The Influence Of The Bible Upon Social Life And Social Institutions.
Man's entire nature forces him directly into a social state. He is destitute of the strength possessed by many of the lower animals, and naturally unable for want of speed to escape their attacks, so care for life leads him into the closest alliances with his fellows. Childhood and old age necessitate dependence, and his wants, during those periods, bring him under obligations to others during his strength and manhood. The social state is also necessary to the development of his intellectual nature, and some of his natural affections can be exercised only in such a state. Benevolence, gratitude, complacency and heroism are not exercised in an insolated condition—they are called out only in mutual associations with our fellow-men.
The noblest efforts of intellectual strength and of human ingenuity are made under the most powerful influence of society. Thus encouraged, men have collected armies, founded kingdoms and governed them. In such kingdoms the arts and sciences have flourished in a greater or less degree, and imperfect morals have crowned their labors and lifted their minds as high as their unaided powers have permitted. Such has been the best condition in which the Scriptures ever found the social state. The structure has been incomplete, resting upon no solid basis, and only imperfectly cemented together. Such a state of society has always been a proper object for the modifying and controlling influences of a purer system of morality, founded upon a pure religion.
What has been the state of society in times past without the light of revealed religion? There are evils in the social state where the Christian religion exists, but they were there before the Gospel of Christ visited those places. It is very common for unbelievers to charge the calamities of the social state to the Christian religion, but it is a dishonorable mode of argumentation. The proper question is this: Has humanity ever been well organized in the social state without the presence and influence of the Bible? Has it ever been well [pg 086] governed under such circumstances? Have men respected the social rights and obligations or properly understood them in the absence of revealed religion? Has the religion of Christ been a disturber of the social organization where social rights were properly understood and regarded? or has it set aside the rights and obligations of men in social life where men were enjoying peaceable, happy relations? Does its legitimate influence make men more wicked and miserable? An honest answer to these questions will commend the religion of Jesus Christ, and do honor to him as our Lord and Master. The Scriptures have been the means of establishing institutions which have stood for centuries. Where society has been disjointed and out of order, without bonds or adhesiveness, the Scriptures have been introduced, banishing disorder and bringing peace and good will to man. They have silently operated in the social surroundings and gradually elevated Pagan lands out of Paganism. They refine and cleanse the cruel, giving them habits which make them at once superior to all Pagans.
Look at Rome and Persia in comparison with England and America. The Persian's religion was the best of all the uninspired religions. They worshiped their unknown god in the sun, moon and stars. In two reigning principles they sought for an explanation of the present state of good and evil mixed, which is the perplexing problem that has always confounded unenlightened reason. The Persian's creed only exercised his intellect and gratified his curiosity. It brought no power to bear upon his social relations. Persian history is a mass of crimes, suffering and intolerance. The government was a despotism, and polygamy gave laws to the domestic and private relations of the citizens.
Ancient Rome stands foremost in all that moral culture and philosophy alone can do for social institutions. Its religion was gross in the extreme, exerting an unhappy influence upon the masses, while it was disregarded by the priests who taught it, their sole object being to terrify the multitude and keep them in subjection to the authorities of the state. It was said by a Roman, “Our nation exists more by religion than [pg 087] by the sword.” But upon an examination of Roman history you will find servitude, despotism, tumult, revolt, revolution and slaughter, peace and war. The ambitions of rivals to the throne, and new schemes of rulers, often deluged the country with blood and carried the sword to remote and peaceable nations, till the horrors of civil war were realized in almost every part of the world. Every now and then the powers of some great mind, irritated by his calamities, having all the vices and none of the virtues of his species, would rise up and wreak vengeance in deeds which can not be thought of without sadness of heart.
How much better was ancient Greece? How much better are modern Pagan nations? These evils have been extinguished in the ratio of the circulation and influence of the Bible. The relation between the state and its citizens the Bible recognizes as of divine appointment; the foundation of civil government is the will of God. Government is an ordinance of God. “The powers that be are ordained of God.” The great author of our rights, life, liberty, peace, order, public morals and religion, has not left these interests to chance, anarchy or the social compact. Rulers were ordained of God, and are rulers, not for their own exaltation, but for the tranquility, virtue and peace of the governed. Where are the Pagan rulers who were taught this great lesson so as to feel its importance? When have they respected the rights of the people? Where have anti-Christian or Pagan nations, in a single instance, been actuated by any motive save the restless, factious determination to sink one tyrant for the sake of elevating another? In Christian lands a free and virtuous people limit the authority of rulers and assert the rights of citizens. In our country a mass of public virtue and a weight of moral influence, that restrains the wrath of man, keeps us from being involved in an ocean of blood at every popular election. We are not repeating the history of Rome in this respect. We have been taught to “Render unto Cæsar the things which belong to Cæsar.” The apostles of Christ have enjoined upon us the duty of being subject to the rulers of our [pg 088] land, to submit ourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord's sake. We have been taught to pray for our rulers. While we do this we can not be rebellious. Who is so blind as to not see that the Scriptures will control our citizens with more benevolence than any other book or any other maxims or set of opinions. When the Christian Scriptures are duly regarded and their divine authenticity respected designing, ambitious, corrupting and aspiring politicians will have but little power to plunge us into crimes and sufferings.
