The Influence Of The Bible Upon Moral And Social Institutions.
It is profitable for us to occasionally survey the dark arena where men have played their part, in lonely gloom, without a Savior and without a God. Pagan morality, being without the motives and restraints of revealed religion, and guided wholly by the passions and the lights of reason and nature, is grossly defective. It has no settled standard of right and wrong. It is vain to look, in all heathen philosophy for any settled principles of duty or motives that commend themselves to enlightened minds.
What is the basis and character of virtue? What is the law of moral conduct? What is the object which governs it? In what does human happiness consist? These are questions which have never been satisfactorily answered by the unaided powers of the human mind. The annals of Pagan history show the real results of all their speculations upon these questions. They are comprehensively presented in the following: “They became vain in their imaginations and their foolish hearts were darkened. They were filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness, envy, murder, deceit, malignity. They were backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, without natural affection, implacable and unmerciful.” [pg 082] Their manners and habits were the results of mere whim and caprice when they were not the results of simple love of wickedness. The vice of one community was the virtue of another; and refinement in one was unpardonable rudeness in another. The public festivals celebrated in Egypt are disgraceful upon the pages of history, being accompanied with shameful practices. Egypt was noted for corrupt morals as far back as the times of Abraham. Asia Minor was no better; unrighteousness, sensuality and luxury prevailed. In Greece there was brutal savageness in its most hideous forms; in the age of its greatest refinement sin was dressed up in the finest style. The Olympic, Pythian and Isthmian games, which were kept up to give strength to the body and courage in the battle, were debasing and corrupting to the lowest degree of wretchedness. The ages of ancient heroism were filled up with crime and debauchery. They were fruitful in incest and parricide, and all the dark and gloomy events which were necessary to make up the most fearful picture of immorality. The monarchs of Assyria spent their time mainly in debasing crime and voluptuousness. The brightest and best days of Babylon were notorious for lewdness and accomplishment in crime and iniquity; loaded with riches, they spared no pains and withheld no means in the production of all that gratified their lusts and fed their passions. In Babylon there was a certain well known temple in which adultery was legalized by compulsory law for the purpose of increasing the public revenue. The ancient Pagan religions sanctioned and practiced the most detestible licentiousness. Cato commended young men for visiting houses of ill-fame. Such was the very best phase of morals and public manners in the purest state of Roman society. What must have been the worst? The worst! Well, I will give you an idea of it. The Emperor Nero drove through the streets of the capital with his mistress in a state of nudity; and the Emperor Commodus first seduced and then murdered his own sister. Here reason, blinded by lust, was their guide. These people were not troubled with that terrible book called the Bible. Happy (?) state. How would [pg 083] we like to have our homes in the midst of such fellows? Their conscience had no fastenings, how could their doctrines excite to moral virtue?
How much better are the principles of modern infidels? Bolingbroke's morality is all embraced in self-love. Hobbes claims that the only basis of right and wrong is the civil law. Rousseau says all the morality of actions is in the judgement we ourselves form of them. Shaftsbury says, all the obligations to be virtuous arise from the advantages of virtue, and the disadvantages of vice. Have such moral principles ever reformed the world? Do they reform their advocates? Did you ever know a man to reform after he became an advocate of such principles? Did you ever know a man to reform after understanding and abandoning the Christian religion? If any such ever reformed their lives after setting themselves on Pagan ground, by opposing Christianity, I have yet to learn the fact. It is the morality of a wicked world that simply asks for the profitable, and not the right; which inquires not for duty, but for self-interest—for the opinions of men; it is a body without a spirit—a whitewashed sepulchre—splendid only in sepulchral greatness.
Morality rests not upon principles that clothe themselves in various garbs to please the different fancies of the different ages, consulting simply the spirit of the times. Such morality is one thing to-day and quite another to-morrow—it is variable as the seasons. It adapts itself to the occasion—to the hour. It is very pliant—it has no conscience, but is always popularity-seeking. The morality of the Christian religion is very different. In the New Testament we find a morality as pure, lofty and unchanging as its divine author; it purifies and regulates the inner man—“make the tree good and the fruit will be good.” The Bible settles the great question of duty. It teaches us that to do right is to do that which is right in itself, from pure motives and with a right spirit. These two things God hath joined together, viz: the right deed from right motives, and the right spirit. A man's [pg 084] conscience may be satisfied without the right motives and without the right spirit, but that is not enough.
It is not enough for a man to have the right spirit and the right motives, unless he does that which is right in itself. Conscience may be warped by malevolence, selfishness, prejudice, or education, until the man is led to do that which is detestable in the sight of God. The time may come when this man will regret his foolishness, and see that he was wrong, like Saul of old.
Right things may be done from a wrong spirit, and wrong things may be done from a right spirit, but the morality of the Christian religion consists in doing right things from right motives and in a right spirit.
The great motive that governs us as Christian moralists is the fact made known in these words, God requires it. You may talk of the dignity of correct morals, of their beauty and virtue, and of the terrible nature of vice, and of the demands of a well-governed selfishness, but all these are weak compared with the authority of the Supreme Being whom Christians love and adore.
If we would reform men successfully we must bring the conscience under the strong bonds of obligation; we must extend the authority of the great Lawgiver over the understanding, over the conscience, over the memory, over the imagination, over the entire inner man. This alone will stop the germinations of sin, and check wickedness in its conception. This is the tap-root of the tree of virtue—the source of virtuous principles, demonstrating the truthfulness of the axiom, “Make the tree good and the fruit will be good.” Simple advantage is not the foundation of virtue; it has a nature aside from its tendencies to worldly profit. Otherwise virtue would often cease to be virtue, and vice would often cease to be vice. Anciently there were moral philosophers who plead that utility was the only foundation of virtue. Paul speaks of some who supposed “Godliness was gain.” Such a morality would be the most uncertain thing in the world; give it what name you choose, it is mere selfishness.