Sacramento daily record-union., 1890-04-14
MORALITY AND RELIGION.
Rev. @. p. Massey on the Question
Conscience and Moral Qhligatinn

MORALITY AND RELIGION.
Rev. @. P. Massey on the Question of |
Conscience and Moral Obligation.
Rev. c. P. Massey spoke yesterday morn
ing upon the ultimate facts in conscience
and moral obligation, and selected for his
text jeremiah XXI, 33 "After these
days, saith the Lord, will put my law
in their inward parts, and write it in their
hearts, and will be their God, and they
shall be my people," Mr.. Massey said tbs
passage is taken from one of the later of
the Hebrew prophets, and is an indication
that the truth was beginning to dawn unon
the imaginat;ons of men; that q mere
formal observance of religion, simply
ritualistic piety, may be useful ia many
ways, and may furnish buttresses ard sup
ports for many conditions of faith, hut that
as man advances to a larger culture and
better appreciation of himself as irrational
and responsible being, it is imperative that
religion must possess Tor him deeper and
more intimate sanction. The whole ques-
ton as to the rival claims of morality and
religion to supplent each ether in the
worlds regard, is here opened up, and op-
portunity is offered for an adjustment of
our conceptions respecting two words in
the vocabulary, which are pepularly made
to carry ideas of differing and almost
an:agonizing relations.
For ages the world has insisted
that religion depended upon revela-
ton of some miraculous and exceptional
kind for its authority, but men have grad
ually come to understand that revelation
so-called, is but the reflection of the moral
enlightenment of people; is possessed of
no higher authority than the conscience of
the worshipers, and discloses nothing that
is not discovered to pure hear. and con-
science void of offense.
Some of the greatest thinkers of our
time have come to give to the term moral
ity this high significance. Says Professor
C. G. Everett: THE moral law stands
among the manifold relations OF the world
apparently as the great exception. In
other matters we do not hesitate to trace
the'connection of finite cause and effect.
In regard to duty our natural impulse is to
recognize the presence of some higher ele-
| ment 1t is not strange that Emmanuel
Kant felt that here we are in contact with
the absolute reality; that while everywhere
else we are in the world of phenomena, in
the moral law we touch the substance of
things"
An urfathomable mystery, however,
confrontS US when we come to con-
template the moral nature of which
we are possessed. Science has strug-
gled to account for it solely upon
the principle of evolution, to describe it as
development; but there is something in
us that rebels at the assumption. A purely
materialistc philosophy looks upon matter
as really containing ''the promise and po-
tency of every order of life" This posi-
bic life may be material in some refined
and sublimated use of the word, but not
in its ordinary acceptation. And l am re-
minded here of Mr.. William Hurrell NAL
locks characterization of NJ. Zolas real.
ism. Mr.. Mallock consents thet the
Frenchmsn's art is realistic, but that it is
not real to the extent OF ex-
Guiding other things that are
equally as real. 1t predicts what human
nature is in some of its aspects, it does not
present what human nature may be in
other aspects. 1t eliminates enthusiasm,
affection, refinement, faith. 1t banishes
the ideal. and so leaves out of the picture
what many men regard as a component
element in life, as It becomes to them its
| motive and inspiration.
The speaker then went on at ample
length, and with abundant illustration, to
combat the purely utilitarian views exem
plihed in the social morality of Charles
Darwin, or in the idea of the perfected hu-
man society of Herbert Spencer, and repu-
dated the thought that any of US accept
these purely utilitarian ideas in making up
the sum of what man really owes, of what
he ought to do, in his manifold relations
with the world. Acknowledging that all
truism and egoism are the ultimate i'm
pulses, and that their interplay produces,
or their proper interplay would produce,
universal justice, there are many things in
the moral realm not yet accounted for.
TIE fact is not accounted for that a sense
Of honor and truthfulness frequently impel
man to the commission of acts which in
volve much of sacrifice, and that he COM
ports himself honestly, and truthfuliy,
when the only expediency involved is that
high expediency that demands of him
that the escutcheon of his character
shall remain untarnished. The les.
sons of expediency and utility do
not explain why certain actions, as far as
one may be able to discover, will not i'm
pair the stable equilibrium of things, are
beneath man, and that their practice SUBJ
jects him to the censure of acting un-
worthily. Men tell the truth and pay their
debts, frequently, not because they are
compelled to, not even because any appre-
ciebie disadvantage would otherwiseresult,
but simply because they ought. The truth
is, there is a recognized fullness of life
evolution can account for. a man struggles
for fortune, gains it, and then fails. He
fails, sometimes, it is true, because of his
violation OF natural law, and of moral law,
if the discrimination may be allowed; but
men fail sometimes when they are not
trapsgressors in any possible sense. 1t was
the winds of heaven which brought An
tonio's ventures safe TO port, and it was the
winds of heaven which could have abso-
lutely wrecked them. But if the temper of
such a one is really opulent and royal, he
has no sense of being dishonored through
the calamity. He is mortified, doubtless;
the pride, which is purely personal, is
wounded, but that pride he feels, and
which is characterized differently as honor,
and honesty and truthfulness, as he esti-
mates himself as part of some great system
which overwraps him in its mystery, is
not wounded, and suffers from no reflection
of dishonor.
And now, if the question is asked,
what is the metaphysical explanation
of all this, l can only answer that
it is implicated in what l have
already SAID. 1t is only putting what |
have said in other words, if add that the
life of man is weighted by something
vaster than himself. 1t is this feeling of
relation which inspires to honorable deal
ing in its various illustrations. Laws,
whose authority is easily understood,
early taught man that he is no mere
individual in the world. His life rep
resents a much larger content. Now
it is just in proportion as men estimate this
content, that their sense OF honor increases
or diminishes. The novelist. Winthrop, as
serted that the thought of his ancestry was
a constant incentive to noble acts. The
knight, the noble feels it, and prides him.
al ,at,n L., H.,
strange enthusiasm. This understanding
of the content of life explains the signif-
canoe of the nobieSse obhge of rank, and Just
as the content is made to increase, SO
the enthusiasm for righteousness increases,
as we feel ourselves partakers of an ever
enlarging life. If what / have said is true,
this constant impinging upon US of some