The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1871-05-19
ETHICS AND EccbEsrAsTros.

sidious infideNty. Their heresy is counted
all the more dangerous because covered with
the garb and semblance of faith. Their pol
ished phrase and professed fealty to religion
blind the very elect to the subtle elements of
unbelief lurking in aud diffused through |
them. They are as much more fatal than the |
bold denials of Voysey, Oolenso, and Parker |
as the keen rapier wreathed in roses is more |
death-dealing thauf the blunt broadsword |
brandished high III air. And the ground of
this censure is that he makes anything but
complimentary structures upon the Church
for neglecting to teach those essential morali-
ties upon which the welfare and happiness of
individuals and the world depend.
Professor Seeley's statements relate to
ecclesiastical parties in England Those who
draw sharp line between the saved and the
unsaved the Church and the world, religious
beliefs and sacrameDts that are saving, and
''mere morality is well enough in
church me mbers, but not essential to saliva
ton and very dangerous for the unconverted
to have-of course, take no pains to indoctri-
nate their congregations with ethical princi-
pies and create a sound and healthy moral
sentiment in the community. And only the
Broad Church party in the Establishment,
with a small body of dissenters, are sufi-
ciently emsncipated from the old theology to
regard all human beings as equally children
of God, and subject to moral laws that are
equally binding upon all men. The average
Englishman looks to his church for religion
merely, and religion well-nigh destitute of
moral elements, and gets his ethical ideas
from the press And this is the reason that
the Church is SO little of moral force in the
nation, and has already lost its hold upon the
best minds.
The same thing is essentially true in this
country. If the line between the Church and
the world is less broadly marked than in for
mer days, it still exists, and the chief bust
ness of the minister is to recruit the former
from the territory of the latter. His work is
not to teach ethics but to save souls, and to
save them by some other means than the
morality which is the essence and outcome
of genuine religion and an essential element
of true manliness. He labors to make con-
verts, not to create a climate SO congenial to
what is best and noblest in human nature
that society will blossom with graces and
produce the richest and rarest virtues.
| In his view, morality has nothing
to do with soul-saving Though well enough
in its wOy, and a convenient thing to have, it
! is not essential to salvation. According to
! the most popular preacher in America, it is,
at best, beam too short to bridge the stream
that separates earth from heaven. Morality
! ia admirable for the saints, but dangerous for
| the unconverted, who are constantly tempted
to trust to it for salvation. The more moral
morality and the less likely to accept the doc
trinal and sacramental expedients for the
saving of souls, and the better the world the
worse for the Church.
The inevitable consequence is that, with
few noble exceptions, the pulpits ring all pos
sible changes on the doctrines and sacraments
they regard as essential to salvation after
death and spend their force in recruiting
churches and building up denominations,
while the great common moralities on which
| individual sanity as well as sanctity depend,
which are the foundation of public welfare
and prosperity, are dropped into secondary
and merely incidental place, if not decried
as 'beggarly elements" and ''flthy rags"
Doctrines and sacraments sit at the
ecclesiastical feast, and ethics are left
to pick up the crumbs that fall from
the liable. The practical result of this policy
is that the streets of all our cities are mined
with vices and honey combed with pitfalls
business has become another name for gam
bling; politics, as represented in 'the rings,
is an organized conspiracy to rob the people;
the domestic life of our country is demora-
lized; the churches are the hiding. places of
extortioners and hypocrites; and man
escorts woman in the street car after dark
at the peril of his life
The majority of eccesiastics seem to forget
that the saving of souls in the next world is
Gods business, while it is their business to
make souls worth the saving. Those who
have caught glimpse of better things do
not preach morality because they know so
little about it. A knowledge of ethics is not
considered a necessary part of the intellectual
furniture of a popular minister; he confoands
morals with department, and, filling his
quiver with theological proof texts, brushes
the subject aside. He fails to see, what Kant
showed long ago, that the only impregnable
ground of faith in God and Immortality, as
against the subtle speculations and
scientific activities of the age,
is this of indestruetible- moral
obligations. If the Church has any meaning
and use in modern society, if it stauds for
any permanent reality and essential element
in our new civilization, it is the representa-
tive of those moral verities, laws, and obli-
cations that are as indestructible as human
nature, and the unalterable conditions of
human good. For morality Is not that
mesRre and pinched affair that Ignorant
priests have represented it-merely a
thing of the hands, matter of
propriety, set OF manners, sort
of Lord Chesterfield etiquette with
little more sanctlmony in
look and severity in tone. 1t relates to all
human relations. 1t covers all human duties.
1t reaches to the bottom of the heart and the
top of the life. 1t concerns all human
thoughts and feelings as we'll as actions. II
goes wherever the word Ought goes and
covers all that means and reaches to- Reli-
gion and the Church rest at last upon morals.
religion without morality IS air without
oxygen, or a body without bone or blood.
One reason of the immense detection from
the Church. and that it has lost so much of
! its former hold on the brain aud heart of our
} people, is because ecclesiastics have ignored