The ideal of self-realisation includes three distinct elements:

1. Life as intensity of being.—'I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.'[4] 'More life and fuller' is the passion of every soul that has caught the vision and heard the call of Jesus. The supreme good consists not in suppressed vitality, but in power and freedom. Life in Christ is a full, rich existence. The doctrine of quietism and indifference to joy has no place in the ethic of Jesus. Life is manifested in inwardness of character, and not in pomp of circumstance. It consists not in what a man has, but in what he is.[5] The beatitudes, as the primary qualifications for the kingdom of God, emphasise the fundamental principle of the subordination of the material to the spiritual, and the contrast between inward and outward good.[6] Self-mastery is to extend to the inner life of man—to dominate the thoughts and words, and the very heart from which they issue. A divided life is impossible. The severest discipline, even renunciation, may be needful to secure that singleness of heart and strenuousness of aim which are for Jesus the very essence of life. 'Ye cannot serve God and mammon.'[7] In harmony with this saying is the opposition in the Johannine teaching between 'the world' and 'eternal life.'[8] The quality of life indeed depends not upon anything contingent or accidental, but upon an intense inward realisation of blessedness in Christ in comparison with which even {130} the privations and sufferings of this world are but as a shadow.[9] At the same time life is not a mere negation, not simply an escape from evil. It is a positive good, the enrichment and intensifying of the whole being by the indwelling of a new spiritual power. 'For me to live is Christ,' says St. Paul. 'This is life eternal,' says St. John, 'that they may know Thee the only true God, and Him whom Thou didst send, even Jesus Christ.'[10]

2. Life as Expansion of Personality.—By its inherent power it grows outwards as well as inwards. The New Testament conception of life is existence in its fullest expression and fruitfulness. The ideal as presented by Christ is no anaemic state of reverie or ascetic withdrawal from human interest. It is by the elevation and consecration of the natural life, and not by its suppression, that the 'good' is to be realised. The natural life is to be transformed, and the very body presented unto God as a living sacrifice.[11] So far from Christianity being opposed to the aim of the individual to find himself in a world of larger interests, it is only in the active and progressive realisation of such a life that blessedness consists. Herein is disclosed, however, the defect of the modern ideal of culture which has been associated with the name of Goethe. In Christ's ideal self-sufficiency has no place. While rightly interpreted the 'good' of life includes everything that enriches existence and contributes to the efficiency and completeness of manhood, mere self-culture and artistic expression are apt to become perverted forms of egoism, if not subordinated to the spirit of service which alone can give to the human faculties their true function and exercise. Hence life finds its real utterance not in the isolated development of the self, but in the fullness of personal relationships. Only in response to the needs of others can a man realise his own life. In answer to the young ruler who asked a question 'concerning that which is good,' Christ replied, 'If thou wilt enter into life keep the {131} commandments'; and the particular duties He mentioned were those of the second table of the Decalogue.[11] The abundance of life which Christ offers consists in the mutual offices of love and the interchange of service. Thus self-realisation is attained only through self-surrender.[13] The self-centred life is a barren life. Not by withholding our seed but by flinging it forth freely upon the broad waters of humanity do we attain to that rich fruition which is 'life indeed.'

3. Life as Eternal Good.—Whatever may be the accurate signification of the word 'eternal,' the words 'eternal life,' regarded as the ideal of man, can mean nothing else than life at its highest, the fulfilment of all that personality has within it the potency of becoming. In one sense there is no finality in life. 'It seethes with the morrow for us more and more.' But in another sense, to say that the moral life is never attained is only a half truth. It is always being attained because it is always present as an active reality evolving its own content. In Christ we have 'eternal life' now. It is not a thing of quantity but of quality, and is therefore timeless.

'We live in deeds not years, in thoughts not breaths, In feelings, not in figures on a dial.'[14]

He who has entered into fellowship with God has within him now the essence of 'life eternal.'

But the conception of life derived from, and sustained by, God involves the idea of immortality. 'No work begun shall ever pause for death.'[15] To live in God is to live as long as God. The spiritual man pursues his way through conflict and achievement towards a higher and yet a higher goal, ever manifesting, yet ever seeking, the infinite that dwells in him. All knowledge and quest and endeavour, nay existence itself, would be a mockery if man had 'no forever.' Scripture corroborates the yearnings of the heart and represents life as a growing good which is to attain to ever higher reaches and fuller realisations in the world to {132} come. It is the unextinguishable faith of man that the future must crown the present. No human effort goes to waste, no gift is delusive; but every gift and every effort has its proper place as a stage in the endless process.[16]

'There shall never be lost one good! What was shall live as before.'[17]

II

The foregoing discussion leads naturally to the second aspect of the highest Good, the Ideal in its social or corporate form—the kingdom of God. Properly speaking, there is no such thing as an individual. As biologically man is only a member of a larger organism, so ethically he can only realise himself in a life of brotherhood and service. It is only within the kingdom of God and by recognition of its social relations that the individual can attain to his own blessedness. Viewed in the light of the mutual relation of its members the kingdom is a brotherhood in which none is ignored and all have common privileges and responsibilities; viewed in the light of its highest good it is the entire perfection of the whole—a hierarchy of interests subordinated to, and unified by, the sovereignty of the good in the person of God.[18]

1. By reason of its comprehensiveness the doctrine of the kingdom has been regarded by many as the most general conception of the ideal of Jesus. 'In its unique and unapproachable grandeur it dwarfs all the lesser heights to which the prophetic hopes had risen, and remains to this day the transcendent and commanding ideal of the possible exaltation of our humanity.'[19] The principles implicitly contained in the teaching of Jesus concerning the kingdom have become the common possessions of mankind, and are moulding the thoughts and institutions of the civilised world. Kant's theory of a kingdom of ends, Comte's idea of Humanity, and the modern conceptions of scientific and {133} historical evolution are corroborative of the teaching of the New Testament. Within its conception men have found room for the modern ideas of social and economic order, and under its inspiration are striving for a fuller realisation of the aspirations and hopes of humanity.[20]

Though frequently upon His lips the phrase did not originate with Jesus. Already the Baptist had employed it as the note of his preaching, and even before the Baptist it had a long history in the annals of the Jewish people. Indeed the entire story of the Hebrews is coloured by this conception, and in the days of their decline it is the idea of the restoration of their nation as the true kingdom of God that dominates their hopes. When earthly institutions did not fulfil their promise, and nothing could be expected by natural means, hope became concentrated upon supernatural power. Thus before Jesus appeared there had grown up a mass of apocalyptic literature, the object of which was to encourage the national expectation of a sudden and supernatural coming of the kingdom of heaven. Men of themselves could do nothing to hasten its advent. They could only wait patiently till the set time was accomplished, and God stretched forth His mighty hand.[21]

A new school of German interpretation has recently arisen, the aim of which is to prove that Jesus was largely, if not wholly, influenced by the current apocalyptic notions of His time. Jesus believed, it is said, in common with the popular sentiment of the day, that the end of the world was at hand, and that at the close of the present dispensation there would come suddenly and miraculously a new order into which would be gathered the elect of God. Johannes Weiss, the most pronounced advocate of this view, maintains that Jesus' teaching is entirely eschatological. The kingdom is supramundane and still to come. Jesus did not inaugurate it; He only predicted its advent. Consequently there is no Ethics, strictly so called, in His {134} preaching; there is only an Ethic of renunciation and watchfulness[22]—an Interimsethik.

The whole problem resolves itself into two crucial questions: (1) Did Jesus expect a gradual coming of the kingdom, or did He conceive of it as breaking in suddenly by the immediate act of God? and (2) Did Jesus regard the kingdom as purely future, or as already begun?

In answer to the first question, while there are undoubtedly numerous and explicit sayings, too much neglected in the past and not to be wholly explained by mere orientalism, suggesting a sudden and miraculous coming, these must be taken in connection with the many other passages implying a gradual process—passages of deep ethical import which seem to colour our Lord's entire view of life and its purposes. And in answer to the second question, while there are not a few utterances which certainly point to a future consummation, these are not inconsistent with the immediate inauguration and gradual development of the kingdom.

A full discussion of this subject is beyond the scope of this volume.[23] There are, however, two objections which may be taken to the apocalyptic interpretation of Christ's teaching as a whole. (1) As presented by its most pronounced champions, this view seems to empty the person and teaching of Jesus of their originality and universality. It tends to reduce the Son of Man to the level of a Jewish rhapsodist, whose whole function was to encourage His countrymen to look away from the present scene of duty to some future state of felicity, which had no connection with the world of reality, and no bearing upon their present character. It would be surely a caricature to interpret the religion of the New Testament from this standpoint alone to the exclusion of those directly ethical and spiritual {135} principles in which its originality chiefly appeared, and on which its permanence depends.[24] As Bousset[25] points out, not renunciation but joy in life is the characteristic thing in Jesus' outlook. He does not preach a gloomy asceticism, but proclaims a new righteousness and a new type of duty. He recognises the worth of the present life, and teaches that the world's goods are not in themselves bad. He came as a living man into a dead world, and by inculcating a living idea of God and proclaiming the divine Fatherhood gave a new direction and inner elevation to the expectations of His age, showing the true design of God's revelation and the real meaning of the prophetic utterances of the past. To interpret the kingdom wholly from an eschatological point of view would involve a failure to apprehend the spiritual greatness of the personality with which we are dealing.[26] (2) This view virtually makes Christ a false prophet. For, as a matter of fact, the sudden and catastrophic coming of the kingdom as predicted by the Hebrew apocalyptics did not take place. On the contrary the kingdom of God came not as the Jews expected in a sudden descent from the clouds, but in the slow and progressive domination of God over the souls and social relationships of mankind. In view of the whole spirit of Jesus, His conception of God, and His relation to human life, as well as the attitude of St. Paul to the Parousia, it is critically unsound to deny that Jesus believed in the presence of the kingdom in a real sense during His lifetime.[27]

2. If this conception of the kingdom of God be correct we may now proceed to regard it under three aspects, Present, Progressive, and Future—as a Gift immediately bestowed by Jesus, as a Task to be worked out by man in the history of the world, and as a Hope to be consummated by God in the future.

