Evening Republican, Volume 15, Number 225, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 September 1911 — Morality [ARTICLE]

Morality

By Rev. Guy E. Shifrfer Awiitaet Raetor of St. Pettn '

There la in our civilization a class of women branded as moral-lepers, the presence of any one of whom would not be tolerated in our homes. ‘ Yet our daughters are allowed to mingle freely with the men who prey upon these women; to receive them in our homes —and too often—to many them. Such is custom and conviction, so totally an inversion of the teaching and practice of Jesus Christ, who ate with harlots and sinners, not to con- ( done their acts, but to save them from evil. Let us ask in all frankness, is it not time for the church to inquire rather more seriously into this matter of conscience and morality? Shall we go on being satisfied that custom and convention have said the last word on these vital matters? There are too many false judgments ot morality in society, as a result of untrained conscience. The thing we call convention is too often but a cloak for false morality. Custom and convention are made up of elements both good and bad, though most of us, if a thing la conventional, adhere to Its pronouncements without stopping to question the right or wrong of it. Convention and custom axe good when they conserve the good of the past; they are viciously evil when they cloak evil, and even worse when they so enslave the minds of the people that they stupefy all moral progress. There is a tendency in most of us toward legalism; this false use of the law, and the subtlest foe with which Christianity has had to cope. One of the most remarkable things in history is the speed with which Christianity morally “ran off the track” and allowed Its freedom to become elaborated and stiffened into dogma, and then Into legalism. The church, which was to bring God and man together, became burdened with ecclesiastical machinery, which kept God and man apart What Is the standard? Shall we frankly become legalists and accept the law as our standard of conduct? Or shall we accept what are called the average judgments of mankind—the consensus of opinion—as our standards? If so, what shall we do with the prophets; those men of vision who sometimes rise in our midst, to point the way to a clearer conception of truth than the average man has attained? And if we do not listen to . the prophets—for example, those men of vision we have in our political life today—how can we hope to progress as a civilization? Or shall we accept as our standard that which satisfies us? Or shall we accept that which works—pragmatism, which has become popular among certain ethical thinkers. This matter of conscience calls for clearer thinking than we have bostowed upon it as a church or as individuals in the past. Conscience is the soul’s discernment of right and wrong for the purpose of Its own moral choice. It has as a standard not any exterior law, which means the seduction of religion and morals to jurisprudence and restraint; but .It must have an inner law, which means freedom. Jesus Christ’s most emphatic teaching, about which centered all else hs said and did, was the sacrednbss of the self. We have Christian morality then when we set before “us the task of developing this self. This selfloyalty is the only morality we know. It is truth for truth’s sake, not truth for expediency. Conscience is the voice of God witnessing to eternal right within the individual soul. It is the voice of man's true self, and the true self is one with God. As our sense of beauty leads us on to things beautiful, so our moral sense should lead us to things moral. And, as in art, we turn to great masters, whose genius has wrought in the world of beauty for the standards of valuation; so in the world of morals must we turn with ever-increasing earnestness and appreciation and longing to the master of men. And as our study of the great cam vas reveals ever and anon some deeper truth that lay in the heart of the artist, so our serious study of Christ must reveal more of the truth that lay Hke gold in the depths of his heart. It is for each one of us to say—for no one else can say it for us —whether the light that is in us shall become , darkness and so spread the gloom of | itself through the hearts of humanity or whether it shall become a part of that light that lighteth every man that ■ cometh into the world. 3