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CONSCIENCE AND CHRIST 
 
BY THE SAME AUTHOR 
 
 THE UNIVERSITIES OF EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE 
 AGES, 1895 
 
 Article in CONTENTIO VERITATIS (THE ULTIMATE 
 BASIS OF THEISM), 1902 
 
 Article in PERSONAL IDEALISM (PERSONALITY IN 
 GOD AND MAN), 1902 
 
 DOCTRINE AND DEVELOPMENT (UNIVERSITY 
 SERMONS), 1898 
 
 NEW COLLEGE (with W. S. RAIT in OXFORD 
 COLLEGE HISTORIES), 1901 
 
 CHRISTUS IN ECCLESIA, 1904 
 
 THE THEORY OF GOOD AND EVIL, 1907 
 
 PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION, 1909 
 
 IS CONSCIENCE AN EMOTION? 1914 
 
CONSCIENCE & CHRIST 
 
 SIX LECTURES 
 ON CHRISTIAN ETHICS 
 
 BY 
 
 HASTINGS RASHDALL 
 
 D.LiTT., LL.D., D.C.L. 
 
 FELLOW AND LECTURER OF NEW COLLEGE, OXFORD 
 
 FELLOW OF THE BRITISH ACADEMY 
 
 CANON RESIDENTIARY OF HEREFORD 
 
 LONDON 
 DUCKWORTH & CO. 
 
 3 HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN 
 
if-] 
 
 A, 31 1 'fife 
 
 First i/uhlished sqib 
 Second Imprission Jamtary igij 
 
TO 
 
 THE PRESIDENT 
 
 AND 
 
 THEOLOGICAL FACULTY 
 
 OF OBERLIN COLLEGE, OHIO 
 U.S.A. 
 
 THESE PAGES 
 ARE GRATEFULLY DEDICATED 
 
PREFACE 
 
 THE present lectures were delivered as the 
 Haskell Lectures in the Theological Seminary of 
 Oberlin College, Ohio, U.S.A., during the autumn of 
 1913. They would have been pubUshed earlier but for 
 the war. They were delivered very much as they stand, 
 with a few omissions. I have thought it best to add 
 considerable notes and appendices rather than to enlarge 
 the lectures to an extent which would in several cases 
 have involved complete re-writing. 
 
 It may be desirable briefly to explain the design of 
 this Uttle work. For more than thirty years the 
 present writer has been a University teacher of 
 Philosophy, devoting himself especially to Moral 
 Philosophy. He has also been to some extent a 
 student of Theology. He has been struck by the 
 different tone in which moral questions are dealt with 
 by Philosophers on the one hand, and by Theologians 
 and preachers on the other. The Moral Philosopher, 
 if he is not one of those who explain away Morality 
 altogether, usually holds that Morality means the 
 following of Conscience. In theological books and 
 sermons it is as commonly assumed that the supreme 
 
 vii 
 
viii Preface 
 
 rule for a Christian should be to follow Christ. The 
 writer beUeves that there is truth in both principles, 
 but it is obvious that this position involves a problem 
 as to the relation between the two authorities— and a 
 problem not very often expHcitly dealt with. That is 
 the problem with which these lectures are mainly 
 occupied. 
 
 There seems to be an especial call for some attempt 
 at a systematic enquiry into the subject at the present 
 moment, for a disposition has recently been mani- 
 fested in more than one quarter to disparage the moral 
 teaching of Jesus Christ. The supposed discovery 
 that the teaching of Jesus consisted mainly in 
 " Eschatology " has led to the adoption of an almost 
 contemptuous attitude towards His ethical teaching 
 on the part of writers who describe that teaching as 
 a mere " Interimsethik " of little present value or 
 significance ; while (strange to say) the tendency has 
 been to some extent welcomed on the part of certain 
 Theologians of quite a different school because they 
 discern in it a confirmation of the position that there 
 is nothing particularly characteristic in this part of 
 our Lord's teaching, and that it is only in the dogmatic 
 teaching (to be found chiefly in the Epistles and in the 
 later Creeds) that the true essence of the Christian 
 Religion is to be discovered. They hope therefore 
 that they have discovered in this " eschatological " 
 tendency of modem Criticism a new weapon against 
 the old-fashioned " Liberal Protestantism " which is 
 
Preface ix 
 
 accused of making too much of the actual teaching of 
 Christ and too httle of the doctrine about His Person 
 and work. The present writer is not one of tho^ (if 
 indeed there are such persons) who beheve that Chris- 
 tianity consists solely in the ethical teaching of its 
 Founder, but he does believe that any true repre- 
 sentation of Christianity must treat it as a Religion 
 rooted and grounded in Ethics. He does strongly hold 
 that any doctrine of our Lord's Person which does not 
 base itself primarily upon the appeal which the teach- 
 ing of Jesus makes to the conscience of mankind rests 
 upon an extremely precarious foundation. 
 
 There are two or three points which I would especi- 
 ally invite the reader of these pages to bear in mind : 
 
 I. The lectures are confined to the ethical side of 
 Christ's teaching. I have imposed these limitations 
 upon myself partly because in so short a course it 
 was impossible to deal with the whole of our Lord's 
 teaching, and partly because it was only by isolating 
 the ethical side of that teaching that it seemed possible 
 to discuss with thoroughness and definiteness the 
 question whether or not the ethical ideal of our Lord 
 can still be accepted by the modem world as the expres- 
 sion of its highest Morality, and to ask in what relation 
 this ideal stands to that continuous teaching of Con- 
 science in which, as I believe, there is no less certainly 
 contained a revelation — a progressive and evolving 
 revelation — of God. That there may seem to be some- 
 thing a little artificial and unnatural in so isolating the 
 
 A 2 
 
X Preface 
 
 moral teaching of One for whom Morality stood in 
 such close and intimate relation to Religion, I am well 
 aware ; but this seemed to be the only way in which 
 the particular problem on which I wished to concen- 
 trate attention could be discussed without its be- 
 coming mixed up with many others. 
 
 2. The reader — particularly any Theologian into 
 whose hands the book may fall — is asked to remember 
 that this httle book is not intended primarily as a 
 contribution towards the solution of critical or his- 
 torical problems. I should have preferred to confine 
 myself to purely philosophical and ethical questions, 
 but it is impossible to examine the proper attitude of 
 the modern Conscience to the teaching of our Lord 
 without asking what in point of fact this teaching 
 was; and I have therefore felt bound — somewhat 
 reluctantly — to take notice of, and to pass judgement 
 upon, not a few critical questions, and still more 
 often to recognize the existence of alternative critical 
 possibilities. The critical Theologian will be the first 
 to appreciate the fact that these questions about 
 sources and authenticity are not yet settled with such 
 a degree of certainty that a writer who wishes, as far 
 as possible, to look at the matter from the point of 
 view of Moral Philosophy can simply take over on 
 authority some established view, and confine himself 
 to examining the ethical teaching involved in the 
 sayings accepted as genuine. Most critics will admit 
 that a certain degree of probability is all that can 
 
Preface ^ xl 
 
 ever be hoped for on many of these questions. They 
 will therefore readily forgive the writer for not ex- 
 pressing confident opinions on the more disputed 
 points. 
 
 And here it may be convenient to say that as to 
 the origin of the Synoptic Gospels I accept the now 
 generally received two-document hypothesis. I 
 believe, that is to say, that the writers of the first and 
 third Gospels derive the greater part of their informa- 
 tion from two documents : (i) The Gospel of St. Mark 
 in a form very nearly identical with that which it 
 has now assumed ; (2) A work (consisting principally 
 perhaps of sayings) which used to be spoken of as 
 " the Logia," but is now generally known as " Q." 
 Such a document is generally believed to be the source 
 of those sayings or discourses found in the first and 
 third Gospels, but not found in St. Mark. Besides 
 these each Evangelist doubtless used other sources ; 
 in particular we may recognize an important document 
 used by St. Luke in those passages, including some 
 of our Lord's most characteristic parables, which are 
 peculiar to his Gospel. Upon these matters there 
 is practically now a consensus ; but on such difficult 
 questions as the exact " limits " of " Q," the relation 
 of St. Luke's source to " Q," whether St. Mark had 
 " Q " before him or not, I have not felt myself bound 
 to express definite opinions. I am well aware that no 
 opinion on such matters can have much value which 
 is not based on years of special study. 
 
xii Preface 
 
 3. I am fully conscious of the incompleteness of 
 the book. On the critical side many sayings of our 
 Lord which are not of primary importance for ascer- 
 taining the nature and value of His ethical teaching 
 are not noticed at all. The treatment of many ques- 
 tions of philosophical Ethics which incidentally arise is 
 so brief that I should hardly have liked to let the book 
 go forth at all but for the fact that I have already 
 discussed many of them at considerable length in a 
 previous work, The Theory of Good and Evil.''- I trust 
 I shall be excused for rather frequently referring the 
 reader who is desirous of a more thorough discussion 
 of particular points to a chapter in that work. 
 
 My obligations to many writers upon the life and 
 teaching of our Lord and upon questions of Gospel 
 criticism will be sufficiently obvious. The quotations 
 from one of them are so extensive that a word of 
 gratitude and apology may seem called for. I have 
 been tempted to make frequent quotations from 
 Mr. Claude Montefiore's Synoptic Gospels partly by 
 their intrinsic excellence, and partly because, when 
 questions arise as to the originality of our Lord's 
 teaching and its relation to earlier Jewish Ethics, the 
 verdict of one who occupies the position of Liberal 
 Judaism is peculiarly free from the suspicion attaching 
 to the writings of Christian Theologians. Mr. Monte- 
 fiore, in spite of his reverent appreciation of our Lord's 
 
 • Also in a very brief form in a little volume on Ethics published 
 in The People's Books Series. 
 
Preface xiii 
 
 teaching, cannot be accused of being a " Christian 
 Apologist " ; while he is wholly free from that tendency 
 to belittle or explain away the distinctive elements in 
 the teaching of Jesus which is unhappily at the present 
 moment by no means confined to ultra-" liberal " 
 Theologians. 
 
 I have been greatly helped in the original preparation 
 of these lectures by the Rev. J. R. Wilkinson, Rector 
 of Winford near Bristol, and in their revision for 
 publication by the Rev. C. W. Emmet, Vicar of West 
 Hendred, Oxon, and by my colleague, Canon Streeter, to 
 all of whom I owe many important suggestions. I 
 must also gratefully acknowledge valuable assistance 
 in the final revision of the proofs from the Rev. W. M. 
 Browne, Chaplain to the Bishop of Hereford, and the 
 Rev. G. L. H. Harvey, Vicar of Allensmore, Hereford. 
 
 H. RASHDALL 
 
 The Close, Hereford 
 March, 1916 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 LECTURE I 
 Moral Philosophy and Moral Authority 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Contrast between the philosophical and the theological 
 attitude towards Ethics : philosophers appeal to Con- 
 science, theologians to the Bible or the Church or to the 
 authority of Christ alone ...... i 
 
 A problem (rarely faced) arises : What is the relation between 
 the two sorts of Authority or between Moral Philosophy and 
 Moral Theology or Christian Ethics ..... 5 
 
 Nature and authority of Conscience : not a " Moral Sense " 
 but a kind of Reason, which possesses objective validity . 7 
 
 The Ethical Criterion : Intuitionism v. Utilitarianism. 
 Utilitarianism is right in insisting that actions are right or 
 wrong so far as they do or do not promote a universal Good, 
 but this Good is not pleasure only, but includes oilier 
 elements, especially moral goodness, and (in subordination 
 thereto) intellectual culture, etc. (" Ideal Utilitarianism ") . 10 
 
 If Conscience can decide moral questions, where is there 
 room for Authority ? Reply : (o) ends are self-evident, but 
 to decide on means wants more experience than the average 
 individual possesses ; (6) the individual can only judge of 
 goods which he knows, and (e) not all are equally good judges 
 of moral values ........ 13 
 
 Hence all must begin by relying on authority, and must 
 remain largely dependent on the accepted standard of the 
 community ......... 16 
 
 But this submission must not be absolute (as with some 
 Hegelians) : moral progress is effected by interaction of 
 individual and community . . . . . .18 
 
 Influence on moral progress of great personalities and of the 
 historical religions founded or reformed by them . . 21 
 
 Nature and limits of external Authority in Ethics . . 22 
 
xvi Contents 
 
 I'AGE 
 
 The authority rightly claimed for Jesus Christ cannot rest 
 upon external attestation (e.g. by miracles) but must 
 depend upon the appeal which His teaching makes to the 
 moral consciousness . . . ■ • • ■ ^5 
 
 Submission to external Authority never is, or ought to be, 
 unlimited ......•■• 3i 
 
 Our Lord Himself appeals to Conscience .... 33 
 
 LECTURE II 
 Ethics and Eschatology 
 
 A recent change in the attitude of Theologians towards the 
 eschatological sayings of our Lord compels us to deal with 
 the question. It is contended that the substance of 
 His teaching was Eschatology, i.e. the announcement of a 
 speedy catastrophic judgement, and that His ethical teaching 
 was a mere " interimsethik " of little value to the modem 
 world .......... 36 
 
 Examination of these ideas : (i) Not all the eschatological 
 sayings can be trusted : the eschatological element smaller 
 than is now often contended . . . . . .44 
 
 (2) Side by side with a future Kingdom Jesus recognizes a 
 present Kingdom which was to advance gradually : " the 
 Kingdom of God is within you," etc. .... 51 
 
 (3) " The Kingdom of God," in whatever way it was to come, 
 represents an ethical and spiritual conception ... 55 
 
 If Jesus did expect a sudden and catastrophic judgement in 
 the near future, that need not destroy the truth or value 
 of His ethical teaching; the moral ideal is fundamentally 
 the same, however short or long a time the world is to last . 60 
 
 The actual influence of the current Eschatology upon the 
 teaching of Jesus was small ...... 63 
 
 Consequently it can be applied to modern life with little 
 adaptation ......... 65 
 
 Father Tyrrell's use of the ultra-eschatological theory : 
 Christian Ethics cannot be pessimistic .... 67 
 
 Bearing of the question upon the authority and the Divinity 
 of Jesus Christ ........ 71 
 
 LECTURE III 
 
 The Ethical Teaching of Jesus Christ 
 
 This teaching was not given in the form of a system, but that 
 does not prevent the philosopher discovering general 
 principles in it . . . . . . . -77 
 
Contents 
 
 XVII 
 
 79 
 
 85 
 94 
 
 95 
 
 The moral teaching of Jesus presupposes the advanced 
 Morality of late Judaism, and this morality is in many 
 respects higher than that of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle : 
 e.g. as regeurds Chastity and Charity .... 
 
 Retrogression and progress exhibited by the Pharisaic 
 Legalism : Almsgiving, care of poor, sick, etc. 
 
 Differences between this teaching and Christ's : . 
 
 (i) Attitude of our Lord towards the Jewish Law. Without 
 actually encouraging non-observance of the ceremonial 
 Law, He practically denied its eternal moral obligation 
 and insisted only on the ethical commands 
 
 (2) He deepened, transcended, and spiritualized the strictly 
 moral requirements of the Law ; and insisted upon the 
 " inwardness " of true Morality : attitude towards Divorce 
 
 and oaths ......... loi 
 
 (3) He extended the Jewish idea of love to one's neighbour 
 so as to make it include all mankind : his teaching in 
 principle uuiversalistic : the good Samaritan, etc. 
 
 The principle of Human Brotherhood, laid down by Jesus, 
 must be accepted as the fundamental truth of Ethics 
 
 To appreciate importance of the ethical teaching of Jesus 
 we must remember (i) that its influence is as much due to 
 the form as to the substance ...... 
 
 (2) It must not be treated merely as so many isolated sayings, 
 but as a whole : the ideal embodied in a character and a life 
 
 (3) The close connexion between the ethical teaching and the 
 strictly religious ........ 
 
 108 
 
 "3 
 
 "5 
 
 116 
 
 "7 
 
 A dditional Note on the Ethical Teaching of Christ in Detail 
 The value of Christ's teaching does not depend merely upon the 
 enunciation of a single general principle, but also upon the 
 applications and illustrations of this principle : attempt to 
 enumerate the subordinate principles which follow from the 
 law of Love ........ 119 
 
 (i) Love to enemies ....... 120 
 
 (2) Forgiveness of injuries . . . . . .120 
 
 (3) Self-sacrifice . ... . . . . .122 
 
 (4) The danger of riches . . . . . . .123 
 
 (5) Humility .;....... 124 
 
 (6) Nature of the Christian good ..... 126 
 
 (7) Purity : connexion of this duty with law of love . . 127 
 
 (8) The necessity of Repentance ..... 129 
 
 (9) The duty of making others better .... 131 
 
 (10) The sinfulness of casting stumbling-blocks . . . 132 
 
 (11) The danger of Hypocrisy ...... 133 
 
xviii Contents 
 
 LECTURE IV 
 Objections to the Moral Teaching of Christ 
 
 FAGX 
 
 The most fundamental objections (e.g. Nietzsche's) wilt not 
 be considered, but only those of persons who recognize the 
 obligation of Altruism, but object to particular interpreta- 
 tions or applications of the Christian rule . . -134 
 
 (i) Exaggerated self-sacrifice ? Tolstoi's interpretation 
 illogical 139 
 
 (2) Universal Non-resistance is not a logical development, nor 
 
 did Christ mean all his precepts to be taken literally . 143 
 
 (3) " Sell all thou hast " 150 
 
 (4) Christ's teaching not in the stricter sense ascetic : fasting 156 
 
 (5) Attitude towards celibacy . . . . . .162 
 
 (6) Attitude towards Knowledge and Culture : Christ's 
 teaching does require continuous development, and has 
 received that development through the working of God's 
 Spirit in the Church . . . . . . .163 
 
 Additional Note on Some Detailed Objections to the Moral 
 
 Teaching of Christ 
 
 (i) The unjust Steward . . . . . . .169 
 
 {2) The parable of the Householder ..... 170 
 
 (3) The cursing of the fig-tree . . . . . .173 
 
 {4) The violent cleansing of the Temple .... 173 
 
 (5) Alleged harshness : the Syro-Phoenician woman . .175 
 
 (6) " Give not that which is holy unto the dogs " . . 177 
 
 (7) Alleged depreciation of family ties . . . .178 
 
 (8) " Let the dead bury their dead " .... 179 
 (g) The denunciation of the Pharisees . . . .179 
 
 (10) The suggestion of undue Self-exaltation . . . 183 
 
 (11) Alleged admission of moral imperfection . . .184 
 
 (12) The marriage feast : humility for sake of reward ? . 187 
 
 (13) Discouragement of Prudence : " Take no thought for 
 
 the morrow " ........ 187 
 
 (14) The alleged impossibility of Universal Love . . .189 
 
 LECTURE V 
 
 The Principle of Development 
 
 The teaching of Jesus can be accepted as the supreme guide 
 for modern life, but only on condition (i) that it is under- 
 stood to lay down principles, not details of conduct ; (2) 
 that the principle of Development is admitted . -195 
 
Contents xix 
 
 # 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Two kinds of Development needed : (i) there is a constant 
 discovery of new means to the true end or good . .196 
 
 (2) Men's conception of what good is must in detail be con- 
 tinually growing and expanding : how far it is true that 
 the Ethic of Jesus was " world-renouncing," while ours is 
 and must be " world-affirming "..... 199 
 
 How far the actual morality of the Christian Church has been 
 unduly " world-renouncing " . . . . . . 208 
 
 How far the same can be said of Protestantism . .214 
 
 Abandonment of the " world-renouncing " element in past 
 Christianity involves no abandonment of Christ's own 
 ideal: Christ and the " Imitatio Christi " . . 217 
 
 The best modem Christianity is partly a return to the actual 
 teaching of Christ, partly a development of it in accordance 
 with the true spirit of it . . . . . .219 
 
 But (i) some modem Moralities can never be Christianized 222 
 
 (2) The truly Christian development implies a much more 
 complete realization of Brotherhood than conventional 
 Christianity recognizes . . . . . . .224 
 
 Additional Note on Christian Ethics in the Apostolic Writings 
 
 Analysis of the development given to our Lord's teaching by 
 St. Paul and the Apostolic age ..... 227 
 
 (i) Explicit teaching of the Universalism implied by our 
 Lord .......... 227 
 
 (2) Clear enunciation of the principle that all moral rules are 
 summed up in Love ....... 228 
 
 (3) Emphasis on detailed duties and virtues implied in 
 Love : this made necessary by Gentile Christianity . . 229 
 
 (4) Questions of Casuistry involved in new circumstances . 230 
 
 (5) Duties brought into existence by the organization of the 
 Church ......... 231 
 
 (6) Obedience to the State ...... 232 
 
 (7) Patient endurance of suffering . . . -232 
 
 (8) Application to duties involved by particular relations of 
 
 life — family relations, slavery, etc. ..... 233 
 
 How far there was any element of decline in ethical teaching : 
 (i) Attitude towards persecutors in Apocalypse ; (2) expecta- 
 tion of Parousia ; (3) growth of asceticism ; (4) St. Paul's 
 view of Marriage ; (5) Germs of intolerance . . . 234 
 
XX Contents 
 
 LECTURE VI 
 Christian Ethics and Other Systems 
 
 PACI 
 
 How far was Christ's teaching original and peculiar to Him- 
 self ? 239 
 
 Ethics of Christianity compared with the teaching of Aristotle 
 and other ancient Moralists ...... 240 
 
 With Stoicism, the highest of non-Christian systems : the best 
 
 of its teaching has been absorbed by Christianity . . 242 
 
 The historical Religions : not true that the historical Religions 
 are all expressions of the same " religious experience " or 
 that they teach the same Ethics ..... 254 
 
 Judaism in its historical form not universalistic . . . 258 
 
 Mohammedanism ........ 259 
 
 Zoroastrianism or Parseeism . . . . . .261 
 
 Hindooism ......... 263 
 
 Buddhism ......... 264 
 
 Attempts to reform the old religions more or less in accord- 
 ance with Christian ideas : the Brahmo Somaj, liberal 
 Judaism, etc. ........ 271 
 
 Such attempts should be treated as among the ways in which 
 the Kingdoms of the world are becoming the Kingdom of 
 our God and of His Christ . . . . . .273 
 
 Reasons for not being satisfied with such a partial Christiam- 
 ization of the world : justification of Christian Missions : 
 devotion to a personal Christ . . . . .275 
 
 Connexion between Christ's ethical teaching and the Church's 
 doctrine of His Person ....... 278 
 
 APPENDIX I 
 
 On the Love of God 
 
 Relation between love of God and love of Humanity . . 286 
 
 APPENDIX II 
 
 On Christ's Teaching about Future Reward and Punishment 
 
 Ctitical examination of reported sayings : it is probable that 
 our Lord did not teach the doctrine of endless punishment : 
 certainly not taught by St. Paul . , . . . 290 
 
CONSCIENCE & CHRIST 
 
 LECTURE I 
 MORAL PHILOSOPHY AND MORAL AUTHORITY 
 
 IF you open a book of Moral Philosophy written by a 
 philosopher of any school which does not altogether 
 explain away moral distinctions, you find it invariably 
 assumed that it is possible to find out what is right and 
 what is wrong by an appeal to some power, faculty, or 
 activity of the human mind. The Philosophers may 
 differ as to what this faculty is, as to the method of its 
 procedure, as to the precise meaning attached to the 
 ideas of right and wrong and as to what particular acts 
 are right or wrong. But if we confine ourselves to 
 the greater philosophical writers of any period, or to 
 any philosophical writers great or small who have 
 written in modern times, you will invariably find this 
 much common ground' between them. In none of 
 them wiU you find yourself referred to any external 
 authority — any authoritative book or books, any body 
 of decrees or canons emanating from any external 
 authority whether of the past or of the present — as 
 our only means of discovering what we ought to do. 
 
 B 
 
2 Conscience and Christ 
 
 Probably you will not find such authorities even 
 mentioned at all as a source of guidance on ethical 
 questions. On the other hand, when you take up a 
 book of orthodox Theology or read a discussion upon 
 some particular practical problem in a Church assembly 
 or a religious newspaper, you are very likely to find 
 it assumed without apology or qualification that the 
 difference between right and wrong is to be decided 
 wholly or mainly by the exegesis of scriptural texts, 
 or by an appeal to Canons of Councils passed — it may 
 be in light, or it may be in very dark, ages of the 
 Church's history. The only difference of opinion 
 seems to be as to what are the authoritative pronounce- 
 ments to be considered, and as to their relative 
 authority. In the older discussions — the discussions, 
 for instance, on the deceased wife's sister question in 
 English Convocations or episcopal utterances of forty 
 years ago — ^you will find the Old Testament appealed 
 to as well as the New. In modern times the appeal is 
 usually to the New Testament, or possibly (in writers 
 or speakers a little touched by modern critical views) 
 exclusively to the teaching of our Lord Himself ; 
 while the amount of stress laid upon past decisions 
 of the Church will depend upon the theological 
 school or party of the controversialist. This proposi- 
 tion could be illustrated not merely by discussions on 
 questions connected with marriage, about which for 
 obvious reasons opinion is peculiarly apt to be affected 
 by ecclesiastical differences, but by controversies over 
 
Moral Philosophy and Moral AuthoHty 3 
 
 the broadest questions of social Ethics. It is not an 
 unlcnown experience even at the present day to hear 
 a clergyman at a clerical meeting actually maintain 
 that, if a man does not acknowledge the authority of 
 Christ, a Christian would have no common basis of 
 discussion with him as to such questions as strikes, 
 wages. Socialism and the like. And even less unphilo- 
 sophical Christians sometimes talk as though it were 
 only in the positive teaching of the Christian Scrip- 
 tures or the Christian Church that you can find 
 satisfactory principles for dealing with social diffi- 
 culties. 
 
 And, still more curiously, we sometimes find both 
 attitudes illustrated by the same man under different 
 circumstances. The Theologian may also be a Philos- 
 opher. A clergyman may be a teacher of Philosophy, 
 and when he discourses before his class upon Moral 
 Philosophy he will say a great deal about the authority 
 and validity of Conscience. Indeed, the more orthodox 
 he is as a Theologian, the more certain he is to adopt 
 the philosophical opinions which insist most strongly 
 upon the authority of Conscience. He will probably 
 treat Kant's theory of the Categorical Imperative with 
 profound respect, if he does not adopt all his opinions. 
 He is still more likely to accept Bishop Butler's view 
 that there is " a superior principle of reflection or 
 conscience in every man, which distinguishes between 
 the internal principles of his heart, as well as his external 
 actions : which passes judgement upon himself and 
 
4 Conscience and Christ 
 
 them ; pronounces determinately some actions to be in 
 themselves just, right, good, others to be in themselves 
 evil, wrong, unjust : which, without being consulted, 
 without being advised with, magisterially exerts itself 
 and condemns him, the doer of them, accordingly."^ 
 You may be quite sure that you will never hear in a 
 philosophical lecture — even if delivered by a Bishop or 
 a lecturer in some definitely theological institution — the 
 faintest suggestion of the theory that the only way of 
 settling what is right and wrong is to discover a text 
 which bears upon the subject. The most conserva- 
 tive Theologian, when addressing a meeting of 
 working men on some great moral question, or when 
 writing apologetically upon the fundamental truths of 
 Religion against Agnosticism and Naturahsm, will be 
 sure to adopt the same tone. But let the same man 
 get upon his legs in a Church assembly or take up his 
 pen to write an article in a Church newspaper upon a 
 moral question, and immediately the whole tone is 
 altered. We hear nothing more about Conscience or 
 the Moral Law or the Categorical Imperative, but only 
 about the true exegesis of some text in the Gospels, or 
 about the decrees of some Spanish Council in the 
 eighth century or the like. Sometimes we hear such 
 questions discussed by cultivated ecclesiastics as if 
 the solution to be given in the twentieth century, not 
 only by an individual Christian but by whole societies, 
 to the gravest problems of social policy must depend 
 * Sermon II. 
 
Moral Philosophy and Moral Authority 5 
 
 upon the answer which critics give to a question of 
 various readings. 
 
 The contrast between these two methods may be 
 illustrated by an incident in which I was personally 
 concerned. I was requested to give evidence before 
 the Royal Commission which has recently been in- 
 vestigating the question of the Divorce Laws in Eng- 
 land. I ventured to suggest that the question was one 
 upon which the moral consciousness had something to 
 say. Thereupon I was severely cross-examined by 
 eminent ecclesiastical authorities as though I were a 
 setter forth of strange gods — and very dangerous and 
 unorthodox gods too. The most exalted of them 
 had enjoyed the advantage of a philosophical 
 education, had sat at the feet of Edward Caird, 
 had no doubt written plenty of essays upon 
 Moral Philosophy in his student days, and would 
 be quite capable of dealing with such problems in a 
 way befitting a philosopher : yet he pressed me to say 
 whether I did not think it was a very dangerous thing 
 to proclaim that such a question was one to be settled 
 by the moral consciousness. Another Commissioner, 
 an acute and learned High-church lawyer, talked as 
 if it really were the first time he had ever heard of 
 the moral consciousness, and as if the admission that 
 the human mind possessed any such activity would 
 be fraught with the gravest disaster to Church and 
 State. 
 
 Now it is pretty obvious that this division of the 
 
6 Conscience and Christ 
 
 mind into water-tight compartments is not a desirable 
 attitude. It may be assumed almost off-hand that 
 there must be something to be said for both points of 
 view. Only very uninstructed or very prejudiced 
 religious people will seriously deny the existence and 
 authority of Conscience : while the most liberal and 
 least dogmatic of Theologians are precisely those who 
 will be most disposed to insist that the following, the 
 imitation, the obeying of Christ represents an essential 
 element in the Christian ideal of hfe.^ If we are to 
 recognize both the authority of Conscience and the 
 authority of Christ, we ought surely to aim at clear 
 views about the relations between the two. And yet, 
 it would, I fear, be dif&cult to point to any work in 
 which the problem is satisfactorily dealt with from a 
 point of view which is at once modem and uncom- 
 promisingly Christian. 
 
