I don't know, do you?

by Marilla M. Ricker

Jesus tells us that our Heavenly Father will feed us because we are better than the fowls of the air, and that he will clothe us because he clothes the grass of the field. Our earthly fathers seem to have done more in the way of providing food and clothing for us before we were able to take care of ourselves than any Heavenly Father. Others may put their trust in God for something to eat and drink and wear, if they wish to, but I prefer to give the matter a little thought myself.

Jesus concludes these admonitions by saying, "Take no thought for the morrow." This is bad counsel, and it shows the good sense of mankind that it has never been followed. The whole world lives in what one of our poets called, "The bright tomorrow of the mind."

We will refer to only one more of the peculiar moral injunctions of Jesus. In the fifth chapter of Matthew, in the forty-fourth verse, we read, "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you."

If we were to do as herein commanded, we should have an inverted morality which would place the crown of virtue upon the forehead of vice.

Let us see if the preacher of this doctrine practised it.

Did Jesus bless the Scribes and Pharisees when they refused to acknowledge his claim to be the Messiah? This is the blessing which he pronounced upon them: "Woe unto you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for ye devour widows' houses and for a pretense make long prayers; therefore ye shall receive the greater damnation." "Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of Hell?" That is not a very sweet blessing!

And these men did not curse Jesus. They only did not agree with his opinions. Jesus, also, in his wrath against his enemies, calls them, in the seventeenth and nineteenth verses of the twenty-third chapter of Matthew, "Ye fools and blind," forgetting, doubtless, that he had previously declared, when preaching on the Mount, "Whosoever shall say, 'Thou Fool,' shall be in danger of hell-fire."

The moral teachings of Jesus were inspired by a false estimate of all earthly things. There is no doubt that Jesus believed the world was coming to an end in his generation. How to get into the Kingdom of Heaven was of more consequence than how to reform mankind, or improve the world, since the end of earthly things was near at hand. This appears to have been the thought of Jesus, and explains much of his language.

But today we do not believe that the earth has run its course, and that the end of all material things is near at hand. We are living without fear of failure on the part of the universe, and are giving our attention more to human wants than to divine commands.

Not fear of offending God, but fear of wronging man, is the highest basis of morals. We have reached a time when apologies are not respected, when repentance is looked upon as the mask of villainy, when the stature of life is most shorn of manliness by prancing in the garb of humility, when a brave facing of life's trials and demands counts for more than cowardly surrender in the name of God. In fact, we have come to say to the world of humanity, "Be moral, and you need not be religious." Work for man is coming to be a sufficient excuse for neglect of God.