The Unfailing Moral Standard

- from "Toleration" by John Bigelow

CHAPTER V - Part 1
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THE real motive, or final purpose of an act, is not only all of it that is important, but is all of an act that we can with any propriety call our own. We have in ourselves no power to execute, though for wise purposes we cannot divest ourselves of the impression that we have such power. We are in point of fact as in. capable of lifting a finger or of opening or closing our eyes as of creating a universe. The very breath of life is supplied to us without interruption, from the beginning to the end of our days, from the Source of all life. The power that sustains us at every successive moment is equivalent to a new creation. To do anything involving our control over the material world, or over any part of it for a single instant, would imply the possibility of more than one omnipotence, which is an absurdity.

"Every man is brutish by his knowledge; every founder is confounded by the graven image, for his molten image is falsehood and there is no breath in them. (Jeremiah, li. 17)

"What man is he that boasts of fleshly might And vaine assurance of mortality, Which all so soon as it doth come to sight Against spiritual foes, yields by and by, Or from the field most cowardly doth fly! Nor let the man ascribe it to his skill That through grace he hath gained victory: If any strength we have, it is to ill; But all the good is God's, both power and eke will." ("Faery Queen," Canto, x, i)

"O Lord, I know," said the prophet Jeremiah, "that the way of man is not in himself: it is not in man that walketh, to direct his steps." (Jeremiah, x. 23)

"Now it was in the heart of David my father," says Solomon, "to build an house for the name of the Lord the God of Israel: but the Lord said to David my father: Forasmuch it was in thine heart to build a house for my name, thou didst well in that it was in thine heart; notwithstanding thou shalt not build the house; but thy son which shall come forth out of thy loins, he shall build the house for my name." (Chronicles, vi. 8, 9)

The lesson here taught has been admirably condensed in a line of the most eminent of the French poets : Faites votre devoir et laissez faire aux Dieux. (Corneille's "Horace," Act II, Scene 8. "Do your duty and leave the gods to do theirs.")

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