Rensselaer Union, Volume 9, Number 43, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 July 1877 — Religious Duty. [ARTICLE]

Religious Duty.

Many persons have an idea that they are free from religious duties until they agree to be bound by them. They think that attendance upon worship, the support of the church, the avoidance of unprofitable amusements, and the maintenance of high Christian character may be binding upon the acknowledged Christian, but they do not apply to the irreligious man—especially the avowed skeptic. ---- : But moral obligation is not created by contract, nor does it depend upon belief. It requires no contract to bring a man within thfi range of God’s physical laws. Disregard oi the laws of health is punished, irrespective of the ignorance or disbelief of him who disregards them. Strychnine would kill, even though the victim did not believe in the power of poison or the fact of death; and so of the civil laws. It requires no contract to obligate a man to obey the laws of the State. He may be ignorant of those laws, he mav refuse to obey them; he may deny their existence; yet they bind him, and for their violation te is justly punished. And so of the moral laws; it requires no contract to bring man under their authority. By the very nature of his being he is under their authority. There can be no evasion of the laws by which God carries on His moral government. They must be obeyed or disobeyed. Among those laws are the duties pertaining to the Church of Christ. That Church is a most important part of that moral government. Indeed, it is, on earth, the very embodiment of that moral government. It is the duty of everyone to whom that Church is presented, to enter it, to sustain it, and to be conformed in conduct and character to its teachings. Each one of these duties is binding; and -tiro non-performance of the first —that of entering the church—by no means lessens the obligations of the others; nor does disregard of them all either change their nature or diminish their force. The Divine law, which lays these duties upon everyone, is an eternal fact; and neither its existence nor its power is in any way affected by man’s belief concerning it.— Standard of the Gross.