RELIGION, empty

Let's accompany the British journalist David Pryce-Jones to Hereford Cathedral. While showing the cathedral to a pair of foreign guests, they stumbled upon a service in progress and were rebuked by the vicar. "Not a single worshipper, apart from the vicar, was present in that great nave," writes Pryce-Jones "Evensong was taking place in a vacuum: nunc dimittis, indeed."

D. Bruce Lockerbie, Thinking and Acting Like a Christian, p. 32.

Some people have just enough religion to make themselves miserable. 

Harry Emerson Fosdick.

In the book Gaily the Troubadour, published in 1936, Arthur Guiterman wrote the following poem. Reading his observations, you wouldn't guess it was written nearly fifty years ago.

First denistry was painless;

Then bicycles were chainless

And carriages were horseless

And may laws, enforceless.

Next, cookery was fireless,

Telegraphy was wireless,

Cigars were nicotineless

And coffee, caffeineless.

Soon oranges were seedless,

The putting green was weedless,

The college boy hatless,

The proper diet, fatless,

Now motor roads are dustless,

The latest steel is rustless,

Our tennis courts are sodless,

Our new religions, godless.

Arthur Guiterman, Gaily the Troubadour, 1936.