The Absolute Standard

How and by what authority is the 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 can constitute an absolute moral standard. But what about conscience? Are not the absolute moral standards by which we are bound fixed by conscience? Again the answer must be in the negative. If a man has repeatedly ignored his conscience, it becomes calloused, 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 time—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—an 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, which, insofar as they have been correctly preserved and faithfully interpreted, are all part of the basic law that determines the eternal progress of man.