"SIGNS OF THE TIMES."

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 813, 10 May 1910, Page 5

"SIGNS OF THE TIMES."

"THE DOOM OF VANITY FAIR."

SERMON BY DR. GIBB,

At St. John's Church on Sunday ' evening Dr. Gibb delivered the fifth sermon of the series "Signs of the Times.". The special theme was the "Doom of Vanity Fair." In the sermon preached a week before he had pointed out that • the worldliness in which those who • denied the. reality of sin and redemption through Christ were enmeshed presented certain features which had not previously been observed, at least in. the Christian centuries. Worldliness was justified to-day aa a reasonable cult. Under the guidance of Freidricli Nietzsche it had elaborated an apologia—a philosophy. This was the counsel that was given them: "Bo yourself; do what you want to- do; never mind the weak and the pitiful; above all, never mind Christ; down' with Christ, up with the superman! Down with tho virtues of chastity, selfrestraint, self-sacrifice, and up with the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life." , A new thing this in the Christian ages, but' nevertheless a revival of the old Paganism— the Paganism of the decadence of Greece and Rome.

Illustrating the excesses and' tho ultimate miserv and despair to which this cult, brought its votaries, Dr. Gibb made use of G. F. G. Masterman's volume, "The Condition of England," and drew a number of pictures—first, of the life lived and the torments endured by the ultra-rich both in Great Britain and the United States. Riot and satiety were the dominant .notes. Again ho emphasised the fact that these excesses were to-day justified by appeal to reason, science, enlightenment. The editor of a sober American magazine had not long ago asserted that, - in of classrooms in the colleges of the United States, it was being taught that- "the • Decalogue was no more sacred than a syllabus; that immorality was merely an act in contravention of society's standards; that children were an encumbrance; that ther« could be and were holier, alliances outside tho marriage bond than within it." The situation was not so desperate in-England and tho colonies; but it was bad enough, and all the indications were that worse was coming. Even in v * their- own country there were a great many persons of ample means to whom God and eternity, the sanctity of tho Lord's day, and the claims of tho spiritual nature , of man had hecomo as a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. To them lifo was one round of plnasuroseeking. Ami, with very few exceptions, he could find no more indication of a recognition of the higher things of the soul on the part of tho Socialist 'or the . poverty-stricken than on tho part, of the. utra-rjeh. God was ignered equally, by both. ; AYhat oould be the end of it all but Satiety and. Despair? Matthejv Arnold's description in well-known lines of the hard'pagan , world of antiquity; tho world which disgust, s ,secret loathing, deep weariness, and sated lust had .changed into a' hell was paralleled by' the cry of a modern poet describing his own oondition. "Out"from the mist," ho'said. ,

"Out from the mist, the mist I cry; Let not my soul of numbness die. My soul is furled-in every-limb; And my existence groyveth dim. My senses all like-weapons rust, And lie disused in endless dugt. I may not love, I may'not hate, Slowly I feel' my. lifo abate."

But there was a, further, doom. What form'it. would take only God knew. It might be that the' pre-eminence might pass from the nations now called Christian to tho despised yellow races, among whom the Cross of .Christ seemed to bo winning far greater victories than among ourselves. The soeptre of power might drop from our effete hands. Or .could they be- right who held that all that was happening—these signs of the times of which ho had been speaking— was clearly predicted in the Word°of God, and who further held that tho evils and wrongs of the world would only be righted' by the personal ooming of Jesus Christ to reign on earth when all things that offend and do iniquity shall be gathered out of His kingdom ? The preachei wat ever more inclined tp think that this might be the solution of the great .world problem.