Excerpt from MoralityIt augurs ill for any state when its members are not restrained by their inner consciousness from doing immoral acts, and only refrain from untruthfulness or immorality if the same be not authorized by the usages Of society, or are legally but not morally honest, acting as if they believed man to be but'a handful of dust, a machine to be utilized to the utmost whilst usable, then crumble back to the dust it came from when it has lost the power to act.I am quite indifferent as to the means adopted, so that an earnest effort be made by those who have the power to supplant vice by implanting virtue, and displace an apparent, conventional belief in creeds by a real belief in the laws of God that will be manifested in man's daily acts. Half, nay, nearly all the exhorta tions of our times fail - for what? Because not only are the doctrines not in accord with the intelligence of the times, but where is the teacher or preacher of whom it may be said, He has lived his religion all his life? Do we find the lives of Christians, clergy or laity, free from ill-temper, uncharitableness, or spiritual pride; above all, do they rise above, or speak as though they hated the hollowness and rottenness of hypocritical subterfuges, or respectable expediencies of the time we live in, more than other men?About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.