New Ulm review. (New Ulm, Brown County, Minn.) 1892-1961, 1894-04-25
forces; law would be vindicated any way

J
that violation OF GODS laws wosla net
carry With it its own punishment unless
that God was d Personal one. I showed
that Mature with ali Its laws and forcesn
did not and could not take e0gnizance
of the violation of law in the moral Of
der, moral Governor being necessary
if all crime would receive punishment.
Your correspondent, therefore, would
simply destroy the moral order by max
ing personal God synonym for Ma
ture with all It's laws and forces or by
recognizing no difference between them
so far as the moral order is concerned.
"Man in his normal state must be what
natures law or Gods law intended him
to be. He must be normal not an ab-
normal being" The chain of reasoning
which led up to this conclusion is fault
less and no reasonable man will quarrel
with the conclusion. But 1t must be re-
membered that religion deals with the
supernatural order, and while religions
subject, man, may be very normal crea-
ture in the natural order, he is very abb
normal at birth and through life in the
supernatural order. Man can attain all
natural ends and all natural happiness
by following Natural laws. AS your cor
respondent rightly argues. natural laws
make man a normal being; for at birth
and through life man follows these
laws. But man as spiritual being has
a spiritual OF supernatural end and must
follow supernatural laws in order to at
tain it. If he does not live so as to at
tain it, h, is still very abnormal being,
although in the natural order he is quite
normal. Religion teaches that there
must be birth and growth in the spiritu-
al order like that shown in nature. The
fact that the race was redeemed by God
incarnate proves our fallen state splritu-
ally. And even to the eye ofreason ira
ces of this fallen state are clear Why
is the wrong so often chosen in prefer
ence to the right? Why has the intel
lect such difficulty with prejudice, bias,
doubt and darkness before it reaches the
truth? Why are not the passions al
ways subject to the will and to reasons
The celebrated Psychologist, Dr.. Hicock,
concludes: 1T is impossible to explain.
the arrangement of the souls faculties
and mans defective moral state except
under the hypothesis that the whole race
has been the victim of some great origi-
nal catastrophe. At any rate we have
for this belief the testimony of the Gre
ator himself who said that we are all
born the children of wrath, and God can
not lie. So that your correspondents rea-
soning, while valid as regards mans ma
tural state, can draw no conclusion as
regards mans condition in the spiritual
OR supernatural sphere. Reason of itself
could never prove that we are all born
the children of wrath or in ether words
that we are all tainted by original sin.
The data whereon reason could work is
supplied only by Revelation.
"a priest must unavoidably become a
false character" Your correspondent
enumerates some reasons. One is be-
cause of celibacy. If this reason holds
then nearly one third of the human race
are false characters; for statistics claim
about that percentage die unmarried,
According to that standard nearly all the
teachers in our public, schools are false
characters; for most of them lead the un-
married or unnatural life of which your
correspondent speaks. Again, the ma
jority of those who marry live twenty or
twenty-five years before their marriage,
a time sufficiently long to have developed
false characters; for twenty years of az
unnatural life especially in youth must
in most cases make false characters.
Hence with the above standard applied
not only to priests but to the rest of men
we have very few without false charac-
ters-they are the exception not the rule.
How absurd some principles are when
pushed to their logical conclusion! Be
just. If you condemn the priest for
celibacy, condemn the teacher in your
public school, condemn your own life
previous to marriage, condemn the ma
jority of your race who at one time or
another spent years out of wedlock.
Another reason: .sthe priest takes sol
emn oathas to what he shall believe and
teach no matter what his own convic-
tions may be- Therefore your cor
respondent concludes he is a false char