MATERIALISM AND ITS LESSONS. 683 



upon his fetich to change his heart in answer to prayer, as sanitary 

 science is impossible where he relies upon his fetich to stay a pestilence 

 in answer to prayer. 



So far from materialism being a menace to morality, when it is 

 properly understood, it not only sets before man a higher intellectual 

 aim than he is ever likely to reach by spiritual paths, but it even raises 

 a more self-sacrificing moral standard. For when all has been said, it 

 is not the most elevated or the most healthy business for a person to 

 be occupied continually with anxieties and apprehensions and cares 

 about the salvation of his own soul, and to be earnest to do well in 

 this life in order that he may escape eternal suffering and gain eternal 

 happiness in a life to come. The disbeliever might find room to argue 

 that here was an instance showing how theology has taken possession 

 of the moral instinct and vitiated it. Having set before man a selfish 

 instead of an altruistic end as the prime motive of well-doing his 

 own good rather than the good of others it is in no little danger of 

 taking away his strongest motive to do uprightly, if so be the dead 

 rise not. Indeed, it makes the question of the apostle a most natural 

 one : "If, after the manner of men, I have fought with beasts at 

 Ephesus, what advantageth it me if the dead rise not ? " Materialism 

 can not hesitate in the least to declare that it is best for a man's self, 

 and best for his kind, to have fought with the beasts of unrighteous- 

 ness at Ephesus or elsewhere, even if the dead rise not. Perceiving 

 and teaching that he is essentially a social being, that all the mental 

 faculties by which he so much excels the animals below him, and even 

 the language in which he expresses his mental functions, have been 

 progressive developments of his social relations, it enforces the j)lain 

 and inevitable conclusion that it is the true scientific function, and at 

 the same time the highest development, of the individual to promote 

 the well-being of the social organization ; that is, to make his life sub- 

 serve the good of his kind. It is no new morality, indeed, which it 

 teaches ; it simply brings men back to that which has been the central 

 lesson and the real stay of the great religions of the world, and which 

 is implicit in the constitution of society ; but it does this by a way 

 which promises to bring the understanding into entire harmony with 

 moral feeling, and so to promote by a close and consistent interaction 

 their accordant growth and development ; and it strips morality of 

 the livery of superstition in which theological creeds have dressed and 

 disfigured it, presenting it to the adoration of mankind in its natural 

 purity and strength. Fortnightly Heview. 



