Barbour County index. [volume] (Medicine Lodge, Kan.) 1880-current, 1883-06-08
THE NECESSITY OF MORAL TRAIN.
ING.

gland Congregational Church, Chicago,
on a recent Sunday preached on the
subject: "A Trained Moral Nature
Necessary to Full-Grown Manhood"
taking for his text the following:
{ But strong meat belongeth to them that are
of full age, even those who by reason of
use have their senses exercised to discern
both good and evil.-HebrctCs Z. IA.
The following extracts are taken
from the reverend gentleman's dis
course:
Quite enough inclined are we TO put our
localities where culture is enthroned AS God
and worshlped. If we fail as people it will
not be for lack of knowledge.
This IL, indeed, an era when manual train
ing-schools are becoming popular and felt to
be necessity The right hand is learning
cunning in all workmanship 1t never knew
before. There is no department in business
that does not demand skill and il not willing
TO pay for skill. If we are to have mechanics,
we expect to train them. If we are to have
book-keepers and accountants, we expect to
train them. 1T we are to have architects, en-
gineers, millers, railroad officials, detectives,
statesmen, teachers, musicians, orators, law
yers, doctors, we expect TO train them. The
question which i am concerned TO ask is:
Whether we are not in danger of forgetting
that one may be a mechanic, artisan, soldier,
editor, doctor, publicist, orator, ETC., without
being man-whether our fondness for
specialties may not make our training one
sided and defective. The thought L would
emphasize is that the whole man must be ex-
ercised and trained, or there can be no valu-
able, reliable manhood. The man who is
morally robust II greatly wanted just now
here in Chicago. Moral rectitude compen-
safes for many deficiencies elsewhere.
We could perhaps get along for awhile with
out any more smart men-keen, adroit men
with whom success is everything and honor
nothing, provided we could increase the num-
Der of thoroughly reliable, trustworthy men,
whom IL would books
or the banks, or the public treasury, or the
home for a few hours-men who would have
some slight preference as to the character of
the clients whom, as attorneys, they defend
men who would be willing To wait until the
perfume of the orange blossoms has departed,
before asking for Il divorce-men who would
enjoy money honestly obtained better than
ill-gotten gains Such men are possible. The
moral nature can be trained. We may have
responsive to the light, the lungs to pure air,
the ear to music, than an incipient moral nat
ure to appropriate training: 1t will either
slumber or grow abnormaly, unless 1t be
trained. The demand for the hour is ''stal-
warts"-not in politics but in righteousness.
The ethical faculty can be trained to alert
ness to reliability in it's announcements, to
swift and unerring decisions, to clear discern
ment of things that differ.
How? BY use-the way almost everything
comes. ''Those who by reason of use have
and evil" That word use is Aristotle's
favorite word and signifies habt-the result of
long and careful exercise-gymnastic activity.
IL is fatal to suppose that the moral nature
does not need as constant and careful train
ing as the physical or mental. We may put il
down as certainty that a neglected moral
nature will be distorted, misleading moral
nature whose end will be blindness, blunder-
ing. disaster, death. 1t is by long usage of the
senses, until habit is formed. that they are
exercised to discern both good and evil.
Habits form early. Therefore the work of
moral training must begin very young and be
continued with utmost assduity and faithful
ness. Nothing else deserves to be called train
ing. except the steady, firm handling of the
child from the first moments of dawning con-
sciousness through all the years of pupilage.
The danger is that the lower nature-the I'M
ruy masses-will early get the ascendency
That is the trouble with the children of our
time. They have either been neglected or
pampered and INDUCED until the attesting and
protesting voice of conscience is sienced and
the appetites and desires have the place of
supremacy. 1t almost surely forbOdcs evil
when there is a rapid unfolding of any of the
other powers either of the body mind in adj
vance of the moral and spiritual. The moral
sense ought to be exercising itself as soon, at
glory of the training in the Christian homes of
New England. Duty was the first, middle and
last word heard by the child. II ought and
II ought not" were very familiar phrases. At
tempts were made to quicken the conscience
at the expense of the feelings. This was a
mistake. The New England parent would
have been wiser If he had given more
play to the emotions, made more fire.
