THE ONE STANDARD by Lutheran World

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, California · Oct 18, 1905

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 31, No. 42.

THE ONE STANDARD.

By Lutheran World

As Christians we ought not to be pretentious, but we must and do make some pretensions. We claim to have in the Bible a God-given moral law; the standard of moral excellence by which all human law and conduct must be judged. From this claim we can not, we dare not, make any abatement. "To the law and to the testimony" is our watchword. There must be no equivocation here; no mental reservation. Christ's teaching, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbor as thyself," is the touchstone of Christian ethics; and tho we have not probed the depth of meaning, nor scaled the heights of practical possibilities involved in this central doctrine, it is the one standard by which every human action must be gaged, and all philosophy estimated. In our own consciences and hearts we must hold with integrity the unimpeachable nature of this great law. Here we dogmatize; and we hold it to be our clear Christian duty to tolerate no subtraction and to permit no addition. If the social morality of the age is to be inoculated with the principle of this great law, its divine authority must be boldly taught, firmly held, and practically acknowledged by the adherents of the Christian faith. The world does not appreciate half-heartedness. Mincing Christianity will not convince. If social morality is to be swayed by Christianity, the world must know that the moral code is not a shifting sand, but a solid rock—not a nerveless, indefinite rule; but an inexorable law. "Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them," is a moral precept which has stood the test of long experience, commanded the respect of the world, and is the only fulcrum on which Christian influence on social morality can securely rest.—Lutheran World.