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(1) The Kingdom as a Present Reality.—After what has been already said it will not be necessary to dwell upon this aspect. It might be supported by direct sayings of our Lord.[28] But the whole tenor and atmosphere of the Gospels, the uniqueness of Christ's personality, His claim to heal disease and forgive sin, as well as the conditions of entrance, imply clearly that in Jesus' own view the kingdom was an actual fact inaugurated by Him and obtaining its meaning and power from His own person and influence. Obviously He regarded Himself as the bearer of a new message of life, and the originator of a new reign of righteousness and love which was to have immediate application. Christ came to make God real to men upon the earth, and to win their allegiance to Him at once. No one can fail to recognise the lofty idealism of the Son of Man. He carries with Him everywhere a vision of the perfect life as it exists in the mind of God, and as it will be realised when these earthly scenes have passed away; yet it would be truer to say that His interests were in 'first things' rather than in 'last things,' and would be more justly designated Protology than Eschatology.[29] His mission, so far from having an iconoclastic aim, was really to 'make all things new.' He was concerned with the initiation of a new religion, therefore with a movement towards a regeneration of society which would be virtually a reign of God in the hearts of men. 'The kingdom of God is within you.' Not in some spot remote from the world, some beautiful land beyond the skies, but in the hearts and homes, in the daily pursuits and common relationships of life must God rule. The beatitudes, while they undoubtedly refer to a future when a fuller realisation of them will be enjoyed, have a present reference as well. They make the promise of the kingdom a present reality dependent upon the inner state of the recipients. Not in change of environment but in change {137} of heart does the kingdom consist. The lowly and the pure in heart, the merciful and the meek, the seekers after righteousness and the lovers of peace are, in virtue of their disposition and aspiration, already members.

(2) The kingdom as a gradual development.—The inward gift prescribes the outward task. It is a power commanding the hearts of men and requiring for its realisation their response. It might be argued that this call to moral effort presented to the first Christians was not a summons to transform the present world, but to prepare themselves for the destiny that awaited them in the coming age.[30] It is true that watchfulness, patience, and readiness are among the great commands of the New Testament.[31] But admitting the importance of these requirements, they do not militate against the view that Christians were to work for the betterment of the world. Christ did not look upon the world as hopeless and beyond all power of reclaiming; nor did He regard His own or His disciples' ministry within it as without real and positive effects. While His contemporaries were expecting some mighty intervention that would suddenly bring the kingdom ready-made from heaven, He saw it growing up silently and secretly among men. He took his illustrations from organic life. Its progress was to be like the seed hidden in the earth, and growing day and night by its own inherent germinating force. The object of the parables of the sower, the tares, the mustard seed, the leaven, was to show that the crude catastrophic conception of the coming of the kingdom must give place to the deeper and worthier idea of growth—an idea in harmony with the entire economy of God's working in the world of nature. In the parable of the fruit-bearing earth Jesus shows His faith in the growth of the good, and hence in the adaptation of the truth to the human soul. In the parables of the leaven, the light, and salt Jesus illustrates the gradual power of truth to pervade, illumine, and purify the life of humanity. His method of bringing about this {138} good is the contagion of the good life. His motive is the sense of the need of men. And His goal is the establishment of the kingdom of love—a kingdom in which all the problems of ambition, wealth, and the relationships of the family, of the industrial sphere, and of the state, are to be transfigured and spiritualised.[32]

It is surely no illegitimate application of the mind of Christ if we see in His teaching concerning the kingdom a great social ideal to be realised by the personal activities and mutual services of its citizens. It finds its field and opportunity in the realm of human society, and is a good to be secured in the larger life of humanity. This ideal, though only dimly perceived by the early Church, has become gradually operative in the world, and has been creative of all the great liberating movements in history. It lay behind Dante's vision of a spiritual monarchy, and has been the inspiring motive of those who, in obedience to Christ, have wrought for the uplifting of the hapless and the down-trodden. It has been the soul of all mighty reformations, and is the source of that conception of a new social order which has begun to mean so much for our generation.

Loyalty to the highest and love for the lowest—love to God and man—these are the marks of the men of all ages who have sought to interpret the mind of Christ. Mutual service is the law of the kingdom. Every man has a worth for Christ, therefore reverence for the personality of man, and the endeavour to procure for each full opportunity of making the most of his life, are at once the aim and goal of the new spiritual society of which Christ laid the foundations in His own life and ministry. Everything that a man is and has, talents and possessions of every kind, are to be used as instruments for the promotion of the kingdom of God.

'For life, with all it yields of joy and woe, And hope and fear . . . Is just our chance o' the prize of learning love.'

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(3) But though the reign of God has begun, it has yet to be consummated.—There is not wanting in the New Testament an element of futurity and expectancy not inconsistent with, but rather complementary to, the notion of gradual development. The eschatological teaching of Jesus has its place along with the ethical, and may be regarded not as annulling, but rather reinforcing the moral ideals which He proclaimed.[33] There is nothing pessimistic in Christ's outlook. His teaching concerning the last things, while inculcating solemnity and earnestness of life as become those to whom has been entrusted a high destiny, and who know not at what hour they may be called to give an account of their stewardship,[34] bids men look forward with certainty and hope to a glorious consummation of the kingdom. Though many of our Lord's sayings with regard to His second coming are couched in figurative language, we cannot believe that He intended to teach that the kingdom itself was to be brought about in a spectacular or material way. He bids His disciples take heed lest they be deceived by a visible Christ, or led away by merely outward signs.[35] His coming is to be as 'the lightning which cometh out of the east and shineth even unto the west'[36]—an emblem not so much of suddenness as of illuminating and convincing, and especially, of progressive force. Not in a visible reign or personal return of the Son of Man does the consummation of the kingdom consist, but in the complete spiritual sovereignty of Christ over the hearts and minds of men. When the same love which He Himself manifested in His life becomes the feature of His disciples; when His spirit of service and sacrifice pervades the world, and the brotherhood of man and the federation of nations everywhere prevail; then, indeed, shall the sign of the Son of Man appear in the heavens, and then shall the tribes of {140} the earth see Him coming in the clouds with power and glory.[37]

Jesus does not hesitate to say that there will be a final judgment and an ingathering of the elect from all quarters of the earth.[38] There will be, as the parable of the Ten Virgins suggests, a division and a shut door.[39] But punishment will be automatic. Sin will bring its own consequences. Those only will be excluded at the last who even now are excluding themselves. For Christ is already here, and is judging the world every day. By the common actions of their present life men are being tried; and that which will determine their final relation to Christ will not be their mere perception of His bodily presence, but their moral and spiritual likeness to Him.

Amidst the imperfections of the present men have ever looked forward to some glorious consummation, and have lived and worked in the faith of it. 'To the prophets of Israel it was the new age of righteousness; to the Greek thinkers the world of pure intelligible forms; to Augustine and Dante the holy theocratic state; to the practical thought of our own time the renovated social order. Each successive age will frame its own vision of the great fulfilment; but all the different ideals can find their place in the message of the kingdom which was proclaimed by Jesus.'[40]

There is thus opened to our vision a splendid conception of the future of humanity. It stands for all that is highest in our expectations because it is already expressive of all that is best in our present achievements and endeavours. The final hope of mankind requires for its fulfilment a progressive moral discipline. Only as Christ's twofold command—love to God and love to man—is made the all-pervasive rule of men's lives will the goal of a universally perfected humanity be attained.

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III

The chief good may be regarded finally in its divine aspect—as the endeavour after God-likeness. In this third form of the ideal the two others—the personal and the social—are harmonised and completed. To realise the perfect life as it is revealed in the character and will of God is the supreme aim of man, and it embraces all that is conceivably highest for the individual and for humanity as a whole. This aspiration finds its most explicit expression in the sublime word of Christ—'Be ye perfect even as your Father in heaven is perfect.'[41] This commandment, unlike so many generalisations of duty, is no cold abstraction. It is pervaded with the warmth of personality and the inspiration of love. In the idea of Fatherhood both a standard and motive are implied. Because God is our Father it is at once natural and possible for us to be like Him. He who would imitate another must have already within him something of that other. As there is a community of nature which makes it possible for the child to grow into the likeness of its parent, so there is a kinship in man with God to which our Lord here appeals.