 We have excellent works on Moral Philosophy on 
 the one hand, and on Christian Ethics on the other, 
 in some of which no doubt the true relation between 
 the two subjects is incidentally assumed or suggested. 
 But I do not think that the exact problem which I 
 have in mind has often been formally discussed in recent 
 English or American Theology. The subject certainly 
 deserves more serious treatment than it has received. 
 I need hardly say that in these six lectures I cannot 
 
 1 At least this would have been their attitude a few years ago ; 
 among the ultra-eschatological Theologians this would not perhaps 
 be assumed. The attitude of such Theologians is dealt with in the 
 next Lecture. 
 
Moral Philosophy and Moral Authority 7 
 
 hope to supply this desideratum in our theological 
 literature in any but the most inadequate way. In the 
 little time at my disposal, I shall not aim at any great 
 theoretical completeness, and can only hope to direct 
 your attention to some of the problems which most 
 pressingly demand solution, and offer a few sugges- 
 tions as to the way in which they ought to be dealt 
 with. 
 
 The question with which we are concerned is at 
 bottom " What is the proper relation between philo- 
 sophical and theological Ethics— between the subject 
 usually called Moral Philosophy or Ethics and the 
 subject known among Roman Catholic divines as 
 Moral Theology, among Protestants more usually as 
 Christian Ethics ? " Now it is clear that such a discus- 
 sion must logically presuppose not merely that we know 
 something about philosophical Ethics, but that we 
 have adopted some particiilar ethical system ; for the 
 answer to our problem may, it is clear, be profoundly 
 affected by the particular views we adopt. It being 
 impossible in so brief a coiurse to enter upon any real 
 discussion of these fundamental ethical problems, I 
 can only tell you in the barest and baldest way the 
 main conclusions which I shall presuppose. 
 
 I start then with the assumption that we have a 
 power of distinguishing between right and wrong. I 
 assume the existence and the validity of the moral 
 consciousness, or in more popular language the exis- 
 tence and authority of Conscience. This moral con- 
 
8 Conscience and Christ 
 
 sciousness cannot be any kind of Moral Sense or 
 emotion or amalgam of emotions. ^ For the strongest 
 of our moral convictions is precisely this — that the 
 Moral Law possesses objective validity : that acts 
 are right or wrong in themselves, independently of 
 what I or any other individual may chance to think or 
 feel about the matter. Our ultimate judgements are 
 therefore to be compared rather with the axioms of 
 mathematics or the physical laws of nature than with 
 mere emotions. They express propositions, which, if 
 true at all, are true for all minds whatsoever. A mere 
 feeling — an emotional approbation of one kind of con- 
 duct or disapprobation of another — could not possibly 
 claim any such objectivity. Mustard is not objec- 
 tively nice or objectively nasty : it is simply nice to 
 one person and nasty to another. If our prejudice 
 against murder were a mere emotional dislike, the man 
 who did not as a matter of fact see any harm in murder 
 would not be in error, any more than the colour-blind 
 man who experiences a sensation of indiscriminate 
 grey, when the majority of us see green or red, is in 
 error. The thing really is grey to him, red or green to 
 the normal-sighted person. Upon that view it is 
 senseless to discuss which view of murder is the right 
 one : murder would simply be wrong for you and me 
 
 ^ I have discussed this subject fully in The Theory of Good and 
 Evil, Bk. I, chap, iv sq., and more recently (in reference to recent 
 theories) in Is Conscience an Emotion? being the West Lectures 
 for 1913, published by Leiand Stanford University (in England: 
 Fisher Unwin). 
 
Moral Philosophy and Moral Authority 9 
 
 who are repelled by such an act, right for a man like 
 Benvenuto Cellini who gloried in it. And this is just 
 what the moral consciousness of most people un- 
 doubtedly refuses to admit. Our moral judgements 
 claim to be objective — to state a matter of objective 
 fact, something which is true not for this or that 
 person, but for all minds whatsoever. If this claim is 
 to be admitted, they must come from the intellectual 
 part of our nature, whether we call it Reason or Moral 
 Reason or anything else — not from a Moral Sense or 
 any other emotional capacity. Objectivity, of course, 
 does not imply infallibility. People may make mis- 
 takes about questions of right and wrong, just as they 
 may make mistakes in doing a sum in Mathematics, or 
 in the formulation of a scientific law, or in determining 
 the guilt of a prisoner at the bar. What it does mean 
 is that if A says " I ought to do this under such and 
 such circumstances," and B says, " you ought not to 
 do so," one or other of them must be wrong. The 
 moral faculty has, of course, developed slowly — just 
 like any other intellectual capacity. Not only are the 
 moral ideas of savages different from ours in detail, 
 but it may even be doubted whether the lowest 
 savages can really be said to possess at all the notion 
 of an absolute or objective right and wrong as that 
 notion existed in the mind of a Socrates or a Kant. 
 As applied to the lowest savage, the emotional theory 
 of Ethics developed by such writers as Professor 
 Westermarck and Mr. MacDougall is not perhaps so 
 
10 Conscience and Christ 
 
 very far wrong : the merest germ of the notion of an 
 objective " duty " is to be detected in such minds. 
 But the existence and validity of an objective Morality 
 is no more affected by its gradual development, or by 
 the fact that infants and very low savages may not 
 possess the notion at all, than the vaHdity of mathe- 
 matical axioms is affected by the fact, if it be a fact, 
 that some savages cannot count more than ten, or 
 that mathematically deficient minds — sometimes very 
 brilliant minds in other ways — cannot follow the 
 simplest geometrical reasoning. 
 
 As regards the nature and authority of the Moral 
 Consciousness then, I agree in the main with the 
 rationalistic School of moralists, though I should admit 
 that emotion has a great deal more to do with our 
 actual moral judgements in detail than moralists of the 
 Kantian type have commonly recognized. But I must 
 not dwell further upon that matter. 
 
 When we pass from the question of right and wrong 
 in general to the question of the ethical criterion — that 
 is, the question how we are to ascertain what particular 
 actions are right or wrong— we find that writers who 
 believe our ultimate moral judgements to be self- 
 evident deliverances of Reason have often supposed 
 that it is possible to determine the morality of par- 
 ticular actions without reference to their consequences. 
 If I want to know whether I ought to tell a Ue or not, 
 I must (so one kind of Intuitionist would say) wait 
 till the moment of action, and then I shall hear a 
 
Moral Philosophy and Moral Authority ii 
 
 commanding voice within me telling me not to tell 
 this particular lie or (it may be — in very exceptional 
 circumstances) to tell it. Or (according to another 
 School) I am supposed to find written on my con- 
 sciousness a general law which tells me that it is always 
 wrong to lie — even (so Kant explicitly held) when an 
 armed highwayman asks me t-he whereabouts of my 
 best friend. I must not stay to develope the absurd 
 consequences — as they seem to me — of accepting 
 either of these systems. It is impossible logically to 
 distinguish between an act and its consequences. The 
 consequences, so far as they can be foreseen, are in- 
 cluded in the act. And if we once admit that con- 
 sequences are to be considered, there is no logical 
 stopping at any particular point. We must consider 
 all the consequences, so far as we can. The true, ideal, 
 final solution of a moral problem must depend upon 
 the effect of the particular act upon the well-being 
 of the whole human race, though for obvious reasons 
 it is not necessary as a rule to trace out those conse- 
 quences so far : it is enough to know that its more 
 immediate consequences will be better than those of 
 any alternative course which presents itself to us, and 
 that we have no reason to anticipate any remoter 
 bad consequences which would outweigh the good. 
 So far I agree with the creed commonly known as 
 Utilitarianism. But Utilitarianism, as it is ordinarily 
 understood, is committed to the further position that 
 human well-being means nothing but pleasure, and 
 
12 Conscience and Christ 
 
 pleasure measured quantitatively. From that posi- 
 tion I entirely dissent. The belief in duty carries with 
 it the further conviction that the doing of one's duty 
 —the good will, goodness, virtue, character— is an end- 
 in-itself, that it is itself a good, and the highest of all 
 goods. And I beUeve many other elements in human 
 hfe to be intrinsically valuable besides goodness and 
 pleasure — knowledge, intellectual activity, aesthetic 
 satisfaction ; affections, emotions, and desires of 
 many sorts. All these kinds of conscious life and 
 activity are normally accompanied by pleasure, but 
 their value is not always proportionate to their pleas- 
 antness. And when we do think of them in the light 
 of pleasures, we recognize that they differ in kind: 
 their value is not (as the Hedonist supposes) dependent 
 upon their mere duration and intensity taken together. 
 Human Well-being or Good includes a whole hierarchy 
 of goods. There is a good of the will or moral good : a 
 good of the intellect : a good of feeHng. True good — 
 good in the singular— includes all these goods in 
 due proportion. Acts are right so far as they tend to 
 bring about for all mankind such a true good — the 
 largest amount of it that is possible and the justest 
 distribution of it that is possible. When we have to 
 choose between different goods, our aim should be to 
 bring about the greatest attainable good on the whole. 
 The Utilitarian is right, it seems to me, in aiming at 
 the maximum of human Well-being and a just distribu- 
 tion of it : he is wrong in identifying that Well-being 
 
Moral Philosophy and Moral Authority 13 
 
 with maximum pleasure. The Intuitionist of the 
 traditional type is right in holding that the ultimate 
 moral judgement is intuitive, immediate, or, if you like, 
 a priori : he is wrong only in treating isolated im- 
 promptu judgements upon particular cases of conduct, 
 or, again, hard and fast exceptionless rules as to 
 whole classes of acts, as final, irreversible, absolutely 
 binding deliverances of the moral consciousness. The 
 true ultimate moral judgement relates not to acts but 
 to ends : the true moral judgement is a judgement of 
 value. It is expressed in the form " this is good," 
 not " this is right." The concept of good no doubt 
 includes that of right or duty. If something is good, 
 that means that it is always right to try to bring it 
 into existence, except so far as it stands in the way of 
 some greater good. On the other hand, the judgement 
 " this act is right " always, if thought out, impUes 
 that there is some good which ought to be realized, 
 absolutely, for its own sake, as a means to no end but 
 itself. What the good is, it is for the moral conscious- 
 ness to pronounce. The good is an ideal which the 
 moral consciousness creates or recognizes. Such is in 
 barest outline the ethical system which I have ven- 
 tured to call " Ideal Utilitarianism." 
 
 I cannot hope, of course, in the time at my disposal 
 to explain and justify this mode of ethical thinking to 
 those to whom it is unfamiliar, or who have definitely 
 adopted some other system. I have thought it best to 
 indicate in this, I fear, rather dogmatic manner the 
 
14 Conscience and Christ 
 
 point of view from which I myself approach the sub- 
 ject ; for I shall be obliged at times to assume a par- 
 ticular answer to certain ethical problems. But I 
 trust it will be possible for many to accept the general 
 view which I hope to set before you of the relation 
 between philosophical or (as some people might call it) 
 " natural " Ethics and the special Ethics of Christianity 
 without adopting my own particular answer to the 
 problem of the ethical criterion. In most of what I 
 have to say it will be enough to assume merely that 
 you agree with me in holding that we have a natural 
 power of determining what is right and wrong, and 
 that we ought in the last resort to guide our conduct 
 by the ethical judgements which we derive from this 
 moral faculty of ours. The problem which on such an 
 assumption confronts us is this : If we have this 
 natural power of judging between right and wrong, 
 where can we find room in our moral life for any 
 external authority — for any authoritative rules of 
 right and wrong such as we find in the Bible, in the 
 traditional laws or decisions of the Church, and especi- 
 ally in the commands and ethical sayings of our Lord 
 Himself — or (to put the problem in its most general 
 form) for any positive body of ethical doctrine such as 
 every historical Religion sets before its adherents ? If 
 Conscience is to be supreme, it might seem at first sight 
 that to set up any such body of ethical precepts as 
 final and infallible, or even as entitled to any particular 
 respect, must be superfluous or else pernicious. If we 
 
Moral Philosophy and Moral Authotity 15 
 
 already know what is right, why appeal to the authority 
 of any outside moral legislator ? Might we not (it 
 may be asked) apply to the enactments of such an 
 authority the dilemma by which the Khalif Omar is 
 said to have justified the conflagration of the Alex- 
 andrian Library ? "If these books contradict the 
 Koran, they are pernicious ; if they agree with it, they 
 are superfluous." If the precepts of authority agree 
 with those of our own Consciences, they must be super- 
 fluous : if they contradict them, they must be false. 
 
 Now at this point I must remind you that the process 
 of deciding what ought to be done in any conjunction 
 of circumstances is not really so easy a process as it 
 might at first sight appear from the simple assertion 
 that human Reason gives us certain self-evident 
 judgements on the subject, (i) In the first place these 
 self-evident judgements relate, as we have seen, to the 
 value of ends : what are the means to the end judged 
 to be good, we must learn from experience. A great 
 deal of knowledge about plain matters of fact is re- 
 quired to enable an individual mind — even an adult 
 developed mind at an advanced period of civihzation 
 — to give a right answer as to what ought to be done 
 in any particular conjunction of circumstances. Such 
 a judgement demands much knowledge about the conse- 
 quences of actions which can only be ascertained fully 
 by an experience much wider than that of the average 
 individual. And then (2), even in pronouncing upon 
 the value of an end, the individual is always limited 
 
i6 Conscience and Christ 
 
 to his own experience or to some experience which he 
 can understand by the analogy of his own. If the 
 question be as to the relative importance of culture 
 and (say) athletic exercise, an individual must have 
 some experience of both before he can decide : he 
 need not have an actual knowledge of the particular 
 literature or music whose value is in question, or else 
 it would never be possible to decide upon the value of 
 any experience till it was over, but he must have had 
 some analogous experience. He need not wait to 
 justify his spending time upon hearing Wagner or 
 reading the last new poet till he has made acquaint- 
 ance with their works : but he cannot decide whether 
 music or poetry are good without knowing to some 
 extent what music and poetry in general are like. 
 And (3) it must be remembered that, even when the 
 actual experiences are before him — when he knows that 
 act A will lead to such and such a state of consciousness 
 and act B to some other state of consciousness, and 
 knows what these states of consciousness really are, — 
 not everyone possesses equal powers of judging values, 
 any more than all individuals are equally good 
 judges of scientific truth or of historical evidence or 
 are equally competent critics of poetry and painting. 
 
 From these considerations it follows that the great 
 majority of individuals in the great majority of their 
 actions cannot possibly decide for themselves about 
 their rightness or wrongness in the way that is often 
 assumed to be possible in the abstract discussions of 
 
Moral Philosophy and Moral Authopty 17 
 
 moral philosophers. That would be so even if each 
 individual were born into the world with his faculties 
 already fully developed. Still less are children capable 
 of giving an independent answer of their own to such 
 problems. As a matter of fact the earliest state of the 
 human infant is one in which he differs from a low type 
 of animal only in having less strong and valuable 
 guidance from his instincts and a greater capacity for 
 future development : while, if we look to the history 
 of the race, the civilized modern man has emerged 
 from a savage ancestor in whom it is hard to detect 
 any such rational reflection upon conduct as the moral 
 philosopher presupposes, and further back from an 
 animal in which there was certainly no such reflection 
 Even when we turn to the developed intelligence in 
 its most reflective moments, we at once recognize that 
 the behaviour of most men in most circumstances is 
 determined by instinct, by passion, by custom and 
 habit, or (in so far as it is based upon consciously 
 accepted ethical principle) by rules which are not due 
 to the independent working of their own intellect but 
 have been handed down by social tradition and are 
 imposed upon them by a social environment. It is 
 unnecessary for the present purpose to ask what deter- 
 mines the established morality of a community in 
 early times — how much is due to instinct, how much to 
 the operation of natural selection, how much to the 
 teaching of experience and conscious utilitarian cal- 
 culation, how much to the influence of leading minds 
 
1 8 Conscience and Christ 
 
 and the traditions which they have created, how much 
 to emotion and how much to Reason. It is enough for 
 us to take note of the fact that in primitive communities 
 morality consists mainly in obedience to custom ; and 
 that in so far as custom is due to the working of the 
 moral Reason, it is largely the Reason of the community 
 rather than the deliberate reflective verdict of any 
 particular Conscience that expresses itself in its 
 morality. As civilization and moralization advance, 
 Morality tends to become more conscious, more reflec- 
 tive, and more individual. But even in the most 
 advanced and developed communities, the greater part 
 of the average individual's moral ideal is the ideal of 
 his community. He starts with a set of rules, ideals, 
 institutions, which he does not consciously question, and 
 the ultimate grounds of which he does not investigate. 
 The part which his own Conscience plays in the matter 
 is for the most part that of accepting and recognizing 
 the moral ideal of his community, or in choosing 
 between several social ideals which may be contending 
 for the mastery within the wider community, or in 
 applying the general principles which are so accepted 
 to the determination of particular cases. Only occa- 
 sionally does the individual Conscience assert itself to 
 the extent of criticizing, rebelling against, defying on 
 some particular point, the accepted ethical code. 
 
 This line of thought has been carried by some 
 MoraUsts so far that they absolutely refuse to con- 
 template the case of an individual sitting down to 
 
Moral Philosophy and Moral Authority 19 
 
 consider on general philosophical principles how he 
 ought to act in a particular case. That is one of the 
 characteristics of Hegelian Ethics. In Hegel himself, 
 it has been not unjustly said, there is no moral Phil- 
 osophy, but only political Philosophy. Full as he is of 
 the idea that Morality is an expression of Reason, it is 
 always the social and not the individual Reason that 
 he has in view. The individual must accept the 
 established customs, traditions, and institutions of his 
 time as final authorities. " The wisest men of Antiquity 
 have given judgement," Hegel tells us, " that wisdom 
 and virtue consist in livmg agreeably to the ethos of 
 one's people." And Hegel avowedly accepts this 
 judgement of antiquity. Mr. Bradley has gone one 
 better than Hegel, and pronounced that for a man " to 
 wish to be better than the world is to be already on 
 the threshold of Immorality."^ Now it is tolerably 
 obvious that, if this system is to be carried out 
 thoroughly, no moral progress would be possible — unless 
 we choose to adopt the startling position that all past 
 progress in the ethical standard of communities has been 
 effected by a succession of private immoralities. Moral 
 progress has, in point of fact, only been brought about 
 by the acts of individual men and women who have 
 had the courage to condemn, to go beyond, and to 
 defy the existing code of public opinion at a given 
 time and place. It is true that the development of 
 moral ideals is effected very gradually and imper- 
 * Ethical Studies, p. i8o. 
 
20 Conscience and Christ 
 
 ceptibly. Sometimes you may not be able to point 
 to the particular person or persons whose thought and 
 action have brought it about. Sometimes the same idea 
 or tendency seems to seize upon a whole community at 
 once ; more often it takes possession of some consider- 
 able minority of persons almost at the same time, 
 though it triumphs only at the cost of a violent struggle 
 with the creed of the majority. Even in those cases 
 the change is really due to the working of individual 
 consciousnesses, however much they may act and 
 react upon one another, and however impossible it 
 may be for the historian to determine who the in- 
 dividuals were. But that is not always the case. 
 Many of the great steps and stages in moral progress 
 are definitely associated with the work of individual 
 men — actual historical characters, great rulers, great 
 teachers, great thinkers, reformers, prophets, men of 
 genius. And among these — especially at a certain 
 middle period of history intervening between the era 
 of primitive custom and that of modem civilization — 
 the most prominent individual workers in this great 
 task have been the founders or revolutionary reformers 
 of the great historical reUgions. Whatever else an 
 historical religion is, it always represents a certain body 
 of teaching about right and wrong, a body of ethical 
 rules, a moral ideal. And one difference between the 
 influence which is exercised by such great religious 
 teachers and other personal influences which have con- 
 tributed to ethical progress is just this— that it is much 
 
Moral Philosophy and Moral Authority 21 
 
 more conscious and personal. These men have, of course, 
 hke other contributors to moral progress, influenced 
 the world by introducing into the tone and traditional 
 morality of the community changes which go on 
 operating among those to whom even their names are 
 unknown : but their strongest influence is dependent 
 upon the actual knowledge of their words, their lives, 
 their characters. And this influence is kept alive as a 
 definite tradition in the societies which they have 
 founded or reformed or influenced — whether in the 
 form of sacred books or of traditional rules, customs, 
 and institutions. To overlook or underrate the in- 
 fluence which has been exercised upon moral develop- 
 ment by great personalities has been a too frequent 
 tendency of philosophical Ethics, especially in the 
 writers of the Hegelian School. In the ethical region 
 — men of Science are beginning to say in the biological 
 region also — nature takes more leaps and longer leaps 
 than a priori evolutionary thinkers like to admit. And 
 the form which such leaps assume in the moral region 
 is most commonly to be found in the appearance of 
 great personalities. 
 
 Now to a considerable extent the influence of the 
 great personality consists simply in making people 
 more disposed to do what their Consciences already 
 recognize that they ought to do. It is most im- 
 portant, of course, to remember that men's actual 
 morality depends upon many things besides know- 
 ledge — knowledge of what they ought to do. And we 
 
22 Conscience and Christ 
 
 might attach very great value to the influence of 
 Christ and of His followers and of the Society in which 
 the memory of His sayings and His character is kept 
 alive even if we never appealed to His authority to 
 decide what ought to be done, but only pointed 
 men to Him as supplying an example which makes 
 men more willing to do what their own Consciences 
 enjoin. To a very considerable extent the moralizing 
 influence which Christ has exerted has been of this 
 nature. It has stimulated and deepened the moral 
 consciousness in general. But a recognition of this fact 
 does not solve the particular problem with which we 
 are immediately concerned — that is to say, the ques- 
 tion what and what kind of authority we ought to 
 attribute to His teaching on particular questions of 
 conduct. We must go on to ask " how can Christ — ^how 
 can any great teacher or great personality — ^help us 
 to know what we ought to do in spite of the fact that 
 we have all got Consciences to tell us ? " 
 
 The answer may, I think, be gathered from the 
 considerations which have already been insisted upon_ 
 
 (i) In the first place men's capacities for ethical 
 judgement vary enormously; and average men have 
 to rely to a very large extent upon the judgement of 
 the gifted few. The prophet or great personality may 
 be looked upon as one in whom Conscience has at- 
 tained an exceptional development. 
 
 (2) The moral consciousness can only give ethical 
 judgements upon the basis of the materials presented 
 
Moral Philosophy and Moral Authority 23 
 
 to it. An ideal must be thought of before it can be 
 approved, and to think of a new ideal of life requires 
 genius no less than to think of a new tune or a new 
 scientific hypothesis. The ordinary man can see to 
 some extent — not always in a moment but in course 
 of time — the nobleness of a new ideal which has actu- 
 ally been placed before him ; but he could never have 
 thought of it for himself. The savage into whose mind 
 the idea of unselfishness has so little entered that he 
 finds it easier to believe that the missionary has sprung 
 from the foam of the sea than to believe that he has 
 not come among them to serve some purpose of his 
 own is nevertheless found quite capable of appreciating 
 the beauty and the nobleness of self-sacrifice when once 
 he has been brought to believe in its existence. It 
 wants some poetic capacity to appreciate Shakespeare, 
 but not nearly so much as it took to be Shakespeare. 
 It requires some moral capacity to appreciate the ideal 
 of a moral genius, but not nearly so much as it takes to 
 conceive that ideal. 
 
 And (3) even when the truth of a moral rule is not 
 actually seen, it is quite justifiable to accept the 
 decisions of a moral authority whom we judge to be 
 more likely to be right than ourselves. We do all of 
 us begin by accepting our parents' ideals, and then the 
 ideal of our community. If we come to the conclusion 
 that a particular individual or some group of men or 
 a society within the general community is more likely 
 to be right than we are, it is a quite reasonable and 
 
24 Conscience and Christ 
 
 morally justifiable course to accept and act upon the 
 decisions of this authority, just as we accept the de- 
 cisions of experts on any other subject. Two reserva- 
 tions must, however, be made in laying down this 
 principle, {a) The first is that even this acceptance of a 
 moral authority implies some exercise of the individual's 
 own moral judgement : for it implies that he knows 
 the meaning of right and wrong in general, even if he 
 accepts another's verdict upon some particular ques- 
 tion as to what is right or wrong. This notion of right 
 and wrong in general no external authority could 
 possibly teach him except by calling into activity the 
 latent powers of his own soul. And (6), while on details 
 the wisest of men will always show their wisdom by 
 trusting the judgement of those who are likely to know 
 best, yet when we come to the fundamental principles 
 of conduct, to act in obedience to authority must be 
 regarded as a lower kind of Moraility — one only to be 
 recommended as a step towards the cultivation of an 
 independent ethical judgement. We could hardly 
 imagine a man believing that he ought not needlessly 
 to injure his neighbour on authority. The man who 
 could not see that much would hardly be a moral 
 being at all. It is not so inconceivable that one who 
 was indisposed to treat a man of another race as his 
 neighbour might be prepared to do so in obedience to 
 an authority which he revered. 
 
 On these principles there is ample room for the 
 exercise of great influence over the moulding of moral 
 
Moral Philosophy and Moral Authority 25 
 
 ideals by ethical authorities of various kinds — living 
 teachers, the recorded sayings of teachers in the past, 
 traditional systems, organized societies. And if we 
 could find any human being of supreme ethical insight, 
 we should have on these principles a sufficient reason 
 for placing him in a supreme position among our 
 ethical authorities. Indeed, it might seem that, if 
 only we could be sufficiently sure that his insight was 
 of such a unique character, we might have a sufficient 
 warrant for the most absolute surrender of ourselves 
 to his authority. And this is precisely the position 
 which much traditional Theology would assign — some- 
 times to the Bible as a whole, sometimes to the New 
 Testament only, sometimes to the Bible and the 
 Church (in whatever relation they may be supposed to 
 stand to each other), sometimes to Christ alone. I 
 will confine myself for the present to the authority of 
 Jesus Christ Himself. 
 
 And here, when we approach the central question, 
 " What kind of ethical authority are we prepared to 
 recognize in Jesus ? " everything turns upon the grounds 
 upon which we suppose that He is supremely likely to 
 be right in his ethical judgements. The old way of 
 defending the authority of Christ was something of 
 this kind. First it was established by historical evi- 
 dence that Jesus said certain things, and that He worked 
 certain miracles. The miracles were held to prove 
 that what He said must be true. Then it was either 
 directly inferred that all His ethical teaching must be 
 
26 Conscience and Christ 
 
 divinely inspired, and therefore fully and eternally 
 true; or else the same conclusion was indirectly 
 inferred from the premiss that He taught the doctrine 
 of His own Divinity. Now even supposing that both the 
 miracles and the sayings could be sufficiently attested 
 by historical evidence, and supposing it were certain 
 that the events commonly called miracles were in the 
 fullest sense violations of the laws of nature, it is an 
 immense leap from the fact that a human being was 
 able at some point to suspend the laws of nature to 
 infer that all that he said was true. Moses, according 
 to the traditional conception, worked miracles : yet 
 Christians have always believed that certain parts of 
 his teaching were contradicted and set aside by Christ, 
 and therefore could never have been altogether true. 
 Elijah is said in the Old Testament miraculously to have 
 brought down fire from heaven to consume the captains 
 and their fifties ; yet this very miracle was treated as 
 an indication of an ethical temper deserving of severe 
 condemnation by One whom Christians have accepted 
 as a higher authority than Elijah. If we make the 
 inference indirectly — through the supposed fact that 
 Jesus claimed to be God — the inference to His ethical 
 infalUbility might be better justified. Even then we 
 should really be making a good many other assump- 
 tions, though they might be reasonable assumptions. 
 But fortunately we are dispensed from the necessity 
 of answering so abstract a question. A critical study 
 of the Gospels makes it certain that Jesus never did 
 
Moral Philosophy and Moral Authority 27 
 
 claim to be actually God. The doctrine of Christ's 
 Divinity rests rather upon the sense of His unique 
 religious value entertained by His followers than upon 
 any direct claim of His own. It is due to the reflective 
 consciousness of the Church and not to the actual 
 teaching of Jesus. ^ That He claimed to be the Son 
 of God or the Messiah, to speak with authority, to 
 have a divine message to deliver, is true. But the 
 other prophets had claimed to have a divine message 
 and that with obvious bona fides, and yet we do 
 not regard all their words as final and infalhble revela- 
 tions of moral truth. If it is admitted that revelation 
 or inspiration admits of degrees, a mere claim to be an 
 inspired revealer, or even to be the promised Messiah of 
 Je^^■ish expectation, will not prove ethical infallibility. 
 But the supreme difficulty in the way of this old 
 Paleyan conception of Christianity as a body of super- 
 naturally guaranteed truth attested by historical 
 evidence, lies in the doubtfulness of the miracles them- 
 selves — the doubt, as to some of the events, whether 
 they actually occurred, and as to others whether they 
 cannot be accounted for without supposing any actual 
 violation of the laws of nature, however much they 
 may imply unusual and abnormal degrees of that 
 control of physical processes by mental influence which 
 in lower degrees is a matter of everyday experience. 
 
 * This of course implies that we do not regard the fourth Gospel 
 as a record of the ipsissima verba of our Lord — a conclusion which 
 would now be admitted even by scholarly defenders of its Johannine 
 authorship. 
 
28 Conscience and Christ 
 
 Even those who believe in the Gospel miracles in the 
 most uncompromising manner as actual violations of 
 physical law do not usually at the present day rest 
 their proof of Christ's Divinity chiefly upon the miracles. 
 They believe in the miracles because they already 
 believe in the Divinity rather than believe in the 
 Divinity because they believe in the miracles. And in 
 their proof of the Divinity they rely very largely 
 indeed upon the impression made upon the Conscience 
 by our Lord's moral teaching and character. They see 
 a supreme revelation of God in His character and 
 teaching because they can conceive none higher or more 
 capable of satisfying the demands of their own moral 
 consciousness. And therefore it would be absolutely 
 suicidal to invite us to accept the moral teaching merely 
 on the strength of the miracles, or on the strength of 
 any claims which are proved by the miracles. To argue 
 that Jesus was divine because His moral teaching 
 appeals to us as supremely true, and then to contend 
 that His teaching must be true because He was divine, 
 is to argue in a circle. If we once allow the self-evi- 
 dencing truth of His moral teaching to occupy a 
 prominent place in the argument for His Divinity, we 
 are trusting to the validity of our own moral conscious- 
 ness ; and when we have done this, we can no longer 
 profess ourselves willing to accept any and every moral 
 precept of Christ, without any criticism of its contents, 
 on the strength of the historical evidence that He 
 uttered the words. 
 
