Editorial July 24, 1926 Issue

Moral Restraint

Albert F. Gilmore

Paul's unqualified declaration, "The carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to law of God, neither indeed can be," leaves us in no doubt as to the utter disagreement between the so-called carnal or mortal mind, its demands and desires, and the divine Mind, which is God. Accordingly, we conclude that the carnal mind, the sum total of material beliefs held mortals, based as it is upon the assumption that life and substance are material, has nothing whatsoever in common with the divine Mind, that is, with Spirit; for God is Spirit. Comprised, as it is held, of material beliefs; wholly concerned with material concepts of life, creation, and the universe; believing firmly, as it does, in itself and its objectifications as entity and reality; making its own laws and formulating its own rules, as it seems to do, this mortal mind rebels at the slightest intimation of restraint or restriction. It utterly refuses to recognize authority outside itself, and goes its inconsequential way quite oblivious, it would seem, of the nothingness out of which it came, and to which, in its every phase, it will ultimately return

Out of the exercise of sensuous and brutal traits of the so-called mortal mind there arose very early in the history of the human race the need for restriction to be imposed upon the selfish desires of mortals. These restraints took form in the divine revelation which came to the Hebrew lawgiver upon Sinai; and the Ten Commandments became the basis of the moral code which the Jewish people accepted as divine law, and which, leavened with grace and love through the teachings and practice of Christ Jesus, are the foundation of Christianity.

The Mosaic code was definitely restrictive. The "Thoushalt-nots" of the Ten Commandments imposed upon the inclinations of what Paul called the natural man many restraints necessary to the development of mortals advancing from a state of slavery and barbarism to the status of civilization and Christianity. Christ Jesus tempered the seeming harshness of the Mosaic law with the revelation of the ever present God as the infinite Father who loves with unfailing love all His offspring; and he proved that the restrictions of the Mosaic law were but guide lines to that mental unfoldment ultimating in the spiritual understanding which reveals the real man as the child of God, spiritual and perfect, governed by divine Love, under no material restraint, expressing perfect freedom.

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