“For whether we live, we live unto the Lord; or whether we die, we die unto the Lord. Therefore, whether we live, or whether we die, we are the Lord’s.”— ROM. 14, 8.

I wish to recall to your minds this evening the fundamental ideas of morality as set forth in Christian ethics. I invite your closest attention to this subject, as it will serve as an introduction to this Lenten series of sermons. The question to be considered this evening is the basis of morality. If asked what is the rule of right conduct, the answer is the will of Almighty God. The supremacy of God over us, our individual accountability to His tribunal, are the great truths which influence us to do good and avoid evil. The fatal misfortune of the many is that they lose sight of these vital principles. Hence sin prevails.

1. God is our Creator: “Know ye that the Lord is God. He made us and not we ourselves.” We absolutely depend upon Him, receiving from Him life, thought and action. We belong entirely to Him. He disposes of us as He wills, and in justice we have naught to say, but to obey. Will the clay say to the potter: “Why hast thou made me thus?” Will man say to the omnipotent God, why hast Thou made me thus, or why hast Thou bound me by these laws? Forming our beings according to the eternal prototype of His eternal essence, He marks out the laws under which we exist, and those remain for us the condition of our existence. To strive for liberation from those laws is to strive for liberation from His power and authority, to call Him down from His throne of Master and Monarch, to deny His wisdom, and to make of ourselves gods in His universe. The whole universe received the impress of law, when, at the bidding of His word, it sprang into beauteous and harmonious form. Its unthinking parts, the fiery suns in limitless yonder space, the fields and the forests of the earth’s surface, ocean’s billows, and the vibrations of the atmosphere, never depart from the commands which they received from their Creator. One being among all others rises to sublime grandeur by the possession of intelligence and free will. It is man. Inasmuch as He communicates with matter he is subject to physical laws, which under the penalty of physical death, he is constrained to obey. To rebel against them is certain death. Will it be that, in the higher ranges of action in which the soul operates, he is left by the Creator of all things without rule or command, an erring, aimless star in the heavens of supreme harmony? And if rules and commands are imposed upon him whilst he remains physically free to rebel, will it be that he is without moral obligations to obey in absolute loyalty? — Man in his creation received laws from His Creator, else the Creator were a wisdomless builder and men were the only element of chaos in a well ordered world. — Laws received, man in the exercise of his free will, must freely follow them. To dare send up his voice in protesting tones, saying, I will not serve, were an evil, a wrongdoing, immensely more heinous than the sudden stopping of the planets in their perennial revolutions, or their leaping away from their prescribed orbits, and the consequent breaking up of the firmament into disorder and darkness.

2. What then is the supreme rule of human morals? It is the Divine Will of God.— The idea of right has its first home in the Divine Mind, and it resides in created minds in so far as these reflect or mirror the mind of God. All other concepts of right which may be proposed to us are false, and indeed every enunciation of them presupposes an atheistic world, a world void of faith in God. The human race in the deepest depths of nature is ethical, is moral. It feels its moral obligations as it feels its life. It revolts at the suggestion that it may be lawless in conduct, that passion and whim may govern its doings.

But for moral obligations, there must be a principle, a rule independent of each individual will, and capable of imposing itself on all. God being removed by materialistic and agnostic doctrines, this principle is sought for in all directions but nowhere is it found. The moral order, therefore, imperiously demands God, uniting with all else in creation to prove His being, His power and wisdom. — Without God as supreme, eternal Lawmaker, morals in men would be as changeable as the standards which the various evolutions of civilizations would erect, and as void of authority as the doubtful guessings of human philosophies. Reduced to their final expression, systems of morals which put God aside come down to undiluted egotism, and egotism in the masses of humanity will manifest itself much oftener in ignoble passion than in the exalted virtues and sacrifices of self which alone make human life valuable and beautiful. — With God reigning above us, moral principles endure: and a people will be moral just in so far as they know, love, and serve Almighty God.

3. I have said that the Divine Will is the supreme rule, the eternal law of human morals. But we must not here imagine that there is ought of caprice or arbitrariness in this will. God is eternal reason, and all His works bespeak reason and show forth the order which proceeds from reason. — The laws which God imposes upon man are those which man’s nature demands that it may fulfill its appointed destiny and live out its God received life. The laws of the sun and the moon are conditions making it possible for them to exist, and to effect in the universe the work which the general harmony of material beings exacts of them. In like manner, man receives his laws, parts and compliments of his very nature. Obeying the Divine Law, man serves himself, and exalts himself. Submission to God is the condition of healthfulness of soul and body, of the perfection of man in his several social relations, of his beatitude along the whole course of his existence. — Here and there, this submission seemingly works sufferings, as rebellion seemingly procures happiness; but momentary results are not to be considered in themselves, but in the general trend of action, and right doing ends always in peace and bliss, and wrong doing ends always in perdition and misery.

4. But what is the Divine Law? The Divine Law is named at times the natural, at times the positive law. The natural law is that which necessarily follows from the very constitution of the human being, and from its appointed destiny. The human reason itself reads it in the tracings of the human beings. Hence its universality among all men, of all nations and of all times. But because the human reason discovers it, the inference is false which would give it as the product of the human mind. As such it would be a mere tendency of our being, a mere concept or ideal of the mind, but no law. The natural law shows itself to our reason as an element in the general ordering of the universe, by God’s infinite wisdom, and in consequence, comes to us invested with His authority; indeed His own voice, and His own will. Such is the natural law, such its force and authority.

