At the present day, perhaps more than ever, men are only too happy to find a reason to justify the continuance of any bad habit, or a belief in some false theory, the practical working of which seems more easy, congenial, and convenient for themselves than that of the truth. For instance, show a man that pork is as unclean to the Gentile as to the Jew, that in the Bible it is classed with such animals as the camel and the coney, and such birds as the eagle, the vulture, and the owl (Lev. 11), with the mouse, and other abominable things (Isa. 65:4; 66:17), that the swine is full of scrofulous humors, the cause of many diseases to those who eat it, and more than occasionally filled with the terrible trichinæ,—show him this, and he will gravely ask, “What is to be done with all the swine in the earth?” presuming, virtually, that every filthy animal for which no other use is readily seen, must be eaten! What shall be done with all the homeless, outcast dogs in our streets? What shall be done with the rats and mice? The Chinaman will carry this argument a little further, and say, Eat then! But there is a use for the swine. Let them act as scavengers to pick up the filth and waste from the premises.
We present the Sabbath. The people acknowledge the truth. They see at once that there is not a spark of Bible for the observance of Sunday, and that it is very explicit in commanding the observance of the Sabbath of the Lord, which is the seventh day. Then they begin to reason:—
“It would bring confusion into the community to go to keeping the Sabbath. Some would be keeping one day, and some the other.”
“My mother always taught me to observe Sunday carefully, and I should not feel free to change now, lest I should make her feel bad.” This “reason” was offered us a day or two since.
“It unsettles the minds of the people, and there will be less unity, if this Sabbath doctrine be preached. Don’t you think we ought to be united?”
These and a score of like transparent “reasons” are handed in as occasion requires or opportunity presents.
Benjamin Franklin had a keen sense of the subtlety of carnal reasoning, and he had his own inimitable way of exposing it. In relating some of the incidents of his younger days, he, in his seventy-ninth year, wrote the following:—
“My scheme of ORDER gave me the most trouble; and I found that, though it might be practicable where a man’s business was such as to leave him the disposition of his time, that of a journeyman printer, for instance, it was not possible to be exactly observed by a master, who must mix with the world, and often receive people of business at their own hours. Order, too, with regard to places for things, papers, &c., I found extremely difficult to acquire. I had not been early accustomed to it, and, having an exceedingly good memory, I was not so sensible of the inconvenience attending want of method. This article, therefore, cost me so much painful attention, and my faults in it vexed me so much, and I made so little progress in amendment, and had such frequent relapses, that I was almost ready to give up the attempt, and content myself with a faulty character in that respect, like the man who, in buying an ax of a smith, my neighbor, desired to have the whole of its surface as bright as the edge. The smith consented to grind it bright for him if he would turn the wheel. He turned, while the smith pressed the broad face of the ax hard and heavily on the stone, which made the turning of it very fatiguing. The man came every now and then from the wheel, to see how the work went on, and at length said he would take his ax as it was, without further grinding.
“‘No,’ said the smith, ‘turn on, turn on; we shall have it bright by and by; as yet it is only speckled.’”
“‘Yes,’ said the man, ‘but I think I like a speckled ax best!’”
“And I believe this may have been the case with many, who, having, for want of some such means as I employed, found the difficulty of obtaining good and breaking bad habits in other points of vice and virtue, have given up the struggle and concluded that ‘a speckled ax was best;’ for something, that pretended to be reason, was every now and then suggesting to me that such extreme nicety as I exacted of myself might be a kind of foppery in morals, which, if it were known, would make me ridiculous; that a perfect character might be attended with the inconvenience of being envied and hated; and that a benevolent man should allow a few faults in himself, to keep his friends in countenance.”
Truly, it is convenient to be a ready reasoner. Franklin relates another incident, to show how this happy faculty permitted him to eat codfish, against a previous resolution:—
“In my first voyage from Boston, being becalmed off Block Island, our people set about catching cod, and hauled up a great many. Hitherto I had stuck to my resolution of not eating animal food, and on this occasion, I considered, with my master Tryon, the taking of every fish as a kind of unprovoked murder, since none of them ever had done, or could do, us any injury that might justify the slaughter. All this seemed very reasonable. But I had formerly been a very great lover of fish, and when this came hot out of the frying pan, it smelt admirably well. I balanced some time between principle and inclination, till I recollected that when the fish were opened, I saw smaller fish taken out of their stomachs. Then thought I, ‘If you eat one another, I don’t see why we mayn’t eat you.’ So I dined upon cod very heartily, returning only now and then occasionally to a vegetable diet. So convenient a thing is it to be a reasonable creature, since it enables one to find or make a reason for everything one has a mind to do.” C. W. STONE.