Reader, do you realize that this world, as Satan's sinfulness and man's sinfulness have made it, is in God's sight a scene of moral degradation and darkness? And have you weighed the terrible fact which the word of God demonstrates, that, moving amidst such darkness, the great multitude of men are in themselves as dark as their surroundings?
Do you realize that the mass of men are lost souls, blindly groping their way in time, with eternity before them? that they are heart-hardened and conscience-seared victims of their own lusts? and that Satan induces them not to take their own sinfulness and that of their fellows too seriously, by means of plausible lies concerning this life, eternity, and God?
Do not men prove what they are by their thoughts and actions? Each individual has a selfish heart; therefore the world is full of selfishness. Each heart is a hot-bed of secret lusts which it would like to gratify. A certain proportion of these secret desires are actually carried into execution, making human society groan beneath its burden of crime and shameful deeds.
Select but one of the world's great cities, and take the record of its newspapers and police courts for but a single day! What an exhibition of the human heart! Yet here we have only such cases as reach publicity amongst the grosser outbreaks merely, which even man's law must prohibit in order to make this world tolerable even to sinners! But also consider the brood of social sins, winked at by man's law, which each day brings forth! And think, further, of the surging tide of impure thoughts and secret desires,-impulses of lust, covetousness, passion and hate,-which daily leave their defiling trail in the hearts of perhaps all in the city, high and low, depraved and highly "cultured," alike!
The flood of corruption and evil which prevails in the world is merely the aggregate of iniquity which is constantly being poured out from individual hearts. Each child of Adam, however respectable, contributes his part to this enormous cesspool. Whoever you are, my reader, certainly you also contribute your part. And the most appalling feature is the sad fact that each heart still contains within itself more and worse than it ever pours out,-yea, the spring and fountain of the evil! For human governments, courts, police, jails, and other social institutions,- corrupt as is their administration, in the hands of men who are themselves sinners like all others,-are nevertheless God's merciful provision to restrain man from unbridled license.
But a restraint is not a cure. Hence the attempts of all the reformers in the world's history to solve the problem of good and evil have proved futile. Such men (themselves also sinners, however respectable) attempt to curb and restrain the world's grosser evils, yet cannot eradicate the root of all these evils, since they cannot re-create the human heart and make it pure!
The sinful heart in your bosom and mine, my friend, is the thing at fault. The Saviour put His finger upon the sore spot,-this root of evil,-when He said:"That which cometh out of the man, that defileth the man. For from within, out of the heart of men proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness:all these evil things come from within, and defile the man" (Mark 7:20-23).
Shall we, then, trim and doctor the branches of a tree which is rotten at the roots ? God, at least, is not so foolish. John, the fore-runner of Christ, testified :'' Now also the ax is laid unto the roots of the trees" (Matt. 3:10). And the Saviour Himself said, very plainly, and to a most respectable man, "Ye must be born again "! Man must be newly fashioned -through and through!
Thus even God Himself can command but two remedies to stem the flood of evil which surges from the inexhaustible source of evil in the human heart. (i) If we will permit Him to save us, honestly confessing to Him our need of this, He will eventually re-fashion these hearts of ours, making them holy for eternity. (2) But if we refuse His offer to do this (and we refuse it by rejecting the gospel of Jesus Christ),, then He must bring our career of evil to a close in death and judgment, His wrath throughout eternity restraining the unchanged heart from breaking out into open sin.
Dear reader, which thing have you chosen,-to be a vessel of God's mercy, or a vessel of His wrath? to have your heart cured, and made fit for eternal happiness with the redeemed in God's presence, or merely to have your pestilential heart curbed and restrained in judgment, so as no longer to contaminate the moral atmosphere? Which have you chosen?
But not alone is man immersed in the corruption he has produced:he is in darkness concerning it,-deluded, blinded, as to his real condition, and the inexorable consequences flowing out of it. The word of God says:"Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world,-the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life,-is not of the Father, but is of the world" (i John 2:15, 16). But men say (because their hearts are as dark as the world around them, the world answering to, and being in affinity with, what is in their hearts):"This world is good enough for me!" Reader, have you ever said or thought this? Is this world "good enough " for you? Then how good are you? Are you at home in this sin-laden atmosphere? How impregnated, then, with the virus of sin must your own heart and mind be!
A world of man's crime and misery! of sin, of suffering, of sorrow! of groans and pain and blasphemy and cruelty and selfishness and impure thoughts and deeds! Yet in such a scene most men are self-satisfied optimists, while they heartlessly tread one another down in the mad struggle for the selfish advantages and prizes of this life! Dear reader, are you one of this selfish multitude,-loving and seeking "the things that are in the world," jostling your way among fellow-sinners to grasp at these things, in order that you may gratify the sinful lusts of your flesh, the covetous desires of your eyes, and the vain pride of this life? Then may God have mercy upon you, before it is too late!
But how can men be optimists, in the face of this universal corruption, and each soul's contribution to it? The word of God explains this mystery. It is because the minds and hearts of men are immersed in "the snare of the devil," and "are taken captive by him at his will " (2 Tim. 2:26).
Satan, inspiring the minds of men, his dupes, is the author of all the optimistic systems of philosophy -of all the excuses for sin, and palliations of it, behind which men hide their seared consciences ! He it is who inspires and nourishes unbelief in every heart! who seeks to discredit the testimony of the word of God, in its exposure of the darkness ! who invents the slanders, voiced both by open infidels and by such professing Christians as the "higher critics," against the " Scriptures of truth " !
Satan forged the lie about God which, entering into the heart of Adam and Eve, corrupted them from their allegiance to God's word. And ever since, this "Father of lies" has continued to forge plausible sophistries, constantly tempering his methods, and his philosophy of unbelief, to the spirit of the times. Sinful man is naturally hostile to God, "because the carnal mind is enmity against God" (Rom. 8:7). And Satan is the spirit who, at his own will, stirs up and employs against the truth this natural enmity of the human heart. Scripture therefore speaks of him as '' the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the sons of disobedience " (Eph. 2:2). So completely is the world under Satan's sway and subtle influence that he is also spoken of as "the god of this age." If men do not accept the light of God's revelation, it is simply because Satan, this world's god, has darkened and blinded the minds of his victims. For "If our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost, in whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them that believe not, lest the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them " (2 Cor. 4:3, 4).
Thus, with the exception only of those who are saved through faith in Jesus Christ as the Saviour of sinners, Satan deceives to their destruction the whole world. He holds the human intellect, in which man boasts, in his seductive power, prating of human progress, enlightenment, and the age of reason, while he lulls foolish men, who trust to their supposed wisdom, into false security-in the very face of their manifest corruption ! Hence Scripture proclaims the fearful fact that "the whole world lieth in the wicked one" (i John 5:i, Gr.) !
Such, in brief, is the moral darkness of this world:a scene where man wallows in his own corruption, while Satan's subtle inspiration makes black appear white to the sin-beclouded reason of fallen humanity, seducing men from realizing the facts as they are, or making them skeptics as to future consequences, through the cunning occupation of the mind with man's material achievements, and the insinuation into it of some one of the many schemes of fatal error!
But mark well, unsaved reader:as one living in Christendom, where the word of God is known, your condemnation proceeds not merely upon the fact that you are a responsible unit in the world's system of corruption. An additional verdict is rendered against you:that Light has shone into this darkness, through God's mercy and yet you have not honestly come to this Light, and pleaded guilty under its exposure, in order that you might be saved ! F. A.
(To be continued.)