THE IMPORTANCE OF RELIGIOUS MOTIVES AND SANCTIONS IN MORAL TRAINING.

REV. ROBERT ALLYN, D. D., CARBONDALE, ILLINOIS.

I would have preferred, as a part of the title of this essay, the word necessity, a stronger term and one having definiteness, to the word "importance," a term of degree only. The precise word always carries measured force and delivers its stroke with a purpose. Besides, "training" is also vague, and may refer to an animal quite as properly as to a child. The epithet, "moral," relieves it of much of its mistiness, but, inasmuch as it also needs a definition to keep the full meaning before the mind, I venture to drop it, and substitute for life. I will add the word children, which specifically designates the subjects of the training. Thus my theme translates itself into The Necessity of Religious Motives and Sanctions in Training Children for Life.

Let a few words be defined, for much depends on having the same concepts in all our minds as we go forward. Motives are taken to be powers or forces lying behind, as in space, or going before, as in time, all human actions. They start, or tend to start and direct the activities of mankind. They are the promptings to labor and the directors of it. In this sense the word will be used. We do, however, often find the term motive used somewhat as we use the word reason. We ask, Why did you do that specific act? and receive for answer, my motive was a desire of gain or ease-whatever was the prompting impulse, and we seem to think that we have not only stated the moving force behind the act, but that we have justified ourselves in the doing. This is hardly a motive. It is rather an argument. It is best to take the word motive in the sense of a spring or an impulse to action; a force-nervous, physical psychical, spiritual, social, moral, or religious-which urges toward a given. line of conduct. It may be in the emotions, or affections, or instincts, or propensities, or desires, or choice, but still it pushes us onward.

Sanction is often used to signify that which binds or which makes holy or sacred. It fastens to or confirms and holds to a specific purpose. A motive pushes toward a particular course of conduct, a sanction renders that conduct holy or revered, and fixes or binds to it. A motive seems to drive us, a sanction appears before, drawing us to duty and then binds us there. It may also be a blessing or a benediction pronounced by a higher authority upon the work done, and thus it becomes the bond of a superior power, sent down to bind a soul to the task rightfully prescribed

by an authorized government. It thus assumes legitimate control and commands. Its origin may be from the old Latin sancire which, to be a trifle fanciful, may be compounded from sanum and scire, to know the well or healthful, or "to bind to the sound." It is a part of the religious terminology, and is connected with that grand word religion. itself, which has a similar meaning and signifies to bind backward or upward to something stable and acknowledged, assuming a power higher than human nature, and earlier than the present duty. It carries the

idea of an old English poet:

"Unless, above himself he can

Erect himself, how mean is man."

He is a climbing plant, and needs something to rely on, or to wind about, or fasten to, and then he ascends. If any weight is to be raised it must be lifted by a force superior to it, or by some heavier material pushing itself under it. A balloon inflated with gas may lift a weight, but it has no foundation, and, of course, can only move as the medium which lifts it moves. So man, who is to move among his fellow-men as in a medium, requires a force to lift him, to bind him, and even a something besides his own nature or that of his kind to propel him.

We are now to inquire what are these prompting, binding, propelling forces or agencies, these motives and sanctions which men need to seek in order to find their true destiny, and which bind or oblige them to fulfil it? Man is to become self-directing in his conduct. By what motive is he to be impelled, and by what sanction shall he be bound to duty? Kant says: "Act always so that the immediate motive of thy will may become a universal rule for all intelligent beings." Let us assume this to be a safe direction, wise in itself and sure to lead, if acted upon, the race to peace and prosperity for all. In cases where every one voluntarily does what is right for all, how can anything but harmony result? There is harmony among the orbs of the universe, and peace too. Why? Because every one seeks only so much influence in the great systematic whole, as its weight and relative distance allow. Can disorder then occur? But is it not seen at once, as man has a free will, which he must guide by his own judgment, that such a rule of conduct demands infinite knowledge, or, at the least, an infinite capacity for knowing? Observe that the numbers of the human race living to-day are practically infinite. To count a million is a month's work for a rapid counter. Try to comprehend that sum, and then the sixty millions of our single nation, not to mention the billion and a half of the race. But each person in the long procession of the ages must be, at least originally, as dear to the Infinite Goodness and Love as every other one. Now the relations and consequently the duties growing out of these relations are practically infinite in each case. So we get substantially an infinity of personal duties mul

tiplied by an infinity of individuals. If it is said that what is good for one in the short range of to-day is good for all in the long range of the ages, it is readily answered that we can only know this by experience and that demands time. That self-restraint is necessary is a truth that dawns on us only after we have seen the mischiefs of indulgence, and have been damaged thereby. Hence, we do need a wisdom greater than our own to instruct us, both in our relations and duties, before we err and get injured by trying.

Then there is a force or power not ourselves, Matthew Arnold says, which limits us and our activities on every side. Indeed, there are so many forces about us antagonistic to our wills, as to make us also practically helpless. Yet we must recognize and feel that we have a free will which does count for something in our activities and calculations. Conduct then, is to be guided by motives which are infinite, and must also have reference to independent agencies infinite in number and irresistible in power. We must, therefore, have regard to those considerations above us. Besides, the consequences of our actions affect not only ourselves and neighbors, but, indeed, often in an indirect manner, all the race. Thus, as conduct, "which is three-fourths of life," begins in motives springing from an infinity of causes and is enforced by sanctions which themselves reach out to infinity, it needs something like an infinite intelligence to guide it. Hence the necessity of religion in the sense commonly understood as instruction by an Infinite Wisdom, and accountability to an Infinite Authority of Love and Power.

