The Forerunner Part 83

The Water-fall Could beat 'em all-- And ground it!

PETER POETICUS."

"Confound your impudence!" he wrote to his son. "And confound your poetic stupidity in not making a Big Business now you've got a start!

But I understand you do make a living, and I'm thankful for that."

Arnold and Ella, watching the sunset from their hammock, laughed softly together, and lived.

TEN SUGGESTIONS

This is a sermon.

Its purpose is to point out the need of a clearer conception of right and wrong, based on knowledge.

Its text is from Ecclesiastes I, 13, "And I gave my heart to seek and search out by wisdom concerning all things that are done under heaven; this sore travail hath G.o.d given to the sons of man to be exercised therewith."

(Let me remark here that I had my sermon in mind before I looked for the text; but a more expressive and beautifully apposite one I never saw!)

The Preacher of old is right; this sore travail was laid upon us, a most useful exercise; but we have lazily evaded it and taken other people's judgment as to our duties.

That would-be Empire Builder, Moses, legislated for his people with an unlimited explicitness that reflects small credit on their power to search out by wisdom.

His cut and dried rules went down to most delicate selection of ovine vicera for the sacrifice--"the fat and the rump, and the fat that covereth the inwards and the caul above the liver, and the two kidneys"; and into careful dietetics, which would cut out from our food list the hare and rabbit, the lobster, the crab, the turtle, the clam, oyster and scallop, indeed all sh.e.l.lfish.

The "fowls that creep, going upon all four," whatever they may be, are also considered an abomination; but locusts, bald locusts, and gra.s.shoppers are recommended by name. Even in clothing we are carefully forbidden to use a garment of linen and woolen, yet among our pious Puritan ancestors "linsey-woolsey" was a very common and useful cloth.

All these secondary Mosaic directions have long since been relegated to their place in archaeology; at least by the Christian churches, but the ten commandments are still held as coming direct from G.o.d; and form the main basis of our ethics. Yet while tacitly accepted they are not studied, and few people have remarked how the pressure of social development has changed their weight and relative value.

At first they stood, imposing and alike, an even row, to break anyone of which was held an equal sin. Few persons now would hold disrespect to a patently disrespectable parent as wrong as murder; or a failure to "remember the Sabbath" as great a sin as adultery. Experience has taught us something, and those who have undertaken that sore travail--to seek and search out by wisdom--have found that some things are much more wrong than others--and why.

I met once a very pious man; dark, gloomy, violently virtuous. He looked like one of Cromwell's deacons; but was in fact a southerner and an Episcopalian. Mention was made of an enlightened jury, somewhere in the west, who had acquitted a man who stole bread for his starving children.

"Good!" said I; "good! we are at last learning to discriminate in our judgment of right and wrong."

He glowered at me forbiddingly. "There is no room for judgment," he said; as if he were Fate itself. "There is a Commandment which says, 'Thou shalt not steal!'"

"Do you mean that all the Commandments stand equally?" I inquired.

"That we must hold all of the same importance, without qualification, and to break any is an equal sin?"

"I do!" he said, with solemn a.s.surance.

I meditated a little, and then asked, "Did you not say to me the other day that if the negroes ever tried to a.s.sert social equality, you would be among the first to shoulder your gun and put them in their place?"

"I would!" he admitted proudly.

"But," said I, "is there not a commandment which says, 'Thou shalt not kill?'"

He was silent. He was much annoyed, and saw no way out of his mora.s.s of contradiction. Then I offered what looked like a plank, a stepping-stone to safety. "Surely," said I, "there is some room for judgment. The later and smaller laws and regulations give many directions for killing. All through ancient Hebraic history it was frequently a special mandate, the people being distinctly commanded to slay and destroy, sometimes even to kill women, children and the unborn.

And to-day--even a Christian man, in the exercise of legal justice, in defence of his life, his family, his country,--surely he has a right to kill! Do you not think there are times when it is right to kill?"

With a long breath of relief he agreed.

"Then why may it not be sometimes right to commit adultery?"

The conversation lapsed. He knew the two offenses were not in the same category. He knew that the reasons adultery is wrong, and killing is wrong are older than Hebrew history, and rest on observed facts. It would be a hardy thinker who would defend adultery; but we all know--to quote Ecclesiastes again that "There is a time to kill and a time to heal."

It may be that that set of ten applied with beautiful precision to the special vices of that people and that time; but there is room for many more needed ones to-day. There is no commandment against gambling, for instance; one of the most universal and indefensible evils. Gambling does no one good; the winner of unearned money is corrupted and the loser both corrupted and deprived. Gambling undermines all habits of industry and thrift; it unsettles our reliance on care, patience, thoroughness, ability, and tempts us to rely on chance. It is an unmitigated social evil, but goes unforbidden by the Mosaic code, which was so careful about which kind of fat to sacrifice and how much uncleaner a girl baby was than a boy.

