An Appeal to the People in Behalf of Their Rights as Authorized Interpreters of the Bible

by Catharine Esther Beecher

This view of the subject still further illustrates the nature of that inability which exists in all finite minds in discovering and obeying the laws of God.

There are only two conceivable modes by which we can learn these laws; one is by the experience of finite beings; the other is by revelation from the Creator. To learn what is right and wrong by experience involves not only the certainty, but the necessity, as it respects the absolute right, of wrong-doing; for no one, however right the motive or intention may be, can discover what will cause more or less good or evil but by experiments in which the evil as well as the good is detected by experience.

To learn what is right and wrong in all the thousand and million complications of life by revelation, would involve the necessity of a direct revelation every hour of every day, to every individual of the race. But the only conceivable mode by which revelations from God are possible, is by miracles and prophecy, which are interruptions of the ordinary uniformity of nature. It is the fact that the laws of nature are uniform that alone makes miracles possible, so that incessant revelations by miracles would destroy such uniformity, and thus destroy the only conceivable mode of communication from the Creator.

This being so, the only possible method by which mankind can discover what is right and wrong in the greater portion of their actions is by an experience involving, more or less, wrong-doing as a part.

There are general rules of right and wrong which can be communicated both by God and man, but these [pg 162] rules are to be applied by men to the numberless and ever-varying circumstances of life, involving still the same necessity of experience of evil in order to detect the relative amount of good to be gained in the varied courses offered for pursuit to which these rules are to be applied.

Now the grand difficulty, as it respects both God and man, as before shown, is the positive inability of undeveloped mind to understand much of what is right and wrong. This difficulty meets the mature mind as really as it does the infant's; for while many of the general rules evolved by reason and experience are clear, and easily perceived, there are endless varieties of cases in which the application of these rules is a matter of uncertainty. For example, that men are to be honest and speak the truth, are rules universally appreciated. But then come the questions whether this and that thing is honest, or whether in this or that emergency it may not be right to say what is false. The higher men advance in civilization, and the more means and modes of enjoyment are discovered, the more complicated become the questions of right, and the more frequent the temptations to wrong.

All that can be done is to cultivate the conscience and train the reasoning powers of mankind, so that by means of the experience of life, as developed by individuals and communities, regard to the rules of right and wrong shall keep pace with the increasing civilization.

With these distinctions in the mind, we can perceive that sin, in its widest sense, including transgression of unknown law, is inevitable in a perfect system of finite minds, while in the limited sense, as transgression of known law, it is not so.

So also we can see, that without the intervention of the Creator to teach us, it is an impossibility for any human being to live without sin; so that this intervention is impossible except to a limited extent, without an entire change in the eternal nature of things to which God's own will is conformed.