Moral Philosophy and Moral Authority 29 
 
 And this consideration sets strict limits to the extent 
 to which a Christian can be asked to accept a precept 
 in blind obedience to Christ, regarded as an external 
 moral Legislator or an external Revealer of truth 
 otherwise inaccessible to the human mind. We can 
 accept the revelation only because, and in so far as, 
 it appeals to the moral consciousness as true : it is 
 because it does make such an appeal to us that we 
 believe it to be a revelation. That holds, I should 
 contend, of other than the ethical aspects of the 
 Christian revelation, but with those other sides of 
 Christ's teaching we are not immediately concerned. 
 It holds still more clearly with regard to His ethical 
 teaching. No doubt it will remain possible to treat 
 Christ's deliverances on particular points with pro- 
 found reverence : it may even be quite reasonable for 
 an individual to accept Christ's verdict on particular 
 questions, and to act upon it even when he fails 
 on the fullest reflection to see the ground of that ver- 
 dict. That is the principle on which we accept the 
 judgement of the expert on any subject. We defer to 
 him beyond the limits within which we can see clearly 
 because we have tested his insight, and seen it to be 
 superior to our own, within the limits within which we 
 can judge for ourselves. But there must be a point 
 beyond which such blind submission cannot go : we 
 submit without judging in a detail just because we 
 have judged and approved the ideal as a whole. If the 
 collisions between our own moral judgement and his 
 
30 Conscience and Christ 
 
 were too frequent or too fundamental, that would under- 
 mine all the grounds which we have for trusting his 
 judgement. And then, when we do accept the validity 
 of authority against our private judgement, it will not 
 commonly be a case of the individual's solitary judge- 
 ment being pitted against that of the authority to 
 which he defers. The judgement of the sohtary 
 teacher — be it Christ or some other great ethical 
 teacher — ^will commonly be supported by that of the 
 community generally, or some large section of it. If 
 it were not merely our own individual judgement but 
 that of our whole community, including its best and 
 wisest, that were in collision with the judgement of the 
 great teacher, then we could hardly contend that the 
 ipse dixit of any authority, however justly venerated, 
 ought to prevail against the voice of such a collective 
 Conscience. 
 
 The conclusion to which all I have said points is 
 that the kind of authority which we can attribute to 
 the teaching even of Christ Himself, and the hmits of 
 that authority, must be determined by the impression 
 which His teaching actually makes upon the moral 
 consciousness of the present. And therefore we cannot 
 in the old-fashioned way first examine the credentials 
 of the Master's authority ; and then, having done so 
 and found them satisfactory, profess ourselves willing 
 to accept and act upon His precepts blindly, no matter 
 what the actual character of the acts commanded. 
 We cannot pronounce on the authority justly to be 
 
Moral Philosophy and Moral Authority 31 
 
 claimed by the teaching of Jesus till we have examined 
 what that teaching is, and asked how far it appeals to 
 our moral consciousness. In the following lectures I 
 shall contend that the authority which Christ's ideal 
 of life can still justly claim is based upon the fact that 
 it does, in its essential principles, appeal to and satisfy 
 the demands of our moral consciousness in the present. 
 But meanwhile I will add one or two further remarks 
 on this general question of submission to authority in 
 Ethics. 
 
 (i) Whatever professions may have sometimes been 
 made to the contrary, submission to authority in 
 matters of conduct has never been absolute. There 
 has been, of course, much — often too much — submis- 
 sion to authority in such matters. Without a certain 
 amount of it no community could hold together for a 
 year ; in its excess such submission has been respon- 
 sible for some of the greatest crimes in history. All 
 the great religious persecutions have been justified by 
 the precepts of the Old Testament or of the Koran. 
 But with good men this submission has always had 
 limits. In his famous controversy with Mr. Gladstone 
 Cardinal Newman frankly admitted that, if a collision 
 arose between a Pope who should command him to 
 be disloyal to his Sovereign and the Conscience which 
 bade him obey that Sovereign, he would put Con- 
 science above an authority which he theoretically 
 regarded as infallible in all matters of faith and 
 morals. Enlightened divines still frequently talk as 
 
32 Conscience and Christ 
 
 though they would be prepared to obey a dictum of 
 Christ, no matter what they themselves thought of 
 its morality. Some of them are even willing to obey 
 Him (as I shall point out hereafter) on the strength of 
 a conjectural emendation of His recorded language— a 
 deference to Criticism which they do not always display 
 in other directions. But let us suppose not merely that 
 Criticism had detected an adventitious gloss in a par- 
 ticular text, but that a first-century MS. of the second 
 Gospel were discovered from which it appeared that 
 the true text of the passage about Divorce was this : 
 " thou shalt not put away thy wife in case of adultery 
 but thou mayest take two others," can we suppose 
 that any one of those Anglican ecclesiastics who are 
 so irreconcilably opposed to the remarriage of the 
 innocent divorcee on the strength of a saying of Christ 
 would be prepared to act upon the recommendation ? 
 Of course they would not. It is open to them to say 
 that what they believe to have been the actual com- 
 mand of Christ appeals to their conscience, or at least 
 is not opposed to its dictates, whereas the hypothetical 
 injunction would not make that appeal. But on that 
 view it is really because they approve that they obey. 
 Whether they approve or disapprove, they are equally 
 sitting in judgement. These divines could not condemn 
 others for rejecting on a particiolar point a dictum of 
 Christ which should not commend itself to the modern 
 Conscience. Whether there are any dicta of Christ 
 Himself which fail to appeal to the modern Conscience, 
 
Moral Philosophy and Moral Authority 33 
 
 I shall examine in future lectures. It is enough to 
 insist that no one really makes his submission even to 
 the teaching of our Lord Himself absolute and un- 
 limited except in so far as the actual injunctions of 
 that authority commend themselves to his conscience. 
 As a rule, of course (where people are naturally in- 
 clined to disagree with some authoritative command), 
 an open collision is avoided by interpreting the com- 
 mand of their authority in a way which does not 
 contradict the deUverances of the present-day Con- 
 science. Such interpretations always have been, and 
 always will be discovered, in these cases. 
 
 (2) And, secondly, it is important to insist that our 
 Lord Himself does not claim any such absolute sub- 
 mission to Himself as to a merely external authority. 
 He always addresses Himself to Conscience. He 
 assumes that His hearers, too, have some of that power 
 of judging about questions of right and wrong which 
 He possessed Himself in a supreme degree. I shall 
 return to this point hereafter. Meanwhile it will be 
 sufficient to remind you that, even when He appealed 
 to the works which are commonly called miraculous. 
 He appealed not so much to the power exhibited by 
 the works (which He admitted might quite conceivably 
 come from Satan), but to their goodness. It was the 
 merciful character of His healings which showed that 
 they came from God, and that would be no evidence 
 at all if we had no power of judging for ourselves that 
 mercy is more divine than mahce. His language about 
 
34 Conscience and Christ 
 
 the sin against the Holy Ghost— whatever were the 
 exact words He used and whatever their precise meaning 
 —implies at least that His Pharisee opponents were 
 struggling against their own conviction that His teach- 
 ing came from God — a conviction which could only be 
 based on the witness of Conscience. " The lamp of 
 the body is the eye : if therefore thine eye be single, 
 thy whole body shall be full of Ught. But if thine eye 
 be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If 
 therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how 
 great is the darkness. "^ There we have an explicit 
 testimony to Jesus' belief in a light which, in greater 
 or less measure, lighteth every man : and it was 
 that light to which He appealed as the supreme sanction 
 for His claims. But it is not so much upon any detailed 
 passage that I would rely as upon the spirit of His 
 whole teaching. Habitually He assumes that, though 
 men did require to have the truth about Morality set 
 before them, though it had never been set before them 
 so fully as He felt Himself able to reveal it, yet when it 
 was set before them, they were capable of recognizing 
 its truth. " Why even of yourselves judge ye not 
 what is right ? " ^ The words occur incidentally in a 
 somewhat obscure passage, but they only recognize a 
 power of moral judgement which is implied in the whole 
 of our Lord's best-authenticated teaching. He did not 
 ask men to obey his precepts except in so far as their 
 
 1 Matt. vi. 22 (=Luke xi. 34, 35). 
 ? Luke xh. 57. 
 
Moral Philosophy and Moral Authority 35 
 
 Consciences bore independent witness to their truth. 
 Doubtless He thought of that inner light in other men 
 as coming from the same heavenly Father who had in 
 an exceptional way spoken in the Old Testament Scrip- 
 tures and was speaking also in Him : but it was a 
 voice within, not a merely external voice, to which He 
 appealed in confirmation of the claim which He made 
 upon their allegiance. ^ 
 
 ^ This side of our Lord's teaching is very much developed in the 
 fourth Gospel. More directly than any of the Sjmoptists the 
 Evangelist appeals to the " works " in attestation of Christ's 
 claim, but after all the appeal to the works comes second : " Or 
 else believe me for the very works' sake " (xiv. ii). 
 
LECTURE II 
 ETHICS AND ESCHATOLOGY 
 
 IN my last lecture I endeavoured to show you 
 that it is impossible to determine the kind of 
 authority which may reasonably be claimed for the 
 ethical teaching of our Lord in advance — before we 
 have examined the teaching itself. For, in His own 
 view, that teaching was assuredly not regarded as the 
 promulgation of a moral code by an external authority, 
 to be accepted in consequence of some already estab- 
 lished claim to Messiahship^ or Divinity — without 
 examination, without interior assent, without spon- 
 taneous acceptance. It was put forth as an appeal to 
 Conscience. Still more certainly the authority which 
 it possesses for us at the present day must depend 
 upon its own intrinsic character. In the view alike 
 of His own immediate disciples and of the reflecting 
 Theologians of later ages, the claim of the Teacher to 
 be something more than one among many inspired 
 teachers or prophets has been based — to a very large 
 extent at least — upon the appeal which the teaching 
 
 • It is most probable, I think, that this claim was not definitely 
 made till towards the close of His Ministry, and it is doubtful how 
 far it was made in public at all. 
 
 36 
 
Ethics and Eschatology ' 37 
 
 and the character have actually made to the moral 
 consciousness, upon the response which they have awak- 
 ened and still awaken in the human heart. I should 
 like to have gone on at once to examine what the 
 ethical teaching of Jesus actually was in detail, and 
 then to invite you to consider what authority it can 
 justly claim for the modem world. Ten years ago I 
 should probably have adopted that course. But in 
 the present state of theological thought we are liable 
 to be met with a preliminary objection which it will, 
 I think, be well to deal with in advance. We are 
 liable to be told that the teaching of Jesus was not 
 primarily ethical at all. It was primarily eschato- 
 logical. Its main content was simply this : the 
 Messianic Judgement, long foretold by prophet and 
 apocalyptic writer, was at last on the very point of 
 coming — a sudden, catastrophic, in the fullest sense 
 supernatural, appearance of the Messiah upon the 
 clouds of heaven — a violent and abrupt winding up of 
 the present world-order, followed by the establish- 
 ment of the Messianic Kingdom in an outward and 
 visible form whether upon a very much altered earth 
 or in a Heaven beyond the skies. Any ethical teaching 
 which the Teacher uttered was merely incidental to 
 this His central message : and that teaching is almost 
 destitute of any special value or significance for the 
 modern world just because it is so intimately bound 
 up with ideas about the Universe which we cannot 
 share, and with anticipations as to the future which the 
 
38 Conscience and Christ 
 
 course of events has already shown to be delusive.^ I 
 should very much have preferred to pass over these 
 questions in silence. I have no claim to speak as a 
 speciaUst upon this subject — a subject which involves 
 for its adequate discussion intimate acquaintance not 
 only with the difficult and complicated Synoptic prob- 
 lem but with all the apocalyptic literature of later 
 Judaism and early Christianity. Nor do I believe 
 that these questions have in reality any very close 
 connexion with our proper subject ; but I fear that to 
 brush them aside and proceed to examine the ethical 
 teaching of the Gospels without touching upon them 
 would expose the lecturer to the suggestion that his 
 whole point of view was out of date, and that every- 
 thing he had said must in consequence be consigned to 
 the limbo of obsolete apologetics. I must therefore at 
 least make a short statement as to the attitude of my 
 own mind towards the problem, though a thorough 
 discussion of it will be impossible. I must be content 
 with giving you conclusions with no more than the 
 merest outline of the reasons which lead me to them. 
 All students of Theology — and most of those who, 
 
 * " The truth is, it is not Jesus as historically known, but Jesus 
 as spiritually arisen within men, who is significant for our time and 
 can help it. Not the historical Jesus, but the spirit which goes 
 forth from Him," etc. (Schweitzer, The Quest of the Historical Jesus, 
 E.T., p. 399). There is a sense of course in which one might 
 accept such statements, but if this " spirit " really " goes forth from 
 Him," i.e. the historical Jesus, there must be something in common 
 between the two, and this something must be capable of being dis- 
 tinguished from its eschatological surroundings. 
 
Ethics and Eschatology , 39 
 
 without being professed students of Theology, take 
 some interest in the course of theological thought and 
 enquiry — are aware of the great change which has 
 taken place in the prevailing attitude towards what 
 are called the eschatological sayings of the Gospels — 
 that is to say, the predictions alleged to have been 
 uttered by our Lord about His own future coming 
 again, about the Judgement which that coming would 
 inaugurate, and that supernatural winding up of the 
 existing order of things which is popularly spoken of 
 as the end of the world. Conservative Theology has 
 never of course doubted that these sayings were 
 actually uttered : and, as regards the central event, 
 it has been disposed to understand them very literally. 
 The Master is reported to have said that He would 
 come again seated on the clouds of heaven. Con- 
 servative and orthodox Theology has always assumed 
 that that prediction would be Uterally fulfilled. All 
 that is said in the Gospels as to the second coming of 
 Christ, as to the Judgement, and the physical catas- 
 trophes which should precede, accompany, or follow 
 that Judgement have been understood with almost 
 equal literalness, or at all events in the most uncom- 
 promisingly supernatural sense. On the other hand, the 
 passages which seemed to speak of these events as 
 impending in the very near future — before the disciples 
 had gone over the cities of Israel or in the lifetime of 
 those who listened to Jesus— were explained either by 
 understanding the " coming " (so far as those particular 
 
40 Conscience and Christ 
 
 passages were concerned) in some spiritual sense or 
 by referring them to that approaching destruction of 
 Jerusalem which was regarded as a sort of preliminary 
 anticipation or first instalment of the final Judgement. 
 When we come to the nature of the Kingdom, there has 
 been much diversity of opinion. Some passages were 
 understood as referring to the establishment of the 
 Kingdom by the missionary work of the Apostles on 
 this earth ; and the main difference of opinion among 
 orthodox thinkers has been as to how far they were to 
 be understood in a spiritual sense of a Kingdom of 
 Christ in the hearts of the individual believer or in the 
 invisible aggregate of believers, or how far the King- 
 dom might be identified frankly and without more 
 ado with the visible, organized, hierarchically governed 
 Church. But there were other passages in which the 
 establishment of the Kingdom was so closely con- 
 nected with a judgement of a supernatural character 
 that the Kingdom had there to be understood as a 
 new order of things to be established — after the judge- 
 ment — whether on this earth or (from the time when 
 " Millenarianism " came to be looked upon as here- 
 tical) more usually " in heaven." 
 
 The tendency of " liberal " thought until recently 
 has been towards a more complete spiritualization of 
 this eschatological teaching. Theologians Uke Frederick 
 Denison Maurice and his followers were inclined to 
 explain in a spiritual sense the whole idea of the 
 " coming " and " the Kingdom." The Kingdom 
 
Ethics and Eschatology ■ 41 
 
 meant for them a gradual remoiilding of human 
 society in accordance with the ideas of Christ. The 
 coming was to be gradual, though it might include 
 catastrophic episodes — startling historical events which 
 constituted peculiarly signal exhibitions of that divine 
 judgement of the world which was always going on for 
 those who had spiritual eyes to see it. In particular 
 passages there might be a reference to the destruction 
 of Jerusalem as one of the first and most significant 
 of the epochs or stages in the continuous world-judge- 
 ment ; while others might be understood as a dramatic 
 embodiment of that judgement of God upon individual 
 souls which gradually takes place as each one dies and 
 stands before what was metaphorically described as the 
 judgement seat of God. Maurice belonged to that 
 school of pre-critical Liberalism which was peculiarly 
 English. Such men knew httle of the critical work of 
 their German contemporaries, and there was practically 
 no such thing as higher criticism in English Univer- 
 sities or among Enghsh theological writers. English 
 liberalizing writers were content for the most part to 
 accept the recorded words of Christ as substantially 
 authentic, and to Umit their criticism of the traditional 
 Biblicism to the substitution of a moderate and a 
 spiritual for a mechanical or verbal theory of Inspira- 
 tion. More advanced Liberals were disposed to deny 
 that the more intractable eschatological sayings were 
 really uttered by our Lord, and to put down the 
 apocalyptic imagery and colouring, when it could not 
 
42 Conscience and Christ 
 
 with any plausibility be spiritualized, to the influence 
 upon the minds of the Apostles and the Evangelists of 
 narrow Jewish ideas, the existence of which in other 
 minds than that of Jesus they had no desire to 
 conceal. 
 
 During the last few years there has been a much 
 closer study of the Synoptic problem on the one hand 
 and of the apocalyptic literature on the other — of 
 Daniel and the Revelation of St. John within the 
 Canon and of that group of extra-canonical writings — 
 some of them only recently edited — of which the 
 Book of Enoch is the best-known representative. And 
 the result is that Theologians have for the most part 
 become convinced that the apocalyptic and eschato- 
 logical element in the teaching of Jesus cannot be so 
 easily disposed of. The tendency of the older Liberal- 
 ism was to spiritualize as much as possible, and either 
 to explain away or to reject what was non-spiritual. 
 Now a precisely opposite disposition prevails. The 
 more "advanced," the more liberal, the more emanci- 
 pated a Theologian claims to be, the more probable is 
 it that he will insist on regarding as authentic, and on 
 explaining in the most literal sense, every saying of 
 Christ that could possibly be understood as having an 
 eschatological significance. It is just the prima facie 
 more spiritual, more ethical sayings that are explained 
 away or rejected as ecclesiastical insertions. By the 
 fashionable school of German Eschatologists which has 
 culminated in Schweitzer, and by the Cathohc Modem- 
 
Ethics and Eschatology • 43 
 
 ists of the Loisy type, the older Liberalism is now 
 accused of having made of Jesus a German liberal 
 Protestant. The historical reality, we are told, was 
 very different. In the view of Jesus Himself — accord- 
 ing to Schweitzer and his stricter followers ' — His 
 whole message was primarily Eschatology. He 'con- 
 ceived of Himself not as Messiah in some new, spirit- 
 ualized, transfigured sense but in the literal sense of 
 Jewish Apocalyptic. And he accepted that role with 
 all its consequences and all its concomitants. He 
 expected a catastrophic judgement in the near future. 
 He faced — some of them say He courted — death in 
 order to hurry on the miraculous interposition which 
 He expected to follow or to prevent it. His hopes were 
 disappointed : His cry of agony on the Cross was the 
 cry of one who had expected a supernJitural deliver- 
 ance, and found it not. He really felt Himself forsaken 
 of God. All His teaching about the Kingdom refers 
 to the expected future personal reign of Himself, the 
 Messiah, after the Judgement at which He was Himself 
 to preside. It was. to be a Kingdom of a very material, 
 though a very supernatural, kind — to be set up sud- 
 denly and catastrophically. He had no thought of a 
 gradual permeation of Jewish society by His teaching 
 — still less of a conversion of the Gentile world to His 
 principles. His moral and religious teaching, what 
 
 * Loisy is less extreme in his Eschatology. He doubts many 
 sayings which Schweitzer accepts, and he has more respect for the 
 ethical teaching of Christ. 
 
44 Conscience and Christ 
 
 there was of it, was not much in advance of the higher 
 rabbinic teaching of His time. His ethical precepts 
 consisted merely of very simple instructions for the 
 behaviour of His followers during the few months 
 which He expected to intervene before the Judgement. 
 It was a mere " Interimsethik " — as the phrase is— 
 of little value, or even interest, for us at the present day 
 who know His Messianic ideas to be a delusion and 
 anticipate no catastrophic judgement or sudden " end 
 of the world." ^ 
 
 What are we to say to these new ideas ? 
 
 (i) In the first place as to the critical basis. I have 
 no time to enter upon a discussion of particular pas- 
 sages, but I must confess that I am still very sceptical 
 as to the more definite sayings — the sayings which 
 profess to indicate the exact time of the coming 
 Judgement. Not one of them belongs to what is per- 
 haps the best attested stratum of Synoptic tradition. 
 Not one certainly belongs to the source now known as 
 Q — that is to say, to the original document which 
 underiies the sayings common to Matthew and Luke. 
 If we put aside the apocalyptic discourse' of which I 
 shall speak in a moment, not one of them which occurs 
 
 • Of course I do not deny that these ideas are often expressed 
 with considerable qualifications in the writings of the ultra- 
 eschatologists (and with considerable exaggeration in their more 
 private utterances) ; but, in proportion as such writers qualify 
 their statements, they do not differ from the theologians whom 
 they criticize. Cf. Schweitzer, The Quest of the Histoncal Jesus, 
 p. 239, pp. 399-401- 
 
 * Mark xiii. with its parallels. 
 
Ethics and Eschatology . 45 
 
 in Mark is found also unaltered in the other two 
 Gospels. ^ And they are not consistent with one another. 
 In one passage our Lord is represented as sa3dng that 
 His disciples would not have gone over the cities of 
 Israel till the Son of Man should be come (this is found 
 in Matthew only) :* at another He says that only 
 some of those who stood by should witness the coming, 
 implying that the time would not be in the very near 
 future.^ In the long series of predictions contained 
 in the thirteenth chapter of St. Mark and largely 
 amplified in the other two Synoptists, He speaks of a 
 number of false Christs as destined to come first, which 
 means of course that He was to disappear in some way 
 from the earth, and that there was thus to be a con- 
 siderable interval before the coming again, although 
 all three Synoptists here make Him say that this 
 generation should not pass away till all these things 
 came to pass. And all these passages are inconsistent 
 
 ' Unless the prediction that He would drink no more of the fruit of 
 the vine till He should drink it new in His Father's Kingdom (Mark 
 xiv. 25=Matt. xxvi. 29=Luke xxii. i8) be regarded as an exception, 
 and be understood in an extremely literal sense. There is again 
 the passage : "Ye shall not see me henceforth till ye shall say, 
 Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord " (Matt, xxiii. 
 39 : Luke xiii. 35). But this passage seems to imply a disappear- 
 ance and a reappearance after an interval of some duration, rather 
 than any immediate manifestation of the Kingdom. 
 
 ' Matt. x. 33. The extreme improbability that Jesus should 
 have spoken thus is pointed out by Loisy (Evan. Syn. I, p. 866). 
 See note on page 46. 
 
 " Mark ix. i : Matt. xvi. 28 : Luke ix. 27. Luke has simply 
 " see the Kingdom of God." This is probably, it must be confessed, 
 a correction of Mark. 
 
46 Conscience and Christ 
 
 with the express declaration that He Himself did not 
 know the date of the Judgement, but only the Father, i 
 This last is one of the five " pillar-texts " which 
 Schmiedel treats as the most certain of all the sayings 
 of Jesus, because the least likely to be invented by a 
 disciple or by the unconscious growth of tradition. 
 All the others may quite conceivably be attempts made 
 by successive generations of Christian teachers at once 
 to adjourn the date of the Coming and to reassure the 
 waning hopes of Christ's followers. ^ The thirteenth 
 chapter of St. Mark is obviously, according to some 
 even of the more eschatological critics, a Jewish- 
 Christian Apocalypse variously amplified and touched 
 
 > Matt. xxiv. 36 : Markxiii. 32. Luke no doubt omits the saying 
 as derogatory to the omniscience of Jesus. It may be suggested 
 that this means merely " He did not know the exact date," but 
 to say that the Judgement should come before a tour of Palestine 
 could be completed was surely to claim a very exact knowledge, 
 hardly less so to say it would come within some forty years. 
 
 * The saying most dif&cult to account for, " Ye shall not have 
 gone over the cities of Israel till the Son of man be come," is found 
 only in Matthew (x. 23). Sayings found in Matthew alone are the 
 most doubtful of all the words put into our Lord's mouth, especially 
 when they can be explained as " ecclesiastical additions." Schweitzer 
 treats this as an actual sajrtng which was meant literally. Jesus 
 was disappointed when the disciples returned, and the kingdom 
 had not come. But the context should be remembered : " When 
 they persecute you in this city, flee ye into the next, for verily I 
 say unto you ye shall not," etc. The disciples were in little danger 
 of persecution at this time. The situation presupposed by this 
 verse, as by much else in Matthew's version of this discourse, ii 
 that of the disciples during their later Palestinian mission. The 
 Evangelist evidently means the whole mission of the Church to 
 be understood as a continuation of the first and original mission 
 of the Twelve during the earthly life of their Master. The date 
 contemplated is therefore much the same as that implied by " This 
 generation shall not pass away." 
 
Ethics and Eschatology > 47 
 
 up in the different Synoptists by a succession of hands. 
 It may contain genuine sayings of Christ, but it cannot 
 be treated as conclusive evidence as to the way 
 in which Christ Himself spoke of His "coming." 
 Even the earhest version in Mark assumes that a not 
 inconsiderable time will elapse between the departure 
 of Jesus and His return. If we accepted it as genuine, it 
 would positively disprove the notion that Jesus looked 
 for a quite immediate Parousia. The succession of 
 false Christs could not be expected while Jesus was 
 still with His disciples or in any very short period after 
 His departure. With regard to the declaration before 
 the High Priest it may plausibly be argued that critical 
 probability is in favour of the Matthew-Mark version, 
 according to which our Lord says : " Henceforth ye 
 shall see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of 
 power and coming with the clouds of heaven," though 
 Luke's account has simply " from now shall the Son 
 of Man be seated at the right hand of the power of 
 God."^ But what are the probabilities of the exact 
 words of Jesus at the Judgement-seat being accurately 
 preserved by any tradition whatever ? It seems that 
 none of His disciples was present. How infinitely 
 greater were the probabilities of Luther's words before 
 the diet of Worms being correctly remembered. Luther 
 spoke in an orderly assembly of hundreds or thousands, 
 among whom many were attached followers. Some of 
 these were princes or great personages, occupying 
 ' Mark xiv. 62 (=Matt. xxvi. 64) ; Luke xxii. 69. 
 
48 Conscience and Christ 
 
 prominent places, and all were hanging upon his words. 
 Yet very different versions of his words were in circula- 
 tion a few years after his death, and the famous " Here 
 I stand, I can do no other," which has become classical, 
 is now shown to be opposed to the testimony of an 
 eye-witness who wrote very shortly after the event. ^ 
 
 I look then with great suspicion upon all the pas- 
 sages which profess to fix the date of the Judgement, 
 and I have also grave doubts as to the share which 
 Jesus personally claims for Himself in the judgement 
 of which He speaks. ^ It is doubtful whether He 
 ever spoke of Himself as the actual Judge. I think 
 I could give you critical grounds for these doubts if I 
 had time to go through the passages seriatim. But 
 
 1 See Lindsay, Hist, of the Reformation, I, p. 291. " It is most 
 likely," says Dr. Lindsay, " that in the excitement men carried 
 away only a general impression and not an exact recollection 
 of the last words of Luther." 
 
 ' That Jesus claimed to be Himself the Judge in the coming 
 Judgement can be established only by three parables reported in 
 St. Matthew — the parables of the Talents, the Sheep and the Goats, 
 the Tares. Only the first is in Luke also. In this (Matt. xxv. 19) we 
 are told that it is only " after a long time " that the Lord will 
 return to reckon with the servants. Either therefore we must give 
 up saying that Jesus expected a Parousia as immediate as is con- 
 tended for by Schweitzer and his uncompromising followers, or the 
 parable cannot be treated as in its present form an accurate repre- 
 sentation of His words. The Lukan version — the parable of the 
 ten pounds — is said to have been uttered " because he was nigh to 
 Jerusalem, and because they thought that the Kingdom of God 
 should immediately appear " (Luke xix. 11) ; and even apart from 
 this comment, the intention to discourage the notion of an im- 
 mediate Parousia is sufificiently evident. It is therefore quite 
 possible that in the original parable the function of the Messiah 
 was less distinctly that of a Judge. The parable of the Sheep and 
 the Goats is found in Matthew only (xxv. 31). It is based on 
 Enoch (cap. Ixii.), where (i), though the Messiah judges, it is not 
 
Ethics and Eschatology , 49 
 
 I do not deny that there is a residuum of truth in these 
 eschatological ideas. Nothing is more certain than 
 that the burden of Christ's earUest Gospel was that " the 
 Kingdom of God is at hand." And by the coming of 
 the Kingdom we cannot suppose Him to have meant 
 anything so vague as a gradual leavening of Society 
 by His own teaching. In the light of the current 
 apocalyptic conceptions and of His own parables, I 
 think we must admit that Jesus did expect a coming 
 of a sudden, catastrophic kind in the very near 
 future. I also admit the probability that before the 
 end— it is not probable that that was so from the first 
 — He had made up His mind that He was Himself 
 that promised Messiah ; and He therefore may very 
 
 until " the Lord of Spirits seated him on the throne of His (i.e. 
 God's) glory," (2) the " elect One " is not called " The King." The 
 King is God. Perhaps this was so in the original parable. 
 
 The third passage in which the Messiah is represented as 
 judging the world Himself is in the parable of 'the Tares (or 
 rather in the explanation of it), in which " the Son of Man 
 shall send forth His angels," etc. (Matt. xiii. 41). This is found 
 in Matthew only, and the explanations of parables are less trust- 
 worthy than the parables themselves. If the saying as a whole 
 be genuine, it is quite conceivable that the r61e which is here 
 discharged by the Messiah was in Jesus' words attributed to 
 the Father, or, as in verse 49 of the same chapter, to the angels 
 ("the angels shall come forth," etc.). And after all this Matthean 
 parable (like the last) strongly suggests the circumstances of 
 the early Church. The absence of passages definitely implying 
 a judgement by Jesus Himself in Mark and (with one exception) 
 in Luke is very significant. The words about coming in the clouds 
 of heaven at the trial, if genuine, do not imply Judgement by the 
 Messiah : it is more probable that Jesus should have spoken of 
 HimseU as sitting on the right hand of the divine Judge, than that 
 He should claim to be the actual Judge. Luke xiii. 25, xxi. 36 
 hardly imply more than Assessorship, even if they are unaltered. 
 