1. Among the ethical qualities of divine perfection set forth in scripture for man's imitation Holiness stands preeminent. God, the perfect being, is the type of holiness, and men are holy in proportion as their lives are Godlike. This conception of holiness is fundamental in the Old Testament. It is summed up in a command almost identical with that of our Lord: 'Be ye holy, for I am holy.'[42] Holiness, as Christianity understands it, is the name for the undimmed lustre of God's ethical perfection. God is 'the Holy one'—the alone 'good' in the absolute sense.[43]

If God's character consists in 'Holiness,' then that quality determines the moral end of man. But holiness, as the most comprehensive name for the divine moral perfection—the pure white light of God's Being—breaks up into the {142} separate rays which we designate the special moral attributes. These have been grouped under 'Righteousness' (truth, faithfulness, justice, zeal, etc.), and 'Love' (goodness, pity, mercy, etc.), though they are really but expressions of one individual life.[44]

2. In the New Testament Righteousness is almost equivalent to holiness. It is the attribute of God which determines the nature of His kingdom and the condition of man's entrance into it. As comprising obedience to the will of God and the fulfilment of the moral law, it is the basal and central conception of the Christian ideal.[45] It is the keynote of the Pauline Epistles. Life has a supreme sacredness for Paul because the righteousness of God is its end. While righteousness is the distinctive note of the Pauline conception, it is also fundamental in the Ethics of Jesus. It is the ruling thought in the Sermon on the Mount. To be righteous for Jesus simply means to be right and true—to be as one ought to be. But human standards are insufficient. A man must order his life by the divine standard. Jesus is as emphatic as any Old Testament prophet in insisting upon the need of absolute righteousness. That, for all who would share in the kingdom of the good, is to be their ideal—the object of their hunger and thirst. It is a 'good' which is essential to the very satisfaction and blessedness of the soul.[46] It is the supreme desire of the man who would be at peace with God. It involves poverty of spirit, for only those who are emptied of self are conscious of their need. They who, in humility and meekness, acknowledge their sins, are in the way of holiness and are already partakers of the divine nature.

Christ's teaching in regard to righteousness has both a negative and a positive aspect. It was inevitable that He should begin with a criticism of the morality inculcated by the leaders of His day. The characteristic feature of Pharisaism was, as Christ shows, its externalism. If a man fulfilled the outward requirements of the law he was {143} regarded as holy, by himself and others, whatever might be the state of his heart towards God. This outwardness tended to create certain vices of character. Foremost amongst these were (1) Vanity or Ostentation. To appear well in the opinion of others was the aim of pharisaic conduct. Along with ostentation appears (2) Self-complacency. Flattery leads to self-esteem. He who loves the praise of man naturally begins to praise himself. As a result of self-esteem arises (3) Censoriousness, since he who thinks well of himself is apt to think ill of others. As a system Pharisaism was wanton hypocrisy—a character of seeming righteousness, but too often of real viciousness.

But Christ came not to destroy but to fulfil the law.[47] His aim was to proclaim the true principles of righteousness in contrast to the current notions of it. This He proceeds to do by issuing the law in its ideal and perfected form.[48] Hence Jesus unfolds its positive content by bringing into prominence the virtues of the godly character as opposed to the pharisaic vices. Modesty and humility are set over against ostentation and self-righteousness.[49] Single-minded sincerity is commended in opposition to hypocrisy.[50] The vice of censoriousness is met by the duty of self-judgment rather than the judgment of others.[51]

The two positive features of the new law of righteousness as expounded by Jesus are—inwardness and spontaneity. The righteousness of the Gospel, so far from being laxer or easier of fulfilment, was actually to exceed that of the Pharisees:[52] (a) in depth and inwardness. It is not enough not to kill or steal or commit adultery. These commandments may be outwardly kept yet inwardly broken. Something more radical is expected of the man who has set before him the doing of God's will, a righteousness not of appearance but of reality. (b) In freedom and spontaneity. It is to have its spring in the heart. It is to be a righteousness not of servile obedience, but of willing devotion. The aim of life is no longer the painful effort of the bondsman who {144} strives to perform a distasteful task, but the gladsome endeavour of the son who knows and does, because he loves, his father's will. In the Ethics of the Christian life there is no such thing as mere duty; for a man never fulfils his duty till he has done more than is legally required of him. 'Whosoever shall compel you to go with him one mile, go with him twain.'[53] The 'nicely calculated less or more' is alien to the spirit of him who would do God's will. Love is the fulfilling of the law, and love knows nothing of limits.

3. Thus the holiness of God is manifested not in righteousness only, but in the attribute of Love. The human mind can attain to no higher conception of the divine character than that which the word 'love' suggests. The thought is the creation of Christianity. It was the special contribution of one of the innermost circle of Jesus' disciples to give utterance to the new vision of the divine nature which Christ had disclosed—'God is love.'[54] In our Lord's teaching the centre of gravity is entirely changed. The Jewish idea of God is enriched with a fuller content. He is still the Holy One, but the sublimity of His righteousness, though fully recognised, is softened by the gentler radiance of love.[55] Jehovah the Sovereign is revealed as God the Father. Divine righteousness is not simply justice, but goodness manifested in far-reaching activities of mercy and pity and benevolence. A new note is struck in the Ethics of Jesus. A new relationship is established between God and man—a personal filial relationship which entirely alters man's conception of life. To be perfect as our Father in heaven is perfect, to be, and embody in life all that love means, that is the sublime aim which Jesus in His own person and teaching sets before the world. As God's love is universal, and His care and compassion world-wide, so, says Christ, not by retaliation or even by the performance of strict justice, but in loving your enemies, in returning good for evil and extending your acts of helpfulness and charity to those 'who know not, care not, think {145} not, what they do,' shall ye become the children of your Father, and realise something of that divine pattern of every man which has been shown him on the holy mount.

If the view presented in this chapter of the ethical ideal of Christianity be correct, then the doctrine of an Interims-ethik advocated by modern eschatologists must be pronounced unsatisfactory as a complete account of the teaching of Jesus.[56] The three features which stand out most clearly in the Ethics of Christ are, Absoluteness, Inwardness, and Universality. It is an ideal for man as man, for all time, and for all men. The personality of God represents the highest form of existence we know; and the love of God is the sublimest attribute we can conceive. But because God is our Father there is a kinship between the divine and the human; and no higher or grander vision of life is thinkable than to be like God—to share that which is most distinctive of the divine Fatherhood—His love of all mankind. Hence Godlikeness involves Brotherhood.[57] In the ideal of love—high as God, broad as the world—the other aspects of the chief good, the individual and the social, are harmonised. In Christian Ethics, the problem of philosophy how to unite the one and the many, egoism and altruism, has been practically solved. The individual realises his life only as he finds himself in others; and this he can only do as he finds himself in God. The first and last word of all morality and religion is summed up in Christ's twofold law of love: 'Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind; and thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.'[58]



[1] Cf. Troeltsch, Die Sociallehren d. Christl. Kirchen, vol. i. p. 37, where the idea of self-worth and self-consecration is worked out.

[2] Wernle, Beginnings of Christianity, vol. i. p. 76.

[3] Wernle, Beginnings of Christianity, pp. 76 f.

[4] John x. 10.

[5] Luke xii. 15, 16.

[6] Matt. v.

[7] Matt. vi. 24.

[8] 1 John ii. 15.

[9] Luke x. 21; Matt. xi. 28-30; Mark viii. 35; John iii. 15, x. 28, xvii. 2.

[10] John xvii. 3.

[11] Rom. xii. 1.

[12] Matt. xix. 17.

[13] Luke xvii. 33; John xii. 25.

[14] Bailey, Festus.

[15] Browning.

[16] Jones, Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher, p. 354.

[17] Abt Vogler.

[18] Cf. Balch, Introd. to the Study of Christian Ethics, p. 150.

[19] Newman Smyth, Christian Ethics, p. 97.

[20] Balch, Introd. to the Study of Christian Ethics, p. 150.

[21] See Apocalypses of Baruch, Esdras, Enoch, and Pss. of Solomon, and also Daniel and Ezekiel. Cf. E. F. Scott, The Kingdom and the Messiah, for Apoc. literature.

[22] J. Weiss, Die Predigt Jesu vom Reiche Gottes. Cf. also Wernle, Die Anfaenge unsurer Religion, who is not so pronounced. Bousset rejects this view, and Titius, in his N. T. Doctrine of Blessedness, regards the kingdom of God as a present good. See also Moffatt, The Theology of the Gospels.

[23] Cf. Dobschuetz, The Eschatology of the Gospels, also Schweitzer, op. cit., and Sanday, The Life of Christ in Recent Research, E. Scott, The Kingdom of God and the Messiah, and Moffatt, op. cit.

[24] Cf. Barbour, A Philos. Study of Chr. Ethics, p. 184.

[25] 'Jesu predigt in ihrem Gegensatz zum Judenthum.'

[26] Cairns, Christianity in the Mod. World, p. 173. See Schweitzer, The Quest of the Historical Jesus, for advocates and opponents of this view, pp. 222 ff. Cf. also Troeltsch, op. cit., vol. i. p. 35.

[27] Cf. Moffatt, op. cit.

[28] Luke iv. 21, xvii. 21; Matt. xii. 28, xi. 2-8, xi. 20; Luke xvi. 16. Cf. also Matt. xiii. 16-17.

[29] Our Lord never uses the word 'final' or 'last' of anything concerning the kingdom. Only in the fourth Gospel do we find the phrase 'the last day.' See art., Contemporary Review, Sept. 1912.

[30] The view of Weiss.

[31] Luke xii. 19; Matt xxiv. 13; Mark xiii. 13; 2 Tim. ii. 12.

