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Education
Light of life they had turned aside to walk in the sparks of the fire
which they had kindled.
Having separated from God, their only dependence being the power
of humanity, their strength was but weakness. Even the standard set
up by themselves they were incapable of reaching. The want of true
excellence was supplied by appearance and profession. Semblance
took the place of reality.
From time to time, teachers arose who pointed men to the Source
of truth. Right principles were enunciated, and human lives witnessed
to their power. But these efforts made no lasting impression. There
was a brief check in the current of evil, but its downward course was
not stayed. The reformers were as lights that shone in the darkness;
but they could not dispel it. The world “loved darkness rather than
light.”
John 3:19
.
When Christ came to the earth, humanity seemed to be fast reach-
ing its lowest point. The very foundations of society were undermined.
Life had become false and artificial. The Jews, destitute of the power
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of God’s word, gave to the world mind-benumbing, soul-deadening
traditions and speculations. The worship of God “in Spirit and in
truth” had been supplanted by the glorification of men in an endless
round of man-made ceremonies. Throughout the world all systems of
religion were losing their hold on mind and soul. Disgusted with fable
and falsehood, seeking to drown thought, men turned to infidelity and
materialism. Leaving eternity out of their reckoning, they lived for the
present.
As they ceased to recognize the Divine, they ceased to regard the
human. Truth, honor, integrity, confidence, compassion, were depart-
ing from the earth. Relentless greed and absorbing ambition gave birth
to universal distrust. The idea of duty, of the obligation of strength
to weakness, of human dignity and human rights, was cast aside as
a dream or a fable. The common people were regarded as beasts of
burden or as the tools and the steppingstones for ambition. Wealth
and power, ease and self-indulgence, were sought as the highest good.
Physical degeneracy, mental stupor, spiritual death, characterized the
age.
As the evil passions and purposes of men banished God from their
thoughts, so forgetfulness of Him inclined them more strongly to evil.
The heart in love with sin clothed Him with its own attributes, and this