The most important of all our social institutions is the marriage. It is the paternal source of all other relations. There is no exhibition of the divine goodness in conditioning our race that is more significant and lovely. By it our world is a collection of families in which the tenderest affections are cherished and the worst generally subdued. Here there is a community of interests. Here we experience the highest motives to a virtuous influence, especially in forming the character of the youth of our country. The race is continually multiplying and enlarging. What wonderful wisdom was it that consulted its honor, its virtue and eternal destiny by the appointment of the marriage relation? It was the best method upon which human society could be organized. There are narrow-hearted, lustful bigots who would do away the social family compact. They talk about “free thought,” “free love,” no restraints of law, no protection of the mother save the voluntary. Such has been the custom in a few heathen lands; such is the doctrine of a few modern infidels; such are the habits of a few gregarious communities in Christian countries. In these communities the sexes are taught from the cradle to hate the marriage bond. Such a state of society is poisoned and polluted; is a fearful mass of corruption and rottenness. All moral safeguards are removed. The offspring are thrown out upon the world with no restraints of paternal love and wisdom; no obligations of filial love and reverence; monsters in iniquity, and in a short time equal in crime to those who were swept from the earth by the waters of the deluge or the flames of Sodom. Look then for one [pg 089] moment after the evil of polygamy. It existed for awhile among the ancient Hebrews. Moses suffered it for the hardness of their hearts. From the beginning it was not so. It was a perversion of the ancient institution of matrimony. All the evils of that idolatrous age could not be remedied in a moment; nothing was made perfect until the appearance of that wonderful counselor—Christ. He restored the primitive integrity of the marriage institution by revoking polygamy and divorce. Polygamy was never friendly to the physical and mental character of its population. It is demonstrated beyond the possibility of a doubt that it is debasing and brutalizing. The Turks and Asiatics are polygamists, but they are much inferior to the old Greeks and Romans; yet ancient Rome was a long ways from Heaven's will in respect of marriage ties.
The matrimonial institution of Rome was a compromise between the right and the wrong. The institution was considered in the light of a civil contract, entered into for expediency, and protected by the magistrates because it was deemed a blessing to society; by the law of the twelve tables it continued during the pleasure of the husband. The result was that frequent, and often, rapid succession of divorces and marriages took the place of polygamy, and introduced many of its evils.
The private history of Roman ladies of first rank is a succession of marriages and divorces, each new marriage giving way to one more recent. Octavia, the daughter of the Emperor Claudus, married Nero, was repudiated by him for the sake of Poppæa; this woman was first married to Rufus Crispinus; then to Otho; and at length to Nero, by whom she was killed.
Nero murdered Thessalina's husband, and married her for his third wife. Julia, the daughter of Augustus, was first the wife of Marcellus, then the wife of Agrippa, and then the wife of Tiberius. Such examples are found almost without number in the annals of Tacitus. The extent to which this evil was carried may be learned from the poet Martial, [pg 090] who informs us, that, when the Julian law against adultery was revived as a prevention of the corruption of the times, Thessalina married her tenth husband within thirty days, thus evading all the restraints which the law imposed against her licentiousness. What is the marriage bond worth in such a state of society?
Where is the state of society essentially better in the absence of the Christian religion?
The Bible teaches us that the institution is of Divine origin, established by the Lord himself. It inscribes upon every marriage altar, “What God hath joined together let no man put asunder.” It definitely defines marriage to be the act of uniting two persons in wedlock, and only two. According to the Scriptures, this union can only be dissolved by crime or death. With great tenderness the Bible prescribes the duties of this relation. “Husbands love your wives as Christ loved the church.” This love is not the cold hearted affection that is after the fashion of free-love philosophy, but it is after a model that has touched heavenly hearts, and caused more admiration than all other things combined.
In the ancient dispensation adultery was punished with death. In the Christian dispensation, it is said with great emphasis, “Whoremongers and adulterers God will judge.” There is a place of which it is said, “Whoso is simple let him turn in hither, but he knoweth not that the dead are there, and that her guests are in the depths of hell.” There is a sin of which the Bible often speaks, pointing the guilty perpetrators to the fact that they have none inheritance in the kingdom of God and of Christ.
The history of Pagan nations is little else than a record of crime. By studying it we may learn something of our obligations to the Christian religion, and our indebtedness to its pure spirit, which has brooded over the darkness of the nations, and brought order out of confusion. It will, also, learn us to value the names father, mother, husband, wife, children and parents; these names were of little value among Romans. In the annals of the Roman empire may be found [pg 091] a record of all that is shocking; a record of all that man can be guilty of; a record of all that an enemy could be guilty of; suspicion, licentiousness, murder, conspiracy of wives against their husbands, and husbands against their wives; children sacrificed by the doings of a mother; families whose peace is ruined by intrigue and violence; men everywhere falling upon their own swords; the wife murdering her own husband for the sake of marrying another; woman practiced, skilled, in the art of poisoning—such is the picture of Pagan life in the most enlightened age of Rome.
Let any man compare society in our country, or in any protestant country, with the state of society under the reign of the Cæsars, and he will see what the Christ has done for our race. The spirit that sustains our social institutions does not grow cold even at the grave, but is felt beyond death. How is it in heathen lands? The sweetest loves of life give way to suspicion and envy; the jealousy of love, the thirst for power and ambition, drives them away, often as soon as the flowers and beauty of youth are gone. Where Christ reigns it is not so. Yet there are those who would have us believe that the religion of Christ is an unsocial, selfish religion. If it is unsocial and selfish to have no sympathy with wickedness, to promote all that is virtuous and kind, pure and true, to take pleasure in all that subdues the malignant and beastly, the ambitious and cruel, then it is an unsocial and selfish affair. If it is unsocial and selfish to take pleasure in that which elevates and moulds character in the image of God, and fits it for angelic society hereafter, then it is truly unsocial and selfish.