[32] King, The Ethics of Jesus, p. 143.

[33] Mark xiii. 7-31 has been called the 'little Apocalypse' and the hypothesis has been thrown out that a number of verses (fifteen in all) form a document by themselves, 'a fly leaf put into circulation before the fall of Jerusalem, and really incorporated by the Evangelist himself. See Sanday, art., Hibbert Journal, Oct. 1911, and Life of Christ in Recent Research.

[34] Matt. xxiv. 42.

[35] Matt. xxiv. 23.

[36] Matt. xxiv. 27.

[37] Matt. xxiv. 30.

[38] Matt. xxiv. 31.

[39] Matt. xxv.

[40] E. F. Scott, The Kingdom and the Messiah, p. 256.

[41] Matt. v. 48.

[42] Lev. iv. 11, xix. 2.

[43] Mark x. 18.

[44] Cf. Orr, Sin as a Problem of To-day, chap. iii.

[45] Cf. Jacoby, Neu-testamentliche Ethik, p. 1.

[46] Matt. v. 3 f.

[47] Matt. v. 17.

[48] Matt. v. 18.

[49] Matt. vi. 1-6.

[50] Matt. vi. 16-18.

[51] Matt. vii. 1-5.

[52] Matt. v. 20.

[53] Matt. v. 41.

[54] 1 John iv. 8, 16.

[55] John xvii. 11; Heb. x. 31; Rev. xv. 4.

[56] Cf. E. Digges La Touche, The Person of Christ in Modern Thought, pp. 150 ff.

[57] 1 John iv. 21.

[58] Matt. xxii. 37.



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CHAPTER IX

THE STANDARD AND MOTIVE OF THE NEW LIFE

In every system of Ethics the three ideas of End, Norm, and Motive are inseparable. Christian Ethics is unique in this respect that it presents not merely a code of morals, but an ideal of good embodied in a person who is at once the pattern and inspiration of the new life. In this chapter we propose to consider these two elements of the good.

Christ as Example.—The value of 'concrete examples' has been frequently recognised in non-Christian systems. In the 'philosopher king' of Plato, the 'expert' of Aristotle, and the 'wise man' of the Stoics we have the imaginary embodiment of the ideal. A similar tendency is apparent in modern theories. Comte invests the abstract idea of 'Humanity' with certain personal perfections for which he claims homage. But what other systems have conceived in an imaginative form only, Christianity has realised in an actual person.

The example of Christ is not a separate source of authority independent of His teaching, but rather its witness and illustration. Word and deed in Jesus are in full agreement. He was what He taught, and every truth He uttered flowed directly from His inner nature. He is the prototype and expression of the 'good' as it exists in the mind of God, as well as the perfect representative and standard of it in human life. In Him is manifested for all time what is meant by the good.

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1. If Christ is the normative standard of life it is extremely important to obtain a true perception of Him as He dwelt among men. But too often have theology and art presented a Christ embellished with fantastic colours or obscured by abstract speculations. Recently, however, there has been a revival of interest in the actual life of Jesus. Men are turning wistfully to the life of the Master for guidance in practical matters, and it is beginning to dawn upon the world that the highest ideals of manhood were present in the Carpenter of Nazareth. We must therefore go back to the Gospels if we would know what manner of man Jesus was. The difficulty of presenting the Man Christ Jesus as the eternal example to the world must have been almost insurmountable; and we are at once struck with two remarkable features of the synoptics' portrayal of Him. (1) The writers make no attempt to produce a work of art. They never dream that they are drawing a model for all men to copy. There is no effort to touch up or tone down the portrait. They simply reflect what they see without admixture of colours of their own. Hence the paradox of His personality—the intense humanness and yet the mystery of godliness ever and anon shining through the commonest incidents of His life. (2) Even more remarkable than the absence of subjectivity on the part of the evangelists is the unconsciousness of Jesus that He is being portrayed as an example. We do not receive the impression that the Son of Man was consciously living for the edification of the world. His mental attitude is not that of an actor playing a part, but of a true and genuine man living his own life and fulfilling his own purpose. There is no seeming or display. Goodness to be effectual as an example must be unconscious goodness. We are impressed everywhere with the perfect naturalness and spontaneity of all that Christ did and uttered.[1]

The character of Jesus has been variously interpreted, and it is one of the evidences of His moral greatness that each age has emphasised some new aspect of His {148} personality. In a nature so rich and complex it is difficult to fix upon a single category from which may be deduced the manifold attributes of His character. Two conceptions of Jesus have generally prevailed down the centuries. One view interprets His character in terms of asceticism; the other in terms of aestheticism.[2] Some regard Him as the representative of Hebrew sorrow and sacrifice; others see in Him the type of Hellenic joy and geniality. There are passages in Scripture confirmatory of both impressions. On the one hand, there is a whole series of virtues of the passive order which are utterly alien to the Greek ideal; and, on the other hand, there is equally prominent a tone of tranquil gladness, of broad sympathy with, and keen appreciation of, the beautiful in nature and life which contrasts with the spirit of Hebrew abnegation. But, after all, neither of these traits reveals the secret of Jesus. Joy and sorrow are but incidents in life. They have only moral value as the vehicles of a profounder spiritual purpose. To help every man to realise the fullness and perfection of his being as a child of God is the aim of His life and ministry, and everything that furthers this end is gratefully recognised by Him as a good. He neither courts nor shuns pain. Neither joy nor sorrow is for Him an end in itself. Both are but incidents upon the way of holiness and love which He had chosen to travel.

2. Everywhere there was manifest in the life and teaching of Jesus a note of self-mastery and authority which impressed His contemporaries and goes far to explain and unify the various features of His personality and influence. It is remarkable to notice how often the word 'power' is applied to Jesus in the New Testament.[3] Whether we regard His attitude to God, or His relation to others, it is this note of quiet strength, of vital moral force which arrests our attention. It will be sufficient to mention in passing three directions in which this quality of power is manifest.

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(1) It is revealed in the consciousness of a divine mission. He goes steadily forward with the calmness of one who knows himself and his work. He has no fear or hesitancy. Courage, earnestness, and singleness of purpose mark His career. He is conscious that His task has been given Him by God, and that He is the chosen instrument of His Father's will. Life has a greatness and worth for Him because it may be made the manifestation and vehicle of the divine purpose.

(2) His power is revealed again in the realisation of Holiness. Holiness is to be differentiated, on the one hand, from innocence; and, on the other, from sinlessness. Innocence is untried goodness; sinlessness is negative goodness; holiness is achieved and victorious goodness. It was not mere absence of sin that distinguished Jesus. His was a purity won by temptation, an obedience perfected through suffering, a peace and harmony of soul attained not by self-suppression, but by the consecration of His unfolding life to the will of God.

(3) His power is manifested once more in His Sympathy with man. His purity was pervasive. It flowed forth in acts of love. He went about doing good, invading the world of darkness and sorrow with light and joy. It is the wealth of His interests and the variety of His sympathy which give to the ministry of the Son of Man its impressiveness and charm. With gladness as with grief, with the playfulness of childhood and the earnestness of maturity, with the innocent festivities and the graver pursuits of His fellow-men, with the cares of the rich and the trials of the poor, He disclosed the most intimate and tender feeling. His parables show that He had an open and observant eye for all the life around Him. To every appeal He responded with an insight and delicacy of consideration which betokened that He Himself had sounded the depths of human experience and knew what was in man. Humour, irony, and pathos in turn are revealed in His human intercourse.

But while Jesus delighted to give of Himself freely He knew also how to withhold Himself. There can be no true {150} sympathy without restraint. The passive virtues—meekness, patience, forbearance—which appear in the life of Christ are 'not the signs of mere self-mortification, they are the signs of power in reserve. They are the marks of one who can afford to wait, who expects to suffer; and that not because he is simply meek and lowly, but because he is also strong and calm.'[4]

The New Testament depicts Jesus as made in the likeness of men, whose life, though unique in some of its aspects, was in its general conditions normal, passing through the ordinary stages of growth, and participating in the common experiences of mankind. He had to submit to the same laws and limitations of the universe as we have. There was the same call, in His case as in ours, to obedience and endurance. There was the same demand for moral decision. Temptation, suffering, and toil, which mean so much for man in the discipline of character, were factors also in the spiritual development of Christ. Trust, prayer, thanksgiving were exercised by the Son of Man as by others; confession alone had no place in His life.

3. The question has been seriously asked, Can the example and teaching of Jesus be really adopted in modern life as the pattern and rule of conduct? Is there not something strangely impracticable in His Ethics; and, however admirably suited to meet the needs of His own time, utterly inapplicable to the complex conditions of society to-day? On the one hand, Tolstoy would have us follow the example of Jesus to the letter, and rigidly practise the precepts of the Sermon on the Mount, even to the extent of refusing to resist wrong and possess property, and of holding aloof from all culture and enterprise, and the interests of life generally. On the other hand, philosophers like Paulsen and Bradley, perceiving the utter impracticableness of Tolstoy's contentions, yet at the same time recognising his attitude as the only consistent one if the imitation of Christ is to have vogue at all, are convinced that the earthly life of Jesus is not the model of our {161} age, and that to attempt to carry out His precepts consistently would be not only impossible but injurious to all the higher interests of humanity.[5]

But this conclusion is based, it seems to us, upon a two-fold misapprehension. It is founded upon an inadequate interpretation of the life and teaching of Christ; and also upon a wholly mechanical understanding of the meaning and value of example.

