The Immediate Price

At some time or other, perhaps everyone asks himself: Why should I conform to the rules? Why should I maintain standards and ideals? Why should the promises or supposed punishments of a remote hereafter restrict my way of life? Maybe this old adage about virtue’s being its own reward is just an old-fashioned idea. There are many answers to this line of questioning, but suppose for the moment we forget abut heaven and the hereafter, and confine our answers to what we positively know about ourselves here and now. It has, for example, been established as a physiological fact, that such negative emotions as worry, anger, hate, and jealousy generate within us those substances which can and do impair our physical and mental well-being. Even to the skeptic this can now be demonstrated. And it isn’t necessary for anyone to pronounce the penalty. Anyone who hates his neighbor, anyone who must make mental excuses for his own misconduct, is experiencing the relentless operation of the laws of reward and punishment, as they affect every man every day. And what is true negatively is also true positively. In an atmosphere of trust, of good will, of kindness, and of good conduct there is a tendency toward physical and mental well-being, which has its bearing on health and happiness. To wrestle with a gnawing, troubled conscience is a punishment which no scriptural fire and brimstone can equal, and which takes its toll physically, mentally, and spiritually. Of course there is good authority for the fact that rewards and punishments are not confined wholly to the present. Sometimes the mills of the gods grind slowly. Sometimes it seems that justice is not done in this life. And why it should be so may have to be left for answer beyond the bounds of this world. But to those who do not care to project their thinking beyond their present life’s expectancy, to those who want to know only what their course of conduct will do for them here and now, let it be said that, in a very real sense, every day brings its own reward and punishment. “And the work of righteousness shall be peace; and the effect of righteousness quietness and assurance for ever.”¹