The Pulpit Speaks: July 5, 1958

An article written by my father, the Rev. C. Thomas Paige, as it appeared in the Tri-State Defender on the date shown.

For a long time I have been searching for a word or a group of words that would definitively describe the current conditions of our world. This is not it but it comes closer than anything I have found to date. It is on a paraphrase of one of the most popular hymns of the church but oh, what a paraphrase:

Backward, Christian soldiers,
Marching as in fear.
With the cross of Jesus
Going to the rear.
Christ the royal Master
Leads against the foe
But we are going backwards,
Our banners do not flow

Like a bunch of weaklings
Moves the church of God.
Brothers, we are treading
Where no saints have trod.
We are all divided,
Not one body we!
United in dissensions
And one in apathy.

— Rev. U. G. Murphy

These are the words of a preacher — a preacher, mind you — who has dedicated his life to making this a better world, a Christ-centered world. Now with the evening shadows closing about him, he cries out, “Backward, Christian soldiers.”

What words could better describe our conditions today? Yes, we are going backwards — and backwards fast. Anyone who holds to the ideas of some decades ago is quickly labeled “old-fashioned.

A few days ago, I walked down one of our streets and saw one of my favorite slogans: “HE WHO FOLLOWS THE CROWD WILL ONE DAY WAKE UP LOST IN IT.” The day has come when most of us have become lost in the crowd. There was a day of heterogeny in thinking, in behaving, in life’s goals. Today it is no longer true. We are all moving toward a period of homogeny. All of us, to a large degree, think, act, behave and everything else alike. The lines between what is right and what is wrong is thinly drawn. We lose ourselves in the complacency that everyone else is doing it. Instead of the church going into Christ-centered society, the world has come into our churches and we are more concerned about having a new dress or a new suit to show than we are in serving God.

Last Sunday, I attended service in one of the local churches. I purposely went in late and sat in the back. After I took my seat, my eyes dropped down to the feet of the lady sitting next to me. She sat with a baby squirming in her arms and wearing stockings that were more “runs” than stocking.

As I looked at her there rocking her baby and joining in the singing of the hymns, I was touched. To me, she represented the old school of thought as far as going to church is concerned. Whereas she was willing to take her baby to church and wear those stockings, there were many who would have used such apparel as a reason for staying home. We find ourselves in a society where we are moving further and further backward from those things that have had meaning and will have meaning as long as there is a man on this earth.

We live in a society where people take greater pride in being anything but a Christian. I heard a young man ask a young lady, who had recently finished college, what church she belonged to. She looked at him and said, “Are you kidding?” A long time ago, the young woman would have said to the young man, “I see learning this has made thee mad.”

Today we are living in a society filled with mad people. We are marching backward and backward fast. The paths we are traveling, the things we are doing, and the thoughts we are nourishing in our hate-filled bosoms can do nothing but lead us backward.

It has been nearly 20 centuries since Jesus came down here and suffered, bled and died for the salvation of mankind. His suffering was a method whereby this world was to get better and better and better through his efforts. But what have we done? Man’s inhumanity to man marches daily before all of us, showing that we are going backward and backward fast. We have lost that zeal, we have lost that deep-seated yearning, we have lost that inner desire that makes each of us want to be more and more like Jesus. Only in proportion that we are willing to let the life of Jesus become a part of each of our lives will the ever-hastening process of backward marching cease.