Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 27.djvu/111

Rh of that which is conducive to the happiness of man, it is certainly a faculty or sense which is largely developed by educational training and example. Without this, it surely can not be relied upon as an unerring guide in all the problems of life. Man does not possess a power to distinguish between right and wrong action which rises superior to the need of cultivation. For such culture teachers are required, and the great necessity of united action is apparent. If associated action in the shape of schools of moral or ethical training, and agencies for charitable work—the fruit of such training—are demanded, we are confronted with the question of what their nature should be, and how far the want is already supplied. If the means now provided for these purposes are as good as any that can be devised, and if they are suited to the needs and uses of all, it were idle to supply other agencies.

Foremost, perhaps, among the agencies now existing, are the churches. According to the theories adopted and taught by the various religious organizations which are collectively known as Christian, the cultivation of ethical truths, or, in other words, the recognition and adoption of high standards of duty, is regarded as but a part of a religious system founded upon the revealed will of a Divine Being.

To those who accept so-called revelation as infallible truth, the rules of conduct or systems of ethics recognized in their Scriptures furnish, in theory, and so far as they can be harmonized, final and absolute standards of human duty. To them, theoretically at least, right or wrong action is such simply by reason of its adherence to or departure from certain standards of duty recognized in their sacred writings.

To the individual who looks upon the sacred books of Jew and Christian, of Mohammedan and Buddhist, as alike the works of men—men of varying degrees of mental and moral development—the idea of accepting their conclusions as final upon the great problems of the duty of man seems narrow and illogical. To him the absolute acceptance of these standards as final, however high he may concede some of them to be, is to place a limit upon moral development and to deny that

But it does not follow, even from the point of view of the agnostic, that there is nothing of value in the ethical teachings of the orthodox Christian churches. Most if not all religions have recognized, and in some sense demanded, the adoption of certain exalted standards of duty, and in this particular the Christian religion stands deservedly high among the great religions of the world. Charity, kindness, and love, are not less beautiful because recognized as such by the churches. A true statement of the duty of man to his fellow-man does not become false because attributed to a Divine Being, or declared to be inspired. It does not become false even when the observance of the duty is