Man’s entire nature forces him directly into a social state. He is
destitute of the strength possessed by many of the lower animals, and
naturally unable for want of speed to escape their attacks, so care for
life leads him into the closest alliances with his fellows. Childhood and
old age necessitate dependence, and his wants, during those periods, bring
him under obligations to others during his strength and manhood. The
social state is also necessary to the development of his intellectual
nature, and some of his natural affections can be exercised only in such a
state. Benevolence, gratitude, complacency and heroism are not exercised
in an insolated condition—they are called out only in mutual associations
with our fellow-men.
The noblest efforts of intellectual strength and of human ingenuity are
made under the most powerful influence of society. Thus encouraged, men
have collected armies, founded kingdoms and governed them. In such
kingdoms the arts and sciences have flourished in a greater or less
degree, and imperfect morals have crowned their labors and lifted their
minds as high as their unaided powers have permitted. Such has been the
best condition in which the Scriptures ever found the social state. The
structure has been incomplete, resting upon no solid basis, and only
imperfectly cemented together. Such a state of society has always been a
proper object for the modifying and controlling influences of a purer
system of morality, founded upon a pure religion.
What has been the state of society in times past without the light of
revealed religion? There are evils in the social state where the Christian
religion exists, but they were there before the Gospel of Christ visited
those places. It is very common for unbelievers to charge the calamities
of the social state to the Christian religion, but it is a dishonorable
mode of argumentation. The proper question is this: Has humanity ever been
well organized in the social state without the presence and influence of
the Bible? Has it ever been well governed under such circumstances? Have
men respected the social rights and obligations or properly understood
them in the absence of revealed religion? Has the religion of Christ been
a disturber of the social organization where social rights were properly
understood and regarded? or has it set aside the rights and obligations of
men in social life where men were enjoying peaceable, happy relations?
Does its legitimate influence make men more wicked and miserable? An
honest answer to these questions will commend the religion of Jesus
Christ, and do honor to him as our Lord and Master. The Scriptures have
been the means of establishing institutions which have stood for
centuries. Where society has been disjointed and out of order, without
bonds or adhesiveness, the Scriptures have been introduced, banishing
disorder and bringing peace and good will to man. They have silently
operated in the social surroundings and gradually elevated Pagan lands out
of Paganism. They refine and cleanse the cruel, giving them habits which
make them at once superior to all Pagans.
Look at Rome and Persia in comparison with England and America. The
Persian’s religion was the best of all the uninspired religions. They
worshiped their unknown god in the sun, moon and stars. In two reigning
principles they sought for an explanation of the present state of good and
evil mixed, which is the perplexing problem that has always confounded
unenlightened reason. The Persian’s creed only exercised his intellect and
gratified his curiosity. It brought no power to bear upon his social
relations. Persian history is a mass of crimes, suffering and intolerance.
The government was a despotism, and polygamy gave laws to the domestic and
private relations of the citizens.
Ancient Rome stands foremost in all that moral culture and philosophy
alone can do for social institutions. Its religion was gross in the
extreme, exerting an unhappy influence upon the masses, while it was
disregarded by the priests who taught it, their sole object being to
terrify the multitude and keep them in subjection to the authorities of
the state. It was said by a Roman, “Our nation exists more by religion
than by the sword.” But upon an examination of Roman history you will find
servitude, despotism, tumult, revolt, revolution and slaughter, peace and
war. The ambitions of rivals to the throne, and new schemes of rulers,
often deluged the country with blood and carried the sword to remote and
peaceable nations, till the horrors of civil war were realized in almost
every part of the world. Every now and then the powers of some great mind,
irritated by his calamities, having all the vices and none of the virtues
of his species, would rise up and wreak vengeance in deeds which can not
be thought of without sadness of heart.
How much better was ancient Greece? How much better are modern Pagan
nations? These evils have been extinguished in the ratio of the
circulation and influence of the Bible. The relation between the state and
its citizens the Bible recognizes as of divine appointment; the foundation
of civil government is the will of God. Government is an ordinance of God.
“The powers that be are ordained of God.” The great author of our rights,
life, liberty, peace, order, public morals and religion, has not left
these interests to chance, anarchy or the social compact. Rulers were
ordained of God, and are rulers, not for their own exaltation, but for the
tranquility, virtue and peace of the governed. Where are the Pagan rulers
who were taught this great lesson so as to feel its importance? When have
they respected the rights of the people? Where have anti-Christian or
Pagan nations, in a single instance, been actuated by any motive save the
restless, factious determination to sink one tyrant for the sake of
elevating another? In Christian lands a free and virtuous people limit the
authority of rulers and assert the rights of citizens. In our country a
mass of public virtue and a weight of moral influence, that restrains the
wrath of man, keeps us from being involved in an ocean of blood at every
popular election. We are not repeating the history of Rome in this
respect. We have been taught to “Render unto Cæsar the things which belong
to Cæsar.” The apostles of Christ have enjoined upon us the duty of being
subject to the rulers of our land, to submit ourselves to every ordinance
of man for the Lord’s sake. We have been taught to pray for our rulers.
While we do this we can not be rebellious. Who is so blind as to not see
that the Scriptures will control our citizens with more benevolence than
any other book or any other maxims or set of opinions. When the Christian
Scriptures are duly regarded and their divine authenticity respected
designing, ambitious, corrupting and aspiring politicians will have but
little power to plunge us into crimes and sufferings.
