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Updated: May 9, 2025
The net result is that ancient Revelations, being given for a certain age and certain social conditions, often cannot and ought not to be carried out in the present state of Society; that ancient documents are difficult to verify often impossible as coming from those whose names they bear; that there is no guarantee against forgeries, interpolations, glosses, becoming part of the text, with a score of other imperfections; that they contain contradictions, and often absurdities, to say nothing of immoralities.
He is generally taxed by writers for discovering a contempt of religion in his common discourse and behaviour; which I take to have risen from the same fountain, being a point of art, and a known expedient, for men who cannot quit their immoralities, at least to banish all reflections that may disturb them in the enjoyment, which must be done either by not thinking of religion at all; or, if it will obtrude, by putting it out of countenance.
But while I assert the rights of religious liberty, I would not deny that the civil power has a right, in some cases, to interfere in matters of religion. It has a right to prohibit and punish gross immoralities and impieties; because the open practice of these is of evil example and detriment.
In their grossest immoralities, too, they scarcely ever seem to be perfectly in earnest; and appear neither to wish nor to hope to make proselytes. They indulge their own vein of gross riot and debauchery; but they do not seek to corrupt the principles of their readers; and are contented to be reprobated as profligate, if they are admired at the same time for wit and originality.
What I say of immoralities in ministers and members of the Church refers chiefly to ministers and members of the New Connexion. I must not however be understood as saying that the ministers and members of the Old Connexion were free from such vices. They were not.
This Lucian acknowledges unawares, when, in deriding the popular religion, he says that a youth who reads of the gods in Homer or Hesiod, and finds their various immoralities so highly renowned, would feel no little surprise when he entered the world, to discover that these very actions of the gods were condemned and punished by mankind. Ovid. Metam., lib. ix. See Diod. Siculus, lib. 8.
This novel was the pioneer of the sentimental romances which rapidly followed in France and England and Germany, worse than our sensational literature, since the author veiled his immoralities by painting the transports of passion under the guise of love, which ever has its seat in the affections and is sustained only by respect.
While we must repress all illegalities and discourage all immoralities, whether of labor organizations or of corporations, we must recognize the fact that to-day the organization of labor into trade unions and federations is necessary, is beneficent, and is one of the greatest possible agencies in the attainment of a true industrial, as well as a true political, democracy in the United States.
In like manner, monotony, seclusion, lack of variety and of social stimulus lower the tone of humanity, drive to sensual pleasures and secret vices, and nourish a miserable pack of mean and degrading immoralities, of which scandal, gossip, backbiting, tale-bearing are the better examples. In the Old World, the wealth of states is freely expended in the embellishment of their capitals.
He also adverted to the practice of stealing, lying, and other immoralities; stating to the natives that these crimes are abhorred and punished in our country; and that murder is punished with death. He then sent me to the boat, lying at the beach, to bring three tomahawks, one axe, a bag of beads, and a number of cotton handkerchiefs, which were presented to the chiefs.
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