(1) What was Christ's ideal of the Christian life? Was it that of the monk or the citizen?—the recluse who meditates apart on his own salvation, or the worker who enters the world and contributes to the betterment of mankind? Is the kingdom of God a realm apart and separate from all the other domains of activity? Or has Christianity, according to its essence, room within it for an application of its truth to the complex relations and manifold interests of modern life? Both views have found expression in the history of the Church. But there can be little doubt as to which is the true interpretation of the mind of Jesus.[6]

(2) But, again, what is meant by the 'imitation of Christ' has been also misconceived. Imitation is not a literal mechanical copying. To make the character of another your model does not mean that you are to become his mimic or echo. In asking us to follow Him, Christ does not desire to suppress our individuality, but to enrich and ennoble it. When He says, on the occasion of the feet-washing of His disciples, 'I have given you an example, that ye should do as I have done to you,'[7] obviously it was not the outward literal performance, but the spirit of humility and service embodied in the act which He desired His disciples to emulate. From another soul we receive incentives rather than rules. No teacher or master, says Emerson, can {152} realise for us what is good.[8] Within our own souls alone can the decision be made. We cannot hope to interpret the character of another until there be within our own breasts the same moral spirit from which we believe his conduct to proceed. The very nature of goodness forbids slavish reproduction. Hence there is a certain sense in which the paradox of Kant is true, that 'imitation finds no place at all in morality.'[9] The question, 'What would Jesus do?' as a test of conduct covers a quite inadequate conception of the intimate and vital relations Christ bears to our humanity. 'It is not to copy after Christ,' says a modern writer, 'but to receive His spirit and make it effective—which is the moral task of the Christian.'[10] Christ is indeed our example, but He is more. And unless He were more He could not be so much. We could not strive to be like Him if He were not already within us, the Principle and Spirit of our life, the higher and diviner self of every man.

What is meant, then, by saying that Christ is the ideal character or norm of life is that He represents to us human nature in its typical or ideal form. As we behold His perfection we feel that this is what we were made for, this is the true end of our being. Every one may, in short, see in Him the fulfilment of the divine idea and purpose of man—the conception and end of himself.[11]

II

The Christian Motive.—Rightly regarded Christ is not only the model of the new life, but its motive as well. All the great appeals of the Gospel—every persuasion and plea by which God seeks to awaken a responsive love in the hearts of men—are centred in, and find expression through, the Person and Passion of Christ.

1. The question of motive is a primary one in Ethics. {153} If, therefore, we ask, What is the deepest spring of action, what is the incentive and motive power for the Christian? The answer is: (1) the love of God, a love which finds its highest expression in Forgiveness. Of all motives the most powerful is the sense of being pardoned. Even when it is only one human being who forgives another, nothing strikes so deep into the human heart or evokes penitence so tender and unreserved, or brings a joy so pure and lasting. It not only restores the old relation which wrong had dissolved; it gives the offender a sense of loyalty unknown before. He is now bound not by law but by honour, and it would be a disloyalty worse than the original offence if he wounded such love again. Thus it is that God becomes the object of reverence and affection, not because He imposes laws upon us but because He pardons and redeems. The consciousness of forgiveness is far more potent in producing goodness than the consciousness of law. This psychological fact lay at the root of Christ's ministry, and was the secret of His hope for man. This, too, is the key to all that is paradoxical, and, at the same time, to all that is most characteristic in St Paul's Gospel. What the Law could not do, forgiveness achieves. It creates the new heart, and with it the new holiness. 'It is not anything statutory which makes saints out of sinful men; it is the forgiveness which comes through the passion of Jesus.'[12]

(2) Next to the motive of forgiveness, and indeed arising from it, is the new consciousness of the Fatherhood of God, and the corresponding idea of sonship. This was a motive to which Jesus habitually appealed. He invariably sought not only to create in men confidence in God by revealing His fatherly providence, but also to lift them out of their apathy and thraldom by kindling in their souls a sense of their worth and liberty as sons of God. The same thought is prominent also in the epistles both of St. Paul and St. John. As children of God we are no longer menials and hirelings who do their work merely for pay, and without {154} intelligent interest, but sons who share our Father's possessions and co-operate with Him in His purposes.[13]

(3) Closely connected with the idea of Sonship is that of life as a Divine Vocation. Life is a trust, and as the children of God we are called to serve Him with all we have and are. The sense of the vocation and stewardship of life acts as a motive: (a) in giving dignity and stability to character, saving us, on the one hand, from fatalism, and on the other from fanaticism, and affording definiteness of purpose to all our endeavours; and (b) in promoting sincerity and fidelity in our life-work. Thoroughness will permeate every department of our conduct, since whatsoever we do in word or deed we do as unto God. All duty is felt to be one, and as love to God becomes its motive the smallest as well as the greatest act is invested with infinite worth. 'All service ranks the same with God.'

(4) Another motive, prominent in the Pauline Epistles, but present also in the eschatological passages of the Synoptics, ought to be mentioned, though it does not now act upon Christians in the same form—the Shortness and Uncertainty of life. Our Lord enjoins men to work while it is day for the night cometh; and in view of the suddenness and unexpectedness of the coming of the Son of Man He exhorts to watchfulness and preparedness. A similar thought forms the background of the apostle's conception of life. His entire view of duty as well as his estimate of earthly things are tinged with the idea that 'the time is short,' and that 'the Lord is at hand.' Christians are exhorted, therefore, to sit lightly to all worldly considerations. Our true citizenship is in heaven. But neither the apostle nor his Master ever urges this fact as a reason for apathy or indifference. Life may be brief, but it is not worthless. The thought of life's brevity must not act as an opiate, but rather as a stimulant. If our existence here is short, then there is all the greater necessity that its days should be nobly filled, and its transient opportunities seized and turned into occasions of strenuous service.

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(5) To the considerations just mentioned must be added a cognate truth which has coloured the whole Christian view of life, and has been a most powerful factor in shaping Christian conduct—the idea of Immortality. It is not quite correct to say that we owe this doctrine to Christianity alone. Long before the Christian era it was recognised in Egypt, Greece, and the Orient generally. But it was entertained more as a surmise than a conviction. And among the Greeks it was little more than the shadowy speculation of philosophers. Plato, in his Phaedo, puts into the mouth of Socrates utterances of great beauty and far-reaching import; yet, notwithstanding their sublimity, they scarcely attain to more than a 'perhaps.' Even in Hebrew literature, as we have seen, while isolated instances of a larger hope are not wanting, there is no confident or general belief in an after-life. But what was only guessed at by the ancients was declared as a fact by Christ, and preached as a sublime and comforting truth by the apostles; and it is not too much to say that survival after death is at once the most distinctive doctrine of Christianity and the most precious hope of Christendom. The whole moral temperature of the world, says Jean Paul Richter, has been raised immeasurably by the fact that Christ by His Gospel has brought life and immortality to light. This idea, which has found expression, not only in all the creeds of Christendom, but also in the higher literature and poetry of modern times, has given a new motive to action, has founded a new type of heroism, and nerved common men and women to the discharge of tasks from which nature recoils. The assurance that death does not end existence, but that 'man has forever,' has not only exalted and transfigured the common virtues of humanity; but, held in conjunction with the belief in the divine Fatherhood and human brotherhood, given to life itself a new solemnity and pathos.[14]

2. But if these are the things which actuate men in their service of God and man, can it be legitimately said that the Christian motive is pure and disinterested? It is {166} somewhat remarkable that two opposite charges have been brought against Christian Ethics.[15] In one quarter the reproach has been made that Christianity suppresses every natural desire for happiness, and inculcates a life of severe renunciation. And with equally strong insistence there are others who find fault with it because of its hedonism, because it rests morality upon an appeal to selfish interests alone.

(1) The first charge is sufficiently met, we think, by our view of the Christian ideal. We have seen that it is a full rich life which Christ reveals and commends. The kingdom of God finds its realisation, not in a withdrawal from human interests, but in a larger and fuller participation in all that makes for the highest good of humanity. It is a caricature of Christ's whole outlook upon existence to represent Him as teaching that this life is an outlying waste, forsaken of God and unblessed, and that the world is so hopelessly bad that it must be wholly renounced. On the contrary, it is for Him one of the provinces of the divine kingdom, and the most trivial of our occupations and the most transient of our joys and sorrows find their place in the divine order. It is not necessary to endorse Renan's idyllic picture of the Galilean ministry to believe that for Jesus all life, its ordinary engagements and activities, had a worth for the discipline and perfecting of character, and were capable of being consecrated to the highest ends. There are, indeed, not a few passages in which the call to self-denial is emphasised. But neither Christ nor His apostles represent pain and want as in themselves efficacious or meritorious. Renunciation is inculcated not for its own sake, but always as a means to fuller realisation. Jesus, indeed, transcends the common antithesis of life. For Him it is not a question as to whether asceticism or non-asceticism is best. Life is for use. It is at once a trust and a privilege. It may seem to some that He chose 'the primrose path,' but if he did so it was not due to an easy-going good-nature. We dare not forget the terrible issues {157} He faced without flinching. As Professor Sanday has finely said, 'If we are to draw a lesson in this respect from our Lord's life, it certainly would not be that

"He who lets his feelings run In soft luxurious flow, Shrinks when hard service must be done, And faints at every woe."