Speaking of social evil, _the_ social evil is not referred to. Adultery is an offence to be sure, dangerous and destructive to family and social life; but prost.i.tution is a greater evil; far more common--and goes unmentioned; unless in the original it meant the same thing.

Lying is not referred to. Of course some say that bearing false witness means lying; but surely malicious perjury is a special crime, distinctly described, and not the same thing as mere misrepresentation.

Another of the blackest sins known to man, always so recognized and punished, goes without notice in this list:--treason. To betray one's country--what could be worse! Is it not visibly wickeder than to play ball on Sunday?

On the positive side our whole code of ethics, Hebrew and Christian, fails to mention the main duty of life--to do your best work. This is the one constant social service; and its reverse is a constant social injury.

The old ethics is wholly personal, the new ethics (still unwritten) is social first--personal later. In the old list we find, on a par with adultery, theft and murder, "Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy G.o.d in vain." Does this mean common swearing? Is it as wrong to say 'd.a.m.n' as to commit murder?

No, we do know better than that. We know that in those days, when lying was so universal a habit that no one thought of prohibiting it, the two most evil extremes were flat perjury with intent to harm, and the solemn invocation of G.o.d's name to bind a bargain or seal a vow, afterward broken. Both these were carefully forbidden. No one thought of believing anything unless it was sworn to--and if they broke their oath there was no reliance anywhere. To compel a slippery people to keep faith--that was good ethics; and then most necessary.

We do not run our business that way now; we do greater evil in new ways--and there is no commandment to forbid us. If that one read, "Thou shalt not break faith nor cheat," it would have applied equally well now.

The very first one is a curious proof of the then belief in many G.o.ds.

Jehovah does not say, "I am the only G.o.d," He says, "Thou shalt have no other G.o.ds before me." That there were others is admitted, but it is forbidden to run after them.

Nowadays we do not care enough even for our own idea of G.o.d--to say nothing of other people's! And look at all that careful objection to images and likenesses, and idol worship generally. The Jews forebore painting and sculpture for many centuries because of that prohibition.

Now everyone with a kodak breaks it. The growth of true religious feeling, as well as scientific thought, makes it impossible for civilized peoples to make images and worship them, as did those ingenious old Moabites and Midianites, Jebuzites and Perrizites, Hitt.i.tes and Haggathites.

The rigorous prohibition of coveting has always puzzled me--to covet is such a private feeling. And if you keep it to yourself, what harm does it do? You may spend your life wishing you had your neighbor's large red automobile; but he is none the poorer. Of course if one sits up nights to covet; or does it daytimes, by the hour, to the exclusion of other business; it would interfere with industry and injure the health.

Can it be that the ancient Hebrews were that covetous?

Now suppose we do in good earnest give our hearts to seek and search out all things that are done under heaven, to cla.s.sify and study them, to find which are most injurious and which are most beneficial, and base thereon a farther code of ethics--by no means excluding the old.

The two great Christian laws will stand solidly. The absolute and all absorbing love of G.o.d and the love of the neighbor which is much the same thing--are good general directions. But in daily living; in confronting that ceaseless array of "all things that are done under heaven," the average person cannot stop to think out just how this game of bridge or that horse-race interferes with love of G.o.d or man. We need good hard honest scientific study; sore travail, which G.o.d hath given to the sons of men, to be exercised therewith; and a further code of ethics, not claimed as directly handed down from Heaven, but proven by plain facts of common experience. We do not need to imitate or parody the authoritative utterance of any priesthood; we want an exposition which a bright child can understand and a practical man respect.

We have succeeded before now in establishing elaborate codes of conduct--yes and enforcing them, without any better sanction than habit, prejudice, tradition. A schoolboy has his notion of right behavior, not traceable to Hebrew or Christian ethics; so has the grown man, putting his quaint ideas of "honor" and "sportsmanship" far beyond any religious teaching. Our scorn of the tell-tale and the coward is not based on the Bible, but on experience; our inhuman cruelty to "the woman who has sinned" is based on mere ignorance and falsehood.

Take that fatuous "unwritten law" which allows a man to murder another man and the wife who has offended what he calls "his honor." There is nothing about that honor of his in old or new testament. It is a notion of his own, which overrides, "Thou shalt not kill," as easily as "lying like a gentleman" overrides, "Thou shalt not bear false witness."

Since we have shown such simple capacity to invent and enforce codes of ethics, of questionable value, why not exercise our ingenuity in making some better ones? We know more now.

As a matter of fact we do not want commands, we want instructions; we want to know why things are wrong, which are the most wrong, and what are their respective consequences. But if a distinct set of prohibitions is preferred it is quite possible to make some that would fit our present day conditions more closely than the Hebraic list.

It would be an interesting thing to have earnest people give their minds to this and seek and search out for themselves a new light on everyday ethics. As a starter here is a tentative list to think about; open to alteration and addition by anyone.