50 Conscience and Christ 
 
 well have applied to Himself some of the current 
 apocalyptic imagery — how much we cannot be sure. 
 If he were indeed the Messiah, as His sense of close 
 communion with God and His consciousness of a divine 
 mission suggested to Him, it would follow that His 
 heavenly Father would in some signal way manifest 
 His Son to the world, visibly interpose in His favour, 
 and set up the long-promised Kingdom in some visible 
 and conspicuous form. Jesus probably applied to the 
 coming of the Kingdom — whatever He may have said 
 about His own personal role in it — the accepted 
 Messianic symbols, and no doubt we cannot explain 
 such imagery in a wholly " spiritual " sense, if by that 
 is meant the entire absence of anything miraculous or 
 supernatural in the manner of its setting up. But 
 not all the sayings can with probability be attributed 
 to our Lord, nor need we take all this imagery (when 
 it is well attested) with the deadly literalness which 
 the extreme Eschatologists demand. In view of the 
 ethical and spiritual tone which pervades His teaching 
 as a whole, it is unlikely that He thought of the 
 Messianic banquet as a banquet at which literal bread 
 would be eaten or literal wine drunk — the more so as 
 this was denied by some of the rabbis.^ We know 
 
 1 " The world to come is neither eating nor drinking, nor 
 increasing and multiplying, nor giving and receiving, nor jealousy, 
 nor hatred, nor strife ; but the righteous sit with crowns on their 
 heads, and enjoy the light of the Shechinah " (b. Bar. 17a, quoted 
 by Herford, Pharisaism, p. 274). Why should Jesus have been 
 less "spiritual" than the Rabbis, even if it be assumed that He 
 cannot have been more so ? 
 
Ethics and Eschatology . 51 
 
 that He thought there would be no marrying or giving 
 in marriage in that Kingdom. And, if He did apply to 
 Himself the traditional picture of the coming with the 
 clouds of heaven (which is by no means certain), we 
 need not suppose that He who certainly spiritualized 
 so much of the old prophetic teaching necessarily 
 conceived that the exact mode of supernatural mani- 
 festation had been revealed to Him.^ 
 
 But (2) it is simply not true that the Kingdom of 
 Heaven is always represented as something to be set 
 up in the future by a sudden and catastrophic event. 
 Side by side with the passages in which this is the case, 
 there are, as has been well pointed out by Prof, 
 von Dobschiitz in his admirable little book on The 
 Eschatology of Jesus, other passages in which the 
 Kingdom is as definitely spoken of as already present, 
 or as destined to spread here upon earth in a moral, 
 spiritual, gradual way. " If I by the finger of God, 
 cast out devils, then is the Kingdom of God come 
 upon you" — is already come {efQaa-ev)."^ This 
 passage is found in Matthew and Luke, and doubtless 
 
 ' I doubt whether our Lord promised the disciples that they 
 should sit on twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel 
 (Matt. xix. 28=Luke xxii. 30, not in Mark). How could He who 
 made such a promise have declared that to sit on His right hand 
 and on His left was not His to give ? (Mark x. 40=Matt. xx. 23, 
 omitted by Luke as derogatory to the Apostles) . Whether genuine 
 or not, the "thrones" may have been suggested by Testaments of 
 the Twelve Patriarchs (Judah xxv. i). 
 
 * Luke xi. 20. An attempt is made on the analogy of modern 
 Greek to make this mean "is just coming." Such a conjecture 
 might serve once, but the extreme eschatological position involves 
 explaining away so much. 
 
52 Conscience and Christ 
 
 forms part of the oldest Gospel source which used to 
 be known as the Logia, and which it is now customary 
 to speak of as Q. So is the passage : " from that time 
 the gospel of the kingdom of God is preached, and 
 every man entereth violently into it." ^ Another passage 
 is not quite so well attested, being found in Luke only, 
 but there is no reason for rejecting it. "The Kingdom 
 of God cometh not with observation : neither shall they 
 say, Lo here or Lo there ! for behold the Kingdom of 
 God is within you."^ And, in the light of these two or 
 three pretty clear cases, there is no reason why we 
 should not interpret in their obvious and natural 
 sense those passages which can only by a forced 
 and tortuous exegesis be squeezed into conformity 
 with a purely futurist and catastrophic conception — 
 the parables of the grain of mustard-seed,* of the 
 
 1 Luke xvi. i6. In Matt. xi. 12 the words are somewhat 
 difierent, but the essential part is the same : " The Kingdom of 
 Heaven suffereth violence and men of violence take it by force." 
 It would be out of place to discuss the meaning of this difficult 
 passage. 
 
 ' Luke xvii. 20, 21. {ivrbs v/iuv). If we accept the translation 
 " among you," that will not affect the argument. (Luke probably 
 meant "within"; the meaning of the original Aramaic is more 
 doubtful, cf. below, p. 55 notf.) Canon Streeter gives good 
 reasons for attributing this saying to Q (Oxford Studies in the 
 Synoptic Problem, p. 201). It may have been omitted simply 
 because it was not understood. Matt. xxi. 31 (" the publicans 
 and the harlots go into the Kingdom of God before you "), cited 
 by Prof, von Dobschiitz, may be got rid of by the suggestion 
 that in the original Aramaic the tense used was the imperfect, 
 which admits of being translated either in present or future. 
 
 ' Matt. xiii. 31 ; Mark iv. 31 ; Luke xiii. ig. The stress may 
 (as is contended by some) be on the contrast between the smallness 
 of the beginning cind the greatness of the culmination, but still the 
 transition from the one to the other is by a process, not by a catas- 
 
Ethics and Eschatology * 53 
 
 leaven,* of the wheat and the tares, ^ of the seed growing 
 secretly.* All such passages may be much more natur- 
 ally understood of the rapid spread of Christ's teaching 
 — not, indeed, in the Gentile world or in a distant future, 
 but now, during His earthly life among His own people, 
 before His very eyes. So again, while our Lord some- 
 times speaks of " entering " the Kingdom, He elsewhere 
 speaks of receiving the Kingdom of God " as a little 
 child "^ — ^which lends itself naturally to the present 
 and spiritual interpretation. He who receives the 
 good news of the Kingdom, and prepares himself for 
 its coming in the right spirit, is already in a sense 
 within the Kingdom, or the Kingdom may be said to 
 be aheady in him. ' The transition from the one aspect 
 of the Kingdom to the other is not a difficult or a 
 violent one. Jesus certainly started with the con- 
 ception of the Kingdom as something future. But 
 
 trophe. It is suggested that the idea of development is modern, 
 but after all the ancients were quite familiar with the fact that 
 trees grow gradually. 
 
 ' Matt. xiii. 33 ; Luke xiii. 21. 
 
 ' Matt. xiii. 24. This parable may no doubt be coloured by a 
 reference to the state of the Church in the Evangelist's day. 
 
 ' Mark iv. 26. 
 
 ♦ Mark x. 15; Luke xviii. 17. Matthew (xviii. 3) has "Except 
 ye turn and become as little children." The words that follow (" he 
 shall in no wise enter into the kingdom ") show that the full 
 coming of the Kingdom is future. 
 
 ' So the scribe who answered discreetly was not far from the 
 Kingdom. If the Kingdom was nothing but a future event, his 
 distance from it could not be affected by his moral condition. It 
 is implied that had he a little more completely lived up to the 
 spirit of his answer, he would be already within the Kingdom. 
 But as this occurs only in Mark xii. 34, it may possibly be regarded 
 as an addition of the Evangelist's. 
 
54 Conscience and Christ 
 
 when He saw before Him the spiritual effects of His 
 teaching, He may well have been impelled to exclaim 
 " The Kingdom is already come." " You need not 
 wait till the distant future for it," He suggests: " when- 
 ever the teaching about the Kingdom bears fruit in 
 human society, in men's hearts and in their lives, 
 wherever men are living as they will live who shall 
 hereafter live in the Kingdom that is to be, the King- 
 dom is theirs already : the essentials of the Kingdom 
 are already present." In such passages we get what 
 Prof, von Dobschiitz has called a " transmuted 
 Eschatology " 1 — the old eschatological or apocalyptic 
 
 • The transition from the idea of the kingdom as something 
 future to the kingdom as something present is far easier than 
 it is sometimes assumed to be, and there are precedents for such 
 a transition in Jewish literature. The original meaning of the 
 Hebrew and Aramaic terms translated kingdom of God is simply, 
 we are told, " Sovereignty of God," though it does seem to imply 
 also the social system in which that sovereignty is exercised. 
 " The sovereignty of God belongs, in the first instance, to the 
 current age, and is as yet fully acknowledged only in Israel. The 
 future will, however, bring a fuller development " (Dalman, The 
 Words of Jesus, I, p. 98). " ' The sovereignty of God ' is for Jesus 
 invariably an eschatological entity, of which the present can be 
 predicated only because ' the end ' is already approaching " (I.e. 
 P- 135)- " There was already in existence, prior to the time of 
 Jesus, a tendency which laid little stress on the Jewish national 
 element in the hope for the future. This aspect of the future 
 hope Jesus thrust still further into the background, placing the 
 purely religious element decisively in the foreground, and He 
 thereljy extended the conception of the ' sovereignty of God ' so 
 as to include within it the blessings mediated by this sovereignty. 
 For Him the sovereignty of God meant the divine power, which, 
 from the present onwards with continuous progress, effectuates the 
 renovation of the world, but also tlie renovated world into whose 
 domain mankind will one day enter, which is even now being offered, 
 and therefore can be appropriated and received as a blessing " (I.e. 
 p. 137). " It is indubitable that He developed His own ideas in 
 
Ethics and Eschatoto^y . 55 
 
 language applied or reinterpreted in a present, a 
 moral and a spiritual, sense. 
 
 And the very possibility of this transmutation 
 implies something further. It implies not merely 
 that the Kingdom is not wholly future, but that even 
 the Kingdom that is future is at bottom — in its 
 inmost essence — a moral and spiritual conception. 
 The Messianic idea and its spiritual significance lay 
 so near to each other in the mind of Jesus that He 
 probably passed from one aspect of the Kingdom to 
 the other quite naturally and almost unconsciously. ^ 
 
 (3) And this brings me to a third point which it is 
 important to insist upon as against those extreme 
 Eschatologists who can see in our Lord's teaching 
 nothing but a piece of tawdry apocalyptic romance of 
 no more present spiritual significance than the expecta- 
 tion of Nero's reappearance, or the vision in the book 
 
 regard to the sovereignty of God ia conscious opposition to the 
 Zealot movement" (I.e. p. 138). From this point of view there 
 is no difficulty whatever in supposing that He might have said " The 
 kingdom of God is among you," or even " within you." Dalman 
 appears to have no doubt that He said one or the other : he inclines 
 to the view that the original Aramaic meant " within." The whole 
 treatment of the subject by Dahnan is most instructive. 
 
 1 On the basis of Matt. xiii. 52 we might argue that Jesus 
 was not quite unaware that in His mind and His teaching the con- 
 ception of the Kingdom had undergone a " transmutation." 
 " Therefore every scribe which hath been made a disciple to the 
 kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is a householder, which 
 bringeth forth out of his treasure things new and old." If the 
 saying be genuine, it betrays a consciousness that the old Messianic 
 language was being invested with a new meaning. But the passage, 
 or the turn given to it, may possibly be due to the Evangelist, 
 though personally I see no reason why it should be so. Luke may 
 have omitted it because he could not understand it. 
 
56 Conscience and Christ 
 
 of Enoch about the stars which became bulls and the 
 cows which gave birth to elephants. 
 
 The conception of the Kingdom throughout— whether 
 it is looked upon as future or as present, as to come 
 gradually or to come suddenly — ^is at bottom ethical 
 and spiritual. Doubtless the environment, the 
 accidents, the setting of the jewel are apocalyptic. 
 No doubt our Lord expected that the Kingdom was 
 to be established in a supernatural manner, just as 
 all believers in Immortality think of that immortal 
 life as involving a divine action which goes beyond 
 anything of which natural law as at present known to 
 Science can tell us. True, the belief in Immortality 
 does not necessarily involve a breach of natural law, 
 and the eschatological conception does : but that 
 difference does not make the one conception spiritual 
 and the other not. The essence of the Kingdom of 
 Heaven, as Jesus thought of it, was that it was a state 
 of closer union between God and man, a state of 
 things in which God's will was to be perfectly fulfilled. 
 
 How shall I estabUsh this position in a way that will 
 convince those who do not see that it is implied in all 
 His sayings about it ? The best proof that can be 
 offered is perhaps the purely spiritual character of the 
 means by which it is to be entered. The proclamation 
 " Repent " is as undoubtedly part of the earliest 
 message of Jesus as " the Kingdom is at hand." And 
 all through His teaching it is insisted that nothing can 
 secure admission to the Kingdom but goodness. Not 
 
Ethics and Eschatology ' 57 
 
 descent from Abraham, not circumcision, not the 
 observance of the ceremonial law, not the sacrifices or 
 any other external rite, not (as was sometimes taught 
 by the Jews of a later day^) the Day of Atonement 
 and its ritual could procure forgiveness of sins, 
 deliverance at the Judgement, and admission to the 
 Kingdom. About these not one word is said in any 
 part of our Lord's teaching. Admission to the King- 
 dom depends upon righteousness and upon nothing 
 else. " Not every one that saith unto me Lord, Lord, 
 shall enter into the Kingdom of heaven, but he that 
 doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven."^ 
 It is the righteous and they alone who will shine forth 
 as the Sun in the Kingdom of their Father. All the 
 parables of the Kingdom, whatever other aspects of 
 it they emphasize, imply this — that repentance and 
 righteousness, moral regeneration, lives devoted to 
 the good of their fellows, were the sole means of 
 entering it.' 
 
 ^ This was not the only view. See Herford, Pharisaism, pp. 210- 
 215. 
 
 ' Matt. vii. 2i=Luke vi. 46-8. "Except your righteousness 
 shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall 
 in no case enter into the Kingdom of heaven " is in Matthew only 
 (Matt, v., 20), and therefore perhaps not in Q. 
 
 ' If we could rely on it implicitly, we might especially point to 
 the parable of the marriage-feast (Matt. xxii. 11 ; cf. Luke xiv. 16). 
 It is arbitrary and extravagant to interpret the wedding-garment 
 by " election " (as is done by Schweitzer), and to quote it in proof 
 of the fact that Jesus was a " predestinarian " ; though after all 
 to be a predestinarian is not necessarily to be unethical. But 
 the passage about the wedding-garment is in Matthew only. It is 
 curious how uncritical an " Eschatologist " can become when he 
 finds anything to suit his purpose. 
 
58 Conscience and Christ 
 
 No doubt Jesus thought of the Kingdom as some- 
 thing more than an ethical condition : it was a state 
 of reward : it included, it may be assumed, happiness 
 and freedom from the cares and sufferings of human 
 life as we know it : and to be excluded from the 
 Kingdom meant punishment and suffering — of what 
 kind it is unnecessary now to ask. If this is to be 
 unethical, almost all teachers who have believed in 
 Immortality have been unethical, — Plato and Kant 
 and nearly all the most spiritual teachers of philo- 
 sophical Ethics no less than all the prophets of all the 
 Religions. Even with a negative Eschatology such as 
 Gautama's, freedom from pain is part of the promised 
 reward.^ In the teaching of Jesus this reward is 
 symbolized by the ordinary apocalyptic image of the 
 Messianic banquet. The rejected gnash their teeth 
 with shame, and remain in the darkness outside the 
 briUiantly lighted banqueting hall. But there is in 
 His teaching singularly little insistence upon the joys 
 of the Kingdom — still less is there anything about 
 carnal joys except what is implied in the imagery of 
 the banquet. A Kingdom which is entered by righteous- 
 ness and nothing else must surely be conceived of as 
 a Kingdom of righteousness: that much is after all 
 implied in the old prophetic conception of the King- 
 
 ' Jesus never taught that the good deed was to be done only 
 for the sake of the reward. The Pharisees, says Mr. Herford, 
 " were emphatic in teaching that the ' Mitzvah ' [good deed] was 
 not to be done for the sake of the reward, as if to obtain thereby 
 some payment of what was due " [Pharisaism, p. 275). 
 
Ethics and Eschatology ' 59 
 
 dom, and even in that of the more spiritual Apocalyp- 
 tists. 1 The bare fact that Jesus taught that a Messianic 
 Kingdom was to be set up involves no disparagement 
 of Ethics. Unless to promise a future reward for 
 righteousness is to be unethical, there is no antagonism, 
 as seems to be assumed in some quarters, between 
 Ethics and Eschatology. In the preaching of Jesus 
 the announcement that the Kingdom was to come 
 and the ethical appeal went together. But to be 
 eschatological is not necessarily to be unethical. 
 Everything depends upon the question where the 
 emphasis is laid. According to the ultra-eschatological 
 School, all the emphasis was upon the Eschatology. 
 I believe the exact opposite to be the case. In the 
 teaching of Jesus all the emphasis was on the Ethics, 
 and upon Religion of an intensely ethical type. 
 
 It is scarcely possible to emphasize Ethics more 
 than to urge men to devote their whole energies to 
 winning an entrance into the Kingdom of God, and 
 then to tell them that the only way of entering it is 
 to be righteous. And there is hardly anything said 
 about the Kingdom — if we put aside the " little Apoca- 
 lypse " — except in close connexion with exhortations to 
 
 ' This is well put by Mr. Montefiore who has assuredly no bias 
 in favour of Christian orthodoxy. "The essential feature of the 
 ordinary conception of the Messiah was that of a righteous King 
 ruling over a righteous people ; the Messianic era was indeed one of 
 prosperity, but far more was it one of peace and goodness and the 
 knowledge of God. So far as it was this, why should not Jesus have 
 wished to be the Jewish Messiah ? " (Syn. Gospels, ^.■x.cwii). Of course 
 Mr. Montefiore would admit that out of the various and conflicting 
 Messianic ideals, Jesus picked the most spiritual. 
 
6o Conscience and Christ 
 
 righteousness. By the simple process of counting verses, 
 it can be shown that the teaching is mostly rehgious or 
 ethical. And what the Gospels do not contain is as sig- 
 nificant as what they do contain. Compare our Lord's 
 sayings with the book of Daniel, or the Apocalypse of 
 St. John, or with any of the other avowedly eschatologi- 
 cal and apocalyptic writings. These are not entirely 
 wanting in ethical elements, but the ethical parts are 
 small in bulk compared with those which deal with 
 the details of the awful calamities coming on the 
 earth, of the historical or physical disasters which 
 would precede or follow it, of the rewards in store for 
 those who should be saved from the approaching 
 judgement. There is nothing therefore in the mere 
 fact that our Lord believed that the Kingdom of God 
 would be set up in the near future, and in a catas- 
 trophic manner, which proves that Ethics formed an 
 unimportant or subordinate part of His teaching ; or 
 that that teaching possesses no value for us. If this 
 is to be shown, it must be shown from the actual 
 character of His teaching. What the character of 
 that teaching was, we shall examine in our next 
 lecture. 
 
 But, it may be asked by some, " Does not the mere 
 fact that Jesus expected the coming of the Kingdom 
 and a general winding up of the present physical and 
 social order within a few months or a few years by 
 itself imply that His teaching cannot be suitable to 
 the moral needs of our times — that it must be merely 
 
Ethics and Eschatology . 6i 
 
 an ' Interimsethik ' — a mere temporary makeshift, 
 a provisional code for a strictly transitional state of 
 things ? " I submit that this is not to be assumed a 
 priori. Why should we spend our time otherwise 
 because we are going to die, or to pass into some new 
 stage of existence, in six months than we should do if 
 we were to know we had twenty years of life before 
 us ? "To live this day as if my last " — ^has not this 
 been at all times a familiar prayer among religious 
 people and a commonplace of rehgious exhortation ? 
 No doubt, when we come to details, the probable 
 duration of life does become important. A wise man 
 who knows that he has only a year or so to live does 
 not set himself down to write a Lexicon or a Universal 
 History. Objects of pursuit that are really vain and 
 unimportant may seem doubly so in prospect of an 
 early death : but not the things that are best worth 
 doing. And the same principle will apply to the 
 duration of Society as to the duration of the individual 
 life. Here the difference in detail might be greater. 
 A good man who knew he was to die in six months' 
 time would go on ploughing his field because he knows 
 that, even if he will not be able to reap the harvest 
 and eat the bread, others will do so. He might well 
 devote himself to the founding of enterprises which 
 others will carry on. But, if he thought the world 
 was coming to an end, or that human Society as 
 at present constituted was to be wound up, in five 
 years' time, he would not begin to build a Cathedral 
 
62 Conscience and Christ 
 
 or to found a new University. Still, these are matters 
 of detail, not of principle. In point of fact the moral 
 teaching of Jesus contains very little detail. It deals 
 almost entirely with general principles. The im- 
 perative need for repentance, the supreme importance 
 of pure motive, the swallowing up of all the command- 
 ments in the command to love God and our neighbour 
 — these are its main ideas. There is no reason why 
 commands like these should not be equally valuable 
 for a society which believes itself destined to endure 
 till the sun waxes cold, and for a society which believes 
 that some world-transforming catastrophe is close at 
 hand. There is no a priori reason for treating the 
 Ethics of Jesus as useless to a modern society, because 
 He entertained certain eschatological expectations. 
 Once more, if we want to discover whether it is an 
 " Interimsethik " or not, we must examine the 
 teaching itself, and say how it appeals to us. 
 
 And here let me remark that in answering this 
 question we are no longer obliged to adopt a meek 
 and deferential attitude towards the experts in 
 Synoptic criticism or in Apocalyptic literature. When 
 it is a question of spiritual values, such persons have 
 no particular claim to be heard. To say what is the 
 present value of our Lord's teaching is the business 
 of the Philosopher or of the Moralist ; and even they 
 of course have after all no data to go upon but the 
 deliverances of their own moral consciousness. Here 
 it is ethical or spiritual insight which counts rather than 
 
Ethics and Eschatology * 63 
 
 critical learning or acumen, though a certain amount 
 of philosophical training an4 acquaintance with the 
 general history of thought may be considered not 
 altogether irrelevant. And I will venture the further 
 remark that in this matter the extremer eschato- 
 logical critics have shown no superiority to the 
 old-fashioned Liberal Protestant Theologians whom 
 they affect to despise. 
 
 I proceed then to ask how far the eschatological 
 expectations of Jesus — whether those which I admit 
 He entertained or those more detailed expectations 
 which He may have entertained if we suppose all the 
 eschatological utterances attributed to Him to be 
 genuine — have actually coloured His ethical teaching, 
 and diminished the value of it for ourselves. There 
 is, I believe, only one way in which the character of 
 our Lord's ethical teaching may have been affected by 
 His belief in the coming end. In the face of the ap- 
 proaching Judgement all other occupations, interests, 
 aims in life seemed comparatively unimportant beside 
 that of announcing that the Judgement was at hand 
 and calling upon men to prepare themselves for it. And 
 therefore He did sometimes emphasize the unim- 
 portance of worldly goods, and encourage His dis- 
 ciples to take no thought for the morrow to an extent 
 which would require some correction before it could 
 be literally applied to the case of those who do not 
 believe that the world is just coming to an end. The 
 essential principle even of such sayings does, however. 
 
64 Conscience and Christ 
 
 remain eternally true. " Seek ye first the King- 
 dom of God and His righteousness." The Kingdom 
 of God first, all else afterwards. If we refuse to accept 
 that principle, it will be because we do not care 
 for righteousness as much as Christ, not because our 
 eschatological ideas are different from His. Here, 
 as elsev/here, we must distinguish between eternal 
 principles and particular applications. It is true that 
 to some men He did address the invitation, as the 
 supreme thing to be done for the moment, to leave 
 their ordinary occupations and join His missionary 
 band. He did not, it would appear, impose that 
 task upon all His hearers : the call which He addressed 
 to the Twelve and to some others was a call (as M. Paul 
 Sabatier has remarked) not to a new religion, but to a 
 new apostolate. The call was addressed to those 
 whom He judged fit for it. And, as we look back upon 
 the work of Jesus and His Apostles in the light of 
 history, was He after all so very much mistaken as to 
 the supreme importance of this task ? He was en- 
 gaged, according to the Eschatologists, in trying to 
 save a small section of one Jewish generation from a 
 terrible calamity which awaited the unrepentant in a 
 few months or a few years' time, after which the 
 effects of His preaching would end. In the light of 
 history we see that He was really sowing the seeds 
 of a vast spiritual revolution, founding a new reUgion 
 instead of regenerating an old one — a religion which 
 was to convert the whole Roman Empire within some 
 
Ethics and Eschatology 65 
 
 few centuries, which has now after nearly two thousand 
 years spread to the remotest corners of the world, and 
 has so far proved itself to be the only one of the ancient 
 historical religions which can hold its own in the light 
 of modern Science and modern Culture. Surely the 
 task of preaching what Jesus called the Kingdom of 
 God really was the most important task to which any 
 human being could then and there have addressed 
 himself. Doubtless the task was conceived by Himself 
 and His followers under the limitations of Jewish 
 thought : but that did not affect its essential import- 
 ance. If Jesus was not the Messiah as Jewish thought 
 conceived Him, it was only because He was so much 
 more : if the ideal of a Messianic Kingdom, as He and 
 His disciples expected it, was not to be realized, the 
 Kingdom that they really did set up was something 
 much greater than they contemplated. Like all the 
 world's greatest spiritual builders, they builded much 
 better than they knew. Jesus was not wrong then in the 
 advice which He gave to the best men of His own 
 generation. With all our fuller knowledge and larger 
 experience, we could not wish that He should have 
 taught, or that they should have acted, differently. 
 
 But what of the application of that call to ourselves ? 
 No doubt in order to apply it to the conditions of 
 modern life, we must to some extent translate the 
 conception of the Kingdom into terms of modern life. 
 For us the light of Science and the course of History 
 have dispelled the dream of a speedy return of Jesus 
 
66 Conscience and Christ 
 
 upon the clouds of Heaven. But how far need that 
 modify our conception of the Kingdom ? It is neces- 
 sary that we should face this question, because so 
 much of Christ's ethical teaching was conveyed under 
 the form of parables about the Kingdom. If we can- 
 not make the Kingdom mean something modem, there 
 is a large part of Jesus' teaching which will mean 
 nothing at all for us. I have endeavoured to show you 
 that, though the original conception was that of a 
 future, catastrophic Kingdom, Jesus did also in all 
 probability speak of a Kingdom which should come 
 gradually, which was actually coming gradually in 
 a quiet, unobtrusive, uncatastrophic development, as 
 individual souls listened to His message, and as a little 
 society formed around Him in which God's will was 
 being already done. If this meaning of the King- 
 dom was for Him, in a sense, a secondary meaning, it 
 is clear that to us it must be the primary one. The 
 Kingdom of God, after all, means only the reign of 
 God. To bring about a reign of God in human society 
 is surely the true conception of the supreme end of 
 human life. And then there is a sense in which the 
 futurist interpretation of the Kingdom will always be 
 the right one. Of course, if we think that the idea of 
 a future life better than the present was a baseless 
 or even a demoralizing dream, then, indeed, we should 
 have arrived at an ethical ideal which would be 
 fundamentally irreconcilable with the deepest ideas 
 of Jesus. But if we share the hope of Immortality, 
 
Ethics and Eschatology 67 
 
 then it makes little difference, from an ethical and 
 religious point of view, whether the entrance upon 
 this future hfe was to be effected by a sudden catas- 
 trophe or by the departure of individual souls from 
 the present scene and their reawakening in some other 
 state. 
 
 And there is no real incompatibility between these 
 two aspects of the Kingdom of God — the present 
 ethical aspect of it, and the future or " transcendental " 
 aspect. The late Father Tyrrell in one of his last 
 books, Christianity at the Cross-roads, adopted a 
 curious attitude towards this eschatological question 
 which has attained a certain popularity in England. 
 He agrees with the extreme Eschatologists that the 
 teaching of Jesus was Eschatology and very little else, 
 and that the eschatological hopes which He cherished 
 are a delusion. But, instead of drawing the inference 
 " Christianity cannot be the Religion of the Modern 
 World," he infers on the contrary that the Christianity 
 of the modem world must be equally eschatological. 
 For him the Christian idea of the Kingdom of God has 
 absolutely nothing in common with that hope of a 
 gradual improvement in the social and spiritual con- 
 dition of Humanity in which Protestant Liberal 
 Theology has been disposed to find its deepest meaning. 
 Tyrrell pours ridicule upon the modern idea of indefi- 
 nite progress, moral advance, social improvement. His 
 view of the present condition of the world is pro- 
 foundly pessimistic, and he treats the hope of any 
 
68 Conscience and Christ 
 
 serious improvement in it as absolutely baseless. The 
 only hope for the future that there is must be concen- 
 trated upon another world than this. The essence 
 of Christianity must always lie in the dream of a new 
 heaven and a new earth. By the vulgar, it seems to be 
 suggested, that expectation will always be accepted 
 in some rather literal and materialistic sense : more 
 cultivated Christians will treat it as a symbol of a 
 somewhat vague hope for a better world beyond the 
 grave which will supply a sort of spiritual anod5me for 
 the irfemediable badness of life, even if it is actually 
 doomed to eventual disappointment. ^ 
 
 I venture to think that this attempt to combine a 
 pessimistic contempt for the present life with 
 optimistic hopes for the future is profoundly illogical 
 and self-contradictory. For upon what in the last resort 
 are our hopes of Immortality founded ? For those at 
 least who are not prepared to base them entirely upon 
 the historical evidence for a bodily Resurrection of 
 Christ, it must rest chiefly upon our conception of the 
 character of God. It is no doubt just because the 
 present life does not seem good enough to be the sole 
 end of creation for a just and a loving God that we 
 feel constrained to regard it as the educational prepara- 
 tion for — or the introductory stage of — something 
 better. To deny altogether the existence of real evil 
 
 ' A much more sober and intelligible account of Father Tyrrell's 
 position is given in the last of his Essays on Faith and Immortality. 
 There is much in this volume with which I feel great sympathy. 
 
