by Arthur W. Pink
by Arthur W. Pink
Philologos Religious Online Books
Philologos.org
by Arthur W. Pink
June, 1938
CONDITIONS IN THE PAST.
It will be observed that most of the quotations in the previous article were taken from writers of the seventeenth century, that is, when Puritanism was in its heyday. If, then, during the time that sound preaching and vital godliness flourished most in these favoured Isles, wickedness also held high carnival, why should it be thought strange that in our day—when faithful preaching and personal piety are at a discount—sin is in the saddle and lawlessness abounds on every side? But to continue our review of conditions in the past. Bad as the seventeenth century was, the eighteenth was far worse. No human pen can adequately depict the moral degeneracy and the spiritual stagnation of its first five decades. Page after page might be filled with quotations from the few men of God who lived then. A brief selection must suffice.
Upon the abdication of James II, Prince William of Orange was invited to occupy the English throne, for the surer establishment of Protestantism. Describing the assembling of the English gentry to welcome him to London, Lord Macauley wrote, “The attractions must have been great, for the risks of the journey were not trifling. The peace had, all over Europe, and nowhere more than in England, turned crowds of soldiers into marauders. Several aristocratic equipages had been attacked, even in Hyde Park. One day the British mail was robbed, another day the Dover coach. On Hounslow Heath a company of horsemen with masks over their faces watched for the great people who had been to pay their court to the King at Windsor.
“There are few periods in the history of the world that have been marked by deeper spiritual darkness than the commencing part of the eighteenth century. From 1700 to 1750 seemed to have lapsed into lifeless formality, and this, together with the matured abominations of Popery, opened the way for that tide of infidelity of which the French Revolution was the manifested result. The latter part of the eighteenth century was, through the Lord's great mercy, marked by a very decided revival of evangelical truth. The effect of the writings and preachings of Whitefield, Romaine, Newton, and others, was widely felt in Europe and America” (B. W. Newton, “Aids to Prophetic Enquiry,” first series, p. 3).
“The darkest period which the church of God in this country has ever seen since the Reformation was in the reign of Queen Anne. Dissent had obtained a legal footing at the Revolution of 1688. From that era commenced the decline of vital religion till the time of Whitefield. The eighteenth century arose in the thickest cloud that has overspread this country since Popery fell. We live, it is true, in a day of much spiritual declension; but things were much worse then. Nearly all the Dissenting churches were sunk into Arianism (which denied the Godhead both of Christ and the Holy Spirit). Little else but dead morality was heard in pulpits where free grace was formerly proclaimed. Religion, in fact, had sunk so low that when Whitefield went about proclaiming the new birth, it was a doctrine as new to the Dissenters as to the adherents of the National Establishment. A national religion was the order of the day, and as much preached in the chapel as in the church” (The Gospel Standard, 1852, p. 336).
“Another thing wherein the state of things is altered for the worse from what it was in the times of the Reformation, is the prevalency of licentiousness in principles and opinions. There is not now that spirit of orthodoxy which there was then; there is very little appearance of zeal for the mysteries and spiritual doctrines of Christianity; and they never were so ridiculed and held in contempt as they are in the present age, and especially in England, the principal kingdom of the Reformation. In that kingdom, those principles on which the power of godliness depends, are in a great measure exploded; and Arianism and Socianism, Arminianism and Deism, are the things which prevail and carry almost all before them. History records no age wherein there was so great an apostasy of those who had been brought up under the light of the Gospel to infidelity; never was there such a casting off of Christianity and all revealed religion, never any age when it was so much scoffed at and the Gospel of Christ ridiculed” (Jonathan Edwards, Vol. 1, p. 471). Nor were conditions, generally, any better in the U.S.A. at that period.
“Surely the Lord has a controversy with this land; and there hardly can be a period assigned in the annals of the ages, when it was more expedient or seasonable for those who fear Him to stir up each other to humiliation and prayer than at present. What is commonly called our National Debt is swelled to an enormous greatness. It may be quickly expressed in figures; but a person must be something versed in calculation to form a tolerable idea of accumulated millions. But what arithmetic is sufficient to compute the immensity of our National Debt in a spiritual sense? or, in other words, the amount of our national sins? The spirit of infidelity, which, for a time, distinguished comparatively few, and, like a river, was restrained within narrow bounds, has of late years broken down its banks and deluged the land. This wide-spreading evil has, in innumerable instances, as might be expected, emboldened the natural heart against the fear of God, hardened it to an insensibility of moral obligation, and strengthened its prejudices against the Gospel. The consequence has been that profligate wickedness is becoming almost as universal as the air we breathe and is practiced with little more reserve or secrecy than the transactions of common business, except in such instances as would subject the offender to the penalty of human laws. O the unspeakable patience of God!
