MIND AND MORALS | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Feb 10, 1876

MIND AND MORALS.

SIR: I don't quite understand your philosophy when you say, in speaking of the revival of Moody and Sankey, that if it is to be considered a success you will look for an increase in the righteousness of the citizens of Brooklyn. This result may follow and it may not. Religion is belief, and while sometimes associated with morals, it is by no means a concomitant. If the revival adds members to the church, it cannot be considered otherwise than a success for religion. Do you understand righteousness to mean a combination of religion and morals, and that religious morals are better than common morals? If not that, then the term is a surplusage in the language, except to distinguish the moral members of the church from the immoral ones. J. R. PARKS.

Campaign, Illinois.

We should find it hard to clear up the mental and moral muddle in which the writer of the above note finds himself. He holds that religion is belief, and that morality is not necessarily its concomitant; but he does not sustain this notion of his by reason, or Scripture, or any competent authority, and cannot expect us to accept it as a self-evident truth. In reply to his remark, we will merely remark in turn that morality is religion in action, and that morality or righteousness in the life is a concomitant of true religion in the mind.

Mr. Parks reaches a singular stage of confusion when he says that a revival which adds members to the church must be a religious success. Why, there are myriads of church members who are utterly destitute of true religion, either as an experience of the mind or as a practical director. Their membership is a satire on religion and a curse to themselves. The Founder of Christianity spoke scathingly of those who struggled for a proselyte, whom they made two-fold the child of hell. Mr. Parks is anxious to know what righteousness means, and we plainly tell him that it means, right doing and being. The word is not a “surplusage in the language,” except when used as he suggests. It occurs many hundreds of times in the Scriptures, and is very often used there as synonymous with religion, though our correspondent does not seem to be aware of this impressive fact. In closing his note, Mr. Parks speaks of immoral church members, after having previously implied that religion and membership were convertible terms. Now, an immoral religious member may be an interesting specimen to look at, but he is not worth much to religion; in fact, he is a fraud.—N. Y. Sun, Dec. 22.