Ethics and Eschatology ' 69 
 
 in this life does no doubt destroy all logical basis 
 for the belief in Immortality, unless indeed the position 
 be taken that the sole real evil in this present life is its 
 brevity and its sudden termination. And as a matter 
 of fact most of those philosophers who do take an 
 optimistic view of the present, or explain away the 
 existence of real evil under cover of a belief in a super- 
 moral Absolute, are avowed disbelievers in anything 
 like a personal Immortality. We may admit the 
 radical incompatibility between such Optimism as 
 this and the religion founded by Jesus. Christianity 
 treats the evil in the world as real evil. But because 
 we admit the existence of some evil in the world, that 
 is no reason why we should believe that the evil is 
 dominant, and always destined to remain so. If we 
 get rid of the popular notion of Omnipotence as a 
 power to do anything or any combination of things 
 which we take it into our heads to imagine, we must 
 regard God as really contending against a real evil, and 
 ourselves as called upon to become in the most literal 
 sense fellow-workers with Him. But this is scarcely 
 a possible position for those who hold that all their 
 efforts are by some divine decree or some impersonal 
 fate doomed to utter disappointment so far as the 
 present life is concerned, though there is a bare off- 
 chance of some better life beyond the grave. The very 
 same considerations which make us hopeful for the future 
 of the individual soul hereafter should forbid our alto- 
 gether despairing of the present life. A Theology which 
 
70 Conscience and Christ 
 
 bids men love and serve one another because God works 
 with them cannot despair of a brighter future— though 
 not necessarily an actual extinction of evil and of 
 struggle — for Humanity on earth. And therefore for 
 us, as for Jesus, there is no essential incompatibihty 
 between that sense of the Kingdom of Heaven in 
 which it means the hope of a better world beyond for 
 the individuals who pass away from this life and that 
 sense of it in which it means a better social state to 
 be gradually set up on this earth by the progressive 
 penetration of human society with the principles 
 which Jesus taught. The Kingdom of God must be 
 for us an ideal to be realized in part here, more com- 
 pletely hereafter. The fact that we no longer anticipate 
 the sudden winding up of the imperfect Kingdom and 
 the sudden appearance of a perfect one by a catas- 
 trophic world- judgement is, ethically speaking, an 
 unimportant detail. We can accept Jesus' funda- 
 mental idea that the supreme object of human life 
 should be the promotion of the Kingdom in the sense 
 of an ideal social state. That conception already 
 implicitly involves the notion which, we shall see, is 
 developed in the actual teaching of Jesus — that the 
 duty of mutual love is the best summary of human 
 duty. The conception of the Kingdom of God may 
 be regarded as expressing fundamentally the same 
 idea as Kant's notion of the Categorical Imperative, 
 with this additional advantage — that it expresses not 
 merely the bare " form " of the Moral Law, but also, 
 
Ethics and Eschatotogy . 71 
 
 when it is read in the light of the rest of Christ's 
 teaching, the most essential element in its true con- 
 tent. 1 
 
 Of course it is a priori conceivable that, though there 
 is no necessary incompatibility between eschatological 
 hopes and an Ethic of eternal significance, the teach- 
 ing of Jesus might have been so far affected in detail 
 by these eschatological notions as to render it incapable 
 of becoming the concrete expression of the moral ideal 
 for a modern civilized community or rather for a 
 universal, world-wide, " absolute " Religion. I shall 
 endeavour in future lectures to establish the two 
 following propositions : '•^(i) that even in detail this 
 was not to any considerable degree the case — ^that 
 the teaching of Jesus was not affected by His eschato- 
 logical expectations even to the same extent for instance 
 as that of St. Paul, whose advice about marriage really 
 was dominated and seriously distorted by this expecta- 
 tion ; (2) that this was so just because the teaching 
 of Jesus was so much confined to fundamental, eternal, 
 truly ethical principles that in point of fact there can 
 hardly be said to be any detailed injunctions. The 
 details are mere illustrations — often paradoxical illus- 
 trations — which have, indeed, a certain colouring 
 which is local and temporary, but this colouring can 
 
 ' No doubt Kant's conception of Kingdom of Ends does to some 
 extent supply the desired content, and the conception is of course 
 only a philosophical interpretation of Christ's " Kingdom of God " 
 with the disadvantage that it leaves out the religious aspect of the 
 Kingdom. 
 
72 Conscience and Christ 
 
 easily be distinguished from the principle which they 
 illustrate. Once again, everything depends upon 
 what conclusions we arrive at as to the actual, con- 
 crete character of the teaching. All I have aimed at in 
 this lecture is to show you that there is nothing in the 
 eschatological teaching of Jesus — even if we accept 
 the views of the extremer Eschatologists as to the 
 merely critical and historical questions — which would 
 necessarily affect the value of His ethical, and more 
 generally of His spiritual, teaching. The subject must 
 be approached with an open mind. It would be as 
 absurd to reject or to disparage the ethical ideal of 
 Jesus a priori because He entertained eschatological 
 hopes which we cannot share, as it would be to reject 
 a priori the metaphysical conceptions of Plato because 
 we have outgrown his physics, or to scrap-heap all 
 the metaphysical systems which came before the 
 Darwinian revolution in Biology. The parallel is 
 not, indeed, adequate ; for Ethics can much more 
 easily be separated from Apocalyptic Eschatology than 
 a metaphysical conception of the Universe can be 
 abstracted from its author's conceptions of natural law. 
 There is no reason then why the Ethic of Jesus should 
 not be an Ethic of universal, paramount, and eternal 
 value because He may have thought that the physical 
 Universe was on the eve of a vast catastrophe. 
 
 It may be suggested that, though the eschatological 
 ideas do not affect the truth of the moral ideal, they 
 do most materially affect our conception of Christ's 
 
Ethics and Eschatology ♦ 73 
 
 Person, and so the authority of His teaching. We 
 are not now directly concerned with the doctrine of 
 Christ's Person or even with the theological aspect of 
 His teaching. That is not my subject. But I am 
 unwilling to have suggested a difficulty which it is 
 quite reasonable for religious minds to feel without 
 saying a word which may tend to meet it. In the 
 first place I have endeavoured to suggest that the 
 extent to which Jesus shared the eschatological ideas 
 of His time has been exaggerated, and that some of 
 the more definite eschatological sayings are probably 
 distorted or coloured by the ideas of His immediate 
 disciples or of the early Church. But we shall do well 
 to prepare ourselves for the possibility that the more 
 advanced Eschatologists are right on the purely 
 critical questions, or at least that some quite Christian 
 minds may think them to be right, and to ask ourselves 
 what we should say if it could be shown that all the 
 eschatological sayings were uttered and were meant in 
 a sense not very different from that of current expecta- 
 tion. I should venture to ask whether even such an 
 admission would demand more than a slight extension 
 of that doctrine of the limited knowledge of Christ 
 which has now, I suppose, been accepted by all serious 
 Theologians and by most thoughtful Christians. We 
 have most of us come to recognize that the theory of 
 the unique Divine Sonship of Jesus is not incom- 
 patible with the admission that He knew no more 
 about the date and authorship of Old Testament 
 
74 Conscience and Christ 
 
 books or the causation of mental disease than other 
 men of His time. Need our Christology be much more 
 affected by the discovery that He also shared their 
 conceptions as to the way and the time in which God 
 would judge the world, and set up the Messianic 
 Kingdom ? We gather from one of the most gener- 
 ally accepted ^ of His own sayings that He did not 
 claim to know the exact date of the Parousia : 
 need it affect the fullness of His spiritual insight that 
 He knew — perhaps would have admitted that He 
 knew — almost as little about its mode ? The fact 
 that He accepted traditional language and even 
 traditional ideas on the subject which were in point 
 of fact mistakes, is no reason why the God who reveals 
 Himself in some mode and in some measure through 
 every human conscience, who dwells to some extent 
 in every human soul, should not have made His fullest 
 revelation of Himself in one conscience, one character, 
 one life. 
 
 If what we want in a doctrine of Christ's Divinity is 
 a supernatural guarantee for an externally communi- 
 cated moral code, then, indeed, our conception of 
 that doctrine will be profoundly modified by the dis- 
 covery that He could make mistakes. If, on the 
 other hand, belief in His Divinity is based upon the 
 appeal which His teaching and His character make 
 
 » Some doubt the genuineness of "neither the Son," but this 
 omission does not aflEect the disclaimer of such knowledge for 
 Himself. 
 
Ethics and Eschatology ■ 75 
 
 to heart and Conscience, the force of that appeal will 
 be in no way weakened by the discovery that it has 
 survived so many changes in men's conceptions of the 
 material Universe. That the ethical ideal presented 
 us by the teaching of Christ does still appeal to us in 
 its essential principles as the highest that we know 
 is the thesis which I shall endeavour to establish in 
 the following lectures.^ 
 
 ' The following passages from Mr. Montefiore seem to me to go 
 to the root of the matter in spite of his not being willing to assign to 
 Jesus that absolutely supreme and unique position which Christiams 
 claim for Him : " We may reasonably argue that Jesus, as a great and 
 original religious and ethical thinker, could hardly not have 
 allowed his religious and ethical views to affect his conception of 
 the Messiah. It is not right to call his ethical doctrine a mere 
 ' Interimsethik.' Righteousness was to be the keynote of the new 
 Kingdom, as well as the passport of admission within its gates. . . . 
 
 " And among those virtues upon which he laid stress may we not 
 safely assume that the virtue of self-sacrifice, of service for the sake 
 of others, was vmdoubtedly one ? Is it not reasonable then to 
 suppose that he looked upon his own life as a service, and that 
 this thought may even have developed into the idea that he might 
 have to die in order to complete his service ? Death would not be 
 the end ; death was to no man the end ; certainly not to the 
 righteous ; least of all to the Messiah. Was the glory and was the 
 triumph perhaps only to come after the life of service had been 
 ended by a death of sacrifice ? If the principle of non-resistance 
 was adopted by him in his ethics for daily life, it is not unnatural 
 that it should have been adopted by him as regards his own special 
 life and his position as Messiah. Hence we see how it may have 
 come about that his conception of the Messiah may have been 
 modified. The Messiah was no more the conqueror and the warrior- 
 prince : what destruction there was to do would be done by God. 
 The Messiah would, indeed, rule in the perfected Kingdom, but this 
 rule was hardly looked upon in the ordinary way, and the stress was 
 not habitually laid upon it. The stress was rather often laid upon 
 the Messiah's work in the present and the near future, a work of 
 service, even of lowly service, and a work which was, perhaps, to 
 culminate in death. This, then, may have been the special develop- 
 ment made by Jesus to the conception of the Messiah ; and such a 
 
76 
 
 Conscience and Christ 
 
 view would fit in with the supposition that Jesus identified the 
 Messiah with the mysterious Man (Daniel vii. 13) who was to be 
 sent by God at the great crisis to superintend the final consumma- 
 tion, and that he believed that this Man was himself — himself 
 as he was to be in his glory, rather than himself as he then was " 
 {Syn. Gospels, I, 53-4). 
 
 " The real greatness of Jesus consisted in that side of his teaching 
 which was independent of these old watchwords and battle-cries. 
 Though the more original and beautiful parts of his teaching are, 
 as it were, set in the framework of the conception of the coming 
 Messianic era, and were partly produced by this dominant idea, they 
 are yet independent of the framework, and they can be detached 
 from it and can survive it " {I.e., I, 58). 
 
 For a further discussion of the subject from a Christian point 
 I may refer to The Esckatological Question in the Gospels by the 
 Rev. C. W. Emmet, and an excellent article by the same writer on 
 " Is the Teaching of Jesus an Interimsethik ? " in The Expositor 
 (Nov., 1912) ; also to The Eschatology of Jesus by Dr. Latimer 
 Jackson. No recent writer has done more to reduce the 
 eschatological element io Christ's teaching to its proper place 
 than Prof. B. W. B^on (of Yale) in The Beginnings of the 
 Gospel Story. On the critical side of the question see Canon 
 Streeter's Appendix to Oxford Studies in the Synoptic Problem. 
 His general conclusion is that " in the series Q, Mark, Matthew, 
 there is a steady development in the direction of emphasizing, 
 making more definite, and even creating, sayings of our Lord of 
 the catastrophic Apocalyptic type, and of thrusting more and more 
 into the background the sayings of a contrary tenor " (p. 433). 
 This is, of course, quite consistent with the possibility that St. Luke 
 may have somewhat attenuated the eschatological element. 
 
LECTURE III 
 THE ETHICAL TEACHING OF JESUS CHRIST 
 
 IN my last two lectures I have tried to remove 
 some a priori objections to the principle — usually 
 accepted alike by the most orthodox and the most 
 liberal forms of Christianity — that the ethical teaching 
 of an historical person who lived nineteen hundred years 
 ago can still be regarded as representing in its essentials 
 the highest ideal of the modem world. I admitted — 
 or rather strongly contended — that the authority 
 which can rightly be claimed for the historical Christ 
 must base itself upon the fact that the moral con- 
 sciousness of the present still recognizes its truth, and 
 finds its highest aspirations satisfied by the picture 
 which the Gospels present us of His character and His 
 teaching. I tried to show that, in spite of the differ- 
 ence between His circumstances and ours — in spite of 
 the eschatological medium, so to speak, through which 
 His teaching was given — there was no a priori reason why 
 such a teacher should not have taught an ethical ideal 
 which, in its fundamental principles, later ages might 
 recognize as eternally true. To-day I want to enquire 
 what in its fundamental principles this ideal actually 
 is, and whether it does as a matter of fact commend 
 
 n 
 
78 Conscience and Christ 
 
 itself to the moral consciousness of the modem world 
 at its highest. It is needless to say that the Christian 
 Ethic is not presented to us in the New Testament 
 as a philosophical system. ^ But that does not make 
 it incapable of being reduced to a system which may 
 harmonize with the results of the deepest philosophical 
 reflection. By reflection on the actual practice of 
 great Artists we may build up Canons of Criticism, a 
 system of .Esthetics, a Philosophy of taste : but the 
 Artist himself, as a rule, has no such system. The 
 poet may teach profound truths which the speculative 
 philosopher may subsequently reduce to something like 
 a philosophy of life : but in the poet's mind they are 
 not, as a rule, reduced to a philosophy. And so the 
 greatest moral teachers of mankind have not, usually, 
 been speculative philosophers. That was eminently the 
 case with Jesus Christ and His first disciples. It is 
 true that an instinct of reverence is apt to blind us to 
 the immense amount of real, hard thinking which was 
 implied in the religious and moral teaching of Jesus : 
 the greatness, the originality of Jesus was intellectual 
 
 * On the other hand it is a great deal too much to say with 
 Mr. Selwyn {The Teaching of Christ, p. 79) that " there is no Chris- 
 tian ethic, but only a Christian spirit." If the Christian spirit (in 
 matters of character and conduct) is capable of articulate expres- 
 sion, that expression wiU be an Ethic, which can be to some extent 
 analysed and systematized by the philosopher. If it is not capable 
 of such expression, it would be useless to go to the Gospels to dis- 
 cover that spirit. A Christianity which is not capable of articulate 
 expression can have no connexion with History. This may be said 
 with the fullest allowance for the inadequacy of all formulae fully 
 to embody an ethical ideal. 
 
The Ethical Teaching of Jesus Christ 79 
 
 as well as moral. But still His teaching — His re- 
 ligious and His ethical teaching alike — was not pre- 
 sented in the form either of a theological system or of 
 a speculative philosophy. It came to Him by way 
 of intuition : it was presented to His hearers in the 
 form of aphorism or of parable. It was homely 
 practical teaching addressed for the most part to people 
 of little culture or education, or with a culture which 
 was popular, intensely national, and closely connected 
 with Religion. In the present lecture I want to ex- 
 amine the actual teaching of Jesus in the form in 
 which He presented it to His own mind and to that 
 of His hearers. 
 
 It must be remembered that the teaching of Jesus 
 Christ presupposes a morality of a very advanced 
 and developed order. I must not now stay to com- 
 pare the ethical teaching of the Jewish prophets with 
 that of the other great ethical and religious systems 
 of the world. I shall have something to say upon 
 that subject hereafter. It must suffice for the present 
 to remark that, if we compare the teaching of the 
 later Judaism with the Ethics of ancient Greece and 
 Rome, there can be no doubt that it represents, on the 
 whole, a higher level than any teaching known to the 
 West, at least till the time of Zeno and the Stoics. 
 In many respects the ideal of developed Judaism 
 represents a higher moral standard even than that of 
 the two great Hellenic thinkers — Socrates and Plato — 
 whom we may fairly recognize as belonging, like the 
 
8o Conscience and Christ 
 
 Jewish seers, to the goodly fellowship of the Prophets. 
 It was enormously superior to the intensely narrow, 
 civic, aristocratic morality of Aristotle. It was 
 strong just where the Greek philosophers were weakest. 
 The political and the intellectual development of Greece 
 were no doubt greatly in advance of anything known 
 in Israel. All those virtues which had to do with 
 political activity and with the intellectual life were 
 better understood by Socrates and Plato than by 
 Amos or Isaiah : and, of course, the high intellectual 
 development carried with it emancipation from some 
 superstitions in matters of conduct. But in Religion, 
 and in those matters of personal morality which are 
 apt to be most affected by the state of religious 
 feeling and religious belief, the Greeks of Aristotle's 
 time were mere children compared with the Jews. 
 The principle of Justice, in its simpler and most 
 elementary form constitutes, indeed, a common ground 
 between the civic morality of Socrates and the religious 
 morality of Judaism. But in two great matters the 
 Jews were enormously in advance of the Greeks — in 
 the matter of Chastity and in the matter of Charity. 
 
 Whether we look to the teaching of the philosophers 
 or to the average practice, there can be little doubt 
 about the superiority of the Jews on the side of sexual 
 Morality. Polygamy was, indeed, allowed among the 
 Jews, though before the time of our Lord it had 
 become rare and exceptional ; and the position of 
 women was perhaps slightly more honourable and 
 
The Ethical Teaching of Jesus Christ 8i 
 
 more secure in parts at least of the Greek world than 
 among the Jews. But the great principle which con- 
 fines sexual relations to lawful marriage was hardly 
 propounded even by Moralists among the Greeks : 
 it was fully acknowledged among the later Jews. 
 The ordinary Greek morality on this matter was 
 simply that extra-matrimonial intercourse must be with 
 non-citizen women ; for that such intercourse was 
 profoundly degrading to the woman, the general feeling 
 of mankind has almost universally recognized. But 
 there was no sense of the intrinsic rights of Humanity 
 as such which could protect the non-citizen woman 
 from that degradation, or make it appear wrong for 
 the man to subject her to it. I need do no more than 
 allude to those still darker vices which, if they were 
 not exactly approved by the highest pagan morality, 
 were condemned with a lightness which is itself the 
 best evidence of their commonness even in the most 
 cultivated, refined, and aristocratic Greek circles. 
 And the higher moral teachers of the time did little 
 to preach a sounder morality on these matters. On 
 the other hand, the Jewish Law and the Jewish 
 prophets are full of denunciations of sexual trans- 
 gression of all kinds. ^ And not only the prophets. In 
 some respects what is called the Wisdom literature — 
 
 * As to Adultery, see Lev. xx. lo ; xix. 20-22. (It is doubtful 
 whether the penalty of death was actually carried out.) As to 
 Fornication, Lev. xix. 29 ; Deut. xxiii. 17, 18 ; Jer. v. 7 ; Amos 
 ii. 7 ; Hos. iv. 14. Cf. also Gen. xiii. 13, xix. 5-7 ; Deut. xxiii. 17, 
 18 ; I Kings xv. 12, etc. 
 
 G 
 
82 Conscience and Christ 
 
 the Book of Proverbs in the Canon, and the Books 
 of Wisdom and Ecclesiasticus now relegated to the 
 Apocrypha — represent perhaps on the whole a lower 
 level of religious insight and reUgious enthusiasm than 
 the great prophetic teachers of the later Monarchy and 
 the Exile ; but at all events in this they show the 
 same superiority to the contemporary Greek morality 
 — that they are full of zeal for social Purity.^ 
 
 In the other great matter to which I have alluded 
 the superiority of the Jews is still more marked. It 
 is a commonplace to say that the Greeks in the time 
 of Aristotle had very little notion of the rights of man 
 as such. • Aristocrat and democrat might differ as to 
 who should be citizens, but they were agreed that the 
 citizens should not be the whole population : for the 
 rights of the barbarian or the alien Greek, the slave 
 or the freedman, the Athenian democrat had only 
 a little more tenderness than the aristocratic Aristotle, 
 who tells us frankly that " the work of the artisan or 
 the labourer has nothing to do with Virtue," and that 
 therefore it is best that such persons should be alto- 
 gether excluded from citizenship — from civil rights as 
 well as political rights. Even as regards citizens, the 
 Greek conception of one's duty towards one's neigh- 
 bour was for the most part limited to the idea of public 
 
 1 Prov. ii. 16-19, V. 3-6, vii. 5-27 ; Ecclus. ix. 3-9, xli. 20 ; 
 Wisdom iv. 6, xiv. 24, 26. The letter of the law only forbade an 
 Israelite woman to be a prostitute (Deut. xxiii. 17). This seems to 
 have led to the multiplication of foreign prostitutes. Hence the 
 denunciation of the " strange woman " in the Book of Proverbs. 
 
The Ethical Teaching of Jesus ChHst 83 
 
 service (in that matter they have still much to teach 
 modern Christians) and to the idea of Justice, that 
 is to say, respect for the property and other legal or 
 customary rights of individuals. There was little or 
 no feeling that there is a duty of positive service or 
 mutual helpfulness owed by one individual to another, 
 even within the ranks of the citizen-class beyond the 
 limited circle of one's own family or friends. 
 
 Still less was there any idea of a special claim on the 
 part of the weak, the oppressed, the sick, the suffering, 
 the poor. The duties of Philanthropy, of Almsgiving, 
 of Mercy are simply non-existent in the elaborate 
 enumeration of virtues and duties given us by Aris- 
 totle ; and in the far higher, more spiritual, more 
 cosmopolitan teaching of Socrates and Plato there 
 is almost as little inculcation of these virtues, if there 
 is less that is shocking to modern Christian sentiment 
 in their way of treating the ignorant and the humbly 
 bom. With all his magnificent conscientiousness, his 
 scrupulosity about matters of conduct, and his sense 
 of public duty, it never seems to have occurred even 
 to Socrates to ask himself whether it might not be 
 morally binding on Society or on individuals to think 
 about the kind of life that was being led by his poor 
 fellow-citizen in the next street or by the slave in his 
 own household. To Plato the sick were simply objects 
 of dislike. The economic problems of our great cities 
 were hardly known in their modem form : but still 
 the orphan, the widow, the unfortunate have always 
 
84 Conscience and Christ 
 
 been with us : yet (so far as we can discover) in the 
 time of Aristotle nobody troubled their heads about 
 them, either speculatively or practically. Even high- 
 class citizen women were not thought to matter very 
 much, though, of course, the Greek idea of their position 
 was far removed from the ordinary Oriental concep- 
 tion of woman as the mere toy and plaything of man. 
 The ethical teaching of the Socratic School reaches its 
 highest level in the scenes connected with the trial and 
 death of Socrates. Socrates died a martyr to truth 
 and to civic duty : yet in the Phaedo Socrates drives 
 his wife and children from the room with something like 
 brutality that his last moments might be spent in un- 
 disturbed philosophical converse with his male friends. 
 What a contrast to all this is presented by the 
 teaching of the Jewish prophets! Amos lived three 
 centuries and a half before Socrates. He is full of 
 denunciation against the cruelty and oppression of 
 the poor, whether practised by the enemies of Israel 
 or by its own rulers and rich men. " For three trans- 
 gressions of Israel, yea, for four, I will not turn away 
 the punishment thereof ; because they have sold the 
 righteous for silver and the needy for a pair of shoes : 
 that pant after the dust of the earth on the head of 
 the poor, and turn aside the way of the meek.''^ Isaiah 
 lived some three centuries before Socrates. Doubtless 
 Socrates had a strong sense of Justice ; but it would 
 be difficult to find in any teaching attributed to him 
 • Amos ii. 6, 7. 
 
The Ethical Teaching of Jesus CJirist 85 
 
 much special tenderness for the poor or unfortunate — 
 any equivalent of Isaiah's " seek judgement, relieve 
 the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the 
 widow." ^ The prophet who is commonly known as 
 the later Isaiah lived more than a century before 
 Plato. The Hellenic philosopher would have sym- 
 pathized keenly enough with the Jewish prophet's 
 denunciation of superstitious confidence in sacrifices 
 and fasts ; but it would never have occurred to him, 
 in enforcing the idea that the true fast was repentance 
 and righteousness, to make his conduct to inferiors 
 the test of a man's moral position. " Is not this the 
 fast that I have chosen ? to loose the bonds of wicked- 
 ness, to undo the bands of the yoke, and to let the 
 oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke ? Is 
 it not to deal thy bread to the hungry, and that thou 
 bring the poor that are cast out to thy house ? when 
 thou seest the naked, that thou cover him ; and that 
 thou hide not thyself from thine own flesh ? "^ In the 
 teaching of the Jewish prophets Mercy is always 
 closely associated with Justice in descriptions alike 
 of the character of God and of the character which He 
 requires in men. Neither Mercy nor any equivalent 
 of it appears in Aristotle's very detailed list of virtues ; 
 the nearest he gets to it is in the Equity which is only 
 a higher form of Justice. 
 
 In the interval between the great prophetic era and 
 
 • Isa. i. 17. 
 
 ' Isa. Iviii. 6, 7, often assigned to a later " Trito-Isaiah." 
 
86 Conscience and Christ 
 
 the birth of Christ a twofold change had come over 
 the ethical ideas of the Jews. At scarcely any other 
 period in the development of any nation have progress 
 and retrogression been so strangely mixed. On the 
 one hand the place of the prophet was taken by the 
 scribe. The customs about sacrifice and ritual and 
 religious observance which had originally been handed 
 down by oral tradition were now reduced to writing, 
 supplemented by highly sacerdotal additions, and 
 combined with earlier documents, in the books which 
 we call the Pentateuch. The letter of the Law came 
 to be surrounded with superstitious reverence. And 
 yet the Mosaic Law, as it was embodied in the Penta- 
 teuch, became in the hands of the Pharisaic scribes 
 only the basis of a vast superstructure of comment, 
 amplification, and Casuistry. The Law contained a 
 general command to rest upon the Sabbath : the 
 Pharisees developed this command into a prohibition 
 of the most ordinary, necessary, and even beneficent 
 occupations of life. It was unlawful on the Sabbath 
 to pluck ears of corn because that was equivalent to 
 reaping, or to rub them in the hand because that was 
 threshing, or to walk more than 2000 cubits — ^less 
 than three-quarters of a mile — because Moses had 
 commanded the Jews in the wilderness to remain in 
 their places on the Sabbath-day. And so on. The 
 dietetic regulations and the rules about avoiding con- 
 tact with a dead body, which the Jews had no doubt 
 inherited from primitive systems of Totemism and 
 
The Ethical Teaching of Jesus Christ 87 
 
 Taboo, were insisted upon with a punctiliousness 
 which shut off the Jews from all ordinary intercourse 
 with Gentile neighbours. It was the fear of incurring 
 ceremonial pollution which drove the Pharisees to in- 
 sist so much upon the washing of hands before eat- 
 ing, upon the washing of cups and pots and the 
 like,^ and this carried with it unwillingness to sit at 
 table with Gentiles. Even sound moral principles 
 were degraded and narrowed by being made to rest 
 upon the positive written rules of an authoritative 
 book, instead of being treated as the injunctions of a 
 Conscience which believed itself to derive its inspira- 
 tion directly from a living God : while an immense 
 host of petty observances of no real moral importance 
 were placed side by side with the eternal laws of 
 Justice and Benevolence, and this had the inevitable 
 result of practically throwing them into the shade and 
 at times' of contravening them. Men were taught 
 (if we may accept our Lord's saying as sufficient evi- 
 dence of the fact) how to avoid supporting their 
 parents by taking a vow not to give them anything, ^ how 
 
 ' Mark vii. 4. But we are told that this is an exaggeration. 
 
 ' According to Mr. Herford (Pharisaism, p. 159) " If a man make 
 a vow upon a matter between himself and his parents, i.e. one which, 
 if he kept it, will occasion injury or loss to them, then he is to be 
 released from it on the ground of honour to his parents. The 
 commentators on the Mishnah all agree in this interpretation, and 
 there is no doubt as to the intention of the Mishnah. Moreover, 
 there is no indication that there ever had been a different opinion, 
 as if the statement now made in the Mishnah had taken the place 
 of an earlier statement. There is no evidence that the Pharisees 
 ever held or taught the doctrine attributed to them by Jesus, 
 while it is contradicted in the most definite manner by the declara- 
 
88 Conscience and Christ 
 
 to cheat their neighbours by taking oaths which had no 
 binding force, how to neglect the duties of Charity and 
 Mercy under pretence of observing the Sabbath, and 
 so on. 
 
 All this represented serious moral retrogression. 
 Legalism took the place of Morality. Many qualifica- 
 tions might be required if we were dealing with the 
 question of rabbinical Morality in detail. No doubt 
 it is possible to quote from the Rabbis passages in 
 which the comparative unimportance of ceremonial 
 as compared with moral transgression is insisted 
 upon ; but still the existence of an extreme over- 
 estimate of the letter of the ceremonial Law is hardly 
 denied by any student of the Talmud : the pages of 
 
 tions of their own legal authorities." When Mr. Herford says " There 
 is no evidence," he seems to overlook the evidence of the Gospels 
 themselves. It is difficult to understand how the saying of Jesus 
 is to be accounted for if the other view had absolutely no supporters. 
 It may well be that it was at no time the accepted view. The Talmud 
 was of course not put into its present form till centuries later ; 
 and, however much we may be disposed to trust the attribution of 
 particular sayings to the Rabbis of an earlier period, it is unreason- 
 able to suppose that all their opinions were preserved. This was 
 one which later Rabbis might well wish to have forgotten. As 
 Mr. Montefiore remarks, " It is not at all improbable that so vast 
 an innovation as the annulment of vows met with opposition at 
 first" (The Synoptic Gospels, I, -p. 166). According to the same writer 
 " ' Corban ' does not mean that the property was dedicated to the 
 use of the Temple. The word is used as a mere oath. When I say, 
 ' Corban, if you shall ever eat anything that is mine,' that does not 
 mean that my eatables are dedicated to the use of the Temple, in which 
 case neither I nor you might eat them, but merely that, so far as 
 you are concerned, they are ' dedicated ' ; you may never eat what 
 is mine. I should sin in letting you eat any of my food, so long as 
 the vow stands, and you, if you ate, would sin also. The Temple 
 does not come in " {I.e., p. 164). 
 
