I like to listen to audio books while mowing. My iPhone, a pair of earbuds, and ear protectors make for some very entertaining and easy yard work.
Lately I have been listening to Pollyanna. I have always loved the movie that stars Haley Mills but must admit the book is very much different.
While listening on Saturday I heard something that really caught my attention.

Not until it was nearly time for her to go, did the man say, in a voice Pollyanna had never before heard from stern John Pendleton:
“Little girl, I want you to come to see me often. Will you? I’m lonesome, and I need you. There’s another reason–and I’m going to tell you that, too. I thought, at first, after I found out who you were, the other day, that I didn’t want you to come any more. You reminded me of–of something I have tried for long years to forget. So I said to myself that I never wanted to see you again; and every day, when the doctor asked if I wouldn’t let him bring you to me, I said no.
“But after a time I found I was wanting to see you so much that–that the fact that I WASN’T seeing you was making me remember all the more vividly the thing I was so wanting to forget. So now I want you to come. Will you–little girl?”

Eleanor Porter wrote Pollyanna in 1913. While the Bible says in Eccl 1:9-10 there is nothing new under the sun. Is there anything of which it may be said, “See, this is new”? It has already been in ancient times before us.
My thought was you couldn’t find this dialogue in modern literature. Mr. Pendleton would certainly be labeled a child molester or predator.
While I am sure that such sin existed in 1913 and before, perhaps because God was still very much a part of society, businesses, schools, colleges, and homes, that it may have kept morality and ethics in the forefront of peoples thoughts.
A woman like Eleanor Porter could write such words without the thoughts that I had.
The same thing happened to Israel. The Lord God said, “Because you have forgotten Me…I have seen your adulteries and your lustful neighings, the lewdness of your harlotry, your abominations on the hills in the fields. Woe to you, O Jerusalem! Will you still not be made clean?” Jer 13:25, 27
We need to return to God and repent of our abominations! He is the only hope for mankind!