“The multiplied instances of impiety, blasphemy, cruelty, adultery, villany, and abominations not to be thought of without horror, under which this land groans, are only known to Him who knoweth all things. There are few sins which imply greater contempt of God, or a more obdurate state of mind in the offender, than perjury, yet the guilt of it is so little regarded, and temptations to it so very frequent, that perhaps I do not go too far in supposing there are more deliberate acts of perjury committed amongst us than among the rest of mankind taken together. Though some of the Roman poets and historians have given very dark pictures of the times they lived in, their worst descriptions of this kind would hardly be found exaggerated if applied to our own. But what are the sins of heathens, if compared with the like evils perpetrated in a land bearing the name of Christian, favoured with the Word of God, the light of the Gospel, and enjoying the blessings of civil and religious liberty and peace in a higher degree, and for a longer continuance, than was afforded to any people of whose history we have heard?” (John Newton, Vol. 1, p. 197).
In his “Foolish Virgins Described,” William Huntington (1797) wrote, “We have more need to fear a certain army in the bowels of our own country, than all the combined forces on the frontiers (i.e. of Napoleon) . . . the daily elopement of women from their husbands, and the unclean spirit of whoredom that so universally reigns and rules among the higher classes . . . Another thing I fear is the threatened stroke of judgment upon the oppressor. The last hard frost gave the coal merchant his opportunity to grind the face of the poor to the utmost, which will never be forgotten by the days of this generation. The year following, the whole staff of life was confined in the hands of the farmer, the monopolist, and the miller, who exhibited such hardness of heart, covetousness, and cruel oppression, as is not to be found in the annals of history” (Vol. 2, p. 568). So that “cornering” of food and unjust “profiteering” is no new thing.
Spiritual conditions in Scotland at this same period may be readily visualized from the following quotation. “The darkness of a dead, blasted, profane, or ignorant ministry prevails upon the withholding of the lamp of God's Anointed. Indeed God may leave something in the land called the Gospel, and a set of men who call themselves ministers of the Gospel. But what sort of a lamp is it that is left, when the true Gospel lamp is taken away? It is the Devil's lamp; it is not the narrow way, but a broad-way lamp, to set folk straightway to the bottomless pit. And what sort of ministers or lamp-bearers are left? Why, they are blind guides leading the blind, and both fall into the ditch together” (Eb. Erskine, Vol. 2, p. 285).
Perhaps the reader would inquire, Do you, then, wish to make out that conditions now are better, or at least no worse, than they were in the past? That expression “the past,” dear friend, is entirely a relative one. It all depends upon the unit of comparison. We are certainly not so mad as to argue that things now wear a more favourable appearance than they did a generation ago. No indeed, we freely grant and sadly acknowledge that during the past fifty years there has been a most decided and terrible deterioration, both spiritually and morally, and that not locally or provincially, but universally. The law winks at many things today which had been punished before the War. The press smiles upon things now which it had not dared to do then. The rank and file of the public countenance today was formerly condemned by all decent people. Professing Christians are no longer shocked by sights which once horrified them.
But what does the degeneracy and wickedness of our generation prove? That the end of the age is certainly upon us? By no means. That evil is more rampant today than it has ever been before? Certainly not: the testimony of history proves otherwise. Conditions are far worse than they were fifty years ago, yet, in many respects, they are not nearly so bad as they were two hundred years ago. Things generally were in an awful state during the first half of the eighteenth century, but even they were better than much which obtained before the Reformation, during the Dark Ages. All of this simply serves to illustrate what we said in our first article: there is an ebb and flow of the tide—manifest throughout the history of Israel in Old Testament times; equally evident during the course of this Christian era. What is coming next? We know not. No man knows. Only fools will prophesy. Whether God will soon graciously grant a widespread revival or whether He will let loose the bolts of His judgment, remains to be seen.
This very imperfect review of Conditions in the Past would lack anything approaching completeness if we failed to notice some of the physical judgments which, from time to time, God has sent upon men's wickedness. Our special object in here referring to these is to protest against our “Signs-of-the-Times” men, who magnify out of all proportion and historical perspective such phenomena when they occur in our own days. If some terrible calamity happens, bringing with it great loss of life and destruction of property, and especially if such calamities quickly follow one another (for they rarely come singly) scaremongers and lovers of the sensational declare that nothing like it has ever happened before, and that such things “prove” the coming of the Lord is at our very doors. But “There is no new thing under the sun.” These very calamities have occurred all through human history.
“We have been visited with famines, earthquakes, pestilence, inundations, thunder and lightnings in winter, and most strange and unseasonable weather; but alas, all these have taken no effect: where is the humiliation, repentance, and reformation which they have wrought? therefore it must needs be there remains behind a great judgment” (William Perkins, 1587, Vol. 3, p. 424).
