The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 | Page 3

in our very civilization. For thus
would be thrown out upon our society, year after year, a class of
thinkers, of earnest, working, strong-minded men and women,
searchers after truth and disciples of the highest good, instead of the
crowd of half-fledged intellectual idlers who yearly emerge from our
schools with the conceited idea that the course of study is finished, the

paths of investigation fully explored, and that life is henceforth a
holiday from study. Under such a giant impulse our society could not
but advance with enormous strides in all that pertains to true
civilization, since thinkers would then be the rule instead of the
exception, and talent almost universal, which is now, like angels' visits,
comparatively 'few and far between.' This is no Utopian vision: it is a
reality within the scope of human exertion and the capacity of our
people of to-day, if men would but exert themselves to such an end,
and properly apply the energy and labor which is now too often excited
upon unworthy and trifling objects. The realm of knowledge is so
boundless that a lifetime is little enough and short enough to give to
mortals even a smattering of that sea of wisdom which swells around
the universe, and he alone can claim to be a seer who devotes the whole
of a long existence to the investigation of truth; and only when this fact
is impressed upon the minds of youth can they be made to appreciate
their true position in existence, and made efficient workers in the great
cause of humanity.
Yet all education is vain, all intellectual development is of little benefit,
all civilization hollow in its nature and ephemeral in its duration which
lacks the moral element. And by the word moral in this connection is
intended to be understood not only what is usually conveyed in the
term morality, but also all religion. It is a well-established fact, more
particularly exemplified in our own history, that all political parties
founded upon an ephemeral issue, inevitably disappear with the final
adjustment of the questions upon which they are based, having nothing
left to rest upon, so it is in the affairs of nations. In the weakness of
human nature and the fallibility of all human prescience, no system or
theory can be devised which shall endure through all time, which shall
not become effete, useless, and even erroneous in the progress of
human development, and in the ever-shifting condition of human
society. Hence any government and society founded upon a system of
merely human devising, must, in the progress of events, fall to pieces,
and give place to the results of a new and younger development. The
law of God, as contained in Divine revelation, is alone unchangeable,
unmodifiable. It is adapted to meet the requirements of all lands and all
ages, to answer all the necessities of which human nature is capable,

even to its extremest verge of development. Hence all political systems
are durable only in proportion as they, in their organization, conform to
the precepts of Divine law.
We have used the term 'moral element' as necessarily comprehending
all religion, for the reason that upon religion is necessarily based all
true morality. There is nothing in the physical, and more especially in
the intellectual world, without a final cause; and that so-called morality
which exists entirely separate and distinct from religion, can be based
upon nothing other than self-interest, which, under different conditions
and circumstances, would as unhesitatingly lead to evil. The 'moral
man' without religion could as easily be evil minded and dissolute in a
community purely evil as he is upright and honorable in a civilized and
enlightened community of to-day, for the reason that his morality is
nothing more than deference to a certain standard of honor--in other
words, to the tone of the society by which he is surrounded, bringing
with it all the benefits of high public estimation and a lofty position in
society, which tone it must follow, be it good or bad: it is founded and
built up in self-interest. Yet this very tone of society, and all these
standards of honor and uprightness, when traced to their origin, are
found to arise from the precepts of revelation. We are all, physically
and intellectually, the creatures of circumstance. Experience moulds
and develops the intellect. Our moral natures are not innate, but solely
and entirely the result of the influences by which we are surrounded.
There is in the soul no absolute standard of right; if there were,
uprightness would be the same the world over. But the right of the
heathen is a different thing from that of the Christian; the right of the
Chinese or the Japanese is a different thing from that of more
enlightened nations; the