Things to be Avoided.

We must not follow the example set us by Christian teachers who do not try to make their hearers lives conform to the precepts of Jesus, but do their utmost to make His precepts fit to the lives of their hearers, thus producing a worse condition than ignorance—stupid sophists, vain and puffed-up, inaccessible to reason, yet laying claim to the greatest amount of humility. Poor deluded souls, they ought to excite our greatest commiseration. All human law should be kept inviolable so long as it remains law, and any under-mining, over-riding, or evasion of laws enacted by the supreme authority (the aggregate intelligence of the people) ought to meet with our utmost condemnation.

We must avoid the vital error of making laws for the government of mankind in society contrary to Nature's laws, fixed by the Eternal. Our reason for this is based on the fact that all the laws of Nature in and around us are not the result of an unintelligent force: they are the speaking voice of the ever-living, omnipresent God instructing us in the path of duty and obedience.

When we see the evils of Riches or Poverty, Gluttonous Luxury or Destitute Want, Unhallowed Extravagence or Starving Misery, Pampered Ease or Over-wrought Physical Power,—men who hare hewn their way through forests of human beings or plunged through page 27 oceans of blood and tears to power—or men who, in the ditch or on the dunghill-pallet of straw, breathe out their last sigh of misery in this life—we feel inclined to turn round upon the author of all being and demand, Why hast thou made us thus P But our divine philosophy comes to our aid—checks the impious thought and points out the harmonial narrow way of happiness lying between these evil extremes: 'tis the way of wisdom, a pleasant, flowery, and a peaceful path, leading direct to the higher mansions of our Father God.