The Bossier banner. [volume] (Bellevue, Bossier Parish, La.) 1859-1952, 1911-02-02
Every Man the Arbiter of His Own Destiny

u.
Man is moral being and he is subject to
these laws This does not mean that he
is under the bondage or tyranny OF law.
There is dispositjoe in many quarters to +
regard man as the victim of seen or unseen t
forces, which either make or break him.
There is false teaching to day which says
there is a predetermined course marked
out for each man by an arbitrary, partial
power, and each individual must follow
this pedestined course.
Then there is philosophy of fate and
chance, and they who believe it look upon
the soul as in lifelong game of battledoor
and shuttlecock. Too many persons regard
their lives as marbles flung out indiscriml-
nately upon the bagatele board of human
existence. They bump against obstacles,
wabbe around life's honors and go bound
ing and rolling toward some unknown des-
tiny. Pathetic indeed is it to see the per-
sons who have yielded to such teaching
Many of them have ceased to struggle and
ceased to care Bafled, discounted by the
strange and hard experience through which
they have passed, they have lost, or we'll
nigh lost, their faith in human volition and
divine providence. 1t is pitiful to see them
swept along like driftwood on river or
hustled about like dead leaves in an au-
tumn wind, victims of forces over which
they cease to exert any control.
Much of modern fiction is saturated with
the thought that heredity and environment
are the all powerful factors in human des-
tiny, that personality counts for nothing;
that every man is the ghost of his dead
ancestors, who look through his eyes, speak
in his words and act in his deeds.
1t is against this morbid and erroneous
conception of life that we raise word OF
protest and warning. Heredity and envi-
ronment are not to be moderated. They
are powerful factors. Nor are they to be
overestimated. In every man there is an
untainted power, something which passes
from generation untouched by change, and
even though it may be shut in by evil con-
ditions and tied to Thousand evil tenden
cies yet it may, and it does frequently,
assert itself and show its superiority.
Man is morally free. Strip that state
ment of all theological sophistry and meta
physical subtlety; is it not true of every
man that he has the power of moral choice?
If you deny that then it is useless to appeal
to motives. You may as we'll close the
avenues to academic honors and abolish
courts Of justice and penitentiaries. Deny
mans capacity of moral choice and you
deny mans personal accountability and
destroy manhood itself.
Man is also under law. You admit thai
of mans bodily nature, but there are laws
moral as we'll as physical. Mans physical
freedom consists in an adjustment of his
body to those physical laws. So mans
moral freedom consists in the adjustment o.
his spirit to moral laws. Both physical ano
moral laws find their gravitating centre ir
God. These laws are memorable in thei
operation. We talk about breaking thu
laws of God, but that is careless speech
We break the laws of God? No. If we d.
not obey them they break US. There is nj
more escaping the consequences of tn
violation of the moral law than there is ex
emption from broken body if you VIOLATE
the law of gravitation.
Man is under the law of heredity. Thi
means vastly more than the reproduction o
the traits and characteristics of his parents
1t means that he is not only heir to his en-
vironment, inheriting, for example, tn
lineaments of parents, affected by birth
place, nursing, early training and the like
but it means that he is also inheriting him
self in himself. He is reproducing his ow
character. He is repeating himself in him
self. Each repetition of an act is intense
than the preceding. Each bad act become
the sire of many bad acts, even as eac
good act becomes the sire of many goo
acts. In other words, he illustrates in him
self the law of the harvest. "Whatsoeve
man sows, that shall he also reap.'
The harvest gathered is ever larger tina
the seed sown. He who sows sparingl
reaps sparingly. He who sows bountifuil
reaps beautifully. For example, ma
sows the love of money. What does b
reap? Dollars and cents? Possibly; br
one thing he does reap-an intensifyinglov
of money. AS the growth is ever large
than the germ, he grows fonder and fonde
of money. 1t is not to be wondered at if h
grows covetous, becomes more and NOR