Religion and Morality

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Jun 3, 1913

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 40, No. 22.

Religion and Morality

An article in the San Jose Morning Times of April 14, by the Rev. H. M. M'Quilkin, truly says that "religion is the mother of morality." He further says that "James Russell Lowell reminds us that the Ten Commandments have not been repealed. . . . The judge, the crusader, the poet, all join in declaring that God's holy will is the ground of all human morality." Speaking of San Jose, he says:

"Vice festers in our midst. Immorality stalks abroad at noonday and is not afraid. The watchdogs of justice doze or have their teeth drawn so that their faint bark does not sound alarm to the pilferers of righteousness and decency."

And the picture which he draws of San Jose is a fairly good picture of nearly every other city of the same size, and larger, in the United States; yet how he can say, in the face of this, that "morality has become epidemic in the nation," we do not know. The things that he refers to in support of this,—"reform congresses, vice commissions, vigilance committees, reform associations, leagues, and societies,—all these crowd upon one another,"—instead of proving that there is a "tidal wave" of reform, prove just the opposite. They are spasmodic or half organized efforts to meet a tremendous tidal wave of iniquity. A generation or two ago such things as these were not needed to stay immorality. There was a real moral sentiment at the base of society everywhere, and the fact that all these organizations are forming, and are multiplied, is evidence that the thing to be met has grown to be so colossal that almost anything and everything that promises results is swung into line to meet it. The Rev. Mr. M'Quilkin too faintly suggests what he ought strongly to declare the only thing that there is which can meet it, and that is not any crusade of organizations, but a revival of religion which will change the moral sentiments of the individual heart.

Vice-President Marshall, in a speech before the Federation of Churches, December 6, 1912, truly said: "If there is a weakness in the church organization of to-day, that weakness springs from the fact that too many of the followers of the Nazarene are more interested in some particular phase of evil in civil life than they are in proclaiming the original sin of mankind and its only sure remedy—an undoubting, unqualified, and everlasting hold upon the gospel of the Galilean." The only power that will meet the vice of to-day is regeneration in Jesus Christ. Men may suppress vice by law, and doubtless that is duty in most cases, but the vice is still there. They may elect reform city councils and legislatures; but the whole great, vicious system will go on unless man is regenerated from above.