PRESENT MORAL STATE OF SOCIETY.

Daily Southern Cross, Volume XXII, Issue 2808, 26 July 1866, Page 4

PRESENT MORAL STATE OF SOCIETY.

To the Editor of the Daily Southern Cross. Sir,— The letter of the Eev. Mr. Edger, in a late number of your paper, treats of a very important subject. What is the cause of the present great and increasing depravity of public manners, both in this colony and elsewhere ? Naturally we look to the Church and Bench as the appointed guardians of morality. That our judges and magistrates perform, their duty in a diligent and efficient manner, no one doubts. Their integrity and impartiality are, in general, unimpeachable*- They dispense justice •without fear, and make no effort to court popularity by any subserviency to popular prejudices or passions. .But if we are to credit the Eev. Mr. Edger, the Church is not so effective or honest in her office. By the Church of course he means all Protestant denominations. He maintains, if I understand him, that the Church fails to exercise a favourable influence on the morals of society — is, in fact, powerless, or all but powerless, in the present age to repress vice or foster virtue — chiefly for the following reasons : — 1. Because our modern preachers fawn upon the people, and in the pursuit of popularity and a high salary are afraid to speak plainly, and to reprove the vicious as they ought. 2. These modern preachers are for ever representing that faith, not virtue, is the road which conducts to heaven. 3. The Bible is employed as a weapon to defend the most deplorable of social evils — slavery, war, and capital punishment, among the rest. If the rev. gentleman's view of the case be correct, we cannot reasonably feel anydegree of surprise at the present deplorable and fast increasing immorality among us. If the salt have lost its sav«ur, wherewithal shall the social body be salted ? It must necessarily grow more and more corrupt. But the remedy. Aye, there is the rub. Any lengthened disquisition in that direction would be unsuitable for your pages. I may, however, be permitted to remark that the present evil, adverted to by Mr. Edger, is not of recent origin. It dates back for some centimes. There was a time when Englishmen were more honest and temperate, and English women more chaste, than many of them now are. It was a time when no Divorce Court existed among us ; and when the nation was not so far advanced in material prosperity as it now is. It was a time moreover when the arm of the ecclesiastical power was not so effectually paralysed as it now is. History, and especially English history, when studied in a spirit of candour and impartiality, might convince us that there were some principles and practices prevalent among our ancestors, which it would have been well for ourselves and -society had they never abandoned. The power of the civil magistrates and the humanising influence of science and literature, or the eloquence of popular preachers, however valuable, constitute but frail supports to virtue, and feeble barriers against vice, compared with the power of conscience and the authority of the Church. Yet is it not true that for the past 300 years the uniform tendency of English legislature and English literature, as represented in the press, has been to depress the influence of the ecclesiastical power,"on the plea that it has been abused to evil ends in past times ? Whether the old or new faith of England be the true faith, need not here be discussed ; but a remedy for the evils of' which Mr. Edger complains has yet to be sought and found. — I am, &c, % J. W.