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BODAGE TO A IGOBLE AGE By Thomas Selby Who gave Himself for our sins that He might redeem us from thispresent evil world. — Gal. i. 4.ot a few people who claim to be Christians, and arenot altogether unworthy of the name, think only of the far-off issues of the Redeemer's work. In theirview salvation is from the woes of a remote futurerather than from the contamination, restlessness,and gilded captivities of the present hour. And adesultory style of viewing the Scriptures mightalmost seem to justify them in their position. TheBaptist struck an unmistakable keynote when hespoke of the wrath to come. Christ's own parablesof retribution were for the most part prospective inthe terrors they portrayed. Paul himself speaks of Jesus who delivered us from the wrath to come. It was perhaps necessary to begin with that view, forsuch is the deceitfulness of sin that in the heyday of its perpetration and before tragic reactions set in,men scarcely realise the misery and mischief itengenders. And when they have lapsed into stuporand settled down in degradation, it may be easierto excite the imagination by delineating wrath tocome than to quicken drugged sensibilities to aBondage iro an igMo^le agepresent apprehension of the wrath overshadowingevery opponent of God's authority.But this view needs to be supplemented by thedeeper view that salvation, if it be a process corre-sponding to the promise of its name, is salvationfrom all that is evil in the present. There is adanger lest we should live so much in what is yet tobe that we forget what is actually taking place beforeour eyes. Operating in futures is an art practised just as much in the churches as on the exchangeswhere men buy and sell ungrown corn or cotton.With not a {^\w people religion is a speculative trans-action for distant dates, and the man who giveshimself up to God's service is going in for a lock-up investment, sound of course, but the handsome wisdomof which will be proved fifty years hence. Suchtentative pietists anticipate rather than experience,their spiritual life resolving itself into a hope ratherthan a faith saving from present evil. Paul speaksmuch of hope, but in his scheme of thought, hopedwells together with faith and love in the same houseand is no solitary figure looking out across a shorelesssea. Our religion is not made up of dreams fof to-morrow but takes in the urgent problems of to-day.Christ did not give Himself for our sins to save onlyfrom hell hereafter, forgetting to reckon with the hellsthrough whose grim circles of disquiet and pain, thedim, moaning millions are daily moving. After utter-ing his last parables of the wrath to come, Jesusprayed that the disciples might be saved from theevil of the world, and His prayer was answeredthrough the power of His own cross which effectuallyseparated them from the weltering unregeneracy of the times. In Paul's words the prayer, and the1 84 BODAGE TO A IGOBLE AGEsacrifice which was the abiding answer to the ]3ra\er,are brought into the same focus.It is a widespread opinion that the most viciousthings in the world may be controlled and improved,and that the domain of life which the ew Testamentlooks upon as adverse to God is in no sense a cityof destruction from which men and w^omen need tobe brought out. The very expression, as used inevangelical circles, implies a libel on decent andreputable sections of society, it is said. In answer tothat we may admit that artificial and misleading linesare often drawn between the Church and the world.That which ecclesiastics call elect and precious, God may sometimes call reprobate and vile. We cannot put a ticket on every amusement andrecreation and sa)^, This is Christian, and that is un-christian. We cannot divide up our neighbours andsay, Here are the sheep, and yonder are the goats. But at the same time, if we vigilantly exercise ourspiritual senses we shall be able to detect the presenceof evil, just as truly as a sanitary expert can smelldry-rot or sewer-gas in a shut-up house. Where the judgments of earnest and sagacious Christians agree in such matters, we may safely accept their verdict.In some decades the world may become complaisanttowards the Church and claim to be partly of it. Butan evil world there surely is, touching with its seduc-tive influences numberless points of sensibility in ournatures, and from that world we need to be saved byChrist's sacrifice just as urgently as from hell itself What is this sinister domain ? How may wedefine and identify that world which is the foe of God? It is organised error and depravity, con-federated unregeneracy. It is that mass of precedents,P.ODAGE TO A IGOBLE AGE 185conventions, antipathies bred of the secret antagonismsof the race to God. It is the old Adam ruhng byan informal plebiscite : an offensive and defensivealliance against the regal claims of the spiritual life.It is the kingdom whose first law is self-indulgence,in which men are crowned and praised and sungwhen they do well to themselves. It is the grossresiduum with which we have to deal, when the soulsresponsive to Christ's call have been separated fromtheir fellows. It is the special psychic atmospherewhich quickens the seeds of moral contagion. Itmay be a fashionable set, a club, a society paper, aschool of art, a cult in literature. It is party politicsdisencumbered of the onconformist conscience. It is the environment which produced a Messalina inthe first century of the Christian era, and the kindof woman who flutters from morning mass to themidday racecourse in the nineteenth. It asserts itspower in every part of the city. It means grimy,grinding wretchedness as well as dress, glamour, andglittering jewellery. Its chief question is, Whatshall we eat ? What shall we drink ? Wherewithalshall we be clothed? The one problem absorbs themind alike under the embarrassment of riches andthe oppression of penury, and in both cases issymptomatic. It is Babylon when God's peoplehave fled from it lest they should be partakers of itssins.It is quite possible for the zi>orId to zvax ivorseand worse, in spite of the ever-enlarging victories of Christ's spirit. The fact that those who yield their allegiance to Jesus Christ continue to increase is quiteconsistent with another fact — that as the ages run on,the untouched and impenitent world becomes more1 86 BODAGE TO A IGOBLE AGR evil and obdurate. The drinking water of some greatcities is drawn from the impure rivers on which thosecities stand. After the reservoirs have been pumpedfull from the turgid stream a chemical substance isused to precipitate the sewage and pollution, and clearcrystal water is run off into tanks made ready toreceive it. ow the more of the pure water you takefrom the contents of the reservoir, the viler will bethe residuum. What John and Paul and Jesus Himself mean by the world, is the obdurate and refractoryprecipitant left behind when human life has beenacted upon by the gospel. As the natures pre-disposed to good are gathered to Christ, the worldmust necessarily become more evil. In that sensecommentators of a certain school are quite right in thepessimistic view they take of the times immediatelypreceding Christ's second coming. Do not let uslightly assume that amidst the humane civilisationsof these last times, there is no trace or taint or stainof the old world left. The malignant virus which hasbeen working in the human soul for centuries is scarcelyeven attenuated, and the old rage against God andvirtue, the old lust of blood still sleeps in the race.In cities nominally Christian crowds will go to see aboxing match where there is some little chance of physical injury or death, and a magistrate will pre-scribe to wrangling street boys fisticuffs rather thansummonses. Unless we are saved from the world itwill bring out the devil that lies low in most of us, andwe need deliverance from it just as much as from thepit of darkness itself.In Christ's view of things, J^resen^ and future standinseparably related, and He never contemplates asalvation that overlooks the immediate evil and beginsBODAGE TO A IGOBLE AGE 187to take effect only in the far-off epochs. Earth and the
