River Falls journal. [volume] (River Falls, Pierce County, Wis.) 1872-2019, 1909-01-21


and wrong. The
: fruit of this is that
every man who believes it has his own
standard of religion and morals, which
varies with the state of his physical,
mental and moral health. We have in
the last chapter of the book of Judges
the working of this vagary when
in his own eyes," and know of no
darker days in human history than
those chapters record. When men are
taught to do as they please, reason and
conscience become easy preys to pre-
JUDGE, passion, ignorance and sin.
But the worst fruit is the loss of re-
spect for all authority which prevails
to an alarming extent ut is not the
authority of the Bible only" says Pres
ident Eliot of Harvard, which has de-
clined during the closing century. All
authority has lost force-authority po-
litical ecclesiastical, educational and
domestic" And then he adds: "The
world has had too much authority, and
not enough of love and freedom" And
yet President Eliot knows that love
and freedom, unrestrained by authority
Of some kind, degenerates into license,
and community in which love and
freedom hold unrestrained carnival
without the restraints of law, would
not be desirable place to live in. This
revolt against authority is filling our
prisons, while it keeps gibbet and
electric chair busy. 1t develops and
fosters the spirit of anarchy and,
strange to say, it has helped to
strengthen Roman Catholicism, for
men who have been won by argument
from their faith in the Bible as author
itative will soon see that their reason
and ethical sense, which they have
been taught to trust, are fallible and
often misleading Finding the need of
some guide they can trust, they turn
in their reaction to the so-called infal-
lible church and give everything over
to the priest
An Encouraging Feature.
But the encouraging feature of the
present situation is the fact that in
losing respect for all authority, people
have lost respect for the authorities
that inveigh against authority, and
they are turning back with renewed
confidence to the Bible. And this re-
volt against authority, which has en-
couraged Independent thinking, will re-
store confidence in the authority of the
Bible just as soon as men learn to
read and study the book untrammeled
by the influence of insurgents against
all authority. And they will become
truly untrammeled when they have
watched the workings of this revolt
against authority in the home, the shop
and the state.
1t is an farming fact that there has
come to some New England commune
ties a disintegration and degeneration
Of public morality which, according to
DR.. Horn, who gave several summers
to a careful study of the subject, has
brought them down in moral tone be-
low the mining camps Of the west. De-
generates in western mining camps
are willing to acknowledge that they
are bad, but not so with degenerates
III 1NOW DA6lO11Qs hCJ NOlIl11AC S11O
sins of the mining camps while they
lay claim to responsibility and refuse
to admit their guilt. The reaction
against Puritanism demands something
sinful, so that morality with some has
become bad form.
Have Let Faith Go.
I'm 80 per cent. of the New England
towns the large majority of the people
have no intelligent faith about any.
thing and do not wish to have any.
Serious religion which interferes with
personal aims and pleasures is
Stunned and it's advocates ridiculed.
The condition seems utterly hopeless.
In such places the liberal preaching of
the past decades and the refined criti.
cism of the holy Bible have enabled
the people to throw off nearly all re-
straints of conscience, so that God is no
longer loved nor feared, and human
life grows cheap. I am sure of this,
that wherever the pulpits of New Eng
land have been untrue to the Bible and
the Deity and the auth GRITTY of Christ,
in those places irreverence, profanity,
immortality and godlessness almost
hopelessly exist"
There has been complete loss of
the sense of sin, and with this loss of
the sense of sin goes the indulgence of
sin without protest of reason or con-
science God is held to be a sentimen-
talist, whose laws may be violated with
impunity because he is too merciful to
punish offenders. With bells of guilt
on every side consuming body and
soul the hell of the Bible has been
pronounced nightmare of medieval
horror, and thus the restraining power
Of fear, the only deterrent for coarse
natures, is removed, while love for
such God of mercy without justice
and truth weakens and dies for the
lack Of respect.