The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864. Various

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СКАЧАТЬ a long existence to the investigation of truth; and only when this fact is impressed upon the minds of youth can they be made to appreciate their true position in existence, and made efficient workers in the great cause of humanity.

      Yet all education is vain, all intellectual development is of little benefit, all civilization hollow in its nature and ephemeral in its duration which lacks the moral element. And by the word moral in this connection is intended to be understood not only what is usually conveyed in the term morality, but also all religion. It is a well-established fact, more particularly exemplified in our own history, that all political parties founded upon an ephemeral issue, inevitably disappear with the final adjustment of the questions upon which they are based, having nothing left to rest upon, so it is in the affairs of nations. In the weakness of human nature and the fallibility of all human prescience, no system or theory can be devised which shall endure through all time, which shall not become effete, useless, and even erroneous in the progress of human development, and in the ever-shifting condition of human society. Hence any government and society founded upon a system of merely human devising, must, in the progress of events, fall to pieces, and give place to the results of a new and younger development. The law of God, as contained in Divine revelation, is alone unchangeable, unmodifiable. It is adapted to meet the requirements of all lands and all ages, to answer all the necessities of which human nature is capable, even to its extremest verge of development. Hence all political systems are durable only in proportion as they, in their organization, conform to the precepts of Divine law.

      We have used the term 'moral element' as necessarily comprehending all religion, for the reason that upon religion is necessarily based all true morality. There is nothing in the physical, and more especially in the intellectual world, without a final cause; and that so-called morality which exists entirely separate and distinct from religion, can be based upon nothing other than self-interest, which, under different conditions and circumstances, would as unhesitatingly lead to evil. The 'moral man' without religion could as easily be evil minded and dissolute in a community purely evil as he is upright and honorable in a civilized and enlightened community of to-day, for the reason that his morality is nothing more than deference to a certain standard of honor—in other words, to the tone of the society by which he is surrounded, bringing with it all the benefits of high public estimation and a lofty position in society, which tone it must follow, be it good or bad: it is founded and built up in self-interest. Yet this very tone of society, and all these standards of honor and uprightness, when traced to their origin, are found to arise from the precepts of revelation. We are all, physically and intellectually, the creatures of circumstance. Experience moulds and develops the intellect. Our moral natures are not innate, but solely and entirely the result of the influences by which we are surrounded. There is in the soul no absolute standard of right; if there were, uprightness would be the same the world over. But the right of the heathen is a different thing from that of the Christian; the right of the Chinese or the Japanese is a different thing from that of more enlightened nations; the right of one Christian community is different from that of another; and this because right, considered distinct from religion, is relative, and subject to all the modifications of different conditions of society. The 'Evil, be thou my good' of Milton's Satan is a delicate recognition of this fact. But absolute right is a thing unknown to human nature; it can never be innate, but comes from without. It can only be apprehended by the intellect as a thing of God, a part of His nature, given to us as a law, a rule of action, which we can accept or not, taking upon ourselves the consequences of its rejection. There can be no standard of absolute right other than the law of God; there can be no other invariable and eternal rule of human action.

      And if this position be true of individuals, most assuredly is it true of nations, which are but individuals in the concrete, subject to the same vicissitudes, governed by the same laws, physical and moral, and following the same path of development. Only that form of government which recognizes the Supreme Being as the chief of rulers, and His law as the source and model of all human law, can be sure of truth and justice on its side, both in its dealings with other nations and in its regulation of its own internal affairs. Only such a form can work steadily for the advancement of its people, both by leading them forward and by smoothing the rugged path to perfection, and removing every obstacle which impedes the national progress. However near the principles of our Government may approach to those of the Divine law, there is still room and urgent necessity for reform. Yet, in the universal disfavor into which theocracies have fallen, and in the intense desire which pervades our people to avoid the complicated evils of a union between church and state, every attempt to unite religious principles with those of government is looked upon with positive alarm; and justly so, since the experience of past centuries proves that both thrive best in separate spheres, however near they may approach each other in the abstract, and that when united, the one is apt to prove a hamper on the other, through the introduction of error and corruption; while, separated, they act as a mutual restraint, each tending to control the abnormal development of the other. For these reasons reform in this particular must move from the people to the government, not from the government to the people.

      And here we come to the root of the whole matter, to the field where reform is most needed, that is, in the moral condition of our society. While there are few nations in which there is such a diversity of religious views and multiplicity of religious sects, there are few peoples which are so proverbially irreligious as our own. Yet our condition in this respect is rather a neutral one than otherwise, for while we are without any positive immorality which should make us preëminent above other nations for vice, there is, nevertheless, in our midst, little of that simple, trusting, unquestioning faith, which is the 'substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen'—little of that all-pervading and all-powerful reverence for sacred things, that deep religious feeling which forms a portion of the very life of most of the nations of the Old World. This is nothing more than the reaction of the stern Puritan tenets of the colonial times. It is the logical result of those dark and gloomy theories which aimed to make religion not only unpalatable but absolutely repelling to the young and the ardent, causing them to fly to the opposite extreme of throwing aside religion to 'a more convenient season,' when the pleasures of life should have lost their charm, and they themselves should be drawing near the close of their pilgrimage. That theory which made a deadly sin of that which was at worst but a pardonable misdemeanor and perhaps wholly innocent in its nature, could not fail in time to react violently, first through the process of disgust, then through that of inquiry, and finally to the carrying of speculation to extremes, and practically pronouncing harmless and innocent that which was really vice. The popular mind, rebounding from the Puritan ideas, did not pause to discriminate between the truth and error which were so intimately mingled in their system, but, sweepingly denouncing all the theories whose most prominent characteristics were revolting, involved in the denunciation and rejection much of pure and simple truth, and ran rapidly along the path of revolution, heedless of every warning, unchecked by the obstacles which Truth threw in its way, down to the present time of almost universal looseness.

      Another effect of this rebellion of the national mind against the Puritan theories is seen in the almost yearly inauguration of some new sect in religion, in a land which is already so crowded with diverse and antagonistic religious organizations that it might be termed the land of sects. However right or wrong in a religious point of view, the Puritans committed the great social mistake of establishing a new church, instead of working earnestly to reform the old in those respects in which it seemed to them to have fallen into error, thereby destroying the unity of the Christian world. Had the movement stopped here, less harm would have been done; but it was not of the nature of things that it should be so. The establishment of the principle that purity of worship and of belief was to be sought, and diversity of religious opinion to be gratified in separation and the erection of new organizations, rather than in the endeavor to purify the old and established form, at once threw wide open the door of schism, and with it, in the end, that of scepticism. The movement once begun could neither be checked nor controlled by any human effort. Others claimed the right which they themselves had exercised, and the result was soon seen in the separation of one after another denomination from the Puritan Church, each, in its turn, to be divided into a score of sects, according as circumstances should alter religious views. Were the principles of true СКАЧАТЬ