man's present condition. His upward development has been interrupted.
In theological language he is a 'fallen' being, and the path of
ethical progress is a way of _recovery_[477]. Man's capacity of
corresponding with the ideal, of free self-conformity to it, though
not destroyed, is at least seriously impaired. His spiritual
capacities are not what they were once in a fair way to be; they are
weakened and depraved, and man's advance towards a free power of
self-determination is in fact hindered by a radical defect of will--in
Christian language by the principle of Sin. The Bible gives an account
of sin, its first cause, its consequences in human history. Christian
Ethics make allowance for this factor; systems which overlook it or
minimize it inevitably lose contact with the actual problem to be
solved, with life as it is. Their tendency at best is to treat moral,
as on a level with physical, evil: as an obstruction, a hindrance, but
not a vital defect inherent in human nature. Not such is the Christian
view of sin. For sin conditions the work of the Incarnate Son Himself.
Not only does Christ set Himself to re-erect the true standard of
character. He devotes Himself also to dealing with the actual ravages
of moral evil. He teaches its intrinsic nature, its source in the
will, the inviolable law of its retribution; He reveals the
destructive potency of its effects; He labours as the Good Physician
to remove its temporal penalties; He provides, in His atoning
Sacrifice of Himself, the one and only countervailing remedy[478].
Such postulates respecting the Nature of God and of Man find their
complement and point of contact in the Catholic doctrine of the
Incarnation. As to the Person of Christ, it is enough to premise that
the Christian system of ethics is intelligible only on the basis of a
complete recognition of all that our Lord claimed to be. He came to
reveal among men the nature, the ways, the will of the All-Holy; to
present the true pattern of human goodness; to be the perfect
representative of man before God[479]. He is the Revealer of God, as
being Himself in the fullest sense One with God; He is the pattern of
humanity, in virtue of His sinless manhood; the representative,
through His organic union with our race. His Resurrection and
Ascension together are the condition of His recreative action as a
quickening Spirit on the entire nature of man. In a word His Person,
His work, His character form the central point of ethical inquiry and
contemplation[480]. To arrive at the true _differentiae_ of Christian
morals we need to study more profoundly the character and purpose of
Jesus Christ.
I. _Christ's Revelation of the Highest Good._
To the Christian moralist the entire universe presents itself in the
light of a revealed purpose as capable of receiving a spiritual
impress, and as moving towards an ethical consummation. For although
man is the crown of the physical creation, he cannot be independent of
it in his advance towards the proper perfection of his being. The
destiny of nature is bound up with that of humanity, in so far as
nature tends towards some form of ethical consciousness, presents the
material conditions of moral action, is capable of being appropriated
or modified by moral forces--will and personality. Thus an inquiry
into the Highest Good for man gives to ethics a natural point of
contact with metaphysics[481].
Christ Himself points our thought to this ideal region by presenting
to us as the Highest Good, as the ultimate object of moral effort,
_the kingdom of God_[482]. A precise definition of this expression may
be left to a formal treatise; but a certain complexity in the idea may
be briefly elucidated.
In the first instance the kingdom of God is spoken of by our Lord as a
Good to be appropriated by _man_, through conscious and disciplined
moral effort. In this sense the kingdom is already 'within' men[483],
though not in its mature, or perfected stage. It is an actual state,
spiritual and moral; an inward process or movement; a present
possession. The attainment of this state involves 'Blessedness'--a
word the true meaning of which is open to misconception. 'Blessedness'
is not 'a mere future existence of imaginary beatitude[484];' not a
bare independence of natural necessities; nor is it identical with,
though it may include, 'happiness.' The instinct in human nature to
which Christ appealed is more fundamental than the desire of
'happiness.' The word employed by Him to convey His meaning had by
ancient usage been connected with supposed conditions and modes of the
Divine existence. 'Blessedness' in fact consists in a living relation
to God, in a progressive likeness to Him; in its final stage it is
nothing less than the possession of God. God is the Highest Good[485].
The kingdom of God is also to be conceived as the goal of the entire
movement of the universe: but while nature tends blindly towards some
ideal end, the history of mankind is the record of a Divinely-directed
movement carried on through free human agency[486]. For an ethical
world two factors are required; physical nature, the sphere of force
and necessity; rational personality, conscious of freedom and of the
claim of authority. The goal of the universe is therefore a kingdom in
which each element, physical nature and personality, finds its
appropriate sphere, the one subordinate, the other dominant. We
discern a prophecy of this result in Bacon's great conception of a
'regnum hominis' attainable by intelligent obedience to nature. The
Bible is full of a greater thought. It foresees a kingdom of
intelligent beings whose law is the service of God; a state in which
the inner harmony of man's restored nature will be reflected in a
worthy outward environment. This ideal kingdom, however, has its
preparatory stage on earth. Though the present condition of it only
faintly foreshadows the promised glory of the future, it has
nevertheless been in fact set up among men, 'not in word, but in
power.' For the main factor that makes such a kingdom ideally
possible, already operates--namely, creaturely life realizing its true
dependence on God, human will and human character responding to the
will and purpose of God[487].
