Religion and Manners

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Mar 1, 1877

Religion and Manners.

Good religion and good manners always go together. They are things that God has joined, and no man can put them asunder. This follows from the nature of religion, which is the love of God and the love of our fellow-men. It is a compliance, in some good degree, with the two great commandments of the divine law. It is the exercise of proper feelings toward God and a corresponding treatment of him, and the like toward our neighbor. He who has true religion is a renewed man. Holy love has been shed abroad in his heart by the Holy Spirit. And that love makes him kindly disposed toward all. This the precepts of the gospel require of him. He is to love not only those who love him and to treat them kindly, but he is to love even his enemies, if he has them, and to treat them with kindness. So did the Saviour, who is to be the example of his disciples.

Religion, having its seat in the heart, is developed in the outward life. It modifies and shapes the conduct. It has upon its possessor a refining influence. It improves his manners. Under its power he becomes more kind and gentle and courteous. Such was its effect upon the apostle Paul. Before his conversion he was impetuous and headstrong. He was overbearing, caring little for the interests of others. But religion tamed him. It subdued his natural ferocity and made him lamb-like. To the Thessalonian Christians he thus wrote: “We were gentle among you, even as a nurse cherisheth her children.” We find him, in all circumstances, an example of courtesy.

But it may be said that some Christians are unmanly and boorish. They are greatly lacking in kindness and friendliness. We are constrained to admit that it is so. We are not ourselves strangers to such. But it is nevertheless true, as we said at the outset, that good religion and good manners always go together. There are no exceptions. It is no more true that good religion and dishonesty go together, than it is that good religion and ill-manners go together. Those boorish and unmannerly Christians are lacking in good religion. They are greatly deficient here; and that is the reason why they behave no better. Let them increase their religion; let them get more of the genuine article, and they will be improved outwardly in an equal degree as inwardly. There is not a defect or deficiency at which some precept of the gospel does not aim a blow, and which is not rebuked by the example of Him who was ‘holy, harmless and undefiled.’ To learn good manners, one does not need to go to school to Lord Chesterfield . He can better learn them in the school of Christ, where he has ever before him perfect rules and a perfect example.—

N. Y. Observer.