Common Sense Applied to Religion; Or, The Bible and the People

by Catharine Esther Beecher

Moreover, the greater the good to be gained, the greater is the self-denial and suffering involved in its attainment. Though there are exceptions, this certainly is the general rule.

The history of an individual is a history of self-conquest. It is a history of the self-denial and suffering involved in subjecting the physical to the intellectual, and both to the moral nature.

In like manner, the history of the race, from infancy through its stages of barbarism, heathenism, civilization, and Christianity, is a process of suffering, as the lower principles of humanity are gradually subjected to the higher, while men learn to give up lower gratifications for the more elevated, and to sacrifice the lesser good of the minority to the well-being of the majority.

But the cheering aspect of the case is that the effects of suffering are salutary and tonic. The child who is trained to bear cold bravely, to undergo toil, and to meet crosses, becomes strong in body, and enterprising and energetic in spirit; while a course of ease and indulgence debilitates both mind and body. This is true most decidedly when such a course is cheerfully and voluntarily assumed, and is not forced merely by fear of penalties.

The same is true of communities. Those people who live in a cold climate and on a hard soil become vigorous, industrious, and enterprising; while a soft climate, and such abundance as requires no self-denial and toil, tend to national debility and decay.

Another fact is still more cheering, and that is, that the more a habit of self-control and self-denial is formed, the easier they become, so that what at first was severe and painful may become a pleasure. Such may be the progress of a virtuous mind, that, ultimately, acting right, or conscious rectitude, may become more desirable and agreeable than any other mode of enjoyment.

The history of mankind thus far shows that as a race we are progressing to higher and higher happiness. As we take the history of each nation from its origin, we find it a development of progress from lower to higher degrees of enjoyment. Then we find periods of retrocession and decay. Still, the experience of one age is transmitted more or less to another, so that, on the whole, the race has been gaining, both as to the number of sources of enjoyment received and as to the relative value of the enjoyments sought. The proportion of persons who secure the higher class of enjoyments is certainly greater now than at any former period of the world's history.

Again, the history of the world teaches us that while the race gains in knowledge of the laws of the system and in obedience to them, there are vast multitudes to whom, as individuals, this life is a total failure. Their career has involved such frequent and fatal violations of the laws of the system, that their progress is constantly downward; and, so far as past experience gives any data, we must infer that continued existence would prove a continued downward progress. The glutton, the drunkard, the miser, the sluggard, the licentious, the selfish, malignant, and cruel—all these are binding their spirits with the chains of habit, rendering obedience to the laws they are violating more difficult and improbable.

But then, as a counterbalancing result, it is seen that these losses to individuals are made available to the protection and improvement of the race, and seem indispensable to it; for it is the example of the evils suffered by wrong-doers that is constantly exercising a preservative influence to deter others from similar courses. Thus good is constantly educed from ill, even in the most melancholy cases.

We have seen that it is the desire of good and fear of evil that is the motive power in causing all mental action, and we have the history of man to teach us also what kinds of motives prove the most effective in securing that obedience to law which is the only way to true and perfect happiness.