A Message to Living Men

by Sir Robert Anderson

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To living men no time can be so solemn as "the living present," whatever its characteristics; and that solemnity is immensely deepened in an age of progress unparalleled in the history of the world. But the question arises whether these days of ours are momentous beyond comparison, by reason of their being in the strictest sense the last? Is the world's history about to close? The sands of its destiny, are they almost run out, and is the crash of all things near at hand?

 

Earnest thinkers will not allow the wild utterances of alarmists, or the vagaries of prophecy-mongers, to divert them from an inquiry at once so solemn and so reasonable. It is only the infidel who doubts that there is a destined limit to the course of "this present evil world." That God will one day put forth His power to ensure the triumph of the good, is in some sense a matter of course. The mystery of revelation is not that He will do this, but that He delays to do it. Judged by the public facts around us, He is an indifferent spectator of the unequal struggle between good and evil upon earth. 

 

"I considered all the oppressions that are done under the sun; and, behold, the tears of the oppressed, and they had no comforter; and on the side of their oppressors there was power, but they had no comforter." (Ecclesiastes 4:1)

 

And how can such things be, if indeed the God who rules above is almighty and all-good? Vice and godlessness and violence and wrong are  rampant upon every side, and yet the heavens above keep silence. The infidel appeals to the fact in proof that the Christian's God is but a myth.
 

The Christian finds in it a further proof that the God he worships is patient and longsuffering—because He is eternal," longsuffering because He is almighty, for wrath is a last resource with power. But the day is coming when

"our God shall come and shall not keep silence." (Psalm 1:3)