The most important of all our social institutions is the marriage. It is
the paternal source of all other relations. There is no exhibition of the
divine goodness in conditioning our race that is more significant and
lovely. By it our world is a collection of families in which the tenderest
affections are cherished and the worst generally subdued. Here there is a
community of interests. Here we experience the highest motives to a
virtuous influence, especially in forming the character of the youth of
our country. The race is continually multiplying and enlarging. What
wonderful wisdom was it that consulted its honor, its virtue and eternal
destiny by the appointment of the marriage relation? It was the best
method upon which human society could be organized. There are
narrow-hearted, lustful bigots who would do away the social family
compact. They talk about “free thought,” “free love,” no restraints of
law, no protection of the mother save the voluntary. Such has been the
custom in a few heathen lands; such is the doctrine of a few modern
infidels; such are the habits of a few gregarious communities in Christian
countries. In these communities the sexes are taught from the cradle to
hate the marriage bond. Such a state of society is poisoned and polluted;
is a fearful mass of corruption and rottenness. All moral safeguards are
removed. The offspring are thrown out upon the world with no restraints of
paternal love and wisdom; no obligations of filial love and reverence;
monsters in iniquity, and in a short time equal in crime to those who were
swept from the earth by the waters of the deluge or the flames of Sodom.
Look then for one moment after the evil of polygamy. It existed for awhile
among the ancient Hebrews. Moses suffered it for the hardness of their
hearts. From the beginning it was not so. It was a perversion of the
ancient institution of matrimony. All the evils of that idolatrous age
could not be remedied in a moment; nothing was made perfect until the
appearance of that wonderful counselor—_Christ_. He restored the primitive
integrity of the marriage institution by revoking polygamy and divorce.
Polygamy was never friendly to the physical and mental character of its
population. It is demonstrated beyond the possibility of a doubt that it
is debasing and brutalizing. The Turks and Asiatics are polygamists, but
they are much inferior to the old Greeks and Romans; yet ancient Rome was
a long ways from Heaven’s will in respect of marriage ties.
The matrimonial institution of Rome was a compromise between the right and
the wrong. The institution was considered in the light of a civil
contract, entered into for expediency, and protected by the magistrates
because it was deemed a blessing to society; by the law of the twelve
tables it continued during the pleasure of the husband. The result was
that frequent, and often, rapid succession of divorces and marriages took
the place of polygamy, and introduced many of its evils.
The private history of Roman ladies of first rank is a succession of
marriages and divorces, each new marriage giving way to one more recent.
Octavia, the daughter of the Emperor Claudus, married Nero, was repudiated
by him for the sake of Poppæa; this woman was first married to Rufus
Crispinus; then to Otho; and at length to Nero, by whom she was killed.
Nero murdered Thessalina’s husband, and married her for his third wife.
Julia, the daughter of Augustus, was first the wife of Marcellus, then the
wife of Agrippa, and then the wife of Tiberius. Such examples are found
almost without number in the annals of Tacitus. The extent to which this
evil was carried may be learned from the poet Martial, who informs us,
that, when the Julian law against adultery was revived as a prevention of
the corruption of the times, Thessalina married her tenth husband within
thirty days, thus evading all the restraints which the law imposed against
her licentiousness. What is the marriage bond worth in such a state of
society?
Where is the state of society essentially better in the absence of the
Christian religion?
The Bible teaches us that the institution is of Divine origin, established
by the Lord himself. It inscribes upon every marriage altar, “What God
hath joined together let no man put asunder.” It definitely defines
marriage to be the act of uniting two persons in wedlock, and only two.
According to the Scriptures, this union can only be dissolved by crime or
death. With great tenderness the Bible prescribes the duties of this
relation. “Husbands love your wives as Christ loved the church.” This love
is not the cold hearted affection that is after the fashion of free-love
philosophy, but it is after a model that has touched heavenly hearts, and
caused more admiration than all other things combined.
In the ancient dispensation adultery was punished with death. In the
Christian dispensation, it is said with _great emphasis_, “Whoremongers
and adulterers God will judge.” There is a place of which it is said,
“Whoso is simple let him turn in hither, but he knoweth not that the dead
are there, and that her guests are in the depths of hell.” There is a sin
of which the Bible often speaks, pointing the guilty perpetrators to the
fact that they have none inheritance in the kingdom of God and of Christ.
The history of Pagan nations is little else than a record of crime. By
studying it we may learn something of our obligations to the Christian
religion, and our indebtedness to its pure spirit, which has brooded over
the darkness of the nations, and brought order out of confusion. It will,
also, learn us to value the names father, mother, husband, wife, children
and parents; these names were of little value among Romans. In the annals
of the Roman empire may be found a record of all that is shocking; a
record of all that man can be guilty of; a record of all that an enemy
could be guilty of; suspicion, licentiousness, murder, conspiracy of wives
against their husbands, and husbands against their wives; children
sacrificed by the doings of a mother; families whose peace is ruined by
intrigue and violence; men everywhere falling upon their own swords; the
wife murdering her own husband for the sake of marrying another; woman
practiced, skilled, in the art of poisoning—such is the picture of Pagan
life in the most enlightened age of Rome.
Let any man compare society in our country, or in any protestant country,
with the state of society under the reign of the Cæsars, and he will see
what the Christ has done for our race. The spirit that sustains our social
institutions does not grow cold even at the grave, but is felt beyond
death. How is it in heathen lands? The sweetest loves of life give way to
suspicion and envy; the jealousy of love, the thirst for power and
ambition, drives them away, often as soon as the flowers and beauty of
youth are gone. Where Christ reigns it is not so. Yet there are those who
would have us believe that the religion of Christ is an unsocial, selfish
religion. If it is unsocial and selfish to have no sympathy with
wickedness, to promote all that is virtuous and kind, pure and true, to
take pleasure in all that subdues the malignant and beastly, the ambitious
and cruel, then it is an unsocial and selfish affair. If it is unsocial
and selfish to take pleasure in that which elevates and moulds character
in the image of God, and fits it for angelic society hereafter, then it is
truly unsocial and selfish.