Lincoln County leader. [volume] (Toledo, Lincoln County, Or.) 1893-1987, 1906-05-25
NEED FOR MORAL UPLIFTING.
By Rev. James E. Freeman.

NEED FOR MORAL UPLIFTING.
By Rev. James E. Freeman.
Stand We in the old ways and see
and ask for the old paths.-Jeremiah
vi, 16.
Every renaissance and reformation,
every epochal movement that has to do
with the upward development Of human
life is marked by a return to old ways,
strong, wholesome, clean, that have
long been neglected. Life's great moral
principles, the highways over which it
comes to its highest and truest devel-
opment, are not susceptible to change.
Conditions and environments change
with kaleidoscope rapidity, but those
things that have to do with the moral
well-being, with character in its lar
gest enrichment and development, do
not change.
Honesty Is the best policy today, as
1t has ever been, and no new made law
Of commercial life can ever change it.
Purity and decency and moral respec-
liability are not amenable to any new
conditions Of modern life. Life's con-
fusions, its persistent and insistent de-
mands require us to look up now and
again these old guide maps by which
we shaped our course in the earlier
days.
We instance three departments of
life In which there is an urgent need
for this return to the old paths, name
ly, the commercial, the social and the
religious.
If anyone wishes to seek for the evil
dences Of the need for return to the
old ways of commercial integrity, let
him but note the colossal moral fail
ures that. have marked this so-called
period Of commercial development. The
youth that are entering the several
callings and vocations need to be re-
minded that there are ways that are
honest and clean and wholesome and
that they are the only ways of per-
manence and satisfaction. What we
find here we disclose again in our So
cial life. There is a certain puerility
and sterility, certain lack of reality
and wholesomeness about much that
masquerades as social life. Impurity
and intemperance Of life, whether they
wear broadcloth or homespun, are as
repugnant to the sense Of decency to-
day as they were when our fathers and
mothers danced the minuet
There is q peculiar revival Of inter
est in the old furnishings Of former
generation. If we would revive their
environments let us seek to bring back
something Of their character, some
thing Of that splendid simplicity and
genuineness that marked the finer life
Of our colonial days. 1t is needless to
say that here, as in our commercial
life, there are saving remnants; that
there are homes where the spirit Of
true chivalry among men and true no
bility and grace among women keep
pure and strong the currents of social
intercourse. What we contend against
is that spurious thing that, for GER
tains reasons Of wealth or so-called
social prestige, exhibits no restraint
and practices no temperance in con-
duct.
Again the religious life of the twen-
tieth century has been described as in
transition state" and we are dis
posed to think that this is largely so.
But what is to be the transition?
Where are we tending?
There Is an almost pathetic and trag-
ic appeal today for the old paths and
ways Of religious experience. Much as
the later expostors Of holy writ have
done, and 1t is much, to give greater
clearness to the Interpretation of the
Bible, there is a persistent cry, that
must be needed If the church is to pre-
vail, for those old familiar and funda-
mental truths that have to do with life
and death and Immortality.