quent appeals to the affections, striven
to create more genial and sunny atmosphere
in the home. But duty was the watch
word and usefulness" the end in life.
conscience was supreme over the feelings,
emotions; appetites and passions. But It
pleasant for the hour The moral develop
ment does not keep pace with the physical,
the social, the intellectual. tits dwarfed. The
other parts of the wOndrous child nature are
too rapidly pushed towards maturity. If 1t is
ever good to smoke. it isn't good for boys TO
smoke: but they want to, and so they do. II
nj 4 ri lie ly m
right for children to drink; but they want to,
and so they do. If it is ever right to keep late
hours, it isn't right for, children to do it: but
they want to, and so they do. If it is ever
good to go to the theater, 1t is not a very good
place for children; but they want to go, and
SO they do. They do not like to be curbed
held in, restrained, exercised in moral gym.
nastics. They chafe under il. Hence the
juvenile crime. Hence the great mass of men
who have almost no moral nature to which an
appeal can be made-men TO whom 1t signifes
nothing to tell them "they ought" Their re-
ply is: We don't feel like tive don't
want to-" Hence. under powerful temptation
they fail, unable TO bear the strain. Hence
when u religious life is or seems to be super
induced upon the former life, there is no basis
no substratum TO build upon, no moral fiber
and the jealous laborer for souls violates the
laws of God and man by forming an unhai
lowed alliance with convert.
Doubtless Aell disciplined ethical nature
is not Christianity. but it is splendid founda
ton upon which to build-a toneless, hbef1ess
nature touched and suffused with a momen
tary gush of religious sunshine is dangerous
character.
This trimming means that children shall be
taken young, very young and exercised like q
gymnast, in right-choosing, i'm self-restraint, In
obedience to all rightful authorities, in self
surrender in keeping the body under, in 81
lencing the clamors of appetite, in ringing
out an imperious mo" to the demands OF
passion, in self-content, in stoutly refusing tt
do any most pleasant or desirable thing unles,
II is right.
Only so can one get a sense of self-mastery
Only so can one be a man. Only so can one
ethical habit-that will be his unfailing friend
and stand him in good stead amid the heavy
and frequent assaults of temptation. We arr
living in an era of cyclonic temptations, In
whose awful swirl men go down. They think
for the moment that there is something
easier and better than TO do right. We legis
nobody is interested to be moral or thinks II
worth while. We attempt moral reforms, and
find no moral sense in those who need re
form, and not much in the reformers. There
is kind of guild pro quo, willit-pay morality
is it safe. and will it hurt nobody"
The need of this hour Is a voice crying in
the wilderness and summoning men back tc
first principles, and reminding them of some
well-nigh forgotten primal truths Of their be
ing. Training-schoois in ethics-moral gym
nasia with God as the law-giver, the Bible the
code, and Christ the inspiring and vitaizinl
agent in the work. Drilling-schools TO evoke
tie the slumbering moral forces so aggressive
so bristling with resistance to evil that SataT
shall be deferred from making any most subtle
and insidious proposals.
For what purpose this training7 ITO discern
both good and evil" This is the reason for
well-developed moral faculty. This is the pur
pose and end Of the training. Good and evi
abound. The problem of life Is to choose thu
one and avoid the other. In order to do thi
we must know the difference between them
and. in order TO know the difference between
them, we must have the discerning mind ant
heart. These are the product of careful train
ing: It's believed that the primary reference
in the text is to good and evil doctrine. How
much we need our senses exercised. the mora
habit formed. so that we may do this. Wa
there ever time when there was greater necs
of clear thinking and clear discernment witt
| respect to doctrinef For false prophets ant
| teachers are abroad in the world. Almost ev
erythfng is CHALLENGED and doubted. 1t Is {
| time to know what and why we believe. to dis
| criminate between things that differ.
Arnold, of Rugby, once said that he had seei
boys enough who loved God. He wanted q
| see ontawho hated the Devil We want boy
| and men who can both recognize and hate tn
| Deyil-the devil of greed, OF impurlty, OF dis
| honesty of SANDER. of deceit, of Sabbath-break
| ing, of intempcrance. OF infideiity. OF athe
| ism-under Whatsoever plausible and insinua'