Such is the kingdom for which we look, and its Centre and Head is the
living Christ[488]. He is the type after which the new personality is
to be fashioned. He who unveils this world of spiritual beings and
powers, is Himself the source of its movement, the centre of its
attraction, the surety of its final triumph.
There cannot but result from this hope a particular view of the
present world. It is characteristic of the Christian spirit frankly to
recognise the natural world in its due subordination to personality,
in its subserviency to ethical ends. An absolute idealism is not less
alien to this standpoint than a crude materialism. The Christian is
not blind to the tokens of interdependence between the worlds of
matter and spirit; the fact indeed of such relation gives peculiar
colour to the Christian regard for nature. Nature is precious as the
sphere in which a Divine Life is manifested, as the object of Divine
Love[489]. And yet, in the light of revelation, the universe cannot be
contemplated without mingled emotions. The Christian knows something
of the pain, and of the satisfaction which in their unchastened form
we call Pessimism and Optimism. For there must be sorrow in the
recollection of the causal link that unites physical to moral evil.
Though pain has value as the condition of nobler phases of life, and
heightened spirituality of character, it is nevertheless an evil
producing in a healthy nature something more than a transient
disturbance. Pain is the sensible, even if remote, outcome of moral
perversity, of misdirected desire. It pervades impartially the
physical universe, but seems in manifold instances to point beyond
itself to its source in human sin.
And yet there is a Christian optimism--a thankful joy even amid
present conditions. There is the joy of at least a rudimentary
realization of the chief Good; the joy of setting a seal, as it were,
to the truth of God[490]. The 'powers of the world to come' are
already within reach; they can be set in motion, felt, tested,
enjoyed. There is a known end of creation by the light of which all
forms and products of human enterprize can be judged. Thus even the
growth and organized strength of evil does not dismay the Christian;
for he knows that the advance of the kingdom is certain, whatever be
the hindrances opposed to it, and that God's invincible will controls
and overrules all that seems most lawless, and hostile to His purpose.
'The city of God,' says S. Augustine, 'is a pilgrim sojourning by
faith among evil men, abiding patiently the day when righteousness
shall turn to judgment, and victory bring peace.' In his assurance
that 'all things work together for good to them that love God,' that
the end is certain, and human fears are blind, the Christian can be
free from illusions or extravagant hopes, yet not cast down,
'sorrowful, yet alway rejoicing,' 'perplexed, but not in
despair[491].'
II. _Christ's Revelation of the Moral Law, its authority, sanctions,
and content._
On the place and meaning of freedom in Christian Ethics we have
already touched. Our formal freedom is the ground of moral
responsibility--that element in us to which Law makes its
authoritative appeal. From the thought of freedom in relation to a
moral universe we pass naturally to that of Law.
And first, it is convenient to inquire what is the _revealed basis of
obligation_ in general?
The most conspicuous feature of the Sermon on the Mount--that first
great outline of Christian morality--is its authoritative tone. We
instinctively turn to it in searching for a fundamental principle of
obligation, a ground of authority for Law. Nor are we disappointed,
for our question is met by the consideration that this great discourse
is primarily a revelation of the personal God in His holy relation to
mankind. It is with this personal relationship that the claim of moral
Good on man's will is seen to be uniformly connected. The Good in fact
presents itself to man in the shape of a _personal appeal_: 'Be ye
holy, for I am holy.' Morality appears as God's exhortation to man to
embrace and fulfil the true law of his nature. 'Be ye perfect,' it is
said, 'even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect[492].' The
Good is thus at once the explicit declaration of the Divine will, and
the condition of human perfection. Already the coldness of abstract
Law begins to disappear. Law is seen to be not an abstraction merely,
but inseparably connected with the living Personality behind it. It is
the self-revelation of a loving Being, appealing to the object of His
Love, and seeking its highest welfare. Obligation is transformed, and
is seen to be the tie of vital relationship between persons[493].
Further, it must be borne in mind that Christ's teaching as to
obligation was accompanied by the promise of a supernatural gift--the
gift of a new capacity to fulfil the Law. The Good had hitherto been
known, howsoever imperfectly, as requirement. Ethical progress before
Christ's coming could only tend to deepen this knowledge. We know
indeed what was the object of that long providential discipline of
humanity which culminated in the Incarnation: how it ended by driving
man to look and long for a condition of things which should no longer
be marked by hopeless severance of the actual from the obligatory.
With the advent of the Redeemer, a new joy dawned on the world--the
possibility of goodness.
