John 18:37 Pilate therefore said to him, Are you a king then? Jesus answered, You say that I am a king. To this end was I born… Apparently, the end of society is still what it has always been — amusement, and nothing else. As years go on, the race after pleasure grows in severity and speed. New modes of enjoyment are invented, and fresh ingenuity is exhibited in combining as many of them as possible. There is absolutely no such thing as rest or pause. What space is there amid the thronging, surging crush, for those delicate sentiments which make the higher life of humanity to grow and prosper? Such as these want light and air: they have neither. Society, in a word, knows no other existence except that which is material, and gross, and selfish. It talks vaguely of duty. At heart it is disposed to be sceptical as to whether there exists any real sanction for the performance of duty; and smiling a smile, which is more like a sneer of despair, puts the question by. It is struggling to find a sure foothold. It has plunged into a quagmire, has bid adieu to the firm ground on one side, and has not reached the firm ground on the other. In the worst sense of the phrase, it is in a state of transition. It has defiantly shaken its head at, and turned its back on, the old ologies; it has still to find consolation in the new isms. Thomas Carlyle says, "To speak in the ancient dialect, 'we have forgotten God;' we have quietly closed our eyes to the eternal substance of things, and opened them only to the shows and shams of things." Its old ideals, its old faiths, its old standards of duty, of right and wrong, are dissolving or dissolved. It is unsettled, and it is aimless. What society wants is seriously to ask whither it is going, and on what principle it is acting. (The Standard.) Parallel Verses KJV: Pilate therefore said unto him, Art thou a king then? Jesus answered, Thou sayest that I am a king. To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth. Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice. |
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