THE MANIFEST DOWNWARD TENDENCY.
By Editor
CONCERNING the immoral tendency in business, political, and social circles, the Examiner (Baptist) has these timely remarks:— "There is no use in mincing matters. In spite of a host of honorable exceptions, and much fine talk about our Christian civilization, conduct in business and the trades is to an alarming extent conscienceless, and the practises of the caucus notoriously corrupt. Indeed, the tendency has been, and is, to jeer at morality in these relations, to wink at political rascality, to regard conscientiousness and simple-mindedness as convertible terms, and with leering approbation of his 'smartness,' to condone the successes of the adroit scoundrel. This would seem a formidable indictment, which we would be slow to utter, were not the facts that justify and demand it in daily evidence. "To such an extent have violations of the moral law been carried, and so supine has been the spirit of resentment, that we have reached a stage where a certain class of people of wealth believe that their money will protect them in any enormity. The most dangerous anarchists at present, in our judgment, are the befouled figures in the aggregation which calls itself 'society.' The depravity of the two wealthy voluptuaries who recently married each other a few hours after the wretched woman's divorce, would have shocked men in the worst days of decadent Rome, and would cause an indignant outcry from the inhabitants of Central Africa, did the like happen there. It is the effect, however, penetrating inward upon domestic life, of the immoral outward conditions to which we refer. "At such a time it is as gratifying as hopeful to find in the governor's chair of the State of New York a man who has the integrity and courage to sound the note of alarm and indicate the method of reformation. This Governor Roosevelt nobly did at the recent dinner of the Independent Club of Buffalo. The following extracts from his speech will have the hearty approbation of all right-thinking people:— "All of the great truths up to which we try to act are comprehended in the right. I certainly have not found any new principle of importance in public life, and so far as I have been able to get, I have become a more and more convinced believer in the doctrine enunciated a few years ago by a then eminent statesman, that, after all, the Decalog and the Golden Rule are the two guides to conduct upon which we should base our actions in political affairs. If there is one thing which I should like to eradicate from the character of any American, it is the dreadful practise of paying a certain mean admiration and homage to the man who, whether in business or politics, achieves success at the cost of sacrificing all those principles for the lack of which, in the eye of any righteous man, no possible achievement of such success can in any way compensate." "We observe that these utterances have been characterized in certain quarters as in line with Christian Socialism. Attempts to discredit truths by likening them to doctrines deemed opprobrious with which they have partial correspondence, is a very old trick of the devil. The truths stated by Governor Roosevelt may or may not be those of Christian Socialism. We presume they are. If so, all the better for Christian Socialism. But, be that as it may, they are most assuredly the truths of Biblical morality—extant ages before Socialism in any form was ever dreamed of—the morality that has approved itself to the race, possessing which individuals and nations become prosperous, and lacking which they perish." The only fear is that men, who, like Governor Roosevelt, see the evils of these times, and the need of the Decalog and the Golden Rule in the hearts of men, will undertake to force them there by civil laws. And in that case they would only make bad matters very much worse. But we hope that the history of the past as well as the Bible warnings will keep men from resorting to civil power to compel where only the persuading power of the Spirit of God can work the needed reforms. The civil power has its place, but it is not in enforcing obedience to the Decalog or the Golden Rule. You may compel men to be civil, but it is only from choice that the high spiritual life of the Ten Commandments can be breathed into the soul. And this deep spirituality is what is needed to stem the tide in these crying times of evil.