The earthquakes which have happened in our own lifetime, at San Francisco and Quetta, severe as they were, were mild in comparison with those which occurred at earlier dates. In the opening century of this Christian era the entire cities of Herculaneum and Pompeii were totally destroyed. In more recent times, that at Lisbon, in 1755, to mention no others, resulted in no fewer than fifty thousand people losing their lives. Thomas Brooks (Vol. 6. p. 191) makes reference to a famine in England in 1316 which was so terrible, “that horses, dogs, yea, men and children, were stolen for food; and the thieves newly brought into the jails were torn in pieces and eaten at once, half alive, by such as had been there longer.”
Fletcher, the Historian of Salton, tells us that in 1690 conditions were such that, “besides many wretchedly provided for, there were two hundred thousand people, or one fourth or fifth of the total population of Scotland begging from door to door.” As recently as 1847 there occurred a most fearful famine in Ireland. “One correspondent from the County of Cork to whom we sent aid, mentions that in his district forty or fifty people die daily, either of famine or of disease produced by famine. The graveyards are full; through the number of the dead and the general distress, coffins cannot be procured” (Gospel Standard, 1847, p. 122). Probably some of our own readers can recall the fearful poverty and suffering in Lancashire in 1867-8, following the closing of all the cotton mills—owing to the Civil War in the U.S.A., when cotton ceased to be shipped from there.
“On one night in the month of August, 1846, a fatal blast traversed the length and breadth of Ireland, the effect of which was that the growing potatoes which, to use the language of an eye-witness, the day before stood up like gooseberry trees, next morning drooped and flagged, and in a few days filled the air with the stench of putrefaction. Men of science bring their microscopes, and talk very learnedly of fungus, and worn-out stock, and improper soil, and over-much moisture; but the leaf blotched in a single night tells its own tale, and proclaims the air as the bringer of the corrupting taint. The vial of wrath thus poured into the air, swept off in a single night the food of a nation, and in spite of the noble assistance, publicly and privately, of maligned and ill-requited England, herself suffering under a similar infliction, sent at least a million Irishmen to the grave, either by positive famine or by its invariable and more fatal accompaniments, fever” (Gospel Standard, 1854, p. 227).
“When the plague was in London, in 1665, when the Lord, to correct and punish the inhabitants of this kingdom for their national impieties, sent amongst them the most dreadful plague that had been in the memory of man, it was preceded by an unusual drought. The meadows were parched and the highways burnt up: insomuch that there was no food for the cattle, which occasioned, first a murrain among them, and then a general contagion among the human species, which increased in the city and suburbs of London, till eight or ten thousand died in a week. The richest inhabitants fled to the remotest countries; but the calamities of those who stayed behind, and of the poorer sort, are not to be expressed. Trade was at a full stand; all the commerce between London and the country entirely cut off, lest the infection should be propagated thereby. Nay, the country housekeepers and farmers dared not entertain their city friends and neighbours or relations who came from London, till they had performed quarantine in the fields or outhouses. If a stranger passed through the neighbourhood, they fled from him as an enemy. In London the shops and houses were quite shut up, and many of them marked with a red cross, and an inscription over the doors, 'Lord, have mercy on us!' Grass grew in the streets, and every night the bellman went his round with a cart, crying, 'Bring out your dead' ” (S. E. Pierce's Letters, Vol. 1, p. 80). This dreadful plague was followed by a four day's fire in London (1666) so devastating that it destroyed 89 churches and 13,200 houses.
When the Revolution occurred in Russia twenty years ago, [1917] and also in the early days of the present conflict in Spain, sensationalists announced in the most extravagant terms that nothing like it had ever happened before. But those with the merest smattering of history would know that the Reign of Terror in France when the streets of Paris literally ran with blood at the close of the eighteenth century, witnessed that which was equally atrocious and on a far vaster scale. In his Annual-Fast sermon, Nathanial Emmons said, “From January 1789 to October 1795 the number of slain and banished in France amounted to 2,152, 979.” He added, “Since that period there have been five years of internal revolution and foreign wars, carried on with infinite waste and havoc in Holland, along the Rhine, in Switzerland, in the Pyrenean frontiers of Spain, in every part of Italy, in England, in Syria.” Well did he conclude, “Human nature has been the same in all nations and in all ages.”
Nor were sensationalists in those days slow to avail themselves of such material, and “students of prophecy” turned prophets themselves, announcing that such Divine judgments were the immediate precursors of the return of Christ. The same occurred again in 1848 during the Chartist riots in England—“Who does not remember that memorable day, April 10, 1848, when London, commercial, political, and aristocratical, trembled to its very centre at the Chartist procession: when the Bank of England was armed and garrisoned like a fortress, and the greatest general of the age had made his military plans by disposing artillery and soldiers at various points, to drown the threatened insurrection in torrents of human blood” (Gospel Standard, 1854, p. 185). More so, sensationalists were in their heyday during the Crimean War, the Indian Mutiny, and the Civil War in the U.S.A., as anyone can verify for himself, if he has access to books on “The Second Corning of Christ” written at that time.—A.W.P.
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