What Has Happened to Virtue?

“We are too inclined to think of law as something merely restrictive,” said Cecil B. DeMille, “⎯something hemming us in. We sometimes think of law as the opposite of liberty. But this is a false conception…. God does not contradict Himself. He did not create man and then, as an afterthought, impose upon him a set of arbitrary, irritating, restrictive rules. He made man free⎯and then gave him the commandments to keep him free…. We cannot break the Ten Commandments. We can only break ourselves against them⎯or else, by keeping them, rise through them to the fullness of freedom under God. God means us to be free. With diving daring, He gave us the power of choice.”¹ More recently an able ovserver had this to say concerning those who may suppose that the commandments have been repealed: “I ask you⎯is God, who the scriptures say is the same yesterday, today and forever, now changing His mind? Does Jesus no longer believe what He taught when He was on the earth? For any man to attempt to change the moral law is like trying to change the Deity himself.” ² Since God has not repealed the commandments, and since man cannot, the plain fact is that the commandments are in force and self-enforcing. God has not repealed the basic laws of life, nor the law of cause and consequence. Then why should we seek to popularize evil, or to live against the grain. When we ignore the laws, we realize the results. Virtue, chastity, honesty, honor, cleanliness of conduct, lead to respect of self, respect of loved ones, and to quietness of conscience and personal peace. And whatever has happened to virtue, whatever we may have lost, we had better return to it, for the commandments are self-enforcing⎯and, “We can only break ourselves against them,” as Cecil B. DeMille said.