The Absolute Standard – Sunday, September 14, 1941
In considering last week the question of moral standards we arrived at the obvious conclusion that there must be some basic moral law beyond the whims of men, because where no such law is recognized, chaos is what we always have left. This conclusion brings us to the question: Now and by what authority is this basic moral standard fixed.
Many answers have been given to this question. Some have contended that basic morality is determined by custom—but customs change and the customs of different times and of different peoples are in conflict with each other. Obviously then, the absolute moral standard is not fixed by custom. Some have contended that morals are determined by the established laws of men—but those who make our laws are not infallible, they disagree from time to time and from country to country. And it is possible to be technically within the provisions of statutory law, and still violate the fundamental laws of morality. Nothing, therefore, so contradictory as the laws of men could constitute an absolute moral standard. But what about conscience? Again the answer must be in the negative. If a man has repeatedly ignored his conscience, it becomes callused, and the sharpness with which it prompts him varies greatly according to his life and circumstances.
Conscience is a variable and therefore cannot be looked to as the source of an absolute moral standard. And since we have eliminated custom, and the laws of men, and the promptings of conscience, as possible sources of a basic standard of morality, what we have left are the constants of the universe—the fundamentals of all times—the laws of God which were fixed in the heavens before time began. And when we reach this conclusion, we must also reach the conclusion that there is an underlying purpose in life-—n all pervading plan, an intelligent Administrator of the laws of the universe and that while our knowledge of these things changes and is added unto from time to time, the eternal verities themselves do not change, the Ten Commandments which the Lord gave to Moses upon Sinai are basically in harmony with the sermon which the Christ preached on the Mount and with the inspired words of all the spokesmen of God, and, insofar as they have been correctly preserved and faithfully interpreted, are all part of the basic law that determines the eternal progress of man, in obedience to which law he may realize his highest possibilities and in disobedience to which he will surely fall far short of those things which he might have attained.
September 14, 1941
Broadcast Number 0,630