To say that human life changes, and that new discoveries and new powers make necessary new laws and moral customs, is to say something so obvious that it might seem a waste of paper and ink. Man has invented the automobile and has crowded himself into cities, and so has to adopt a rigid set of traffic regulations. So far as I know, it has never occurred to any religious enthusiast to seek in the book of Revelation for information as to the advisability of the "left hand turn" at Broadway and Forty-second Street, New York, at five o'clock in the afternoon. But modern science has created new economic facts, just as unprecedented as the automobile; it has created new possibilities of spending and new possibilities of starving for mankind; it has made new cravings and new satisfactions, new crimes and new virtues; and yet the great mass of our people are still seeking to guide themselves in their readjustments to these new facts by ancient codes which have no more relationship to these facts than they have to the affairs of Mars! I am acquainted with a certain lady, one of the kindest and most devoted souls alive, who seeks to solve the problems of her life, and of her large family of children and grand-children, according to sentences which she picks out, more or less at random, from certain more or less random chapters of ancient Hebrew literature. This lady will find some words which she imagines apply to the matter, and will shut her devout eyes to the fact that there are other "texts," bearing on the matter, which say exactly the opposite. She will place the strangest and most unimaginable interpretations upon the words, and yet will be absolutely certain that her interpretation is the voice of God speaking directly to her. If you try to tell her about Socialism, she will say, "The poor ye have always with you"; which means that it is interfering with Divine Providence to try to remedy poverty on any large scale. This lady is ready instantly to relieve any single case of want; she regards it as her duty to do this; in fact, she considers that the purpose of some people's poverty is to provide her with a chance to do the noble action of relieving it. You would think that the meaning of the sentence, "Spare the rod and spoil the child," would be so plain that no one could mistake it; but this good lady understood it to mean that God forbade the physical chastisement of children, and preferred them "spoiled." She held this idea for half a lifetime--until it was pointed out to her that the sentence was not in the Bible, but in "Hudibras," an old English poem! CHAPTER VIII THE VIRTUE OF MODERATION (Attempts to show that wise conduct is an adjustment of means to ends, and depends upon the understanding of a particular set of circumstances.)