It would be rather that the brightest and tenderest human life must have a stern background, must carry with it the possibility of infinite sacrifice, of bearing the cross and the crown of thorns.'[16]

(2) The second charge, the charge of hedonism, though seemingly opposed to the first, comes into line with it in so far as it is alleged that Christianity, while inculcating renunciation in this world, does so for the sake of happiness in the next. It is contended that in regard to purity of motive the Ethics of Christianity falls below the Ethics of philosophy.[17] This statement, so often repeated, requires some examination.

3. While it may be acknowledged that unselfishness and disinterestedness are the criterion of moral sublimity, it must be noted at the outset that considerable confusion of thought exists as to the meaning of motive. Even in those moral systems in which virtue is represented as wholly disinterested, the motive may be said to reside in the object itself. The maxim, 'Virtue for virtue's sake,' really implies what may be called the 'interest of achievement.' If virtue has any meaning it must be regarded as a 'good' which is desirable. Perseverance in the pursuit of any good implies the hope of success; in other words, of the reward which lies in the attainment of the object desired. The reward sought may not be foreign to the nature of virtue itself, but none the less, the idea of reward is present, and, in a sense, is the incentive to all virtuous endeavour. This is, indeed, implied by a no less rigorous {168} moralist than Kant. For as he himself teaches, the question, 'What should I do?' leads inevitably to the further question, 'What may I hope?'[18] The end striven after cannot be a matter of indifference, if virtue is to have moral value at all. It must be a real and desirable end—an end which fulfils the purpose of a man as a moral being.

(1) But though Kant insists with rigorous logic that reverence for the majesty of the moral law must be the only motive of duty, and that all motives springing from personal desire or hope of happiness must be severely excluded, it is curious to find that in the second part of his Critique of Practical Reason he proceeds, with a strange inconsistency, to make room for the other idea, viz., that virtue is not without its reward, and is indeed united in the end with happiness. Felicity and holiness shall be ultimately one, he says; and, at the last, virtue shall be seen 'to be worthy of happiness,' and happiness shall be the crown of goodness.[19] Thus those philosophers, of whom Kant is typical, who contend for the purity of the moral motive and the disinterested loyalty to the good, bring in, at the end, the notion of happiness, which, as a concomitant or consequence of virtue, cannot fail to be also an active incentive.

(2) When we turn to Christian Ethics we find that here, not less than in philosophical Ethics, the motive lies in the object itself. The end and the motive are really one, and the highest good is to be sought for itself and not for the sake of some ulterior gain. It is true, indeed, that Christianity has not always been presented in its purest form; too often have prudence, fear, other-worldliness been set forth as inducements to goodness, as if the Gospel cared nothing for the disposition of a man, and was concerned only with his ultimate happiness. Even a moralist so acute as Paley bases morality upon no higher ground than enlightened self-interest. But the most superficial reader of the Gospels must see at a glance the wide variance between such a view and that of Christ. Nothing could be further from the spirit of Jesus than to estimate the {169} excellence of an action by the magnitude or the utility of its effects rather than the intrinsic good of its motive. Otherwise He would not have ranked the widow's mite above the gifts of vanity, nor esteemed the tribute of the penitent, not so much for the costliness of her offering, as for the sincerity of affection it revealed. Christ looked upon the heart alone, and the worth of an action lay essentially for Him in its inner quality. Sin resided not merely in the overt act, but even more in the secret desire. A man may be outwardly blameless, and yet not really good. He who remains sober or honest simply because of the worldly advantages attaching to such conduct may obtain a certificate of respectability from society; but, judged by the standard of Christ, he is not truly a moral man. In an age which is too prone to make outward propriety the gauge of goodness, it cannot be sufficiently insisted upon that the Ethic of Christianity is an Ethic of the inner motive and intention, and that, in this respect, it does not fall a whit behind the demand of the most rigid system of disinterested morality.

(a) It must, however, be freely admitted that our Lord frequently employs the sanctions both of rewards and penalties. In the time of Christ the idea of reward, so prominent in the Old Testament, still held an important place in Jewish religion, being specially connected with the Messianic Hope and the coming of the kingdom. It was not unnatural, therefore, that Jesus, trained in Hebrew religious modes of thought and expression, should frequently employ the existing conceptions as vehicles of His own teaching; but, at the same time, purifying them of their more materialistic associations and giving to them a richer spiritual content. While the kingdom of God is spoken of as a gift, and promised, indeed, as a reward, the word 'reward' in this connection is not used in the ordinary sense, but 'is rather conceived as belonging to the same order of spiritual experience as the state of heart and mind which ensures its bestowal.'[20] Though Jesus does not {160} hesitate to point His disciples to the blessings of heaven which they will receive in the future, these are represented for the most part not as material benefits, but as the intensification and enrichment of life itself.[21]

It was usually the difficulties rather than the advantages of discipleship upon which Jesus first laid stress. He would not that any one should come to Him on false pretences, or without fully counting the cost.[22] Even when He Himself called His original disciples, it was of service and not of recompense He spoke. 'Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men.'[23] The privilege consisted not in outward eclat, but in the participation of the Master's own purpose and work. Still, all service carries with it its own reward, and no one can share the mission of Christ without also partaking of that satisfaction and joy which are inseparable from the highest forms of spiritual ministry.[24]

There is, however, one passage recorded by all the Synoptists which seems at first sight to point more definitely to a reward of a distinctly material character, and to one that was to be enjoyed not merely in the future, but even in this present life. When Peter somewhat boastfully spoke of the sacrifice which he and his brethren had made for the Gospel's sake, and asked, 'What shall we have therefor?' Jesus replied, 'Verily, I say unto you, that no man that hath left home, or brethren, or sisters, or mother, or father, or children, or lands, for My sake and the Gospel's sake, but shall receive an hundredfold now in this time, houses and brethren, sisters and mothers, and children and lands, with persecutions; and in the world to come eternal life.'[25] Now, while this is a promise of wide sweep and large generosity, it is neither so arbitrary nor material as it seems. First, the words, 'with persecutions,' indicate that suffering is not only the very condition of the promise, but indeed an essential part of the reward—an element which would of itself be a true test of the sincerity of the sacrifice. {161} But, second, even the promise, 'An hundredfold now in this time,' is obviously not intended to be taken in a literal sense, but rather as suggesting that the gain, while apparently of the same nature as the sacrifice, will have a larger spiritual import. For, just as Jesus Himself looked upon all who shared His own devotion as His mother and brethren; so, in the deepest sense, when a man leaves father and mother, renouncing home and family ties for the sake of bringing his fellow-men to God, he seems to be emptying his life of all affectionate relationships, but in reality he is entering into a wider brotherhood; and, in virtue of his ministry of love, is being knit in bonds stronger than those of earthly kinship, with a great and increasing community of souls which owe to him their lives.[26] The promise is no arbitrary gift or bribe capriciously bestowed; it is the natural fruition of moral endeavour. For there is nothing so productive as sacrifice. What the man who yields himself to the service of Christ actually gives is life; and what he gets back, increased an hundredfold, is just life again, his own life, repeated and reflected in the men and women whom he has won to Christ.

In some of His parables Christ employs the analogy of the work-engagement, in which labour and payment seem to correspond. But the legal element has a very subordinate place in the simile. Jesus lifts the whole relationship into a higher region of thought, and transforms the idea of wages into that of a gift of love far transcending the legal claim which can be made by the worker. He who has the bondsman's mind, and works only for the hireling's pay, will only get what he works for. But he who serves from love finds in the service itself that which must always be its truest recompense—the increased power of service, the capacity of larger devotion[27]—'The wages of going on.'[28] In his latest volume Deissmann has pointed out that we can only do justice to the utterances of the New Testament regarding work and wages by examining them in situ, {162} amidst their natural surroundings. Jesus and St. Paul spoke with distinct reference to the life and habits of the common people of their day. 'If you elevate such utterances to the level of the Kantian moral philosophy, and reproach primitive Christianity with teaching for the sake of reward, you not only misunderstand the words, but tear them up by the roots.' . . . 'The sordid ignoble suggestions so liable to arise in the lower classes are altogether absent from the sayings of Jesus and His apostles, as shown by the parable of the Labourers in the Vineyard, and the analogous reliance of St. Paul solely upon grace.'[29]

The same inner relation subsists between Sin and Penalty. But here, again, the award of punishment is not arbitrary, but the natural consequence of disobedience to the law of the spiritual life. He who seeks to save his life shall lose it. He who makes this world his all shall receive as his reward only what this world can give. He who buries his talent shall, by the natural law of disuse, forfeit it. Not to believe in Christ is to miss eternal life. To refuse Him who is the Light of the world is to remain in darkness.

