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Updated: September 16, 2025
But the example of Christian men is not only repressive. It ought to tempt forth all that is best and purest and highest in the people with whom they come in contact. Every man who does right helps to make public opinion in favour of doing right; and every man who lowers the standard of morality in his own life helps to lower it in the community of which he is a part.
Some of the most dangerous people are those who feel pious because they can say, We never did any harm. Religion often has come to mean only a multitude of repressive regulations, apparently a scheme for making others abstain from those things for which we have no appetite.
Morality should be rather directive than repressive, using all of our energies for wise and noble ends, and overcoming evil with good. A merely negative morality implies the continual dwelling of attention upon sin and the continual rebellion of desire. It keeps the soul in a state of unstable equilibrium, and defeats its own ends.
Order has in it much that is repressive; and wealth in the sense of fecundity of powers is, especially at its beginning, apt to be disorderly. When a new power springs into being, it is usually chaotic or rebellious. It has something else to attend to besides bringing itself into accord with what already exists.
The forced and sudden retirement of Bahá’u’lláh to the mountains of Sulaymáníyyih, and the distressing consequences that flowed from His two years’ complete withdrawal; the incessant intrigues indulged in by the exponents of Shí’ih Islám in Najaf and Karbilá, working in close and constant association with their confederates in Persia; the intensification of the repressive measures decreed by Sulṭán ‘Abdu’l-‘Azíz which brought to a head the defection of certain prominent members of the exiled community; the enforcement of yet another banishment by order of that same Sulṭán, this time to that far off and most desolate of cities, causing such despair as to lead two of the exiles to attempt suicide; the unrelaxing surveillance to which they were subjected upon their arrival in Akká, by hostile officials, and the insufferable imprisonment for two years in the barracks of that town; the interrogatory to which the Turkish páshá subsequently subjected his Prisoner at the headquarters of the government; His confinement for no less than eight years in a humble dwelling surrounded by the befouled air of that city, His sole recreation being confined to pacing the narrow space of His room—these, as well as other tribulations, proclaim, on the one hand, the nature of the ordeal and the indignities He suffered, and point, on the other, the finger of accusation at those mighty ones of the earth who had either so sorely maltreated Him, or deliberately withheld from Him their succor.
There are those who believe that the church has it in its power to stir a wave of indignation that would sweep the whole traffic from the land, but it is not so simple a process. It is generally agreed that both education and legislation are necessary to check the evil. The first is necessary for the public health, and to support repressive laws.
The margin for experiment which was still theirs was not sufficiently largo to insure continued effort inspired by an interest in the work. When we have taken into full account the repressive effect of scientific management on initiative, we may well admit an advantage: educationally speaking, the repression is direct.
The upholding of a standard must be allied with material interests if it is to be repressive of creation and novelty. But, as a free force, operating solely by influence, the standard has the effect only of keeping alive the love of excellence, and, by providing some stability in the old, creating that contrast between the new and the old, so stimulating to the new itself.
He thought the men of the National party not only dangerous in themselves, but that they afforded a reason for many of the repressive laws which Englishmen passed with reference to Ireland.
The repressive measures of Parliament and the landowners only widened the social chasm which parted employer from employed.
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