We learn then that the ground of obligation is God's will for the
perfection of His creatures--His desire that they should be like
Himself[494]. The sense of obligation is indeed never absent from the
consciousness of Christ Himself. 'We must work,' He says, 'the works
of Him that sent Me while it is day.' 'My meat is to do the will of
Him that sent Me, and to finish His work[495]:'--in which utterances
we discern the principle we need. Only when duty presents itself in
the form of personal appeal, only when obedience is kindled and
enriched by feeling, can law become a bond, not of constraint, but of
love.
It follows that obligation, thus founded on personal relationship to
God, is absolute and independent of variation in the specific demands
of Law. Human goodness will consist in correspondence to the will of
God, and the degree of clearness with which a man apprehends that will
is the measure of his obligation. This principle seems to preclude any
idea of 'supererogatory works,' and tends to neutralise for the
individual conscience the distinction between 'commands' and 'counsels
of perfection,' the spirit in which Law is ideally fulfilled being
that of sonship, eager, loyal, and generous[496].
The universal obligation of moral Law is by Christ connected for
practical purposes with a system of _sanctions_. As to the Christian
doctrine of rewards and punishments it is only necessary to observe,
that any ethical system which has regard to the condition of man _as
he is_, finds itself constrained, for disciplinary ends, to lay a
certain stress on this point. Further, it should be noticed that the
nature of these sanctions is seldom clearly understood. They occupy a
place in Christ's teaching, because it is His wont to deal with human
nature as He finds it: He points, however, not so much to a future
state, as to a present spiritual sphere in which conduct is
indissolubly linked to consequence, and there operate 'the searching
laws of a spiritual kingdom[497].' The sanctions with which Christ
enforces His doctrine may thus be regarded as pointing to a reign of
Law in the spiritual realm which He reveals to mankind. He seems
indeed to recognise the occasional need of appeals to fear, as likely
to rouse the conscience and will. He sets before us the prospect of
spiritual judgments acting, at least partially, in the sphere of the
present life. His more frequent appeal, however, is to what may be
called the enlightened self-interest of men. Their true life, He tells
them, is to be found or acquired in a consecration, a sacrifice of the
natural life to the claims and calls of the Divine kingdom[498]. Such
sacrifice, such co-operation with God, is its own ineffable reward.
What then, it may be asked, are the _motives_, the inducements to
action, appealed to by Christianity? how far are imperfect motives
recognised? and in view of the fact that no mere sense of relation to
Law is in general likely to move the human will, where does the Gospel
find its 'moral dynamic'--its highest motive?
We have seen that Christianity in a peculiar degree combines the
presentation of duty with an appeal to feeling. In the same way by
connecting obligation to obey God with a revelation of His Love, Jesus
Christ solves the most difficult problem of ethics. The highest motive
is _Love to God_, kindled not only by the contemplation of His
Perfections, but also by a passionate sense of what He has wrought in
order to make possible the fulfilment of His Law. 'We love Him,' says
S. John, 'because He first loved us.' We do not, however, expect the
motive of actions to be in all cases identical, or uniformly
praiseworthy. A practical system must recognise very different stages
of maturity in character; and the possibility of imperfect or mixed
motives is frankly allowed by Christian thinkers, and seems to be
sanctioned by our Lord Himself[499]. It may be said on the whole that
while the Gospel ever appeals to man's desire for his own good, it
adapts itself and condescends to widely varying forms and degrees of
that desire, by way of educating it to greater disinterestedness and
purity[500]. We may fittingly speak of 'a hierarchy of motives,' and
can view with equanimity those attacks on Christianity which represent
it as a thinly-disguised appeal to selfishness. For the reward
promised to man is one which will only appeal to him in so far as he
has parted with his old self, and has made the Divine purpose his own.
The reward is joy--the 'joy of the Lord;' the joy of a worthy cause
embraced and advanced; of a task achieved, of labour crowned by nobler
and wider service. Such joy could only be an inspiring motive to
self-forgetful love, which finds the fulfilment of every aspiration,
the satisfaction of every desire in God and in His work[501].
Christian duty, the content of the Law, demands somewhat larger
treatment. It has been suggested that the conception of morality as a
Divine code, as 'the positive law of a theocratic community,' which
seems characteristic of early Christian writings on morals--is a
legacy from Judaism[502]. Be this as it may--the _distinctive_ feature
of Christianity is that henceforth the Law is not contemplated apart
from the Personality of God. The Law is 'holy, just, and good,'
because it reflects His character. Obedience to it is acknowledged to
be the indispensable condition of true union between God and His
creatures. For Jesus Christ teaches us to discern in the Law the
self-unveiling of a Being whose holiness and love it reflects, as well
as His purpose for man.