(6) An examination of the Pauline epistles yields a similar conclusion. St. Paul does not disdain to employ the sanctions of hope and fear. 'Knowing the terrors of the Lord' he persuades men, and 'because of the promises' he urges the Corinthians 'to cleanse themselves and perfect holiness.' But in Paul's case, as in that of our Lord, the charge of hedonism is meaningless. For not only does the conception hold a most subordinate place in his teaching, but the idea loses the sense of merit, and is transmuted into that of a free gift. And in general, in all the passages where the hope of the future is introduced, the idea of reward is merged in the yearning for a fuller life, which the Christian, who has once tasted of its joy here, may well expect in richer measure hereafter.[30]

Enough has been said to clear Christianity of the charge of hedonism. So far from Christian Ethics falling {163} below Philosophical Ethics in regard to purity of motive, it really surpasses it in the sublimity of its sanctions. The Kantian idea of virtue tends to empty the obligation of all moral content. Goodness, as the philosopher himself came to see, cannot be represented as a mere impersonal abstraction. Virtue has no meaning except in relation to its ultimate end. And life in union with a personal God, in whose image we have been made, is the end and purpose of man's being. Noble as it may be to live morally without the thought of God, the man who so strives to live does not attain to such a high conception of life as he who lives with God for his object. Motives advance with aims, and the higher the ideal the nobler the incentive. Fear of future punishment and the desire for future happiness may prove effective aids to the will at certain stages of moral development, but ultimately the love of God and the beauty of holiness make every other motive superfluous. Indeed, the reward of the Christian life is such as can only appeal to one who has come to identify himself with the divine will. The Christian man is always entering upon his reward. His joy is his Master's joy. He has no other interest. His reward, both here and hereafter, is not some external payment, something separable from himself; it is wholly conditioned by what he is, and is simply his own growth of character, his increasing power of being good and doing good. And if it be still asked, What is the great inducement? What is it that makes the life of the Christian worth living? The answer can only be—The hope of becoming what Christ has set before man as desirable, of growing up to the stature of perfect manhood, of attaining to the likeness of Jesus Christ Himself. But so far from this being a selfish aim, not to seek one's life in God—to be indifferent to all the inherent blessings and joys involved—would be not the mark of pure disinterestedness, but the evidence, rather, of a lack of appreciation of what life really means. The soul that has caught the vision of God and been thrilled with the grace of the Son of Man cannot but yield itself to the best it knows.



[1] Cf. Fairbairn, The Phil. of the Ch. Religion, pp. 358 ff.

[2] Peabody, Christ and the Christian Character, p. 44.

[3] Peabody, op. cit., pp. 53 f.

[4] Peabody, op. cit., p. 68.

[5] See Paulsen, System der Ethik, pp. 56 ff.; also Troeltsch, op. cit., vol. ii. p. 847.

[6] Cf. Ehrhardt, Der Grundcharacter d. Ethik. Jesu, p. 110. 'The ascetic element in the ethics of Jesus is its transient, the service of God its permanent element.' Cf. also Strauss, Leben Jesu, who speaks of 'the Hellenic quality' in Jesus; also Keim, Jesus of Nazareth, and Troeltsch, op. cit., vol. i. pp. 34 ff.

[7] John xiii. 15.

[8] Conduct of Life.

[9] Metaphysics of Ethics, sect. ii.

[10] Schultz, Grundriss d. evang. Ethik, p. 5.

[11] Cf. Ecce Homo, chap. x.

[12] This thought has been beautifully worked out by Prof. Denney in British Weekly, Jan. 13, 1912.

[13] Luke xv.

[14] Cf. Knight, The Christian Ethic, p. 36.

[15] See Haering, Ethics of the Christian Life, p. 190.

[16] 'Apocalyptic Element in the Gospels,' Hibbert Journal, Oct. 1911.

[17] The question of rewards has been fully discussed by Jacoby, Neutestamentliche Ethik, pp. 41 ff.; also Barbour, op. cit., pp. 226 ff.

[18] Cf. Kritik d. prakt. Vernunft, p. 143.

[19] Kant, Idem.

[20] Barbour, op. cit., p. 231.

[21] Matt. v. 12, xix. 21, xxv. 34; Luke vi. 23, xviii. 22; Mark x. 21.

[22] Mark viii. 19; Luke ix. 57.

[23] Mark i. 17, ii. 14.

[24] Luke xxii. 29 f.

[25] Mark x. 28-31; cf. Matt. xix. 27-30.

[26] This thought is finely elaborated by Barbour.

[27] Matt. xxv. 21; Luke xix. 17.

[28] Tennyson, Wages.

[29] Deissmann, Light from the Ancient East, pp. 316 ff.

[30] See also Eph. vi. 5-8; 1 Cor. iii. 14; Rom. v. 2-5, vi. 23, viii. 16.



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CHAPTER X

THE DYNAMIC OF THE NEW LIFE

In the dynamic power of the new life we reach the central and distinguishing feature of Christian Ethics. The uniqueness of Christianity consists in its mode of dealing with a problem which all non-Christian systems have tended to ignore—the problem of translating the ideal into life. The Gospel not only sets before men the highest good, but it imparts the secret of realising it. The ideals of the ancients were but visions of perfection. They had no objective reality. Beautiful as these old-time visions of 'Good' were, they lacked impelling force, the power to change dreams into realities. They were helpless in the face of the great fact of sin. They could suggest no remedy for moral disease.

Christianity is not a philosophical dream nor the imagination of a few visionaries. It claims to be a new creative force, a power communicated and received, to be worked out and realised in the actual life and character of common men and women.

In this chapter we have to consider the means whereby man is brought into a new spiritual relation with God, and enabled to live the new life as it has been revealed in Christ. This reconciliation implies a twofold movement—a redemptive action on God's part, and an appropriating and determinative response on the part of man.

I

THE DIVINE POWER

The urgent problem of the New Testament writers was, How can man achieve that good which has been embodied {165} in the life and example of Jesus Christ? A full answer to this question would lead us into the realm of dogmatic theology. And therefore, without entering upon details, it may be said at once that the originality of the Gospel lies in this, that it not only reveals the good in a concrete and living form, but discloses the power which makes the good possible in the hitherto unattempted derivation of the new life from a new birth under the influence of the spirit of God. The power to achieve the moral life does not lie in the natural man. No readjustment of circumstances, nor spread of knowledge, is of itself equal to the task of creating that entirely new phenomenon—the Christian character. There must be a cause proportionate to the effect. 'Nothing availeth,' says Paul, 'but a new creature.' This new condition owes its origin to God. It is a life communicated by an act of divine creative activity.

But while this regenerative energy is represented generally as the work of God's spirit, it is more particularly set forth as operating through Christ who is the power of God unto salvation.

There are three great facts in Christ's life with which the New Testament connects the redemptive work of God.

1. The Incarnation.—In Christ God shares man's nature, and thus makes possible a union of the divine and human. On its divine side the incarnation is the complete revelation of God in human life, and on the human side it is the supreme expression of the spiritual meaning of human nature itself. Christ saves not by a special act of atonement alone, but emphatically by manifesting in Himself the union of God and man. In view of the fact of the world's sin, the Incarnation, as the revelation of the divine life, includes a gracious purpose. It involves the sacrifice of God, which theologians designate by the theory of Kenosis. The Advent was not only the consummation of the religious history of the race; it was also the inauguration of a new era. The Son of Man initiated a new type of humanity, to be realised in increasing fullness as men entered into the meaning of the great revelation. 'He {166} recapitulated in Himself the long unfolding of mankind.'[1] Hence in the very fact of the word becoming flesh atonement is involved. In Christ God is revealed in the reality of His love and the persistence of His search for man, while man is disclosed in the greatness of his vision and vocation.

2. The Death of Christ.—Although already implied in the life, the atonement culminates in the death of Christ. Even by being made in the likeness of men Jesus did not escape from, but willingly took up, the burdens of humanity and bore them as the Son of Man. But His passion upon the cross, as the supreme instance of suffering borne for others, at once illuminated and completed all that He suffered and achieved as man's representative. It is this aspect of Christ's redemptive work upon which St. Paul delights to dwell. And though naturally not so prominent in our Lord's own teaching, yet even there the significance of the Redeemer's death is foreshadowed, and in more than one passage explicitly stated.[2] Here we are in the region of dogmatics, and we are not called upon to formulate a doctrine of the atonement. All that we have to do with is the ethical fact that between man and the new life there lies the actuality of sin, the real source of man's failure to achieve righteousness, and the stumbling-block which must be removed before reconciliation with God the Father can be effected. The act, at once divine and human, which alone meets the case is represented in Scripture as the Sacrifice of Christ. In reference to the efficacy of the sacrifice upon the cross Bishop Butler says: 'How and in what particular way it had this efficacy, there are not wanting persons who have endeavoured to explain; but I do not find that the Scripture has explained it.'[3] Though, indeed, the fact is independent of any theory, the truth for which the cross stands must be brought by us into some kind of intelligible relation with our view of the world, otherwise it is a piece of magic lying outside of our experience, and {167} having no ethical value for life. At the same time no doctrine has suffered more from shallow theorisings, and particularly by the employment of mechanical, legal, and commercial analogies, than the doctrine of the atonement. The very essence of the religious life is incompatible with the idea of an external transference of goodness from one being to another. Man can be reconciled to God only by an absolute surrender of himself to God. To assimilate this spiritual act to a commercial or legal transaction is to destroy the very idea of the moral life. No explanation, however, can be considered satisfactory which does not safeguard two ideas of a deeply ethical nature—the voluntariness and the vicariousness of Christ's sacrifice. We must be careful to do justice, on the one hand, to the eternal relations in which Christ stands to God; and on the other, to the intimate association with man into which Jesus has entered. It is the task of theology to bring together the various passages of Scripture, and exhibit their systematic connection and relative value for a doctrine of soteriology. For Ethics the one significant fact to be recognised is that in a human life was fulfilled perfect obedience, even as far as death, a perfect obedience that completely met and fully satisfied the demand of the very highest, the divine ideal.

