LECTURE X.

INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY UPON

MORALS.

THERE is a large class in every state and community which never seeks to be any better than the law. What the law allows they do without scruple, and they are content to keep just within the limits of what it condemns. This is true even in communities where a much higher standard is zealously upheld by other persons throughout their limits. Far more generally shall we find it true where no loftier teaching comes to the aid of human law, as complement or corrective. Not merely the practice, but the consciences, of the mass of a community will conform to the laws which allow, for instance, polygamy or slavery. "The national conceptions of the various relations of society, as property, marriage, the family, the state, and the like, which are the basis of the laws, are also the basis of the morals of the nation." 2

This serious fact calls our attention to the necessity that if revealed religion is effectively to influence the morals of men, it must speak to them with the authority of a state or kingdom. Christian morals must be based upon the divine laws of the Kingdom of God. And as among

'This is beneath the standard of Aristotle's "equitable man," who "does not push the letter of the law to the furthest on the worse side, but is disposed to make allowances,

even although he has the law in his favor."-Ethics, Bk. V., Ch. X., p. 146.

2 Whewell's Morality, Bk. III., Ch. XIX., § 458.

pagan nations we observe that the state absorbed into its own the authority also of the Church-that is, the interpretation of the divine law-so it is to be noted that the language of Scripture, which the Church addresses to her children, usually implies in them a knowledge of the principles of natural justice. When, for instance, the “unjust, covenant breakers, extortioners," are condemned, the sentence is simply left without definitions or limitations of the respective offences. The Church, in fact, while seeking to form in her members a new character, upon a distinct type of morals, recognizes and requires of them, as a matter of course, the virtues such as truth, justice, industry, prudence, which the natural reason and conscience demand in a good man and a good citizen.' But while human laws enforce their precepts by the coercion of penalties, Christ, in His kingdom, offers to His every subject and member the power, purchased by His work of sacrifice on earth, to fulfil every duty, natural and spiritual, and threatens no penalty whatever save the withholding of this power.

And here it seems appropriate to our subject to attempt an arduous task, no less than to sketch an outline of Christian morals, this picture of unearthly perfection, the ability to realize which has been actually brought to human beings in their several places and conditions here upon earth.

The best type of the ideal Christian is doubtless to be found in the example, suggested by our Lord's own comparison, of the little child following in faith and loyalty the voice and leading of his heavenly Father. This is enjoined by the great exemplar of every Christian virtue, "Be ye therefore perfect even as your Father in heaven is perfect." And He is Himself the infallible guide in that heavenward way, bidding each of us as we arise to go, "Learn of me."3 The peculiar virtues of any earthly

1 2 S. Peter, ii. 9. I Cor. v. II; vi. 10.

Rom. i. 31. Moses: "The law is not made for a righteous man, but for the lawless and disobedient.' '—1 S. Tim. i. 9.

"We might say of human law what S. Paul says of the law of

S. Matt. v. 48; xi. 29.

state or kingdom are sometimes said to depend upon its situation, its surroundings, its ruling house, its period in history. Following this analogy, we may say that the traits demanded in the character of the children of God's kingdom, though adapted to every place and time on earth, are in a peculiar way the reflection of the image of their heavenly King, and are fostered by realizing vividly that their life in this world, wherever cast, is in truth a probation and parental discipline for the future life into which they are ushered by death as by a new birth. Every soul alive to the meaning and nature of the Christian life has a deep and growing faith in the invisible world, words from which, and about which, its King and inhabitants, it receives with joy rather than surprise, with thanksgiving rather than difficulty; it has a growing hope that the grace and mercy of its Maker and Redeemer will triumph over its own feebleness and imperfections, and make it share in the glories revealed to faith; it glows with a charity, kindled at first, indeed, and ever fed by the thought of its God and Saviour, but extending to all creatures, and proved and strengthened by labors of love to all who bear the divine image, longsuffering and kind, without envy or pride or anything unseemly.

The virtues of the Christian soul stand in their completeness for what it is; its duties, on the other hand, for the acts it performs in its threefold relation to God, to its neighbor, and to itself. Considering these in a reversed order, we may say that the root of the morality which regulates a Christian man's duties toward himself is the longing for holiness-that is, for likeness to his heavenly Father and Lord-and the deliberate purpose to make the loyal service of that Lord, in thought, word, and deed, the supreme end of life. He finds his selfconquest the more assured to him, when, in the second place, he can labor and pray for his neighbor with the same zeal as for his own salvation, and recognizes his own truest happiness in the success of such unselfish

efforts. In the third place, his devotion to God is quickened, his gratitude enkindled, his faith strengthened, when he perceives the fire that consumes his own heart burning in other souls, and that even his own poor service is accepted in extending the kingdom of his Lord among those who were aliens to it. With new fervor does he bless that holy name and celebrate His hallowed service, when he perceives it displacing profaneness, winning to itself reverence, giving hope to the desperate, and comfort to those forsaken of earthly help.

A Christian hates sin not merely because it threatens his own soul with irremediable misery, but primarily and chiefly because it separates him from God, whose favor is the very life of his being, and lifts the hand against the Master whose honor is dearer to him than his own; then, next, because sin is the fountain of all the sorrows and sufferings of his brethren, and indeed of the entire race of man, for whose ruin the author of sin is plotting. On the other hand, the Christian accepts the toils and discipline of life, not at all as drudgery or a mercenary task for which he will claim a stipulated reward, but as a glad service for a Master whom it is too great honor to be permitted to serve, and a test of the faith and a proof of the love which are the strength and joy of the breast in which they are cherished.

We may test the reality of Christian virtue by comparing it in detail with what the wise heathen called the cardinal virtues-those on which all others depend-prudence, justice, fortitude, temperance. Prudence by itself denotes simply the adapting of suitable means to accomplish a given end. Christianity has raised this virtue into wisdom, which includes the power to select right ends, as well as to adopt suitable means as prudence does. The true religion can alone disclose those ends of action that are absolutely right and worthy. S. Paul inculcates justice almost in the very language of the Roman law: "Render to all their dues." But S. James announced 1 Rom. xiii. 7. añódore nãói ràs operλas. Cf. suum cuique tribuere.

also what no teacher or law-giver among the heathen had done: "He shall have judgment [or justice] without mercy, who hath showed no mercy." So, again, fortitude is a Christian virtue, but means a strength and courage to resist more than mere pain, that is to say, the blandishments of sense and luxury, and still more, the courage to acknowledge fear of what is truly formidable, according to the Lord's words: "I will forewarn you whom ye shall fear." Finally temperance became a Christian virtue when self-control, no longer confined to one or two solicitations, was extended to "all things."3 The Christian religion certainly did a service to morality when it thus not only enlarged the sphere of the old cardinal virtues, but put on a level with them benevolence, truth, and purity, the first and last of which were hardly recognized by heathen moralists as virtues at all.

We should here note how some of the chief points of morality are taught in Holy Scripture. At one time leading virtues are taught by general rules. Thus the duty of piety: "God is a Spirit, and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth." "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind." The Golden Rule, or Christian justice: "All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets." Benevolence: "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those that trespass against us." "I will have mercy and not sacrifice." Purity is taught by condemning a lustful look; and that religious defilement proceeds not from ceremonial omissions, but from the things that proceed "out of the heart." Our Lord illustrates such virtues at times by expressive narratives, like that of the Good Samaritan or the unmerciful servant; or again by incidents that came in His way, such as His reproof of S. James and S. John when they

'S. James, ii. 13. *S. Luke, xii. 3.

'I Cor. ix. 25.