The Ethical Teaching of Jesus Christ 89 
 
 the Gospels would be sufficient evidence of the fact, 
 even if we had no other : for, though Christian com- 
 pilers may have exaggerated this side of Judaism, they 
 could not have invented it. The antagonism to 
 Judaism to which such representations would have 
 to be ascribed, if nr t justified by the facts, could not 
 have existed but i( r the bitter conflict between Jews 
 and Jewish Christians on this matter of the ceremonial 
 Law. 
 
 And yet the enormous change which took place 
 during this somewhat obscure period in the mental 
 history of Judaism was not all retrogression. After 
 all the Law did contain the most essential principles 
 of Justice and neighbourly conduct, though it con- 
 tained much besides. Reverence for the Law was, 
 after all, reverence for Morality, though sometimes 
 the moral precepts which it enshrined were spoiled 
 by the company in which they found themselves. 
 I must not now speak of the religious changes which 
 took place during this period further than to notice 
 that they were, in part at least, changes which made 
 for righteousness. There was a growth in the con- 
 sciousness of Jehovah's goodwill not merely to Israel 
 collectively, but to the individual Israelite. And that 
 carried with it the belief in individual responsibility. 
 In the teaching of Ezekiel the belief in a mere collec- 
 tive or family responsibility (" the fathers have eaten 
 sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge ") 
 was superseded by the idea of a divine Justice which 
 
90 Conscience and Christ 
 
 took account of individual acts : "the soul that 
 sinneth, it shall die.''^ During the Exile and the 
 Dispersion, worship was spiritualized ; the Synagogue 
 ■for a time took the place of the Temple, and continued 
 side by side with it after the Return : the Scribe — the 
 expounder of the Law, the teacher of righteousness, 
 the preacher of Religion — became more important 
 than the sacrificing Priest. Prayer and reading and 
 meditation — spiritual modes of worship which could 
 be practised anywhere — overshadowed in importance 
 the sacrificial ritual of Jerusalem. And all this did 
 carry with it a deeper feeling of the importance of 
 personal conduct, a deeper sense of sin, a more anxious 
 conscientiousness. All these things imply a moral 
 advance, and paved the way for the spiritual revolution 
 which transformed Judaism into Christianity. It may 
 be that on the whole the progress of this age was far 
 greater than the retrogression.' 
 
 And if we look to the details of the Moral Law, 
 there too we see advance. If we compare the prophets 
 with the apocryphal books of later Judaism — both 
 those accepted as deutero-canonical and those which 
 
 1 Ezek. xviii. 3, 4. 
 
 ' " It is high time to put away altogether, as one of the exploded 
 errors of history, the notion that Ezra, by the exaltation of the 
 Torah to the supreme place in Jewish religion, set that religion upon 
 the down-grade. I believe it to be nearer the truth to say that 
 after Moses and Isaiah (or perhaps Jeremiah) Ezra is the third 
 greatest man in the Old Testament" (Herford, Pharisaism, p. 74). 
 This may be so ; still, we need not look beyond the Book of Ezra 
 itself to see that the religiousness of Ezra and his age had its 
 deficiencies. 
 
The Ethical Teaching of Jesus Clirist 91 
 
 have never found their way into any Canon — there 
 can be no doubt that this latest age of Judaism was 
 an age of ethical progress. There is less of ethical 
 inspiration, far less of religious inspiration ; but if 
 we tried to compile a code of duties out of the Old 
 Testament, and then compiled a similar code from the 
 Apocrypha, the latter would come considerably nearer 
 to a modern and a Christian formulation of the whole 
 duty of man. The prophetic insistence upon personal 
 and upon social Morality becomes more detailed and 
 more exacting. The general inculcation of beneficence 
 to individuals is translated into definite precepts 
 about the relief of the sick,^ of widows and orphans, of 
 the poor and helpless ; systematic almsgiving^ becomes 
 a recognized duty. If we would judge this period 
 aright, we must remember the enormous capacity of 
 the human mind for inconsistency. The very same 
 teachers who spoiled Judaism by their legalism, their 
 ceremonialism, their casuistry, were quite capable of 
 appreciating the best elements of Old Testament 
 teaching and even of improving upon them. Doubt- 
 less there were different schools and tendencies even 
 among the teachers of the same period. The Greek- 
 
 1 " Also to the poor man stretch out thy hand, that thy blessing 
 may be perfected" (Ecclus. vii. 32). "Be not slow to visit a sick 
 man" (ib., 35). 
 
 ' " As thy substance is, give alms of it according to thine abund- 
 ance : if thou have little, be not afraid to give alms according to 
 that little " (Tobit iv. 8). There is of course a superstitious side to 
 this insistence upon Almsgiving, e.g. " Almsgiving will make an 
 atonement for sins " (Ecclus. iii. 30). 
 
92 Conscience and Christ 
 
 Jewish writer of Wisdom and the Hebrew writer of 
 Ecclesiasticus were on the whole perhaps more hberal 
 and more enUghtened than many of the Rabbis whose 
 teachings survive in the Talmud. Among the Rabbis 
 themselves the School of Hillel may have been more 
 liberal than the School of Shammai, and so on. And 
 there is one writing of this period which stands abso- 
 lutely alone in its close approach to the teaching of 
 Jesus. In the prominence which it gives to the 
 love of God and one's neighbour, in its inculcation of 
 forgiveness — even to enemies — in its insistence upon 
 purity of heart and intention, the " Testaments of the 
 Twelve Patriarchs " may be taken as representing 
 the highest ideal that the world ever knew before 
 the coming of Christ. And it is a work which, it is 
 highly probable, Jesus had actually read.^ There are 
 many different moral levels among the Jewish writers 
 of this period. And yet it is probable that it was very 
 often the same men who taught the things which excited 
 
 * The date of the original work is fixed by Dr. Charles as between 
 109 and 105 B.C. The Jewish additions belong chiefly to the period 
 70-40 B.C. There are Christian interpolations which long caused 
 the whole work to be assigned to a Christian writer. Here are 
 a few of its noblest precepts which are not interpolations : " Love 
 ye one another from the heart ; and, if a man sin against thee, 
 speak peaceably to him, and in thy soul hold not guile ; and if he 
 repent and confess, forgive him " (Gad. vi. 3) : Issachar (vii. 6) is 
 made to say, " I loved the Lord ; likewise also every man with all 
 my heart." There is no trace of a limitation of this love to fellow- 
 countrymen, and the Messiah whose advent is announced is to be 
 the Saviour of the Gentiles as well as Jews. The emphasis on sexual 
 purity is very marked, while there is no disparagement of marriage, 
 e.g. " He that hath a pure mind in love, looketh not after a woman 
 with a view to fornication ; for he hath no defilement in his heart. 
 
The Ethical Teaching of Jesus ChHst 93 
 
 our Lord's scathing denunciations and who uttered the 
 sayings upon which His own early spiritual life must 
 have been fed and nurtured. There is much of the 
 highest moral teaching and the most spiritual religious 
 teaching in the sajdngs of the Rabbis who lived before 
 and during the ministry of Christ. And yet only a 
 strong anti-Christian bias can suppose that Jesus is 
 adequately accounted for by the ethical teaching of 
 Hillel. Wellhausen has remarked in a famous passage 
 that learned Jews are fond of pointing out that all the 
 moral precepts of Jesus can be found in the Talmud. 
 " Yes," he replies, " all and much more."^ And it is, 
 as he goes on to point out, just in the absence of that 
 much more that the superiority of Jesus lies. The 
 pure wheat of Morality was to be found in the teaching 
 of the Rabbis, but the tares were there too, and the 
 wheat was in danger of being choked by the tares. 
 The work of Jesus consisted to a very great extent in 
 separating what was true and eternally valuable in the 
 
 because the spirit of God resteth upon him " (Benj. viii. 2). Some of 
 the contrasts drawn in the text between the ordinary Jewish 
 morality and the teaching of Christ do not apply to this remarkable 
 writing. Prof. Burkitt, however, tells me that in his opinion 
 the translator was a Christian, and that the translation may have 
 been slightly, perhaps only slightly, influenced by Christian 
 ideas. 
 
 ' Cf. " Jewish scholars think that all that Jesus has said is to be 
 found also in the Talmud. Yes, all and much more. How is it that 
 He was the first to discover something true and eternal in the waste 
 of legal learning ? Why has no one else done so ? And is it 
 certain, when a saying of Jesus is attributed to the Rabbi Hillel, 
 that in such cases the Talmud is right ? Can nothing from the 
 Gospels have been introduced into the Talmud, and be sailing 
 there under false colours ? That the Talmud depends upon pure 
 
94 Conscience and Christ 
 
 traditions of His people from the lower and inconsistent 
 elements which in practice largely neutraUzed their 
 effect. 
 
 All this may seem to be a long preface to a lecture 
 which is to deal with the moral teaching of Jesus, but 
 it is impossible to understand the unique position 
 which that teaching occupies in the moral history of 
 the world unless we realize exactly what were the 
 defects in the current moral ideas of contemporary 
 Judaism, and what was the transformation which 
 it wanted to turn it into an adequate basis for the 
 world's future moral development. Three great 
 changes were introduced by our Lord into the current 
 moral ideas of His time. They are briefly these : 
 (i) The separation of the genuinely ethical and perma- 
 nently valuable elements in the teaching of the Jewish 
 Law from the ceremonial and transitory elements ; 
 (2) the correction of the current legalism by a more 
 inward morality which condemned the uncharitable 
 or unclean thought or intention as well as the com- 
 pleted act : (3) the definite proclamation of the 
 
 oral tradition is a pure superstition : it is largely based upon 
 literature." (Israelitische und judische Geschichle, p. 317, note). Of 
 course I cannot venture to express any opinion as to the probabili- 
 ties of a Christian influence upon the Talmud. On this point Mr. 
 Montefiore says, " The religious value of the teaching of the Synop- 
 tic Gospels for the modern Jew is not to be measured by the 
 presence or absence of parallels to the various sayings of Jesus 
 in the later Rabbinical literature. I do not merely refer to the 
 fact that almost all the parallels are later in date. . . . When 
 Talmud and Gospels ajre compared, the originality is almost always 
 on the side of the Gospels " (Syn. Gospels, p. civ.) Wellhausen's 
 " all " is probably an exaggeration. 
 
The Ethical Teaching of Jesus ChHst 95 
 
 principle tliat the neighbour to whom the Jew owed 
 duties was not merely his fellow-countrymen, but his 
 fellow-man. Let me dwell upon each of these great 
 moral revolutions in detail. 
 
 (i) The question of the attitude of our Lord towards 
 the Jewish Law has been a matter of much dispute. 
 Here I must content myself with suggesting conclu- 
 sions without much discussion or argument. In the 
 first place our Lord clearly drew a sharp distinction 
 between the injunctions contained in the books at- 
 tributed to Moses and the Pharisaic amplifications of 
 them. Sharing the ordinary ideas of His contem- 
 poraries about the authorship and origin of these 
 books, He acknowledged their divine authority. To 
 the Pharisaic glosses He attached no authority what- 
 ever. Consequently He defended His disciples against 
 charges of Sabbath-breaking either by walking through 
 the cornfields or by rubbing the ears of corn ; He 
 healed on the Sabbath and laid down the far-reaching 
 principles, " It is lawful to do good on the Sabbath- 
 day " ^ and " the Sabbath was made for man and not 
 man for the Sabbath." ^ He had no scruples about 
 eating with unwashen hands. He took no account of 
 the fasts which the Pharisees had invented in addition 
 to the Day of Atonement, the only day of fasting 
 prescribed by the Law. He threw to the winds all 
 
 » Matt. xii. 12. 
 
 ' Mark ii. 27. In the saying " The Son of man is Lord also 
 of the Sabbath" it is possible that the "Son of man "=man, 
 humanity. 
 
96 Conscience and Christ 
 
 the immoral Casuistry by which the Scribes not merely 
 added to the burden of the Law, but violated its most 
 essential commands, such as the duty of honouring 
 father and mother and of not taking God's name in 
 vain. Secondly, within the Law itself He practi- 
 cally, if not avowedly, distinguished between the 
 ethical parts of it and merely ritual or ceremonial 
 regulations. He did not perhaps assert in so many 
 words that He had come not to destroy the Law and 
 the prophets, but to fulfil them, or that not one jot 
 or one tittle should pass from the Law.^ These sayings 
 may belong to the attempt of the first Evangelist 
 or of his source to extract out of isolated sayings of 
 Jesus a systematic exposition of the Master's attitude 
 towards the Law ; but in any case the first of them 
 does represent a true statement of what that attitude 
 was, if (with the Evangelist) we mean by this " ful- 
 filling " that He had come to bring out the true, 
 ethical meaning of the Law and the prophets, to 
 complete what was lacking in them, to develope their 
 true principles and push them to their logical conse- 
 
 ^ Matt. V. 17, 18 ; Luke xvi. 17. So Loisy who suggests that 
 St. Paul is the man destined by Judaeo-Christian opinion to be " least 
 in the Kingdom of Heaven." The second of these sayings, but not 
 the first, certainly belongs to Q. The whole of the preface to 
 the enunciation of the new law in St. Matthew (v. 17-19 or perhaps 
 17-20) is of rather doubtful genuineness. If on the strength of its 
 appearing in Luke xvi. 17 we accept the saying about not one jot 
 or tittle paissing from the Law, it must have been said in a different 
 and irrecoverable context. If Jesus said it. He must have done so 
 at a period when His antagonism to Jewish legalism was not fully 
 developed. The verse is omitted by the Sinaitic-Syriac version. 
 
The Ethical Teaching of Jesus Chfist 97 
 
 quences. And, when He proceeds to give illustrations 
 of what He means by this fulfilment, or completion, of 
 the law, it is to the laws against adultery, against 
 murder, against false swearing, and the like that He 
 applies the principle. There is not a word about the 
 ceremonial law. The first at least of our Evangelists^ 
 is anxious to make the most of all utterances which 
 imply profound respect for the Law : yet we nowhere 
 find even the first Gospel representing our Lord as 
 insisting upon the importance of sacrifice, of avoiding 
 ceremonial pollution, of abstaining from unclean 
 meats, or upon the efficacy of the Day of Atonement 
 and its ceremonies, which was a prominent element 
 in the teaching of many Rabbis. The strongest 
 recognitions of the obligation for Jews of compl3dng 
 with the ritual requirements of the Mosaic Law are 
 found only in that most Judaic of the Gospels, and 
 must be looked upon with some suspicion. The in- 
 junction to the leper to show himself to the Priest 
 and offer the gift that Moses commanded is, indeed, 
 found in all three Synoptists. ^ Two Gospels give the in- 
 junction which follows our Lord's scathing words about 
 the tithing of mint and anyse and cummin, while the 
 weightier matters of the Law were neglected : " These 
 ye ought to have done, and not to have left the other 
 
 1 Or one of the sources which he used. The last Edition of the 
 first Gospel was certainly universalistic, but he must have used a 
 source — possibly some later edition of Q — which was more de- 
 cidedly Jewish-Christian. Some have suggested that the original 
 Q was a work of this character. 
 
 ' Matt. viii. 4 ; Mark i. 44 ; Luke v. 14. 
 
gS Conscience and Christ 
 
 undone," 1 but they are omitted in St. Luke by the 
 Codex Bezse (D), and may well have come in from 
 Matthew. The strongest of all is the explicit statement 
 — peculiar to the first Gospel — " The Scribes and the 
 Pharisees sit on Moses' seat : all things therefore what- 
 soever they bid you, these do and observe : but do not ye 
 after their works, for they say and do not. Yea, they 
 bind heavy burdens, and grievous to be borne, and lay 
 them on men's shoulders : but they themselves will 
 not move them with their finger." * Taken literally 
 these words seem inconsistent with our Lord's actual 
 teaching and practice on other occasions : He cer- 
 tainly did refuse to observe, or enjoin the observance 
 of, the Sabbath in the Pharisaic way, or the washing 
 of hands, and many other things which the Scribes 
 and Pharisees bade men do. The absence of such 
 words in Luke suggests that they are a gloss of the 
 Evangelist or some later redactor, a traditional 
 amphfication of the Master's actual words. But, even 
 if they are genuine, the significance of what Jesus 
 does not say in Matthew — the total absence of any 
 insistence upon specific ceremonial rules — is none the 
 less marked. 
 
 To some small extent our interpretation of Christ's 
 attitude towards the Law may be affected by our 
 estimate of the relative trustworthiness of the different 
 Evangehsts in such passages as these — upon the 
 
 • Matt, xxiii. 23 ; Luke xi. 42 
 
 * Matt, xxiii. 2, 3. 
 
The Ethical Teaching of Jesus Christ 99 
 
 question whether we look upon the more legahstic 
 passages of Matthew as Judaistic additions or upon 
 the omission of such sayings in Luke as universalizing 
 excisions. To my own mind the evidence in most 
 cases favours the former alternative. But, however 
 we decide such questions, there is not much room for 
 serious doubt on His general position. We are not 
 entitled to say that Christ ever actually encouraged 
 the non-observance of precepts obviously and fairly 
 deducible from the commands of Scripture : or that He 
 ever explicitly drew a distinction between ceremonial 
 precepts which were not, and moral precepts which 
 were, of eternal obligation. He assumed as a matter 
 of course that Jews would go on observing their 
 national law, and He probably never doubted that in 
 some sense the law of Moses was of divine origin. At 
 the same time it is to be observed that He never 
 sanctions extreme views of biblical inspiration. It is 
 to Moses, not directly to God, that He refers the in- 
 junctions of the Pentateuch : He says vaguely, " it 
 was said to the men of old time," not " God said." 
 He did not doubt that Moses was divinely commis- 
 sioned, or that the Scriptures were divinely inspired ; 
 but that is a different thing from laying it down that 
 the whole Old Testament was written by the finger of 
 God. When the sons of thunder, in accordance with 
 Old Testament precedent, desired to call down fire 
 from heaven to consume the Samaritan village which 
 rejected their Master, no reverence for the Old 
 
100 Conscience and Christ 
 
 Testament or for Elias prevented His rebuking 
 them.i 
 
 The truth seems to be that by a sort of instinct of 
 spiritual insight the mind of Jesus fastened upon the 
 spiritual and ethical import of the Jewish Scriptures, 
 and ignored all the rest. In principle the negative 
 side of St. Paul's teaching about the Law is already 
 contained in the teaching of Christ. Whenever the 
 Law stood in the way of a higher law, He disregarded 
 it boldly. He healed on the Sabbath, ^ which was 
 certainly " work " of a kind, defended His disciples 
 for plucking the ears of corn and rubbing them in their 
 hands, and laid down a principle which goes further 
 than St. Paul went by saying that, even in its applica- 
 tion to Jews, the Sabbath was made for man and not 
 man for the Sabbath. = Most important of all is the 
 explicit depreciation of the whole system of clean 
 and unclean meats which was the main foundation 
 
 1 Luke ix. 55. The words " As Elias did " are omitted in the 
 best MSS. The words " Ye know not what spirit ye are of " (though 
 omitted in some MSS.) are better attested than the words which 
 follow: " For the Son of man came not to destroy men's lives but to 
 save them." 
 
 ' Mark iii. 1-6; Matt. xii. g-14 ; Luke vi. 6-1 1. It is impor- 
 tant to remember that this event marks the beginning of the 
 designs upon our Lord's life by Herod Antipas and the representa- 
 tives of official Religion. Cf. also Luke xiv. i-6. 
 
 » Mark ii. 23-28 ; Matt. xii. 1-8 ; Luke vi. 1-5. There was a 
 rabbinic sajdng, " The Sabbath is yours, and you are not for the 
 Sabbath " (quoted by Holtzmann and Loisy). In Luke vi. 3 D 
 adds the well-known story that the Lord said to a man picking sticks 
 on the Sabbath, " Man, if thou knowest what thou doest, blessed 
 art thou ; but if thou knowest not, thou art accursed and a trans- 
 gressor of the law." 
 
The Ethical Teaching of Jesus Christ lOi 
 
 of that social barrier between Jew and Gentile even- 
 tually broken down by the influence of St. Paul and 
 the development of a Catholic Church. " Perceive 
 ye not that whatsoever from without goeth into the 
 man, it cannot defile him. . . . That which proceedeth 
 out of the man, that defileth the man. For from 
 within, out of the heart of men evil thoughts proceed, 
 fornications, thefts, murders, adulteries, covetings, 
 wickednesses, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, railing, 
 pride, foolishness : all these evil things proceed from 
 within, and defile the man."^ St. Mark is assuredly 
 right in adding by way of comment that in these 
 words our Lord was virtually repealing the whole 
 system : " this He said making all meats clean." 
 What our Lord wovild have actually advised if one 
 of His disciples had proposed to eat unclean meats, we 
 cannot say : but He denied altogether the absolute 
 moral validity of the command to abstain from them. 
 In principle that carries with it the abrogation of the 
 whole ceremonial law as a matter of eternal, intrinsic 
 obligation or divine command. 
 
 (2) Our Lord deepened, transcended, spiritualized 
 the strictly moral requirements of the Law. 
 
 At the present day the principle that Morality lies 
 
 ^ Mark vii. 18-22 ; Matt. xv. 18-20. The explanation contained 
 in Matt. xv. 15-20, and in a more condensed form in Mark, is looked 
 upon with suspicion by some critics, but that gives us no reason to 
 doubt the saying itself (Matt. xv. 11). And it is supported by the 
 general tone of Christ's teaching. Loisy may well remark : 
 " L'fimancipation de Paul, beaucoup plus apparent, n'6tait pas 
 plus riSelle " {Evan. Syn. I, p. 569). 
 
102 Conscience and Christ 
 
 in the intention, that a man who intends to kill is no 
 less guilty because a pistol missed fire, while the 
 accidental homicide is not guilty at all, seems so 
 obviously reasonable that we are inclined to forget 
 that this was not always recognized. Primitive Law 
 and primitive Morality alike dealt almost entirely 
 with acts, very little with motives ; they knew nothing 
 of the guilt of unfulfilled intention or even of the 
 absolute innocence of involuntary blood-shedding. ^ 
 As Morality advanced, people came no doubt to 
 realize more completely the importance of motive 
 and intention ; but it may be doubted whether by 
 the wisest of the ancients the principle was ever 
 understood with the fullness and definiteness and 
 distinctness which it attained in the moral conscious- 
 ness of Him of whose deeper thoughts the Sermon 
 on the Mount contains the most concentrated dis- 
 closure. Matthew Arnold was right in making the 
 " inwardness " of true Morality one at least of the 
 characteristic thoughts of Jesus.' 
 
 We have seen reason to believe that, if the first 
 Evangelist has actually formulated for himself the 
 principle that Jesus came to fulfil {-TrXripuicrai) the 
 Law and the Prophets, i.e. to develope the eternal 
 
 ' The Jewish law protected the accidental homicide, but only if 
 he could reach a city of refuge (Deut. xix. Cf. Numbers xxxv. 22). 
 
 ' Aristotle makes the value of morality consist chiefly in the 
 Tpoalpens, but rAeio iptrii implies both intention and act ; and 
 he is wholly incapable of coaceiving that a man may be liberal who 
 has little or nothing to give. The saying of the widow's mite is 
 quite beyond his ken. 
 
The Ethical Teaching of Jesus Christ 103 
 
 principles implied but nbt adequately expressed in 
 the Mosaic Law, he had ^►right conception of the 
 Master's actual attitude towards that Law. The 
 old Law dealt only with acts : the new righteousness 
 required a love of goodness, a love of one's neighbour, 
 a passionate desire to fulfil the will of God in the 
 inmost depths of the heart. That principle is illus- 
 trated by a succession of detailed applications. The 
 old Law had forbidden murder : the new Law forbade 
 malicious thoughts or evil intentions. The angry 
 thought, prevented from taking effect by a prudential 
 regard for consequences, may be as bad as murder. 
 So with regard to the seventh Commandment, the old 
 Law had forbidden adultery, which later Jewish 
 interpretation had made to include fornication. To 
 Christ the lascivious thought was evil in itself ; the 
 lascivious thought prevented from turning into act 
 by fear of vengeance or legal penalty was as bad as 
 adultery. The essential principle of the seventh 
 Commandment was that man was intended for perma- 
 nent union with one woman. Hence Jesus forbade 
 the polygamy which the letter of the Law allowed : 
 though polygamy was by this time so uncommon 
 among religious Jews that the prohibition of it would 
 not, it is probable, have struck His hearers as specially 
 startling. Not so His peremptory prohibition of 
 Divorce. The Jewish Law allowed the husband to 
 divorce his wife for mere disinclination, and divorce, 
 of course, to a Jew carried with it liberty to marry 
 
104 Conscience and Christ 
 
 again. Some of the later Jewish teachers had dis- 
 couraged divorce/ but none of them had positively 
 - condemned it. Our Lord peremptorily forbade divorce 
 to either party, or the remarriage of a divorced per- 
 son. In the text of Matthew (v. 32 ; xix. 9) an excep- 
 tion is added, " except for fornication."" The absence 
 of this exception from the text of Mark and Luke^ 
 makes it almost certain that it was absent from the 
 common source and from the original utterance of 
 Jesus. It is not so certain that the exception would 
 have been repudiated by Jesus Himself. He was 
 laying down principles. The true principle was 
 permanent monogamous marriage. In a society living 
 up to Christ's principle there would be no divorce for 
 adultery because there would be no adultery. What 
 was to be done when the true ideal of marriage was 
 violated by one of the parties, Jesus (so far as we 
 know) did not consider. If we have no right to say 
 positively that He would have recognized the excep- 
 tion which the Church of the Evangelist's day — the 
 Judaeo-Cbristian Church of the end of the first cen- 
 tury — evidently did recognize, we may at least be 
 sure that it was divorce for lesser causes than this, 
 divorce at the caprice of the husband, that he had 
 primarily in view. This, it must be remembered, was 
 
 1 " I hate putting away, saith the Lord " (Mai. ii. i6). 
 
 « Matthew also adds to the question, " for every cause " (xix. 3). 
 These words may be genuine ; at all events they represent the real 
 question at isiue. They strongly support the view taken in the 
 text. 
 
 » Mark x. ii ; Luke xvi. 18. Cf. i Cor. vii. 10, 39. 
 
The Ethical Teaching of Jesus Christ 105 
 
 the sole question at issue between the rival Jewish 
 Schools — the question about which the new Teacher 
 was invited to adjudicate. Hillel allowed divorce for 
 many causes besides adultery : Shammai allowed it 
 for adultery alone. Both parties admitted that 
 divorce was lawful in the case of adultery. What 
 our Lord meant, in all probability, was to pronounce 
 in favour of Shammai.^ 
 
 In any case the actual attitude of Roman Catholicism 
 and High Anglicanism on this subject is indefensible. 
 Orthodoxy cannot refuse to admit the authority of the 
 actual text of any one Gospel, and the text of Matthew 
 distinctly allov/s the divorce a vinculo matrimonii. 
 We cannot condemn the practice of half Christendom 
 on the strength of what is after all only a con- 
 jectural, and not absolutely certain, emendation of 
 our Lord's recorded utterance.' Moreover, if the letter 
 
 • This is the interpretation put upon the passage by Mr. Monte- 
 fiore (I, 240). It is often assumed that the words which follow in 
 Mark x. 12 can hardly be part of the original saying. Divorce was 
 not allowed to women by Jewish law in any case, though there had 
 been cases of high-born Jewish women leaving their husbands and 
 marrying another, e.g. that of Herodias. Prof. Burkitt [The 
 Gospel History and its Transmission, p. 100) has made the interesting 
 suggestion that this was the case which our Lord had in view. He 
 was carrpng on the protest of the Baptist against this flagrant 
 case of immorality. Possibly Prof. Burkitt is right. However the 
 matter is decided, we have another illustration of the impossibility 
 of basing modem morality purely upon authority — even upon the 
 authority of Christ. We simply do not know with any approach to 
 historical certainty whether our Lord allowed divorce for adultery 
 at all, either to the husband only or to both parties. 
 
 ' This is the position adopted by the Bishop of Oxford in The 
 Question of Divorce. There was for a long time great uncertainty 
 in the attitude of the Church on the subject, and the whole Eastern 
 
io6 Conscience and Christ 
 
 of Christ's teaching is to be insisted on, the Western 
 divorce a mensd et thoro is forbidden as much as actual 
 dissolution of marriage. The difficulty which we 
 experience in determining what our Lord actually 
 taught on this matter, impressively illustrates the 
 absolute impossibility of basing detailed rules for the 
 guidance of modern life upon isolated sayings of 
 Christ. That the ideal is permanent monogamous 
 marriage is undoubtedly the principle which Jesus 
 taught ; and that ideal still appeals to all the higher 
 ethical feeling of our time. By what detailed enact- 
 ments the ideal may be best promoted, which is the 
 less of two evils when that ideal has been violated and 
 made impossible, is a question which must be settled 
 by the moral consciousness, the experience, the prac- 
 tical judgement of the present. That principle has 
 been freely adopted by the Christian Church in other 
 cases. Our Lord's prohibition of Divorce, even if the 
 exception is removed, is not more peremptory, as far 
 as the letter goes, than His prohibition of oaths, of 
 self-defence, or of going to law. 
 
