WORLDLY MORALITY.
Professor Blackie, in his eloquent Edinburgh Essay, has these stringent remarks upon the lax morality of the day:
There is in the world always a respectable sort of surface morality,—and nowhere more than in this British world at the present hour,—a morality of convenience and utility, which pays respect to the principles of right and wrong when generally formalised, but which recognises them practically only in so far as local customs and decencies, proprieties, etiquettes, and the round of certain “inevitable charities,” are willing to recognise them. This morality many a consumer of beefsteaks and swiller of porter in this lusty and material land accepts, after eighteen hundred years of Gospel preaching, as quite sufficient for all the purposes of a respectable English life. But the perverse maxims and vicious practices with which our British society is rank, make it evident to the most superficial glance how far the current morality of our trades and parties is from seeking to accommodate itself to the principles of extreme moral purity laid down in every page of the New Testament. A sermon may be a very proper thing as Sunday work, and may help to bridge the way to heaven, when a bridge shall be required; but on Monday a man must attend to his business, and act according to the maxims of his trade, of his party, of his corporation, of his vestry. Then the respectable sporting-man will stake his last thousand on the leg of a race-horse, and think it quite like a Christian gentleman to allow his tailor’s bill to be unpaid for another year; then the respectable Highland proprietor will refuse to renew the lease to the industrious poor cotter on his estate, that the people, for whom he cares nothing, may make way for the red-deer, which it is his only passion to stalk; then the respectable brewer, instead of preparing wholesome drink from wholesome grain, will infect his brewst with deleterious drugs in order to excite a factitious thirst in the stomach of his customers, and increase the amount of drinking; then a respectable corporation, to maintain their own “vested rights,” will move heaven and earth to prevent the national parliament from acting on the plainest rules of justice and common sense in a matter seriously affecting the public well-being; and the respectable members of society shall flutter round the gilded wax-lights of aristocracy, and perform worship at Hudson’s statue, and have respect to men with gold rings and goodly apparel, and do every thing that is expressly forbidden in the second chapter of the Epistle of James, which they profess to receive as a divine rule of conduct. These are only one or two of the more glaring points in which our commonly-received maxims and practice of respectable British life run directly in the face of that highest morality, which the most religious and church-going Englishman professes to acknowledge as his rule of conduct.
Professor Blackie concludes with the gospel text, “What shall it profit a man, if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?” which the Professor applies in the plain practical question: “What will it profit England to spin more cotton, to pile more money-bags, to set more steam-coaches a-going, if Mammon is to be worshiped every where, rather than virtue and wisdom?” &c.