Atlanta semi-weekly journal. (Atlanta, Ga.) 1898-1920, 1911-09-12

for themselves without much regard to
the methods they employ. provided the
methods used seem safe and prudent
Present conditions in the commercial
world show this to be true The daily
defalcations and disclosures of dis
honesty in the commercial world reveal
faithless hearts to whom God is myth
and His providence IAN irridescent
dream" These deeds of dishonor are
done by hands which have lost their
grip upon the sdivine hand, although
some of them still cling to church
membership and make a hollow profess
sion of faith. The mammonism of the
world of commerce corrupts the honour
without which trade itself is impossible
When men feel that Gods providence
can not be depended upon, and begin
to make a providence for themselves by
laying up superfluous boards of earthly
goods, they begin at the same time to
lose respect for the moral law and to
get gains by wrong methods and short
cuts Then they become cynical, sneer-
ing at the profession of virtue and ques-
tioning its existence in themselves and
in all other men, AS doubt advances
in their souls they, settle down at last
to that cold despair of all goodness in
which they cease to expect to find it
any where. condemn no wrong does not
touch them injuriously. preach toler-
ance of all evil, and delude themselves
with the idea that their loss OF faith
in all right is a mark of their growth
in all charity. When one has reached
this stage of doubt he has come to the
midnight of life in which a blind. CROP
ing sceptism has lost the power to dis
criminate between good and evil. Then
he fancies that true cnarity requires
him to praise the bad and abuse the
good. to laud whiskey selling as indis-
pensable to a commercial community
and abuse churches for hypochisy. to
compliment the generosity of gamblers
and to criticise the liberality of chris
tions. to denonunce creeds and to glorify
free thought" Such men were in the
days of Isaiah, and they called forth
from the prophet these terrible words
of condemnation: Woe unto them that
call evil good. and good evil; that put
darkness for light, and light for dark
ness; that put bitter Sor sweet and sweet
for bitter" (Isaiah v:20). Such men
are in our day. and the same woes
which the prophet ponounced upon
their predecessors In his time apply to
them now. They confuse all moral VAL
ues in their lives and debase the moral
currency by the sentiments to which
they give currency. They are the chill
dren OF doubt and the apostles of dark
ness.
revival of faith In God is urgently
needed that the fundamental virtues of
truth, honesty, and uprightness may be
preserved. To exist at all, these virtues
are required often to be heroic. and
they can not maintain the Heroic posture
without leaning upon faith in the God of
eternal righteousness. To survive they
must look up to a God able to make
-kn Ill h~rry 49,.
powerful and to overcome all misfor-
tunes however disastrous. Virtues which
are not penetrated by the spirit of pray
err perish in the crises of life. An ire
ligious morality can never be an invinci-
BILE morality.
Those sceptical theories of prayer and
providence, which have prevailed in re-
cent years, putting God far off from
men, have put thousands of men far
away from virtue The dethroning of
the God sof the Bible, and the enthroning
of secondary causes in His place, has
made essential morality secondary in
many minds and set up a degrading ex-
pediency as thesrule of life In dts places
Many have listened. to the teachers
of these goddess theories, feeling that
the worst effect of their teachings could
only be a loss of comfort arising from
loss of faith; but the loss has been
greater. With the impairment of faith
in the God of providence, and with the
increase of prayerlessness which their
teachings have produced, there have
come whitening of the, common morale
ties and the enfeeblings of public and
private virtue.
We must understand that there is no
successful separation of morality and re-
ligion. They are manifestations of the
same moral life, and neither can suffer
without the other suffering with it, The
ancient world tried the experiment of a
religionless morality, and the expert
ment eliminated in a mass and mess
of immoral religions. The modern world
can not hope for a better result, if it
chooses to repeat the experiment.
And let US not forget that the ma
tons which we call christian nations
are shut up to accept christianity, or
have no religion at all. If they are to
have. therefore, any morality their NOR
ality must be christian morality. Their
supreme need is revival of the re-
ligion upon which that morality rests
and from which it draws all its author
ity and all Its sanctions.