Morality and Religion by B.

International Religious Liberty Association · Chicago, Illinois · Jul 5, 1900

FromThe American Sentinel, The Sentinel of Liberty, Vol. 15, No. 26.

Morality and Religion.

By B.

There are many people who while assenting to the proposition that the state has no right to intermeddle with religion, hold that it is the duty of civil government to regulate morals. Let us see how this is—where lies the truth upon this subject?

In its broadest sense, religion is any system or method of worship, without regards to what the object of worship may be. In the world there are very many religions, and there are very many objects of worship. In this sense the angels are religious, for they worship God.

But in Christian lands the word is used in a more restricted sense. He is not counted religious who does not believe in God, his Son Jesus Christ as the only means of salvation, and the Bible as the revelation of the will of God to man. As the Mohammedan counts all as infidels who do not believe in Mohammed, so Christians esteem all as infidels who do not believe in Christ and the Bible.

Christianity is that system which accepts the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments as the revelation of God to man; accepts the fact of the fall of man, and of his subjection to death as the penalty of disobedience, and of his entire inability to recover himself from his lost condition. It accepts Christ as the Son of God, the sole means of salvation, who died as a sacrifice to redeem us, and lives a priest to make intercession for us, and to aid us by his Spirit.

Morality is obedience to the revealed will of God, whose law is the moral law, the only moral rule. Man lost his morality by disobedience of this rule, but he did not cease to be a religious being. Had he retained his innocency, he would still have been a religious being, according to the broadest sense of the word. He would have held communion with God, and worshiped him as the angels now do. But religion in the Christian

sense would not have existed. There would have been no sin, no need of a Saviour, Christ would not have died, and Christianity would not have been.

Alexander Campbell, in his debate with Bishop Purcell, said “the ten commandments are a synopsis of all religion and morality.” Webster’s Dictionary defines “morality” as “The relation of conformity or non-conformity to the moral standard or rule: quality of an intention, a character, an action, a principle, or a sentiment, when tried by the standard of right.” The Standard Dictionary defines “moral,” first of all, as “Of or pertaining to the practices, conduct, and spirit of men toward God.” These statements are true, if we consider religion according to its primary signification. But the ten commandments do not contain within themselves the Christian religion; for this is remedial, and a law cannot be remedial. No system can recover the sinner from guilt and its consequences that does not contain pardon. Law cannot pardon, Christianity does. Therefore the law is not religious in this sense,—it is simply moral.

Henry N. Day, D. D., says of morals and religion: “In any comparison as to their relative authority and importance to man, the precedence must be given to religion.” But there is difficulty in marking lines where things are so intimately blended as are these two, as the same writer again says: “A piety divorced from morals is a contradiction or an impossibility.”

The ten commandments are divided into two parts, as based on the two great requirements to love God with all the heart, and our neighbor as our self. Service done directly toward God is generally regarded as more strictly religious, while obligation rendered toward our fellow-men is more properly moral. But, as before remarked, these intimately blend in the ten commandments. In the first four precepts the religious element predominates; in the last six the moral element predominates. But though one element predominates in one, and the other element predominates in the other, the two elements cannot be separated in this law. No man can be a moral man and violate any one of the first four precepts, though they are strictly religious. Neither can any man be truly religious and violate one of the last six precepts, though they are more strictly moral. No one is a moral man who is profane, an idolater, or a Sabbath-breaker; and no one can be truly religious who is covetous, who is a thief, and an adulterer, or a murderer. These propositions need no argument; they are evident to all.

Every precept of the ten commandments is moral, and the whole ten we call the moral law, because they are of original obligation. By this we mean that they directly emanated from the will and mind of the Creator, and depended upon no human contingency. The relations which they recognize, and upon which they rest, are those that inhere in the truth that God is our Creator, and man is our fellow-creature. Men could not originate these relations, nor cause these precepts to become duties. Hence, they are essentially primary; no obligation of any nature can take precedence of them.

The religious element in this law takes precedence, as our duty to God comes first. One must love God supremely, with all the heart, and mind, and soul, and his neighbor only as himself. And this order is not reversed or changed by the gospel; as the angels sang at the birth of the Redeemer: “Glory to God in the highest; and on earth peace, good will toward men.” Glory to God is the first note in the song of the angels, as it should be the first object in the lives of men.

How does Christianity—“the only true religion”—stand related to this law? We have said that the law is primary, and as the nature and object of Christianity is essentially different from that of the law, they cannot stand on the same plane. The gospel, or the Christian religion, is secondary. Man could not originate, nor can he control, his relations to God as his Creator, or to man as his fellow-creature. But Christianity does not grow out of these original or primary relations. It is wholly based upon the fact that man is a sinner; and this relation man himself originated. It was not so originally; it did not grow out of or emanate from the mind or will of God.

And in all the systems of ethics of all mankind, this priority or precedence is given to the moral law. Each and every one of the ten commandments is of obligation, and obedience to each is duty, at all times and under all circumstances. And the importance of this obedience is not lessened by any contingency. Nothing justifies violation of the divine law.

We all hold that, if the two may be separated, it is much more important that a man obey the sixth or eighth commandment, that he abstain from murder and theft, than that he obey the requirement to be baptized and partake of the Lord’s Supper. And for the evident reason, that obedience to the gospel is neutralized by disobedience to the moral law. Obedience is and always was better than sacrifice. Of what account is baptism to a thief—to one who continues to steal? Of what value is the Lord’s Supper to a wilful murderer? The law would have been forever binding had Christianity never existed. Its relation antedates Christianity. But Christianity never would have existed had there been no moral law, or if the moral law had never been violated. And Christianity even now is not and cannot be of any benefit to a man who wilfully or negligently violates the law of God,—the ten commandments. Therefore while religion and morality are not identical, they are so blended as to be inseparable; and for this reason and also because

morality refers not alone to the outward acts but to the invisible operations of the mind—even to “an intention,” or “a sentiment”—it is beyond the jurisdiction of civil government and wholly within the jurisdiction of the divine Author of the divine—the moral law.