3. The Resurrection of Christ.—If the Incarnation naturally issues in the sacrifice unto death, that again is crowned and sealed by Christ's risen life. The Resurrection is the vindication and completion of the Redeemer's work. He who was born of the seed of David according to the flesh was declared to be the Son of God by the Resurrection. It was the certainty that He had risen that gave to His death, in the apostles' eyes, its sacrificial value. This was the ground of St. Paul's conviction that the old order had passed away, and that a new order had been established. 'If Christ be not risen ye are yet in your sins.' In virtue of His ascended life Christ becomes the indwelling presence and living power within the regenerate man. It is in no external way that the Redeemer exerts His influence. He is the principle of life working within the soul. The key {168} to the new state is to be found in the mystical union of the Christian with the risen Lord. The twofold act of death and resurrection has its analogy in the experience of every redeemed man. Within the secret sanctuary of the human soul that has passed from death to life, the history of the Redeemer is re-enacted. In the several passages which refer to this subject the idea is that the changed life is based upon an ethical dying and rising again with Christ.[4] The Christ within the heart is the vital principle and dynamic energy by which the believer lives and triumphs over every obstacle—the world, sin, sorrow, and death itself. 'I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.'[5] All that makes life, 'life indeed'—an exalted, harmonious, and joyous existence—is derived from union with the living Lord, who has come to be what He is for man by the earthly experiences through which He has passed. Thus by His Incarnation, Death, and Resurrection He is at once the source and goal, the spring and ideal of the new life.

'Yea, thro' life, death, sorrow, and through sinning, He shall suffice me for He hath sufficed; Christ is the end, for Christ was the beginning; Christ the beginning, for the end is Christ.'[6]

Theology may seek to analyse the personality of Christ into its elements—the incarnation, death, and resurrection of Jesus. But after all it is one and indivisible. It is the whole fact of Christ, and not any particular experience taken in its isolation, which is the power of God unto salvation. The question still remains after all our analysis, What was it that gave to these events in the history of Jesus their creative and transforming power? And the answer can only be—Because Christ was what He was. It was the unique character of the Being of whom these were but the manifestations which wrought the spell. What bound the New Testament Christians to the cross was that their Master hung there. They saw in that life lived among {169} men, and in that sacrifice upon Calvary, the perfect consummation of the ideal manhood that lived within their own hearts, and of the love, new upon the earth, which made it possible. The cross stood for the symbol of a truth that pierced to the inner core of their souls. 'He bore our sins.' And thus down the centuries, in their hour of shame, and grief, and death, men have lifted their eyes to the Man of Sorrows, and have found in His life and sacrifice, apart from all theories of atonement, their peace and triumph. It is this note of absolute surrender towards God and of perfect love for man which, because it answers to a deep yearning of the human heart, has given to the mystery of the Incarnation and the Cross its lifting and renewing power,

II

THE HUMAN RESPONSE

Possession of power involves the obligation to use it. The force is given; it has to be appropriated. The spirit of Christ is not offered in order to free a man from the duties of the moral life. Man is not simply the recipient of divine energy. He has to make it his own and to work it out by his self-determinative activity. Nevertheless the relation of the divine spirit to the human personality is a subject of great perplexity, involving the psychological problem of the connection of the divine and the human in life generally. If in the last resort God is the ultimate source of all life, the absolute Being, who

'Can rejoice in naught Save only in Himself and what Himself hath wrought';

that truth must be held in harmony with the facts of divine immanence and human experience. The divine spirit holds within His grasp all reality, and by His self-communicating activity makes the world of nature and of life possible. But that being granted, how are we to conceive the relation of that Spirit to man with his distinct individuality, with {170} his sense of working out a future and a fate in which the Absolute may indeed be fulfilling its purpose, but which are none the less man's own achievement? That is the crux of the problem. The outstanding fact which bears upon this problem is the general character of our experience, the growth of which is not the mere laying of additional material upon a passive subject by an external power, but is a true development, a process in which the subject is himself operative in the unfolding of his own potentialities. Without dwelling further upon this question it may be well to bear in mind two points: (1) The growth of experience is a gradual entrance into conscious possession of what we implicitly are and potentially have from the beginning. Duty, for example, is not something alien from a man, something superimposed by a power not himself. It lies implicit in his nature as his ideal and vocation. The moral life is the life in which a man comes to 'know himself,' to apprehend himself as he truly is. (2) In this development of experience we ourselves are active and self-organising. We are really making ourselves, and are conscious, that even while we are the instruments of a higher power, we are working out our own individuality, exercising our own freedom and determination.[7] The teaching of the New Testament is in full accord with this position. If, on the one hand, St. Paul states that every moral impulse is due to the inspiration of God, no less emphatic is he in ascribing to man himself full freedom of action. 'The ethical sense of responsibility,' says Johannes Weiss,[8] 'the energy for struggle, and the discipline of the will were not paralysed nor absorbed in Paul's case by his consciousness of redemption and his profound spiritual experiences.' Scripture lends no support to the idea which some forms of Augustinian theology assume, that the divine spirit is an irresistible force acting from without upon man and superseding his exertions. It acts as an immanent moral power, not compelling or crushing the will, but quickening and inspiring its efforts.

{171}

If we inquire what constitutes the subjective or human element in the making of the new life, we find that the New Testament emphasises three main factors—Repentance, Faith, and Obedience. These are complementary, and together constitute what is commonly called 'conversion.'

1. Repentance is a turning away in sorrow and contrition from a life of sin, a breaking off from evil because a better standard has been accepted. Our Lord began His ministry with a call to repentance. The first four beatitudes set forth its elements; while the parable of the prodigal illustrates its nature.

Ethical writers distinguish between a negative and a positive aspect of repentance. On its negative side it is regarded as the emotion of sorrow excited by reflection upon sin. But sorrow, though accompanying repentance, must not be identified with it. Mere regret, either in the form of bitterness over one's folly, or chagrin on account of discovery, may be but a weak sentiment which exerts little or no influence upon a man's subsequent conduct. Even remorse following the commission of wickedness may only deepen into a paralysing despair which works death rather than repentance unto life.

(1) On its positive side repentance implies action as well as feeling, and involves a determination of will to quit the past and start on a new life. A man repents not merely when he grieves over his misdeed, but when he confesses it and seeks to make what amendment he can. This positive outlook upon the future, rather than the passive brooding over the past, is happily expressed in the New Testament term metanoia, change of mind, and is enforced in the Baptist's counsel, 'Bring forth fruits meet for repentance.'[9] The change of mind here indicated is practically equivalent to what is variously called in the New Testament 'Conversion,'[10] 'Renewal,'[11] 'Regeneration,'[12]—words suggestive of the completeness of the change.

(2) The variety of terms employed to describe conversion {172} would seem to imply that the Scriptures recognise a diversity of mode. All do not enter the kingdom of God by the same way; and the New Testament offers examples varying from the sudden conversion of a Saul to the almost imperceptible transformation of a Nathaniel and a Timothy. In modern life something of the same variety of Christian experience is manifest. While what is called 'sudden conversion' cannot reasonably be denied,[13] as little can those cases be ignored in which the truth seems to pervade the mind gradually and almost unconsciously—cases of steady spiritual growth from childhood upwards, in which the believer is unaware of any break in the continuity of his inner history, his days appearing to be 'bound each to each by natural piety.'

(3) The question arises, Which is the normal experience? The matter has been put somewhat bluntly by the late Professor James,[14] as to whether the 'twice-born' or the 'once-born' present the natural type of Christian experience. Is it true, he asks, that the experience of St. Paul, which has so long dominated Christian teaching, is really the higher or even the healthier mode of approaching religion? Does not the example of Jesus offer a simpler and more natural ideal? The moral experience of the Son of Man was not a revolution but an evolution. His own religion was not that of the twice-born, and all that He asked of His disciples was the childlike mind.[15] Paul, the man of cities, feels a kindred turbulence within himself. Jesus, the interpreter of nature, feels the steady persuasiveness of the sunshine of God, and grows from childhood in stature, wisdom, and favour with God and man. It is contended by some that the whole Pauline conception of sin is a nightmare, and rests upon ideas of God and man which are unworthy and untrue. 'As a matter of fact,' says Sir Oliver Lodge, 'the higher man of to-day is not worrying about his sins at all, still less about their punishment; his mission, if he is good for anything, is to be up and doing.'[16] {173} This amounts to a claim for the superiority of the first of the two types of religious consciousness, the type which James describes as 'sky-blue souls whose affinities are with flowers and birds and all enchanting innocencies than with dark human passions; . . . in whom religious gladness, being in possession from the outset, needs no deliverance from any antecedent burden.'[17] The second type is marked by a consciousness, similar to St. Paul's, of the divided self. It starts from radical pessimism. It only attains to religious peace through great tribulation. It is the religion of the 'sick soul' as contrasted with that of 'healthy-mindedness.' But, morbid as it may appear, to be disturbed by past sin, it is really the 'twice-born' who have sounded the depths of the human heart, and have been the greatest religious leaders. And so far from the sense of the need of repentance being the sign of a diseased mind, the decreasing consciousness of sin in our day may only prove the shallowness of the modern mind. What men need of religion is power. And there is a danger of people to-day losing a sense of the dynamic force of the older Gospel.[18]