later still, in 1878, this able English historian has said that there exists a general drift into infidelity, a disbelief in revelation and God. The Lord Bishop of Winchester declares that “doubt is everywhere,” and Prime Minister Gladstone, in a speech, Dec. 21, 1872, referred to “the extraordinary and boastful manifestations in this age of ours, of the extremest forms of unbelief.”—Scribner, August, 1873. “The truth of the gospel history is now more widely doubted in Europe than at any other time since Constantine.”—Anthony Froude. The Duke of Somerset says: “Skepticism pervades the whole atmosphere of thought, leads the most learned societies, colors the religious literature of the day, and even mounts into the pulpit.”—Scribner, August, 1873. Rev. Dr. Duff, of Scotland, in his great address in 1873, said: “Skepticism of every form, and complexion, and degree, has been naturalized in society. Of the infidel, material, and impure literature, there is a swarming shoal. I have secured two hundred of these scandalously infidel and impure publications. [Charles Bradlaugh’s.] The very names of some of them are replete with blasphemy.” He quotes Mr. Knight, the Fleet-street publisher, as saying in 1850 that the yearly circulation of infidel, impure, and pernicious newspapers reached the number of 28,000,000. Rev. A. P. Peabody, in the Baccalaureate sermon at Harvard, June 14, 1874, said: “In no age has there been so much skepticism as in this. There is skepticism in the air. We must grapple with this question.” The reports of the Evangelical Alliance held in New York, Oct. 2–12, 1873, show an increase of infidelity and atheism in all civilized countries. Holland, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Spain, France, Scandinavia, England, and Europe in general, are leavened with the spirit of rationalism and doubt. Rank infidels, free-thinkers, positivists, rationalists, atheists, neologians, are plenty and rampant, shouting, “No personal God, Creator or Judge!”—Tribune Extra, No. 12. Rev. A. Strittmatter says of China, that most of the ungodly foreigners, from all countries, are immoral, rapacious, Sabbath-breakers; they sneer at the missionaries, dishonor God, are skeptical, deny or doubt the inspiration of Scripture, the divinity and miracles of Christ, future punishment, and all their influence is in opposition to mission work and Christianity.—Missionary Advocate, December, 1874. “That Romanism and infidelity are making progress, we cannot deny.”—New York Observer, Nov. 23, 1876. Of the American Association for Science (numbering several hundred), met at Indianapolis, Aug. 20, 1871, a correspondent said: “I have met with theists and deists enough. . . . But very few men of mark here are Christians in the sense of believing in the vicarious atonement of Christ.” He said that these men were evangelical, but were moralists, shaky, and not sound in theology.—World (N. Y.), Aug. 24, 1871. The Independent says that “in our best schools, by our best scientific authorities, almost without exception, it is taught that man was, so far as his physical structure is concerned, evolved from irrational animals.” We are then cited to the principal colleges and a host of professors in our country who hold this form of evolution,—a belief which Christians generally regard at variance with, and opposed to, the history of the creation of man as given by Moses in Genesis.—N. Y. Independent, Dec. 18, 1879. Of India, Rev. G. Hall at Madras, says: “The unbelief of the philosophers of Europe is coming in like a flood upon India. Our young men now study Darwin, Huxley, Spencer, Newman, Mill, Colenso, and Bradlaugh, and the opinion is widely spread among the best educated natives that Christianity is an antiquated superstition, believed in by very few, even in England, who are well educated.”—Missionary Advocate, January, 1875. Hon. John Jay, LL. D., writes of the forces that oppose Christianity: “The first is infidelity in every shape, from the forbidding atheism of Paine and Voltaire to the poetic allusions of pantheism, the varied forms of rationalism, and the subtle and shallow reasonings of scientists who say in their hearts that there is no God.”—Independent (N. Y.), Nov. 15, 1877. Charles Bradlaugh, the vile British atheist and infidel, says the sale of his immoral pamphlet is 130,000. This man publishes a paper which has a circulation weekly of 250,000. He publishes over 200 vile pamphlets, tracts, and books. There are no accurate statistics of atheism and infidelity. Prof. Christlieb, of Germany, says they number “millions.” The Internationalists, whose creed is “No God,” claim to number 7,000,000. The spiritualists, an infidel and blasphemous sect, claim from 2,000,000 to 3,000,000 of followers. To these must be added the organized atheists of the Old and the New World, the Socialists of Germany, the Commune in all countries, and the Nihilists of Russia, whose hordes of followers would count up millions more. Socialism in Germany alone counts half a million of voters and fifty newspapers. All of this forebodes a fierce and terrible coming conflict!—D. T. Taylor, in Messiah’s Herald.