Religion and morality

"Religion must precede morality if morality is itself to survive. Godliness is essential to ethics. Nothing but a belief in God and a desire to glorify Him, based upon our realization of our utter dependence upon him and our acceptance of his way of life and salvation in Jesus Christ His Son, can ever lead to a good society...Religion and spiritual revival have always led to moral and intellectual awakening and a desire to produce a better society. And coversely, ungodliness has always led to unrighteousness. A slackening in spiritual fervour, even though the zeal and fervour be transferred to a desire to improve the state of society, has always eventuated ultimately in both moral and intellectual decline. The great periods in the history of this country in every sphere are the Elizebethan, the Puriatn and the Victorian. Each followed a striking religious revival. But as religion was allowed to sink into oblivion, and men thought that they could live by morality alone, degeneration set in rapidly. Emil Brunner has said that this is so definite as to be capable of statement as a law of life in which there are distinct steps and stages. he puts it thus: "The feeling for the personal and the human which is the fruit of faith may outlive for a time the death of the roots from which it has grown, but this cannot last very long. As a rule of decay of religon works out in the second generation as moral rigidity, and in the third generation. Humanity without religion has never been a historical force capable of resistance. Even today, severance from the Christian faith, whenever it has been of some duration works out in the dehumanization of all human conditions. 'The wine of life has been poured out, the dregs alone remain.'"

Martyn Lloyd Jones, 'The Plight of man and the Power of God', 1942, Pg.29-30