PROFANITY IN LIFE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 139, 13 June 1936, Page 2 (Supplement)

PROFANITY IN LIFE.

MODERN DAY EXAMPLES. The following passages are taken from a sermon on "Profanity." preached some time ago in a London suburban Congregational Church by Dr. J. Pickthall. The temper of our modern life is profane. It seeks to bring everything down to a materialistic and sensuous level. Take, for example, the question of marriage. In Christian nations, at any rate, it has always been regarded as a sacrament: but now, we have ■writers advocating that it should lie regarded merely as a legal contract capable of being terminated by agreement between the two parties to it. The rmruber of people being married at the registry office continues to increase, and marriage, instead of being a sacrament, is in real danger of degenerating into a mere convenience to satisfy the Bcnsuous iiide of human nature. Anothci aspect of modern profanity is the attitude taken up by many towards our sacred literature. The tragic thing to me is not that the Scriptures are criticised but that they arc left unread. There are, indeed, a great many religious people who read books about the Bible but not the Bible itself. Some time ago a young man of about 25 years of age began to talkto me about the myths and folk-lore of the Bible, and ended by describing it as a book only fit to be relegated to the museum of antiquities. Later on. he admitted that he had not opened a Bible for over 10 years. Xow I can respect a man who scorns the Bible as sacred literature after reading it carefully and reverently, but I cannot rcspect a man who pours contempt on a book which has been the inspiration of men and women for 19 centuries, without even taking the trouble to read it. This light, flippant, thoughtless, off-hand way of dealing with sacred things constitutes a type of profanity which every great-souled man must abhor.

But the deepest profanity of all lies in the fact that so many in these days are keeping God out of their lives. One thinks of that line of Milton's in which he speaks of his work: "As ever in my great Taskmaster's eve."'

I do not like the word taskmaster, but otherwise the thought is noble Men are not <loing their work as in God's sight. The thought of life as a sacred trust is one which i* conspicuous by its absence. So many are living as though Chirist had never lived: as r though He had never died. So feuthink of life as a divine opportunity to smelt the gold of character from the furnace of existence and to leave the ■world a little better for their having lived. The most serious charge one can bring against this age is not that it is profane in l speech but in life. People are living too much for gain, pleasure, fame, reputation instead of living by those great and sacred ideals which were incarnate in Jesus.