The revealed Law is comprised in the Decalogue. It seems needless to
vindicate at length the paramount place which this fundamental code
occupies in Christian thought[503]. Suffice it to say that in broad
outline it defines the conditions of a right relation to God, and to
all that He has made. And the Law is 'spiritual[504].' Though for
educative purposes primarily concerned with action, it makes reference
to inward disposition, and thereby anticipates the main characteristic
of Christian goodness. It also recalls the great landmarks of God's
redemptive action; it sets forth His gracious acts, partly as an
incentive to gratitude, partly as a ground of obligation.
In our Lord's teaching we find two truths implied: (1) The absolute
priority and permanence of the Decalogue in relation to all other
precepts of the Jewish Law. (2) Its essential unity viewed as a Law of
love. This latter aspect is anticipated in the book of Deuteronomy,
and is explicitly set forth by our Lord. There are, He tells us, two
commandments: the first and greatest, love to God; the second 'like
unto it,' love to man, with the limitation annexed, 'Thou shalt love
thy neighbour as thyself.'
Thus guided by precedent, a Christian, in examining the Law's
_content_, may take the Decalogue as a natural basis of division. It
may be shortly analysed as embracing a comprehensive outline of man's
duty towards (i) God, (ii) his fellow-men, and implicitly towards
himself and non-personal creatures.
First stand duties towards God, resulting directly from the personal
contact assumed to be possible between God and man. The all-embracing
command which involves the fulfilling of the Law is contained in the
words, 'Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with
all thy soul, and with all thy mind[505].' In this 'great commandment'
we find the widest point of divergence from Pagan ethics. Man's true
centre is God. His perfection is to be sought in creaturely subjection
and free conformity to the Divine purpose[506]. The general sphere of
God-ward duty is defined in the first four commandments, which are
seen to give moral sanction, not only to the outward expression, but
to the actual substance of belief; the distinctive duties enjoined
therein have been summarily described as faith, reverence,
service[507]. The fourth precept lays down the principle that man is
bound to honour God by consecrating a definite portion of time to His
worship, and by providing space for the due recreation of that human
nature which by creative right is God's, and is destined for union
with Him.
The duty of love to our fellow-men follows upon that of love to God.
Every man's personality gives him absolute and equal worth in God's
sight, and therefore lays us under obligation towards him. Heathen
moralists confined the sphere of obligation to a few simple
relationships, e.g. family-life, friendship, civic duty. But the
revealed law of love to man embraces _every_ relationship. 'Every man
is neighbour to every man[508].' It is clear that any adequate outline
of this precept involves the whole treatment of social duty. Men have
their _rights_, i.e. lay us under obligation, both individually and
collectively. The individual has his 'duty' to fulfil to the family,
the association, the class, the city, the state, the Church which
claims him. The immense field of our possible duties towards society,
and towards each individual, so far as he comes in contact with us,
may be regarded as embraced in the second table of the Decalogue. Thus
the fifth commandment lends important sanction not only to the
parental claim, but also to the authority of fundamental moral
communities--the family, the state, the Church. The following precepts
regulate the security of life and personality, of marriage and sexual
distinctions, of property, honour, and good name. The tenth
commandment anticipates that 'inwardness' which constitutes the
special feature of Christian morality. 'It is the commandment,' says
an ethical writer, 'which perhaps beyond any of the rest was likely to
deepen in the hearts of devout and thoughtful men in the old Jewish
times, that sense of their inability to do the will of God, and to
fulfil the Divine idea of what human life ought to be, which is
indispensable to the surrender of the soul to God[509].'
But according to the Christian theory there are duties to _self_,
which seem to follow from the relation in which man stands to God, and
form the true measure of his regard for others: 'Thou shalt love thy
neighbour as thyself.' There is a right self-love, a right care of the
personality as being itself an object of God's Love, and so included
in the category of things ethically good. What the Christian ought to
love, however, is not the old natural self, but the 'new man,' the
true image of himself which has absolute worth[510]. A moral
complexion is thus given to all that concerns the personal life--the
care of health, the culture of faculties, the occasions of
self-assertion. Every moment of conscious existence, and every
movement of will,--all in fact, that relates to the personality--is
brought within the domain of Law. Christianity 'claims to rule the
whole man, and leave no part of his life out of the range of its
regulating and transforming influence[511].' For in every situation,
transaction, or display of feeling, will is required to declare
itself: moral activity takes place. Duties to self, as loved by God,
are thus implied in the 'great commandment.' For God therein requires
of man a consecration of the entire _self_, an inward self-devotion, a
reasonable, heartfelt service: He asks for love. From this point of
view, sin--the false claim to independence--is simply wrong self-love.
Some would even class all shapes of sin as falling under two main
forms of self-assertion, arrogance and sensuality. And S. Augustine
suggests a profound view of the development of the true, as compared
with the false society, when he says: 'The two cities owe their being
to two forms of love; the earthly, to self-love; the heavenly, to the
love of God[512].'