To obey such teaching as this would overturn every monument of prosperity upon the earth, blight every feeling of happiness that gladdens the heart of man, and convert the busy, working, loving world into one vast army of tramps, following a king without a kingdom, a leader without a purpose, a commander with nothing to give those who followed his command.
Jesus taught that we were not to resist evil; that is, that if a thief stole our watch and chain, we were bound to run after him and give him our purse also; that if a man took away our coat, we should wrong him if we did not send him the balance of the suit; that if a man struck us on one side of the face, we were to invite him to strike us on the other side also; that if, as it were, the armies of some foreign powers were to invade our land, and burn and destroy our cities and towns, pillage our homes and murder our families, we were in duty bound to look upon them as benefactors and thank them for their work of destruction, and ask them to come and do it again.
Such moral teaching as this would make a nation of cowards and slaves.
It is our duty to punish thieves and robbers, not to reward them; to resist wrong and injustice, not to submit to them like cravens; to protect our country from foes, even though we are obliged to shed their blood and our own in so doing.
Is there a Christian on the globe who pays the least heed to a single one of the moral commands of Jesus? You all know there is not.
I need not tell the Christian Church that the morality taught by Jesus is decaying when every church is its coffin, and every minister its grave-digger.
If you wish to see how much respect for the moral teachings of Jesus one of his professed followers has, just steal his coat, and if he gives you his cloak also, as he is commanded to do by his Lord and Master, please publish his name in the daily papers—for the benefit of others who wish to get a cloak.
We find among the express commands of Jesus this advice: "Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth." The most liberal translation of this counsel can not make it anything but poor advice. Every material blessing of mankind has come from the savings of human labor, and the value of laying up treasures upon earth is more evident than that of laying up treasures in Heaven, whatever this saying may mean. When every Christian tries as hard to be poor as he tries now to get rich, we shall think that he has some regard for the moral teachings of Jesus.
It must be apparent to all that what may be claimed as Christian morality is not only decaying, but that it ought to decay. There is no sense in it. Imagine a man telling people in the Twentieth Century to "take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat or what ye shall drink, nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on," and endeavoring to prove that because the fowls of the air do not have to broil a beefsteak for their breakfast or make biscuit for tea, human beings will be fed whether they provide anything for their appetites or not.