 It is a significant fact that St. Paul, in spite of his 
 strong view of the permanence of marriage, did not 
 feel forbidden by his Master's words to permit divorce 
 in one case not expressly mentioned by Him — in the 
 
 Church still allows divorce for adultery and the re-marriage of the 
 innocent party, as do the Protestant Churches of the Continent. I 
 cannot understand how Mr. Selwyn can say {The Teaching of Christ, 
 p. 106) that " the Church has alwdys interpreted our Lord's teach- 
 ing about divorce as though this exception did not exist." 
 
The Ethical Teaching of Jesus Christ 107 
 
 case of a heathen partner anxious to repudiate a 
 newly converted Christian spouse : and in this case 
 even the strict Western Church allows the repudiated 
 Christian to re-marry. 
 
 The same principle is then applied to the case of 
 swearing. Our Lord brushes aside the casuistical 
 distinctions between oaths which were more binding 
 and oaths which were less binding, or not binding at 
 all. Among those who wished to follow the ideal 
 law of God, yea would be yea, and nay nay. The 
 rule of Veracity would be observed habitually : lying 
 would be avoided as much as perjury. Our Lord was 
 here probably thinking not so much either of judicial 
 oaths or of cursing and swearing in ordinary conversa- 
 tion (though He would, of course, have condemned 
 the irreverent appeal to the name of God), as of at- 
 tempts to cheat one's neighbour by taking oaths to 
 repay a debt, or the like, on which the other would 
 rely — oaths which the casuistically learned swearer 
 secretly knows not to be binding, and does not intend 
 to observe.^ In the matter of judicial oaths Christian 
 States and Churches have followed a perfectly sound 
 principle. Undoubtedly in an ideal society there 
 would be no distinction between swearing and affirm- 
 ing ; a man's word would be " as good as his oath." 
 But as long as there are persons superstitious enough 
 to shrink from perjury though willing to lie, it is the 
 less of two evils that formal oaths should be adminis- 
 1 This point seems generally to have been overlooked. 
 
io8 Conscience and Christ 
 
 tered to witnesses in Courts of Justice and on other 
 solemn occasions. 
 
 We need not linger on our Lord's other detailed 
 applications of His principle. They lead up to the 
 emphatic enunciation of universal undiscriminating 
 love to one's neighbour, even to one's enemy. " All 
 things therefore whatever ye would that men should 
 do unto you, even so do unto them," as it is elsewhere 
 expressed. If it be the Evangelist who adds the 
 words, " for this is the law and the prophets," he is 
 only bringing out the very deepest and most character- 
 istic thought of his Master. The law of God which 
 was of universal obhgation was the law of universal 
 love, the law which regards every other human being 
 as of equal intrinsic importance to oneself, as equally 
 entitled to have his true good promoted by every other 
 rational being. The most certain thing about the 
 teaching of Jesus is that He did teach this doctrine of 
 universal love. Anyone who admits that He did so, and 
 that He taught nothing inconsistent there\vith, and who 
 also regards this teaching as the fundamental truth of 
 Morality, is already a disciple of Jesus, in a very dis- 
 tinctive and definite sense. 
 
 (3) The third great modification of average Jewish 
 Morality which was called for in the time of Jesus 
 was an extension of the meaning which was to be given 
 to the precept " Thou shalt love thy neighbour as 
 thyself." In putting that rule side by side with the 
 law of love to God and making these two into the first 
 
The Ethical Teaching of Jesus Christ 109 
 
 and greatest commandments of the Law, Jesus was 
 only quoting the most ritualistic and least spiritual 
 book among the Old Testament Scriptures — the book 
 of Leviticus. The two great deficiencies in the applica- 
 tion of this law by its Pharisaic expositors were these. 
 The first was that they taught much which was really 
 inconsistent with that rule, and which (as we have 
 seen) was in principle brushed aside by the teaching 
 of Jesus. By the love of God it is probable that the 
 author of Leviticus would have by no means understood 
 simply the love and service of men whose good God 
 wills, but also the observance of a host of ceremonial 
 regulations, some of which were thought to be well- 
 pleasing to God, but which were not at all for the 
 good of man. That this was not the case with Jesus 
 we have already seen. The second defect was that 
 by one's neighbour was understood simply — at the 
 very most — the Jewish fellow-countryman. * In the 
 Law itself, in the Prophets, in the teaching of the 
 Rabbis, much was said about the considerate treat- 
 ment of strangers ; but the most liberal of them would 
 have shrunk from the assertion that a Gentile was in the 
 sight of God as important as a Jew, and was entitled to 
 the same treatment at the hands of his Jewish brother. 
 Did the teaching of Jesus actually affirm this 
 principle ? I believe that we can confidently assert 
 that it did. There would, indeed, be no doubt about 
 
 * The very question of the Scribe to our Lord shows that there 
 were different interpretations of it current at the time. See 
 Appendix I (below p. 286). 
 
no Conscience and Christ 
 
 our answer, if we could rely with absolute confidence 
 upon the genuineness of all the universalistic sayings 
 of our present Synoptists — such as the declaration that 
 many shall come from the East and West, and from 
 the North and South and shall sit down in the King- 
 dom of God.^ But such sayings may be doubted or 
 interpreted in some non-universalistic sense. I think 
 it must, indeed, be admitted that our Lord Himself 
 considered His own mission to be to His own people. 
 " I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house 
 of Israel." ^ But this does not imply that, if and when a 
 Jew was brought into contact with a Gentile, he was not 
 to treat him as a brother, or that He would have had 
 any doubts about the truth that " in every nation he 
 that feareth God and worketh righteousness is accept- 
 able to Him." We need not rely upon passages which 
 a somewhat over-suspicious criticism may doubt. 
 That our Lord's teaching was in principle universalistic 
 is implied in the modifications of current Jewish 
 Ethics which have already been insisted on. The whole 
 tone and tenor of His teaching implied that a man's 
 standing in the sight of God did not depend upon 
 
 ' Matt. viii. ii ; Luke xiii. 29. It is a curious fact that in 
 Matthew the passage is certainly universalistic, being addressed to 
 the Centurion, while in Luke it is just possible to suppose that 
 it is only the Jews of the Dispersion that are referred to. 
 
 ' Matt. XV. 24. Cf . X. 6. Luke's omission, being accounted for by his 
 Universalism, is not conclusive against the genuineness of the saying, 
 and yet it may be due to the first Evangelist's view of the Messiah's 
 original mission. We cannot rely upon Mark xiii. 10, xiv. 9, or 
 Matt, xxviii. 19, because these imply a long period before the 
 Farousia. 
 
The Ethical Teaching of Jesus Christ iii 
 
 descent from Abraham, upon circumcision, upon the 
 observance of the distinction between clean and un- 
 clean meats, but upon the state of his heart, upon 
 the degree of his love, upon the extent to which he 
 did the will of God. If righteousness was the sole 
 condition of admission to the Kingdom of Heaven, it 
 followed necessarily and as a matter of course that a 
 Gentile could enter it. If Gentiles might become sub- 
 jects of the Kingdom of God without observing the 
 distinction between clean and unclean meats, it was 
 obvious that they must be treated as brothers. And this 
 was, I believe, no mere implication of Christ's teaching 
 discovered afterwards by St. Paul and the Christian 
 Church. He could hardly have failed to be aware 
 that no less than this was involved in it ; though 
 it did not often (no doubt) fall within the purpose of 
 His mission (as He conceived it) to dwell much upon 
 it. He who associated so habitually and so lovingly 
 with publicans and sinners — lax observers of the Law 
 when they observed it at all — could hardly have 
 regarded Gentiles as less the children of God than 
 they. In proof of this view of our Lord's teaching 
 I will not insist much on the exceptional occasions 
 when He was brought into contact with individual 
 Gentiles — on His healing of the Syro-Phoenician 
 woman ^ or His approval of the Centurion's faith ^ — 
 
 ' The saying above-quoted about His mission being to the house 
 of Israel occurs in two contexts, and this may suggest doubts as to 
 the incident, about which see below, p. 176. 
 
 ^ Matt. viii. 10 ; Luke vii. 9. 
 
112 Conscience and Christ 
 
 but rather upon the general tone and temper of the 
 teaching which finds its most perfect expression 
 in the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke x. 30 sq.). 
 The Samaritans were at least as much outside the pale 
 of average Pharisaic charity as the Gentiles. A Jewish 
 teacher who explicitly taught that a Samaritan might 
 be neighbour to a Jew and spiritually superior to a 
 Priest and a Levite, has parted company with Jewish 
 Particularism. 
 
 If anyone is disposed to accept the conjecture that 
 in the parable of the Good Samaritan, the Samaritan 
 has taken the place of a story in which the bar- 
 barity of Priest and Levite is contrasted with the 
 humanity of the simple Israelite,' we may appeal to 
 the passage in the Sermon on the Mount upon love 
 
 ' " As to the good Samaritan there is much reason to suppose 
 (though no Christian commentator is likely to admit it) that he 
 comes from a verbal alteration of the original story " (Syn. 
 Gospels, I, p. Ixvi.). M. Halevy has given plausible reasons for 
 supposing that the personages of the parable were originally 
 Priest, Levite, and simple Israelite, and Mr. Montefiore (ib., II, 
 pp. 935-7) has accepted his theory. The grounds are briefly: 
 (i) the improbability of a Samaritan travelling between Jeru- 
 salem and Jericho, (2) the strangeness of the collocation 
 " Priest, Levite, Samaritan." These grounds (for a full statement 
 of which I must refer to Mr. Montefiore's note) do not seem to me 
 very convincing, and even if we suppose that an old Jewish story 
 has been adapted to a new purpose, I cannot see why the adapter 
 may not as probably have been Jesus Himself as St. Luke, but the 
 theory prevents our treating this piece of evidence as conclusive. 
 The parable of the two sons is often regarded as meaning " Jew and 
 Gentile" (Matt. xxi. 28: cf. the parable of the Banquet), but those 
 who so interpret it are disposed to regard it as an " ecclesiastical 
 addition " of Matthew. Even if it is so, the attitude of the Jewish 
 Church towards Gentile Christianity can hardly be explained except 
 by the inherent universalism of the Master's teaching. 
 
The Ethical Teaching of Jesus Christ' 113 
 
 to enemies. Any Jew who was disposed to accept 
 the traditional rule of popular Ethics, " Thou shalt 
 love thy neighbour and hate thine enemy," would 
 certainly have extended the principle to national as 
 well as to personal enemies. Christ invited His disciples 
 to love their enemies and pray for those that despite- 
 fuUy used them " that ye may be sons of your Father 
 which is in heaven : for he maketh his sun to rise 
 on the evil and the good."^ A God who loves the 
 bad will certainly love Gentiles, and if the followers 
 of Jesus were to be like Him, they must obviously be 
 no less comprehensive in their philanthropy. 
 
 I submit then in conclusion that in laying down the 
 principle of human Brotherhood, in its fullest possible 
 extent and with a complete absence of inconsistent 
 additions and qualifications, our Lord has laid down 
 the fundamental principles of all true Morality as it 
 is recognized by the moral consciousness of the present 
 day at its highest. Whether side by side with these 
 principles there are other elements in the moral 
 teaching of Christ which fail to commend themselves 
 to the moral consciousness of to-day, I shall consider 
 in my next lecture. Meanwhile, I leave with you the 
 suggestion that the claim of Christ's religion to the 
 position of a universal religion rests to a large extent 
 
 • Matt. V. 45 ; Luke vi. 35. Matthew concludes with the in- 
 junction : "Ye therefore shall be perfect, as your heavenly Father 
 is perfect." If this version be genuine, we must suppose the words 
 to mean " all-embracing, universal, undiscriminating in your 
 charity " rather than " faultless " or " sinless," But Luke's 
 " merciful " is perhaps nearer to the original. 
 I 
 
114 Conscience and Christ 
 
 upon the fact that it is the religion which has most 
 completely and consistently insisted upon this prin- 
 ciple. How congenial is that ethical teaching with the 
 most characteristic idea of Christ's teaching on its 
 strictly religious side — the Fatherhood of God — I 
 must here content myself with merely pointing out. 
 The Ethic which makes the duty of Universal Love its 
 first and chief commandment necessarily involves, 
 for a teacher in whom Religion or Morality are in- 
 separably connected, the idea of a God who Himself 
 loves equally all the souls whose life is derived from 
 Him. 
 
 But before I conclude, a word must be said as to 
 the form in which the moral teaching of Christ is 
 presented to us. It is difficult to reduce that teaching, 
 as I have attempted to do, to formal propositions, 
 and then to point out its complete harmony with 
 the conclusions of modern Moral Philosophy, without 
 doing an injustice to the most characteristic features 
 of the Gospel records. Such an argument may be 
 suspected of proving too much. If all that can be 
 said is that there is no inconsistency between the 
 teaching of Christ and that which may be found in 
 some modern text-book of Morality, the objection 
 may occur, " What does it matter what we teach and 
 preach — the Gospel or some modem Education Com- 
 mittee's text-book of Morality, assuming that such a 
 work does in some way teach the duty of loving one's 
 neighbour as oneself ? " 
 
The Ethical Teaching of Jesus Christ 115 
 
 Fully to answer the objection would demand an 
 elaborate discussion upon many questions which 
 hardly belong to our immediate subject. I must be 
 content with indicating a few of the heads under which 
 such an answer would fall. 
 
 (i) In his inaugural lecture as Professor of Poetry 
 at Oxford, Dr. Andrew Bradley pointed out the 
 inseparability in poetry of form and matter : in 
 poetry we cannot treat the poet's meaning as one 
 thing, and the poet's language as a quite distinct and 
 separable way of expressing his meaning. The same 
 principle holds of the teaching of great moral teachers 
 — and pre-eminently of Christ. The impressiveness, 
 convincingness, and efficacy of His teaching largely 
 disappear when the form which He gave to it is taken 
 away. You can reduce the teaching of the Sermon on 
 the Mount to a dry philosophical form, and its truth 
 is unaffected by the process ; but when you do so, 
 you have lost the peculiar force and charm of 
 the sayings which have caused that discourse to be 
 accepted as the classical summary of human duty by 
 so many of those who have altogether repudiated 
 the Theology with which it is associated^. You 
 can teach the forgivingness of God and the duty of 
 forgiving one's brethren without the parable of the 
 Prodigal Son, the duty of Humanity without the 
 parable of the Good Samaritan, the value of the 
 
 1 It is said that the late Professor Tyudall was in the habit of 
 reading it through once a fortnight. 
 
ii6 Conscience and Christ 
 
 individual soul without the parable of the hundred 
 sheep ; but if you do so, you do not teach them so well. 
 Certainly a MoraUty might be Christian MoraUty, 
 which was taught without a single reference to the 
 personality of Christ or to the words of the Gospel. 
 But it must not be assumed that such a teaching of 
 Christian Morality would be an effective substitute for 
 a knowledge of the historic Christ and of the Gospel 
 pages. The moral supremacy of Christ cannot be 
 fairly appreciated apart from the form in which His 
 teaching is presented to us. 
 
 (2) The value and impressiveness of any moral 
 teacher's work cannot be adequately estimated by 
 isolated sayings. A moral ideal is a connected whole, 
 and this whole is best presented by the picture of a 
 character and a life.^ Even the ideal considered as 
 so much precept can hardly be appreciated apart from 
 the character of the teacher. Still less can the moral 
 effect of the teaching be separated from the impression 
 made by the teacher's life. The ethical importance of 
 Christ and of the religion which He founded is based 
 not merely upon the intrinsic value of His teaching, 
 but upon the picture of a life which seems to be in 
 complete harmony with that teaching. I have con- 
 
 * " Jewish Apologists have a habit of breaking up the Gospels into 
 fragments. They are somewhat inclined to do the same with their 
 own literature. But a great book is more than its own sentences 
 taken singly or disjointedly. A great personahty is more than the 
 record of its teaching, and the teaching is more than the bits of it 
 taken one by one. It must be viewed as a whole." Montefiore, 
 Syn. Gospels, I, p. civ. 
 
The Ethical Teaching of Jesus Christ 117 
 
 tended strongly that we cannot defend the supremacy 
 which the Christian reHgion claims for the moral 
 teaching of Christ except by contending that it actually 
 satisfies the moral consciousness of the present. But, 
 it must be recognized that the full extent of the appeal 
 depends on the character and the Hfe and not merely 
 upon isolated sayings. The influence of a Person is 
 stronger than that of an idea. This is a very impor- 
 tant point to be borne in mind in estimating the moral 
 healthiness of a religious system which places the 
 teaching of an historical Person who lived in the re- 
 mote past in the forefront of its ethical ideal. 
 
 (3) One of the most characteristic features of the 
 Christian Ethic is the closeness of the connexion in 
 which it stands to Religion, as it is the distinctive 
 characteristic of Christian Theology that, more unre- 
 servedly than any other historical religion, it exhibits 
 the complete identification of Religion and Morality. 
 There has necessarily therefore been something un- 
 natural and one-sided about an attempt to exhibit 
 Christian Morality in isolation from Theology. An 
 adequate defence of Christian Ethics would involve an 
 attempt to show that it is morally healthy and desir- 
 able that Ethics should be taught in this close con- 
 nexion with Religion. And this represents a new 
 subject upon which I can hardly enter now.^ I believe 
 
 • I have discussed it pretty fully — so far as I could do so without 
 entering in detail into the special theology of the Christian Religion 
 — in The Theory of Good and Evil, Bk. Ill, chaps, i. and ii. 
 
ii8 Conscience and Christ 
 
 that it could be shown that the idea of an objective 
 moral obligation is not only consistent with, but 
 naturally leads up to and even logically demands, if 
 the fullest meaning is to be given to the term objectivity, 
 the belief that Morality consists in obedience to the 
 will of a perfectly righteous God. At the very least 
 it may be said that it is thus interpreted that the idea 
 of an objective duty comes home most powerfully to 
 ordinary minds, and that it is most likely to influence 
 life. And this is the form in which the idea of an 
 absolute right and wrong is set forth in the teaching 
 of Jesus. In His ideal of life complete devotion to 
 the will of God is bound up with the conviction that 
 God is perfectly and intrinsically good, and conse- 
 quently wills nothing but the true and highest good of 
 His creatures. In the whole range of Theology there 
 is no principle so important as this. If Jesus was 
 the first to teach that principle in its fioll purity, if 
 He taught it with a purity, a force and a consistency 
 to which no other Religion — uninfluenced by His 
 teaching — affords any parallel, we have already dis- 
 covered a sufficient answer — an answer of enormous 
 force — to the question why we of the twentieth cen- 
 tury should still consider ourselves disciples of Christ, 
 and of none other in the same sense and to the same 
 degree. We have found sufficient reason for saying 
 with the disciple of the fourth Gospel : " Lord, to 
 whom shall we go ? thou hast the words of eternal 
 life." 
 
ADDITIONAL NOTE ON THE ETHICAL TEACHING 
 OF CHRIST IN DETAIL 
 
 The central truth of Christ's Morality was His promulga- 
 tion of the duty of universal love. But the teaching of 
 Christ would not have exercised the influence that it has 
 exercised, it would not have constituted the epoch in the 
 ethical development of the race that it has actually consti- 
 tuted, if His teaching had consisted in nothing but the bare 
 enunciation of the formula " Thou shalt love thy neigh- 
 bour as thyself." Nor would the merely negative merit of 
 excluding inconsistent additions or contradictions of the 
 doctrine have been sufficient to account for the effects of 
 that teaching. Ethical teaching that is really to come 
 home to men's consciences must have some body, some 
 fullness of content, some wealth and forcefulness of illustra- 
 tion : there must be more than a bare enunciation of formal 
 principles : the principles must be developed. There must 
 be concrete deductions and apphcations. Corollaries and 
 consequences must be pointed out. Contradictory and 
 inconsistent principles must not merely be excluded : they 
 must be denounced and exposed. And all these things are 
 pre-eminently characteristic of the teaching of Jesus. 
 Nothing is more remarkable in it than the way it combines 
 very great universality in the enunciation of fundamental 
 principles with great concreteness of illustrative detail and 
 application. An entirely incorrect impression will be formed 
 of it — of its originality, its importance and its distinctive- 
 ness — if it is supposed to consist in nothing but the 
 
 119 
 
120 Conscience and Christ 
 
 enunciation of the abstract law of universal Benevolence 
 in a way that will commend itself to philosophers 
 anxious to discover the fundamental principle of all 
 Morality. It does enunciate that law with more clearness 
 and consistency than had ever been done before : but 
 there is much in it besides. And therefore it is important 
 that we should try to enumerate and summarize the 
 leading features of Christ's ethical teaching in somewhat 
 greater detail than has been possible in the preceding 
 lecture. Our limits demand that the summary should be 
 very brief, and that little shall be attempted in the way of 
 explaining or vindicating the teaching or applying it to 
 modern conditions. Such a reply to objections as is 
 possible will be reserved for the next lecture. 
 
 (i) Love to enemies. The principle of love to enemies 
 is so absolutely involved in the principle of love to 
 Humanity in general that it may be treated as simply a 
 teassertion of the principle itself. If Humanity as such 
 is to be loved, if its good is to be promoted, if every indi- 
 vidual human being possesses an intrinsic worth, that 
 principle cannot cease to be true because the man is an 
 enemy. That does not imply that there is not much in 
 some men which may properly be hated as Jesus hated 
 the hypocrisy of some Pharisees and the covetousness of 
 others. Such men are to be loved because they are capable 
 of better things. The enunciation of this principle holds 
 a prominent place in the sermon on the Mount. ^ 
 
 (2) Forgiveness of injuries. The duty of forgiveness is 
 another implication of the same principle. This was an 
 extremely characteristic feature in the teaching of Jesus : 
 " Whensoever ye stand praying, forgive, if ye have aught 
 against anyone ; that your Father also which is in heaven 
 
 ' Matt. V. 43-48 ; Luke vi. 27-35. 
 
The Ethical Teaching of Jesus Chrfsi 121 
 
 may forgive you your trespasses."^ " Leave there thy gift 
 before the altar, and go thy way : first be reconciled to 
 thy brother and then come and offer thy gift."^ " If 
 thy brother sin, rebuke him ; and if he repent, forgive 
 him. And if he sin against thee seven times in the day, 
 and seven times turn again to thee, saying, I repent, 
 thou shaft forgive him."^ The principle is asserted even 
 in the shorter version of the prayer which our Lord 
 is said to have bequeathed to His disciples. It is illus- 
 trated by the attitude of Jesus to the adulterous woman 
 where it is carried to the point of actual disobedience 
 to the letter of the Mosaic law, providing that such 
 should be stoned — a law which it is doubtful whether 
 later Judaism ever enforced even when it possessed the 
 political power to enforce it. It has been enshrined for 
 ever in the parable of the Prodigal Son.* Primarily that 
 parable was intended no doubt to teach the forgiving- 
 ness of God, but in Christ's teaching the divine forgiveness 
 and the duty of human forgiveness were indissolubly 
 associated. It is right to add that in His insistence on 
 
 ' Mark xi. 25. 
 
 2 Matt. V. 24. 
 
 ' Luke xvii. 3, 4 ; Matt, xviii. 21, 22, where it is further 
 illustrated by the parable of the unmerciful servant (ib. 23-35). 
 Luke's version is simpler than Matthew's more elaborate ques- 
 tion and answer with the more emphatic " until seventy times 
 seven." 
 
 ' We need not suppose that either our Lord or the Evangelist 
 meant the Prodigal Son to be a type of the Gentile world, though 
 the principle of the parable undoubtedly carries with it in germ 
 the justification of St. Paul's mission to the Gentiles. The latter 
 portion of the parable — about the jealousy of the elder brother — 
 may more reasonably be treated as a later attempt to vindicate 
 Gentile Christians against Jews or Judaizing Christians : but there 
 is no necessity for the supposition. The parable fits the case simply 
 because it asserts the eternal principle upon which the mission to 
 the Gentiles was founded (Luke xv. 11-32). 
 
122 Conscience and Christ 
 
 forgiveness our Lord was only pressing a point very 
 familiar to the highest rabbinical morality of Christ's day, 
 though doubtless there were some things in that teaching 
 — as in much later Christian teaching — which were quite 
 inconsistent with it. 
 
 (3) Self-sacrifice. Jesus insisted much upon the import- 
 ance of self-sacrifice. It is obvious that, if v/e are really to 
 do what is best for our neighbours and not for ourselves 
 alone, this must involve — in the actual conditions of any 
 human society — much sacrifice of self. But the necessity 
 has not always been recognized — even in theory. Jesus 
 pushed His insistence upon it to the point of making it the 
 characteristic note of discipleship to Himself — the 
 characteristic requirement for admission to the Kingdom. 
 This principle was so fully grasped by the very earliest 
 disciples that it is difficult to say which of the sayings 
 attributed to Jesus represents the earliest form of His 
 teaching. It may well be thought that the saying about 
 taking up the Cross and following Him was formulated 
 by those who knew by what form of death He had died, 
 even if we suppose that His anticipations of a violent death 
 had amounted to inward certainty. This portion of the 
 saying is probably a traditional expansion in the light of 
 subsequent events, though it is barely possible that the 
 cross may have become the recognized phrase for a shame- 
 ful death before it became the consecrated symbol of self- 
 sacrifice through the death of Christ. ^ But the rest of the 
 famous saying there is no reason to doubt, " If any man 
 would come after me, let him deny himself." - So again, 
 
 1 See passages from classical and rabbinic literature quoted by 
 Archdeacon Allen on Matt. x. 38. Luke gives the sa3dng a meta- 
 phorical application to ordinary life by adding the word " daily " 
 (ix. 23). 
 
 » Mark viii. 34 ; Matt. xvi. 24-26. 
 
The Ethical Teaching of Jesus Christ 123 
 
 " Whosoever shall seek to gain his life shall lose it, but 
 whosoever shall lose his life shall preserve it."^ 
 
 On this subject I will quote the words of Mr. Montefiore, 
 who has so nobly resisted the temptation — necessarily 
 strong to a Jewish interpreter — to minimize the originality 
 of Jesus. " Then come tlie two simple Greek words 
 oTra/jvijo-ao-^u lavTov, ' let him deny himself.' Here again we 
 have what is practically a new conception. Self-denial was 
 not unknown before Christ ; but the clear conception of 
 it and the ideal which it suggests were, I think, new,^ and 
 they in their turn have exercised an immense influence 
 upon men's thoughts, aspirations and actions. More 
 restricted, but not less intense, has been the effect of the 
 next words : ' let him take up his cross.' The true 
 follower of the Master, in proportion to the perfection of 
 his discipleship, must endure and renounce, suffer and 
 die " {The Synoptic Gospels, I, 211). 
 
 (4) The Danger of Riches. The particular kind of self- 
 sacrifice to which Jesus called His first disciples was 
 determined by the needs of His mission. The hardships 
 imposed upon His disciples were especially those involved 
 in preaching the Kingdom of Heaven — the more so as it 
 eventually became clear to Him that in all probabihty the 
 accomplishment of that mission would involve death for 
 Himself, and imminent peril of death for His immediate 
 followers. On those whom He called to this work of 
 preaching He laid the specific requirement that they should 
 abandon — at least for the time — their homes and occupa- 
 
 • Luke xvii. 33. It may be that the primary meaning of gain- 
 ing the soul or the life is " to be saved at the Messianic Judgement " ; 
 but none the less the ethical principle is laid down that self-sacriiice 
 is demanded for entrance to the Kingdom. As to our Lord's 
 teaching about reward, see below, p. 290 sq. 
 
 • The Buddhistic ideal of Self-renunciation was different, see 
 below (p. 266). 
 
124 Conscience and Christ 
 
 tions and lead the life of itinerant missionaries.^ Some 
 who were rich He advised that they should sell all they 
 had and give to the poor.^ His teaching was full of the 
 dangers of riches. Luke's version of the Beatitude, 
 " Blessed are ye poor," is probably nearer the original 
 idea than Matthew's " poor in spirit,"^ though we are told 
 that the Aramaic word will cover both meanings — " poor " 
 and " poor in spirit." " It is easier for a camel to go 
 through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter 
 into the Kingdom of God."* That is a saying which, just 
 because of its paradoxical character, is among those least 
 likely to have been invented, whatever we may think of 
 the attenuated explanation in Matthew — " how hardly 
 shall they who trust in riches." The principle is strikingly 
 illustrated by the parables of the rich fool and of Dives 
 and Lazarus. ^ The difficulties involved in these passages 
 I shall consider in the next lecture. 
 
 (5) Humility. Closely connected with the inculcation 
 of self-sacrifice is the insistence on Humility. « The duty 
 of Humility — properly understood— is indeed only an 
 apphcation of the doctrine of Love. In Aristotle's picture 
 of the " high-souled man " the feature which revolts us is 
 not that " he thinks much of himself being worthy," 
 though Jesus might have suggested the doubt whether he 
 was altogether so worthy as he thought himself, but rather 
 
 1 Matt. X. 1-15. It is probable that the Commission to the 
 Seventy in Luke is a variant of the Commission to the Twelve in 
 Matthew. The details of both these discourses have probably been 
 more or less coloured by the later experiences of the first Christian 
 missionaries. 
 
 ' Matt. xix. 21. 
 
 ' Luke vi. 20 ; Matt. v. 3. 
 
 ' Matt. xix. 24 ; Mark x. 25 ; Luke xviii. 25. 
 
 ' Luke xii. 16 ; xvi. 19. Cf. also Matt. vi. 19-34. 
 
 • Matt, xviii. 1-4 ; Matt. xix. 13-14, etc. 
 
The Ethical Teaching of Jesus Christ 125 
 
 his intolerable arrogance and contempt for others. ^ By the 
 man who really loves his neighbour as himself, the excel- 
 lences of others will be as highly esteemed as his own ; 
 their sins and deficiencies will be to him a subject of 
 genuine pity and regret, not of ostentatious self-congratula- 
 tion and haughty isolation. That Jesus recognized this 
 connexion between Humility and Love, is, I think, clear 
 from His whole treatment of the subject. " He that is 
 greatest among you, let him be as the younger, and 
 he that is chief as he that doth serve. "^ True great- 
 ness consists in social service : there is one kind of 
 ambition which He does not deny to His disciples — 
 the ambition to serve much. The oft-repeated ex- 
 hortation to become as little children refers, ^ I think, 
 not primarily to the simplicity, guilelessness and other 
 real or supposed virtues of childhood, but rather to 
 the insignificance of children — with possibly a suggestion 
 that those who wish to enter the Kingdom should, as 
 children have to do in poor families, be much engaged in 
 the service of others.* These sayings are invitations to 
 self-subordination and social service rather than to 
 simplicity or child-hkeness of character. In condemning 
 grasping, self-assertive, pushful ambition, Jesus was only 
 carrying on one of the characteristic features of later 
 Jewish morality. 
 
