E.—REFORM.
The perversion of our moral standards by the dogmas of an antinatural creed is still glaringly evident [[147]]in the prevailing notions of natural justice and the precedence of social duties. The modern Crœsus who deems it incumbent on his duties as a citizen and a Christian to contribute an ample subvention to the support of an orthodox seminary, has no hesitation in swelling his already bloated income by reducing the wages of a hundred starving factory children and taking every sordid advantage in coining gain from the loss of helpless tenants and dependants. The pious Sabbatarians who doom their poor neighbors to an earthly Gehenna and premature death by depriving them of every chance for healthful recreation, lavish their luxuries and their endearments on the caged cutthroat who edifies his jailer by renouncing the vanities of this worldly sphere and ranting about the bliss of the New Jerusalem. The bank cashier who would never be pardoned for kicking the hind-parts of a mendicant missionary is readily absolved from the sin of such secular indiscretions as embezzling the savings of a few hundred widows and orphans.
Before resuming the rant about our solicitude for the interests of departed souls, we should learn to practice a little more common honesty in our dealings with the interests of our living fellow-men. Natural justice would be less frequently outraged if our moral reformers would distinctly repudiate the doctrines of vicarious atonement and salvation by faith, and hold every man responsible for his own actions, irrespective of his belief or disbelief in the claims of an Asiatic miracle-monger. And moreover, the exponents of Secularism should insist on a truth not [[148]]unknown to the moralists of antiquity, that habitual submission to injustice is a vice instead of a virtue, and that he who thinks it a merit to signalize his unworldliness by failing to assert his own rights encourages oppression and fraud and endangers the rights of his honest fellow-men.