The Golden Rule

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Nov 13, 1893

The Golden Rule thus reads: "All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them." Matt. 7 : 12.

This means the putting of our neighbor in our place and putting ourselves in his place. It is not a rule for a single relation in life, but for all relations. It does not cover one phase but all phases.

If all men would follow the Golden Rule there would never be a crime committed on the face of the earth. There is no man who desires his neighbor to steal from him, to destroy his property, or slander his good name. He therefore, if he followed the above rule, would not steal from his neighbor, nor destroy his neighbor's property, nor slander his good name. Neither would he violate the chastity of his neighbor's wife or daughter or take his neighbor's life, because he would not desire his neighbor to do these things by him.

If all professed Christians had ever followed the Golden Rule there never would have been the persecutions of the Dark Ages; there would not be the clamor for laws relating to religious institutions or dogmas. The Christian if he had the power would not debar the heathen from the same privileges which he himself enjoyed, because if the positions were reversed, he would not wish the heathen to deprive him of his privileges and rights. And this is just as true as regards all religious laws in all countries. The Sunday keeper, if he believed in the teachings of Christ, though he had the power would not compel any man to observe Sunday, because he would not desire an observer of any other day to compel him to keep that day. No man who believed in the Golden Rule could or would support, promote, or enforce a Sunday law, or any other "civil" sabbath law. No religious legislation can exist under the teaching of Christ.

Principles are greater than facts. It is important to know a fact of the great system of gospel truth, but it is more important to understand the principles upon which it is founded. Men may be deceived as to seeming facts; and the fact known may seem to be set aside by what seemed to be a bigger fact; but he who has eternal principles of truth, and knows them to be such, has that by which he may correlate and judge all things. Study to know not only truth, but the greatest underlying principles of the truth.