Motives, for our present purpose, may be called instinctive, or such as impel by the unconscious activities or tendencies of the nature itself. These have to do also with the hereditary bent given the nature by the tastes, the habits, the desires, the occupations, and environments of ancestors sometimes very remote. Such are the love of life, of joy, of happiness, of action, and a disposition or set of the nature to follow what the family, the tribe, or the race has previously followed. A nomadic people, an unsettled one, a hunting tribe like the Tartars, or the Gypsies, or our Western Indians, are often moved to act so differently from the English or the Germans, the settled and learned peoples of the world, that we cannot comprehend them.

There are what may be termed the personal motives, growing out of the self-assertive nature which we all inherit. These may lead to selfish designs, and, if they grow strong, to the demand for our own interest which shall sacrifice everything to the individual good. The name egoistic, introduced by Mr. Herbert Spencer, would be a good one for this class; and while these more consciously seek our personal good and lead to self-preservation and even aggrandizement, they have an important place in the economy of directive activities. They regard in this line personal

purity and temperance. They are sometimes opposed to, and sometimes supplemented by the altruistic or social motives, which prompt us to look after and promote the welfare of others, because we naturally do delight to be surrounded by happiness, and because we are ourselves able tó rise higher when surrounded and aided by the intelligent, the cultivated, and the mighty. These motives are social and spring from our love of association, and they bind us one to another in a brotherhood of prosperity and improvement.

Higher than these are the moral motives, not always readily marked as distinct from the social ones. They regard the conduct of life on the plane of the good, the right, and the just, and appeal to us to be honest, faithful, and considerate to the least as well as to the greatest of our fellow-beings. These also regard what was named a moment ago personal purity and temperance, that we may not be examples of baseness, nor tempters of the innocent. These motives-not to enumerate them— extend to all mankind and embrace all of our humanity in all time, and if we as individuals could grow to a sufficient knowledge, and impartiality, to a state of self-restraint noble enough to inspire and bind us, to nerve and ennoble us at all times, we might, perhaps, stop here. But still we do have a relation to a something above us and mightier than we, and if we would rise to our highest we must fasten the machinery which raises us to the very highest. A pulley must be fastened above the point to which it seeks to hoist its load. So when we would raise all mankind to the loftiest we must fix our point of attachment above all humanity. The most humanizing and instructive of all the early legends of saints, in my opinion, is that of the giant St. Christopher. He rejoiced to be a servant, and made it all his aspiration to be directed by and to labor for another. But he determined to serve only the highest and mightiest.

We must be influenced, moved, ruled, if you please, by motives. Let them be the highest. The evolution theory says let these be law, and it spells the word with a small letter. The humanitarian or utilitarian says let love for your kind control you, and spells that word also with a little letter. And both when they personify their ruling words, designate them by that poorest, vaguest, most indefinite, irresponsible, and meanest of all the personal and representative pronouns, the little insignificant it. If we will join intelligence to power and bring Law into our system of governance, if we will add authority to kindness and bring Love into our plan of progress, we must bow to a person somewhere who originates and controls, who enacts law, and requires obedience, and we must give to the name by which we know him a capital letter, and whether we call him the Unknown, the Unknowable, the Absolute, the Infinite, Jehovah, Jove, or Lord and God, we must represent him by the virile and creative pronoun Ile, with a large letter. We then find a basis for authority, ac

countability, and command. All else is narrow and selfish, shifting and transitory, and makes might and opportunity rulers of the universe. Or it is an attempt to give the control of the large destinies of mankind into the direction of ignorance, inefficiency, and caprice. What man wantsguidance, strength, and stability-he can no more find within himself in the requisite degree, than a mote in the sunbeam can gather to itself the gravity of a star, or the power of a sun in a system.

The theory that binds man by all these high motives and divine sanctions, and links him to his Maker and to the grand brotherhood of the races and ages, has stability and infallibility. The ages have kept it from eternity and futurity cannot exhaust it. Intelligence that sees the end. from the beginning has arranged it, and the sleepless vigilance of Omniscence is pledged to maintain its unwasting fullness. What but such a Universal Power or Spiritual Wisdom is able to restrain arrogant selfishness, rampant lust, and towering ambition? This can be brought into the secret chamber of deliberation in every man's breast, and will follow him every moment in every place, not a watchful detective or a distrustful spy, a vengeful enemy or an unpitying judge, but a helpful, older brother, or an instructive father, or a tender mother, or a loving sister, to advise him, to warn him, to control him, and to build him up in all goodness and purity, in all strength and divine nobility.

A brilliant writer in a recent article in a popular magazine says: "Man is merely a fact." So he is. But he is a fact which thinks, and enjoys, and wills, a fact held to a strict accountability; and he must keep himself in the line of march which another has appointed. Obedience is his prescribed duty and his sphere of safety. And I say, out upon any theory and particularly upon any practice that makes man less than a living power under the strictest authority-which calls him a fact only, and gives him up to fate! Let man feel that he is force and cause, and is bound to keep the peace of the universe as against himself and all lawlessness, and he is worth studying, and teaching, and guiding, and binding with religious motives and sanctions. Anything less than this makes him weaker than a straw and cheaper than the dirt that buries him, and I have no patience with any literature or science which depersonates the Most High God and represents him by that driveling, indefinite epithet and expletive-it.

Such, as I conceive them, are the motives and the sanctions needed to aid us in duty, and to bind us to the service of our fellow-men, to impel us to right conduct and to bind us in allegiance to truth and nobleness. But children cannot comprehend them. Neither can any man do it fully. Have we not said they are infinite. We can in part, at least, apprehend them, and we do feel, if we cannot understand the infinity about us, so that it carries us to a mount of clearer vision and more aspiring resolve,