5. What, then, is the positive law of God? The positive law of God is the declaration of God’s will in our regard made through special revelations. This may be a law not absolutely required as a condition of our natural being; but yet it is always in harmony with this being and of a kind to elevate it, and aid it in the fulfillment of the natural law. Obedience to positive law is a precept of natural law, which demands of us as creatures that we harken to the words of the Creator whenever and wherever spoken.

Man’s soul receives the knowledge of divine law, whether through reason alone, or through reason illumined by revelation, and makes solemn proclamation of it. This proclaiming power is conscience, the most sacred and mysterious operation of man’s being. — It is the echoing of God’s own voice, conveying to each one the message of the Most High, and with the precept itself the awful sanction for time and eternity in which it is wrapt, — God leaves no man in absolute moral darkness; for moral darkness is the effacement of human dignity. No one exists without a conscience — an apprehension of things right to be done, and things wrong to-be shunned, and a penetrating sense of duty and of obligations to do the right and shun wrong. — Conscience is the highest prerogative of man; it is intelligence, intelligence reaching unto God, as supreme truth and supreme goodness. It is the absolute, indelible border-line separating men from all inferior beings in creation, beyond which opens a world lit up by the light from God’s own throne, into which enter only they who are made to God’s own image and likeness. Conscience speaks to man in authoritative tones; because it speaks in God’s name and with God’s authority.

6. This then is the evil in wrongdoing, that it offends God, and is rebellion against Him as Creator and Governor of the universe, and it is this that men fail so often to understand. The evil is not in the violation of human laws, as such, criminality as the word is taken. Human laws are indirectly from God and are to be obeyed, always supposing that they do not contravene, trench on, or wound a higher law. But the contempt of mere human authority and the incurring of human penalties is a matter of small and temporary moment. The evil is not in the injury done to fellowmen; on their own account they have slight claims on my services. Nor is the injury done to self; injury comes to self from moral evil, but as a consequence of evil, not as evil itself. The evil is sin, which is a direct violation of God’s laws, a direct rebellion against God. In the moral order, but two beings are to be considered in the last analysis — God and I. What the multitude of my fellows think and say matters me not. The awful question is, what does God think of me? Nor does His vision stop at exterior actions of mine: it penetrates to the most hidden thought of my mind, the most secret vibrations of my heart’s fibres. From Him there is no concealment. His eyes are upon the ways of men, and He considereth all their steps. There is no darkness and there is no shadow of death where they may be hidden who work iniquity. — The rights of God are supreme. If justice is refused to Him there can be no meaning in the justice we would accord to others: — Our ingratitude is the blackest, since from Him come all good things to us, even life itself. If hardened toward Him, why should hearts open towards others? — The malice of sin is beyond power of measurement; for it reaches unto the Infinite One and robs Him of His inalienable rights. Sin is the destruction of all order and of all virtue. God Himself in His Omnipotence could not authorize or look upon it with placid eyes. In doing so He would be guilty Himself of violating order in His universe, in His creation. He could have refrained from creating me, but having created me, He cannot but exact from me most faithful obedience.

7. I am accountable to God for all moral doing, for thoughts, words and acts. As lawmaker He must have put a sanction to His laws. I must at some time come before His tribunal and report my stewardship. Others pass judgment upon me as they may; their words are mere breathings of the air which soon are lost upon the winds, which sooner or later I escape from, through the silence of the grave, across which the murmurings of human voices do not reach. But God is eternal; God remains and confronts me in time and eternity. O God, how little we think of Thee, of Thy rights, of Thy judgments! The forgetfulness of God is the beginning of our woes, and this forgetfulness has settled upon the earth like a deadly pall. We talk of every one but of God, we think of every one but of Him. We must have news from all quarters of the earth; none is asked for from Heaven. We insist on rights being accorded to ourselves; we accord rights to others; the rights of God do not seem to concern us. God is away from us; no wonder the earth weeps with sin and crime. — The true man is the man of God, who lives in God’s presence, and obeys His laws because they are God’s laws.

Strong is the soul that lives with and for God. There is naught on earth so beautiful, so noble. A sense of duty rules all its conduct, and gives it the power of heroism. Nothing moves it from the path of rectitude. Fierce passions roll against it their impotent billows. Worldly interests, temptations of power and pelf have no voice in its counselings. To all seductions of riches and pleasures, to menaces of persecution and death it answers: I will not, I can not. The soul, heroic in duty, may be that of a child or weak woman; it transcends a thousandfold the powerful conqueror levelling the walls of strong cities, but weak before personal temptation.

It may be the soul of uncultured peasant, or an obscure beggar; it is immensely greater than the soul of vaunted philosopher or envied Croesus, over whom sin is master. The Infinite is the judge of true value, and to the saintly disciple of duty, the Infinite bows in love divine; and He despises the haughty and the hon ored, who know Him not and love Him not. Would we be disciples of duty, let us cling close to God. When perils affront us, from whatever side, let us instantly enter into the sanctuary of conscience and there commune with God. There peace and victory await us. In the presence of God we are invincible. The righteous soul defies earth and Hell; it laughs to scorn demons; its own inferior appetites fall back cowed before its stern refusal to yield to them. One power alone can open to the enemy the citadel of the soul, and that is the soul itself, in the abuse of its free will. So long as the soul wills virtue it is as mighty in its resolve as the Infinite Who lends to it His own power.

Be it our never-ceasing study to strengthen in us conscience; to build up in our souls this overpowering sense of duty, which will make sin impossible to us whatever the temptation, whatever the circumstances. What is right, not what pleases, that must we do. What is right: God’s will, be it my ceaseless rule. God and I: O God, be I ever Thine, and be Thou ever mine! Amen.

The Beauty and Truth of the Catholic Church Vol. 5 (1916)
Rev. Edward Jones