It is profitable for us to occasionally survey the dark arena where men
have played their part, in lonely gloom, without a Savior and without a
God. Pagan morality, being without the motives and restraints of revealed
religion, and guided wholly by the passions and the lights of reason and
nature, is grossly defective. It has no settled standard of right and
wrong. It is vain to look, in all heathen philosophy for any settled
principles of duty or motives that commend themselves to enlightened
minds.
What is the basis and character of virtue? What is the law of moral
conduct? What is the object which governs it? In what does human happiness
consist? These are questions which have never been satisfactorily answered
by the unaided powers of the human mind. The annals of Pagan history show
the real results of all their speculations upon these questions. They are
comprehensively presented in the following: “They became vain in their
imaginations and their foolish hearts were darkened. They were filled with
all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness,
envy, murder, deceit, malignity. They were backbiters, haters of God,
despiteful, proud, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents,
without natural affection, implacable and unmerciful.” Their manners and
habits were the results of mere whim and caprice when they were not the
results of simple love of wickedness. The vice of one community was the
virtue of another; and refinement in one was unpardonable rudeness in
another. The public festivals celebrated in Egypt are disgraceful upon the
pages of history, being accompanied with shameful practices. Egypt was
noted for corrupt morals as far back as the times of Abraham. Asia Minor
was no better; unrighteousness, sensuality and luxury prevailed. In Greece
there was brutal savageness in its most hideous forms; in the age of its
greatest refinement sin was dressed up in the finest style. The Olympic,
Pythian and Isthmian games, which were kept up to give strength to the
body and courage in the battle, were debasing and corrupting to the lowest
degree of wretchedness. The ages of ancient heroism were filled up with
crime and debauchery. They were fruitful in incest and parricide, and all
the dark and gloomy events which were necessary to make up the most
fearful picture of immorality. The monarchs of Assyria spent their time
mainly in debasing crime and voluptuousness. The brightest and best days
of Babylon were notorious for lewdness and accomplishment in crime and
iniquity; loaded with riches, they spared no pains and withheld no means
in the production of all that gratified their lusts and fed their
passions. In Babylon there was a certain well known temple in which
adultery was legalized by _compulsory law_ for the purpose of increasing
the public revenue. The ancient Pagan religions sanctioned and practiced
the most detestible licentiousness. Cato commended young men for visiting
houses of ill-fame. Such was the very best phase of morals and public
manners in the purest state of Roman society. What must have been the
worst? The worst! Well, I will give you an idea of it. The Emperor Nero
drove through the streets of the capital with his mistress in a state of
nudity; and the Emperor Commodus first seduced and then murdered his own
sister. Here reason, blinded by lust, was their guide. These people were
not troubled with that terrible book called the Bible. Happy (?) state.
How would we like to have our homes in the midst of such fellows? Their
conscience had no fastenings, how could their doctrines excite to moral
virtue?
How much better are the principles of modern infidels? Bolingbroke’s
morality is all embraced in self-love. Hobbes claims that the only basis
of right and wrong is the civil law. Rousseau says all the morality of
actions is in the judgement we ourselves form of them. Shaftsbury says,
all the obligations to be virtuous arise from the advantages of virtue,
and the disadvantages of vice. Have such moral principles ever reformed
the world? Do they reform their advocates? Did you ever know a man to
reform after he became an advocate of such principles? Did you ever know a
man to reform after understanding and abandoning the Christian religion?
If any such ever reformed their lives after setting themselves on Pagan
ground, by opposing Christianity, I have yet to learn the fact. It is the
morality of a wicked world that simply asks for the profitable, and not
the right; which inquires not for duty, but for self-interest—for the
opinions of men; it is a body without a spirit—a whitewashed
sepulchre—splendid only in sepulchral greatness.
Morality rests not upon principles that clothe themselves in various garbs
to please the different fancies of the different ages, consulting simply
the spirit of the times. Such morality is one thing to-day and quite
another to-morrow—it is variable as the seasons. It adapts itself to the
occasion—to the hour. It is very pliant—it has no conscience, but is
always popularity-seeking. The morality of the Christian religion is very
different. In the New Testament we find a morality as pure, lofty and
unchanging as its divine author; it purifies and regulates the inner
man—“make the tree good and the fruit _will be good_.” The Bible settles
the great question of duty. It teaches us that to do right is to do that
which is right in itself, from _pure_ motives and with a _right spirit_.
These two things God hath joined together, viz: the right deed from right
motives, and the right spirit. A man’s conscience may be satisfied without
the right motives and without the right spirit, but that is not enough.
It is not enough for a man to have the right spirit and the right motives,
unless he does that which is right in itself. Conscience may be warped by
malevolence, selfishness, prejudice, or education, until the man is led to
do that which is detestable in the sight of God. The time may come when
this man will regret his foolishness, and see that he was wrong, like Saul
of old.
Right things may be done from a wrong spirit, and wrong things may be done
from a right spirit, but the morality of the Christian religion consists
in doing right things from right motives and in a right spirit.
The great motive that governs us as Christian moralists is the fact made
known in these words, _God requires it_. You may talk of the dignity of
correct morals, of their beauty and virtue, and of the terrible nature of
vice, and of the demands of a well-governed selfishness, but all these are
weak compared with the authority of the Supreme Being whom Christians love
and adore.
If we would reform men successfully we must bring the conscience under the
strong bonds of obligation; we must extend the authority of the great
Lawgiver over the understanding, over the conscience, over the memory,
over the imagination, over the entire inner man. This alone will stop the
germinations of sin, and check wickedness in its conception. This is the
tap-root of the tree of virtue—the source of virtuous principles,
demonstrating the truthfulness of the axiom, “Make the tree good and the
fruit will be good.” Simple advantage is not the foundation of virtue; it
has a nature aside from its tendencies to worldly profit. Otherwise virtue
would often cease to be virtue, and vice would often cease to be vice.
Anciently there were moral philosophers who plead that utility was the
only foundation of virtue. Paul speaks of some who supposed “Godliness was
gain.” Such a morality would be the most uncertain thing in the world;
give it what name you choose, it is mere selfishness.