Raftsman's journal. [volume] (Clearfield, Pa.) 1854-1948, 1858-11-24
MODERN LICENTIOUSNESS.

One OF our contemporaries notes the evi-
denccS scattered broadcast in the literature of
the present day. that the faith of large classes
of the active population of the world at tho
present time, in the long established codes Of
virtue and morality, is destroyed. He then
refers TO the effect of fhe French Revolution
and the defence of suicide in Europe, and TO
the consequence of political abuse of govern
ment and the justification OF private revenge
on this side of the Atlantic, and adds:
Probably there has been no such a wide
spread aud long continued sapping of the
most fundamental virtues of society since
Christianity arose Just before its rise. how
ever, there is page in the histories of Judea,
of Greece, and of Rome, exhibiting precisely
such spectacle we The Sad
ducees among the Jews had sapped the belief
of the higher orders in all the retributioDs of
another world, and the Epicurcans among the
Greeks and Romans had descended TO the most
open advocacy and practice of sensual pleas
ure, as the chief good in the present world.
Horace and Juyenal, no less than Josephus,
exhibit just such an eclipse of all faith in yir-
tue, as beclouds large masses of the people as
to anything out of and higher than the al
mighty dollar.
1t is especially to be remarked, that this
sort of scepticism is TO be found chiefly in
those who are ignorant of the classics, and
of the history of those debates and struggles
after a true standard of human moralities
which preceded the rise of Christianity upon
the ruins of all previous csepticism- Our
present system of laws as to the protection of
life, of marriage, and of property, are the re-
suit of the siftings and experiences of all
past ages, OF Jewish laws, of Grecian spec
ulations, and of the Roman Pandects, as well
Of the Epistles of Paul, and of the expert
ences of the early Christian sages.
All deep experience brings men round, af-
ter actual trial of life, 10 this standard of NOR.
ais, as the most perfect exhibition of the
teachings of natural virtue, the most com
plete code of human happiness. Lord By
ron, in his latter days, in his conversations
with Mr.. Kennedy, declared himself made
more of a skeptic through the professed Chris
tians he had met, than through anything in
Christianity; and while acknowledging him.
self the slave OF evil habits, took much in
terest in circulating Bibles among the Greeks
fighting their battles, and died apparently
with more hope and faith in the good to be
done by the former than the latter of these
methods OF liberating Greece.
DR.. Franklin, though skeptical in early life,
and laInented over as such by DIR. Priestly at
late period, yet, by the quaint epitaph he
wrote for himself, proclaimed his faith in
the resurrection, and wrote to Tom Paine, be-
seeching him not to ssunchdin the figer,'' as he
significantly wrote, of human passions, loos-
ened from Christian morality, by such publi-
cations his Age of Reason. Upon the
whole, while breaking up of all degmatism
and national religious establishments is clear
ly pointed ont as the work of the present age,
and while there must be more complete
sitting out of all those things only accidental
ly connected with Christianity. frsm these be-
longing to it in essence, yet the whole will and
must result in more firm conviction of tho
ancient morality as the guide for man in all
public and private life.