Reformation by Religion

REFORMATION BY RELIGION.

One reason the world is not reformed is because every man would have others begin the work and never thinks of himself.

Everyone must be struck with the great variety of methods advocated for the reformation of the world. They' are as numerous as quack remedies for catarrah, cancer or any other chronic ailment that flesh is heir to. One class of reformers build their hopes of success upon the suppression of immorality through the agency of the state; through the enactment and stringent enforcement of the laws for suppressing all forms of immorality. They would make men honest, temperate and chaste by legislative enactment. If this is not attempted directly, it is indirectly. It is assayed by making laws to which shall be appended penalties so severe that men through

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fear will be restrained from violating them; and if this does not make men moral from principle it does from necessity. Up to date, however, this system in its operations has not attained any flattering success, for the reason that individual ingenuity has ever been able to circumvent legislative enactments, especially whenever the law is made to infringe on liberty, which it usually does when it undertakes to regulate the consciences of men. Another school of reformers would accomplish through social and economical institutions and regulations what the first would through legislative enactment. For instance, they would so change our industrial system as to take away from men any motive for dishonesty by establishing a community of goods and of interests, and so arrange the distribution of the profits of labor as to practically annihilate want and poverty, and thus remove one of the main sources of immorality and crime. To what extent the world might be reformed through the agency of the above method is diflScult to determine, as it has had little opportunity to test its value, but so far as it has been tried, it has failed. Other reformers would leave the basis of society as it is and

trust to refined education, to the influences of poetry, music, painting and sculpture to reform the world. What success this school of reformers may hope for, may be computed from the success of such influences in some of the ancient classic nations, notably in Greece. No one will dispute that in the palmy days of that nation refined education had full opportunity to test its power as a moral influence over men; and yet when "Greece obtained the brighter palm of art, when soft, yet ardent, Athens learned to please —to keen the wit and to sublime the heart," the nation was morally rotten. The moral condition of the rich, educated people, who have neither poverty nor ignorance to excuse their immorality certainly prophecies no great success to the influence of refined education as a reforming agency among the masses in the world, whatever may be its power over minds of peculiar structure. We still have left to consider those who look to religion to reform the world. Unfortunately religionists are not united in their views as to how religion is to reform mankind. One division of the Christian religious world holds that it will be wholly through

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the grace of God, that man can do nothing which will forward that work further than to believe, which is all he is required to do. On the other hand, the other division holds that man is not wholly passive in the great work of reformation; that it will not be wholly through grace, but partly by the grace of God and partly — by the exertion of men by a combination of faith and works. But whatever disagreement may exist among Christian religionists as to the manner in which the much desired reformation will be brought about, there is this much in its favor, viz: that whereas, other schemes, especially the scheme of the Socialists, works on society with the design of improving the individual, the religionist works through the improvement of the individual toward the — improvement of society the easiest as it is also the surest basis of a permanent reformation. We believe that if ever that great mass of humanity which we speak of as the world, is reformed, it will be done by reforming its units; and if the units are reformed, it follows that the mass will be purified. The great drawback to this system of reformation based on the reformation of the units of society, is stated in the quotation at thejhead of this'article, which we take from the letter of a friend. Truly it would be an easy matter to reform the world if each man in it would reform himself; but there's the rub! Every man would have others begin the work, and never thinks of himself. The religionist reformer, however, will undertake to make him think of himself, and of his responsibility to society and to — God the most powerful influence that can be made to operate on men; and although that method may be slow and may not have the glorious results one could desire to be able to point to as justifying the hopes men build upon it, still by religion casting from it much of the rubbish which superstition has heaped upon it, and by a better understanding of religion and its aims by the people^ the good work of reformation will at least be accelerated.