 * "The high-souled man justly despises" (others). "He is 
 ashamed of receiving a benefit," for that implies inferiority. "To- 
 wards those in power or prosperity he is haughty, but to the lesser 
 people condescending" {/j-hptos), etc. (Nic. Eth. iv. 3). 
 
 ' Luke xxii. 26. 
 
 * Matt. xix. 13-14 = Mark x. i4=Luke xviii. 16 (" of such is 
 the Kingdom of Heaven "). 
 
 * So in the Middle Ages the child habitually waited at table, and 
 even the sons of the rich were brought up as pages in the house- 
 holds of Bishops or great secular Lords. 
 
126 Conscience and Christ 
 
 One reason for humility recognized by our Lord is that 
 it is a necessary outcome of love to one's neighbour. But 
 another ground on which Jesus could not have approved 
 Aristotle's " high-souled man " is His strong sense of 
 human imperfection, of the need for self-condemnation, 
 repentance, and humility in the sight of God. " None is 
 good, save one, even God."i The true moral ideal is so 
 high that no one can self-complacently suppose that he has 
 attained it. Of Humility on this side the noblest expres- 
 sion is the parable of the Pharisee and the tax-gatherer.^ 
 The same principle underlies the condemnation of cen- 
 sorious condemnation of others which is contained in the 
 maxim " Judge not " and the sajdng about the mote and 
 the beam.' 
 
 (6) The Christian Good. The duty of love means the 
 duty of promoting the true good of Humanity, and in its 
 practical applications it will vary enormously according 
 to the interpretation which is given to that true good. In 
 the teaching of Jesus the importance of the spiritual — of 
 conduct, of character, of motive, is everywhere insisted 
 upon, while at the same time there is no ascetic dis- 
 paragement of ordinary human happiness. Happiness is 
 not despised, but the chief good which the Christian lover 
 will seek to realize for the loved is to make him also a lover 
 ■ — a lover of God, a lover of all that is good, a lover of 
 his fellow-men. This principle has perhaps been suffi- 
 ciently insisted upon in our analysis of the sermon on the 
 Mount, but I should like here to quote a fine passage from 
 Professor Royce's recent book on the Problem of Chris- 
 tianity. Professor Royce has mastered, as it seems to me, 
 the true essence of Christ's own moral teaching in a way 
 
 1 Mark x. i8=Luke xviii. 19. 
 
 • Luke xviii. 9-14. 
 
 » Matt. vii. I, 2 (=Luke vi. 37) ; Matt. vii. 3 (=Luke vi. 41). 
 
The Ethical Teaching of Jesus Christ 127 
 
 which hardly any professed Philosopher has ever done 
 before : — 
 
 " But now let us return to the relation of love to the 
 services that one is to offer to one's neighbor. What 
 can the lover — in so far as Jesus describes his task — 
 what can he do for his fellow-man ? 
 
 " To this question it is, indeed, possible to give one 
 answer which clearly defines a duty to the neighbor ; 
 and this duty is emphasized throughout the teaching of 
 Jesus. This duty is the requirement to use all fitting 
 means — example, precept, kindliness, non-resistance, 
 heroism, patience, courage, strenuousness — all means 
 that tend to make the neighbor himself one of the lovers. 
 The first duty of love is to produce love, to nourish it, 
 to extend the Kingdom of Heaven by teaching love to 
 all men. And this service to one's neighbor is a clearly 
 definable service. And so far the love of the neighbor 
 involves no unsolved problems."^ 
 
 (7) Purity. One special application of the last j^inciple 
 — ^the superiority of the spiritual to the carnal— upon 
 which Jesus insisted much was on the side of sexual 
 Morality. The licentious thought was condemned no less 
 than the hcentious act ;^ and He went beyond the letter of 
 the Jewish law in condemning divorce, which was still 
 common though some Rabbis condemned it, and by 
 implication polygamy, which was practically unknown 
 among the Jews of that time.* 
 
 It may be desirable to say a word about the connexion 
 between Christ's central doctrine of Love and His principles 
 of sexual Morality — all the more so because this is one of 
 
 1 I, 85. I should like to quote the whole chapter. I must add 
 that in other directions Professor Royce's interpretation of Chris- 
 tianity seems to me seriously defective. ' Matt. v. 28. 
 
 ' Matt. xix. 3-10, etc. (see above, pp. 104-5). 
 
128 Conscience ani Christ 
 
 the feW cases in which intellectual doubt as to the basis 
 of a moral duty is probably a very frequent cause of moral 
 transgression. What then is the true answer to the 
 question " Why is fornication wrong ? " The duty of 
 abstaining from fornication springs, I beheve, from these 
 two principles taken together — the duty of love, which 
 includes respect, for every human being, and the superi- 
 ority of the spiritual to the carnal. Extra-matrimonial 
 intercourse is degrading to the woman. That it is in- 
 trinsically degrading to the woman to be used for the 
 satisfaction of the lusts of a man, and not with a view to 
 a permanent union in which she is to be treated as the 
 equal companion of the man and the mother of his children, 
 is one of those truths which are intuitively perceived. All 
 judgements as to the nature of the good are of this 
 character : they must be apprehended by our judgements 
 of value. That the vast majority of men do thus judge is 
 made plain enough by the attitude which the most Ucen- 
 tious man of the world would instantly assume towards 
 the seducer of a sister or a daughter, and by his contempt 
 for immoral women. If a man accepts the principle that 
 every human being is equally to be treated as an object 
 of love, entitled to his or her share in whatever is truly 
 good, entitled to be treated as a " brother or a sister " or 
 (in more philosophical language) as an end-in-himself, then 
 he cannot justify the treatment of another woman in a 
 way which would arouse his utmost indignation if any 
 woman he really cared for were so treated by another. 
 And the obligation to treat every other woman as he would 
 wish his sister to be treated is not altered by the fact that 
 weakness or poverty or vanity or sinful inclination may 
 make her a willing victim. The man who accepts Christ's 
 principle is bound to promote the true good of every other, 
 not to gratify all his actual desires. It may be added 
 
The Ethical Teaching of Jesus Christ 129 
 
 that in a vast number of cases the wrong inflicted on 
 the woman is not merely the moral degradation but the 
 first step on the road to ruin in every sense of the word.* 
 
 (8) Repentance. The very idea of an absolute duty — 
 implied in all the teaching of our Lord — carries with it the 
 duty of repentance where there has been a violation of duty. 
 Or to put it otherwise, our Lord taught that sin is the 
 worst of evils, and a recognition of that truth necessarily 
 brings with it sorrow for sin — both for positive external 
 wrong-doing and for any failure in love. Obvious as these 
 deductions are, they have not always been actually drawn 
 in practice. There is nothing about repentance in 
 Aristotle, not very much in Plato ; more no doubt in 
 the teaching of the Stoics, though the proud self-sufficiency 
 of that school hardly favours a penitential attitude of 
 mind. The insistence upon the necessity of repentance, and 
 upon the closely connected doctrine that God will forgive 
 wherever there is sincere repentance, was one of the great 
 points upon which the Jewish prophetic teaching most 
 clearly goes beyond the moral level of the ancient world. 
 And here the doctrine of the Rabbis was quite faithful to 
 the best traditions of Judaism, ^ though there are many 
 things about the necessity of ritual expiation on the great 
 day of the Atonement and otherwise which are hope- 
 lessly inconsistent with this doctrine. In the teaching of 
 Jesus the necessity for repentance was absolutely central. 
 
 ' Those sexual immoralities to which these considerations do 
 not apply are equally condemned by our immediate judgements of 
 value, and here we are able to appeal to a very general con- 
 sensus. There are some pleasures which do not form part of true 
 human good, and everyone is bound to promote his own true good 
 as well as that of others. 
 
 ' " Nothing can be proved by more abundant and overivhelming 
 evidence than that the conception of God as forgiving from free 
 grace was a fundamental and familiar feature of the Pharisaic 
 religion, just as it still remains so" (Montefiore, Syn. Gospels, I, 79) 
 
 K 
 
130 Conscience and Christ 
 
 Even those who most one-sidedly insist upon the eschato- 
 logical character of Christ's teaching admit that the 
 necessity of repentance for entrance into the Kingdom was 
 from first to last as prominent a feature of His message as 
 the proclamation that the Kingdom was at hand.^ The 
 noblest expression of this necessity is the parable of the 
 Pharisee and the PubHcan with its emphatic declaration 
 that the repentant sinner was justified rather than the 
 self-complacent observer of the Law.^ 
 
 The modern depreciation of repentance is a note either 
 of superficiality or of cant. Professor Oliver Lodge's much- 
 discussed declaration that the modern man has no time to 
 think of his sins is really one of the most unwise things 
 that was ever uttered by an able and religious-minded man. 
 If a man's will is not wholly directed towards the good, he 
 must hate and condemn himself in so far as his will is bad ; 
 and he cannot do that unless he knows himself, unless he 
 reflects on his bad actions and sorrows over them and the 
 character which they reveal, and deliberately resolves to 
 turn from them . If the man believes in a perfectly righteous 
 Being whose Will is identical with the law of his Conscience 
 (so far as that Conscience sees truly) — a Being from whom 
 he has alienated himself by his transgressions — ^his sorrow 
 will be deepened, and will assume the form of a desire for 
 reconciliation with that Being, which will most naturally 
 express itself in confession and prayer for forgiveness, 
 restitution, change of will. Repentance is only the reverse 
 side of the turning towards good. It is not complete, it 
 cannot exist, without effort after amendment. And this is 
 a truth which is everywhere taught by Jesus. It is implied 
 in the parable of the Prodigal Son* whose willingness to 
 become as one of his father's hired servants was already an 
 
 » Mark i. is=Matt. iv. 17. 
 
 ' Luke xviii. 9-14. ' Luke xv. 11-32. 
 
The Ethical Teaching of Jesus Christ 131 
 
 act of amendment. It is the especial point of the parable 
 of the two sons. The son who " afterwards repented and 
 went " had begun to do the will of his father.^ 
 
 (9) The duty of making others better. The necessity of 
 repentance was a prominent feature of rabbinic teaching. 
 That was also to some extent the case with another impUca- 
 tion of the doctrine that the most valuable element in 
 the good life is goodness itself, i.e. the duty of promoting 
 that good in others, and of encouraging repentance in those 
 who lack it. The prophets had both by example and 
 precept set forth the importance of making other men 
 righteous, and so had the Rabbis. But it may be doubted 
 whether by any of them this duty had been emphasized 
 as it is emphasized in the teaching of Jesus. When once 
 it is recognized that the Kingdom whose advent was fore- 
 told was an ethical and spiritual Kingdom, a new heaven 
 and a new earth wherein was to dwell righteousness, the 
 eschatological character of the teaching only adds additional 
 emphasis to this supreme duty — ^the promotion for others 
 of a good wherein righteousness is the most important 
 element. From this point of view all the parables of the 
 Kingdom, whatever subordinate aspects of it they are 
 intended to teach, become so many emphatic assertions of 
 this duty. 
 
 The specially characteristic application of this principle 
 which we find in Jesus is His insistence on the duty and 
 blessedness of bringing sinners to repentance. The 
 importance of righteousness is a common note of all high 
 moral teaching, but it has often been accompanied by 
 much contempt of sinners and a disposition to avoid them. 
 Christ pitied the sinner and sought to move him to repent- 
 ance. And this is no more than a logical deduction from 
 these three principles — the duty of love, the doctrine that 
 ' Matt. xxi. 29. 
 
132 Conscience and Christ 
 
 sin is the worst of evils, the possibihty of repentance and 
 amendment even for the worst. The teaching of Jesus is 
 full of this idea. It will be enough to refer to the parable 
 of the lost sheep and the memorable paradox "I say 
 unto you that even so there shall be joy in heaven over 
 one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and 
 nine just persons who need no repentance."^ The truth 
 that repentance is never impossible — and that when 
 there is a full repentance, no punishment is called 
 for or will be demanded by God — is illustrated by the 
 parable of the labourers. " I will give unto this last even 
 as unto thee."^ The whole life of Jesus, His association 
 with the " tax-gatherers and sinners " whom the correct 
 religious world despised, was an illustration of it— a side of 
 His teaching sometimes forgotten by the extreme "Eschato- 
 logists " who complain that our Lord taught no Ethics of 
 permanent value. If they think that the ethical principle 
 which underlies such a mission to the morally lost is 
 suitable only for an " Interimsethik," that is their doctrine, 
 not the Christ's. On this subject Mr. Montefiore remarks : 
 " So far as we can tell, this pity for the sinner was a new 
 note in religious history " {Syn. Gospels, II, 574). 
 
 (10) The sin of casting stumbling-blocks. The heinous- 
 ness of the sin involved in putting a stumbling-block in 
 the way of others, particularly of the little ones, the 
 
 1 Luke XV. 7 ; Matt, xviii. 13 (Luke adds the parable of the 
 lost piece of silver, xv. 8). The thought can only be understood 
 literally if it be assumed that the righteousness of the ninety and 
 nine was merely external righteousness or at least an easy righteous- 
 ness helped by favourable circumstances, which implied less good- 
 will than the repentance of the sinner. But this is too prosaic a 
 way to treat the parable. Matthew perhaps did not like this 
 disparagement of the righteous which he found in his source (Q) 
 and omitted it. 
 
 •= Matt. XX. 12-14. 
 
The Ethical Teaching of Jesus ChHst 133 
 
 simple and the weak, is only a particular application — 
 a negative application — of the duty of helping others to 
 avoid sin.^ And this leads on to the more general principle 
 — the intrinsic value of the lowliest soul, for all are capable 
 of goodness, however narrow their sphere of action and 
 however small their intellectual capacities. " See that ye 
 despise not one of these little ones ; for I say unto you that 
 in heaven their angels do always behold the face of my 
 Father which is in heaven."^ 
 
 (11) The danger of hypocrisy. Much of the moral teach- 
 ing of Jesus is concerned not so much with the enforcement 
 of particular duties as with the importance of goodness in 
 general — the good will itself. This carried with it a special 
 emphasis on the wickedness of hypocrisy^ — ^the besetting 
 sin of religious people in a community in which piety was 
 at a premium, a passport to social recognition and import- 
 ance. This is the principle which underlay His denunciation 
 of the Scribes and Pharisees. Here again those who 
 complain of the "interim" character of Christ's in- 
 junctions seem unable to distinguish between the im- 
 mediate and the permanent application of His sayings. 
 Scribes and Pharisees are always with us, though in the 
 modern world hypocrisy may often assume forms strangely 
 different from those common in first-century Palestine — 
 especially the form of an " inverted hypocrisy " which sets 
 up claims to a greater emancipation from moral restraint 
 than the pretender really believes in or is prepared to put 
 into practice. Much contemporary literature is steeped in 
 this kind of hypocrisy. The interim for which, according 
 to some, Christ's Ethic was suited, has certainly not come 
 to an end yet. 
 
 ' Matt, xviii. 6, 7 ; Mark ix. 42 ; Luke xvii. i. 2. 
 
 ' Matt, xviii. 10. 
 
 2 Matt. vi. 1-6, 16-18. 
 
LECTURE IV 
 
 OBJECTIONS TO THE MORAL TEACHING 
 OF CHRIST 
 
 I PROPOSE in the present lecture to consider 
 some of the objections which are most commonly 
 made to the moral teaching of Jesus. We have seen 
 that the fundamental principle of Christian Ethics, as 
 laid down in the teaching of Jesus Himself, resolves 
 itself into the general principle of impartial love to- 
 wards all mankind.^ I have already pointed out that 
 nothing is more characteristic of Jesus than the 
 generality or universality of His teaching, and that 
 it is this characteristic which makes it possible for the 
 teaching of One who lived in a petty, not very ad- 
 vanced community of the ancient world, to be accepted 
 as the basis of a universal morality and a universal 
 religion. 
 
 At the same time it is essential to recognize that our 
 Lord did not actually limit Himself to the teaching 
 
 * The word " impartial " carries with it the implication that 
 Benevolence is to be combined with Justice. Justice requires that 
 each individual should be treated according to his real value. That 
 every soul of man has real value was a prominent feature of the 
 teaching of Jesus. The relations between Justice and Benevo- 
 lence are fully dealt with in my Theory of Good and Evil, Bk. I, 
 chap. viii. 
 
 134 
 
Objections to the Moral Teaching of Christ 135 
 
 of this one fundamental principle. No ethical teach- 
 ing that did limit itself to abstract generalities of this 
 kind could possibly have produced a powerful influence 
 on human souls and human lives. The moral teacher 
 must be concrete : he must go into details of conduct. 
 No teaching was ever more concrete than that of 
 Christ. In a sense no teaching was more detailed or 
 more practical. The parable of the good Samaritan 
 embodies a principle, but at the same time it suggests 
 an immediately practicable and very definite duty. 
 Much of Christ's teaching — indeed much of the teach- 
 ing which has most influenced the world — relates not 
 to detailed questions about the content of duty, 
 questions as to what particular things are right and 
 wrong, but to the supreme importance of goodness in 
 general. And the teaching of universal love would 
 have been very cold and unpersuasive apart from the 
 particular applications and interpretations which He 
 gave to it. Indeed, the doctrine of universal love or 
 universal Benevolence may lead in practice to totally 
 different kinds of conduct according to the way in 
 which it is interpreted. For what does Love mean ? 
 It means surely desiring to promote the true good of 
 another person, treating that other person's good as 
 an end of no less intrinsic importance than one's own 
 good. The precept, therefore, " promote thy neigh- 
 bour's good " gives us no information until we know 
 wherein consists this true good of one's neighbour. 
 And again the practical rules of conduct to which this 
 
136 Conscience and Christ 
 
 principle leads will become very different according to 
 the view we take as to the means by which this true 
 good is to be promoted. It is chiefly to the detailed 
 rules of conduct — to the conception which our Lord's 
 teaching exhibits of human good and to the detailed 
 rules of conduct for promoting it, and not to the 
 general principle of love to mankind — that exception 
 is taken by people whose moral ideal is not that of 
 mere selfishness. Such persons often admit the 
 enormous and beneficent moral revolution introduced 
 by that teaching, but it seems to them too much marred 
 by the limitations of a race and a period to be treated 
 as containing in any sense a full or final body of 
 ethical teaching suited for all races and all times. 
 To deal with these objections will be the best way, I 
 think, of removing misunderstandings, of bringing 
 out the real nature of Christian morality, and of lay- 
 ing a foundation for an answer to a further question 
 which I have had in view all through these Lectures — 
 the question in what sense the revelation of God in 
 Christ may be regarded as final or complete — in what 
 sense Christianity, looked at either on its purely ethical 
 or on its religious side, can be regarded as a universal, 
 or absolute, religion. 
 
 Of course there are ethical writers of the present 
 day who are out of sympathy with the very principle 
 of Love or universal Brotherhood, and not merely with 
 particular applications or misapplications or alleged 
 exaggerations of it. There are, again, those who, 
 
Objections to the Moral Teaching of Christ 137 
 
 without (it may be) personally entertaining an anti- 
 social ideal, take too naturalistic a view of the 
 Universe to be able to find a place in their theory of it 
 for the idea of moral obligation at all, whether in a 
 religious or a purely ethical form. There are others 
 (among whom the insane genius Nietzsche is the most 
 conspicuous) who deliberately invert the Christian law, 
 and defend a Morality based upon pure, unmitigated 
 Egoism ; who hold that the superior person, the 
 " Uebermensch," the " Super-man," has a right to 
 assert his own individuality to the utmost possible 
 extent, and to treat all other and inferior persons as 
 mere means or instruments for his own enjoyment or 
 " self-realization," who maintain in so many words 
 that selfishness is noble, self-sacrifice mean and 
 contemptible. I believe it can be shown that such an 
 Ethic is as irrational and self-contradictory as it is 
 opposed to the ordinary feelings of mankind. ^ Here, 
 
 ' If anyone is inclined to think that Egoism, as an ethical doc- 
 trine, is capable of philosophical defence, I would recommend him to 
 study E. von Hartmann's scathing criticism of Nietzsche's ideas in 
 Ethische Studien, pp. 33-90, or G. A. Moore, Studia Ethica, p. gg sq. 
 The contradiction may be briefly pointed out. The Egoist says : 
 " It is intrinsically reasonable for me (A) to promote my own good 
 alone." But the meaning of good is something which is intrinsically 
 valuable, something which ought therefore to be brought into exist- 
 ence so far as that is possible. It can only be reasonable for me to 
 promote my own good alone, if it is the only good in the world. If 
 that were so, another person (E) would also be bound to promote 
 my good and that of no one else. But, if I tell B that it is reason- 
 able for him also to be an Egoist and so to promote his own good and 
 that of no one else, I imply that his good is the only good in the 
 world. Here I contradict myself : I say that A's good is the only 
 good in the world and ought to be promoted by everyone, including 
 
138 Conscience and Christ 
 
 however, I am not concerned with such fundamental 
 objections, but with objections in point of detail — ^with 
 objections which may be made by people who cordially 
 accept the fact of moral obligation, and who may not 
 even deny that the Christian law of love, rightly under- 
 stood, is the fundamental law of Ethics, though it 
 requires (they may think) a development and an 
 interpretation different in some degree from that which 
 was actually given it by our Lord Himself and by the 
 early Christian Church. Before I attempt this task, 
 however, I would emphasize the fact that the objec- 
 tions are for the most part to details, to applications, 
 not to the fundamental principle. The applications 
 which our Lord gives to His precepts are for the most 
 part avowedly illustrations of the principle. We 
 must expect that the illustrations should sometimes 
 have a reference to the immediate circumstances of 
 time and place, to the then condition of Jewish Society, 
 to the environment and position of the teacher and the 
 taught. It might be possible to go further than that, 
 and to admit that some of His appUcations were mis- 
 taken or narrow or one-sided, even relatively to the 
 circumstances of the time, and still to remain in a 
 very real sense a follower of Christ and a believer in 
 
 B, and at the same time I say that B should think his own good as 
 the only good in the world. Egoism therefore involves an internal 
 contradiction — a conclusion which cannot be accepted by anyone 
 who professes that his ethical system is rational. The irrationality 
 of the national Egoism now defended by so many German writers 
 may be exhibited in exactly the same way. 
 
Objections to the Moral Teaching of Christ 139 
 
 the Christian religion. I do not myself think that 
 any such admissions are required, but the possibility 
 should be faced with an open mind. 
 
 (i) The first objection to the Ethic of Christ which 
 I shall consider is the general suggestion that it 
 teaches exaggerated self-sacrilBce, exaggerated un- 
 selfishness — that it insists on love of neighbour and 
 forbids the due and proper regard for self, that 
 reasonable self-love of which so orthodox a Moralist 
 as Bishop Butler has spoken with so much respect. 
 Certainly such a consequence does not flow from the 
 principle of loving one's neighbour as oneself, and 
 Christ never taught that a man ought to love his 
 neighbour better than himself. By the later Christian 
 Church such a doctrine has more than once been 
 formally condemned.^ The very principle on which 
 the rule of Altruism is founded would be inconsistent 
 with such an exaggeration. The duty of loving one's 
 neighbour springs from the truth — a truth which is 
 the very heart and centre of Christ's teaching — that 
 each individual human self or life or soul possesses an 
 intrinsic value. That same principle requires there- 
 fore that each man should treat himself as of no less 
 value than his neighbour. Most of the exaggerations 
 of self-sacrifice have sprung from forgetfulness of this 
 principle. It cannot be reasonable that an individual 
 
 ' In 1346 Nicholas de Ultricuria was condemned for maintaining 
 even that a man ought to love better than himself a man who is 
 better than himself. See Denifle and Chatelain, Chartularium 
 Vniversitatis Parisiensis, T. II, No. 1124. 
 
140 Conscience and Christ 
 
 should sacrifice a larger amount of his own good for 
 a smaller amount of another's ; or that he should lay 
 down as a rule for universal observance a precept 
 which, if universally obeyed, would prove fatal to the 
 general interests of the whole community ; or that he 
 should promote one man's interests at the expense of 
 a much larger number of persons who are no less his 
 brethren. 
 
 This seems to be forgotten by people like Count 
 Tolstoi, who think it inconsistent with Christian 
 principles under any circumstances to refuse relief to 
 a beggar, or to punish a criminal. To give to beggars 
 in the street when one knows that the effect of doing 
 so habitually will be a doubtful boon to the recipient 
 himself, and will certainly turn those who are now 
 honest working-men into habitual mendicants ; to 
 give in a way which will injure the self-respect of the 
 receiver and encourage him in idleness and dependence ; 
 to give away what ought to be spent upon the mainte- 
 nance of a family and provision for the future ; even 
 to give to an extent which, if generally followed, would 
 lower the standard of life and of culture for the whole 
 community — such giving cannot be a true application 
 of the Christian principle of loving one's neighbour as 
 oneself. How far, it may be asked, would our Lord 
 Himself have recognized this interpretation of His 
 words ? There is no reason to think that Jesus 
 actually understood those laws of social Well-being 
 which have only been discovered by the extended 
 
Objections to the Moral Teaching of Christ 141 
 
 experience, the accumulated observation, the social 
 and economic Science of later ages. In some ways 
 no doubt kinds of giving which are harmful when 
 carried out on a large scale in our highly complex 
 society may have been less harmful, or not harmful at 
 all, in a simpler society. To this day the poor give 
 to each other on a scale which shames the grudging 
 and scanty charity of the rich, and they do so very 
 often with the best results. There is no loss of self- 
 respect in taking money from a friend who knows the 
 reality of the need, when the receiver would be ashamed 
 to take it the moment he could do without it, when the 
 donor may the next day stand in the like need of 
 assistance himself. Even in their application to the 
 circumstances of His own day it is most improbable 
 that our Lord had actually thought out these ques- 
 tions as to the limitations of giving. But it would be 
 quite unreasonable to contend that, because He said, 
 " Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that 
 would borrow of thee turn not thou away,"^ therefore 
 He would have refused to recognize that there might 
 be occasions on which it is right to refuse a dole. 
 Do we not all of us — the most enlightened and phil- 
 osophic Moralist, the most stony-hearted charity 
 organizer, the most cold-blooded social scientist among 
 us — say to children " Do not lie, do not be hard on 
 other people, do not kill " ; although we fully recog- 
 
 ' Matt. V. 42; Luke vi. 30 has: "of him that taketh away thy 
 goods, ask them not again " {iiralTei). 
 
142 Conscience and Christ 
 
 nize on reflection that there are exceptional circum- 
 stances under which the interests of Society demand 
 hardness or lying, and in which killing is no murder ? 
 All moral teaching has to be given in the form of 
 general rules : we cannot at every turn be dealing 
 with exceptions. Jesus Himself, by turning aside at 
 times from the crowds who wanted Him to heal their 
 sick, recognized the principle that one detailed moral 
 rule may sometimes interfere with another ; that one 
 good can sometimes only be attained by the sacrifice 
 of some other and lesser good ; that we must think of 
 the future as well as of the present, and do that which 
 is best for our fellow-men on the whole. There were 
 times when it was necessary for the eventual good of 
 His disciples and of humanity generally that He should 
 secure leisure for that meditation and communion with 
 God from which He derived His power to succour 
 them, or for teaching His disciples how to preach 
 the Gospel of the Kingdom — more necessary than to 
 relieve this or that sufferer or minister to the wants 
 of this or that body or mind diseased. 
 
 Another way of putting the same thing is this. Our 
 Lord fully recognized that the supreme moral law 
 dealt with dispositions, intentions, the state of the 
 heart. The true moral law, as it has been said, is 
 internal.^ The internal law has no exception. It is 
 always right to love or to be charitably minded. But 
 internal precepts must be illustrated and defined 
 > Sir Leslie Stephen, Science of Ethics, p, 155 seq. 
 
Objections to the Moral Teaching of Christ 143 
 
 by the acts which under ordinary or normal circum- 
 stances flow from them. The most obvious applica- 
 tion of the rule " Be kind " is " Give, lend, refuse not." 
 But there are circumstances under which a truer 
 charity, more desire for our neighbour's good, will 
 show itself in the refusal to give or to lend than is 
 shown by the kindness which insists on giving even 
 when it will do more harm than good. I do not deny 
 that there may have been occasions when our Lord 
 might have said " Give " when a wider consideration 
 of social consequences would induce us to say " With- 
 hold " ; but I do not think there is any precept of His 
 which is inconsistent with the interpretation which 
 I have attempted to put upon them when they are 
 understood with the same allowance for possible excep- 
 tions or complementary principles which we should 
 make in interpreting any other moral teacher of any 
 age or country. 
 
 (2) The next objection which I shall notice is the 
 same in principle as the last, and ought, I think, to 
 be met in much the same way. It is said that our 
 Lord lays down principles of non-resistance, sub- 
 missiveness, meekness which are inconsistent with 
 manly self-respect ; and which, if generally observed, 
 would be fatal to the very existence of social order 
 and civil society. " Resist not him that is evil : but 
 whosoever smiteth thee on thy right cheek, turn to 
 him the other also. And if any man would go to law 
 with thee, and take away thy coat, let him have thy 
 
144 Conscience and Christ 
 
 cloke also "^ and so on. In such injunctions Jesus was 
 clearly not thinking of political problems at all. They 
 lay entirely beyond His province. The people whom 
 He was addressing had nothing to do with govern- 
 ment or the administration of justice : they had no 
 votes and did not sit on juries. This must not be 
 distorted into the doctrine that Christianity has 
 nothing to do with politics or social questions. The 
 principles of Ethics, whatever principles they are that 
 we adopt, must necessarily be applicable to all spheres 
 of life. Those who have accepted Christ's principles of 
 conduct must necessarily, when they find themselves 
 in power, regard them as their rule of action in their 
 official or civil capacity as well as in their business life 
 and their private affairs. The principles must be 
 applied to politics : but Christ did not so apply them 
 Himself. He was speaking of the conduct of private 
 individuals towards one another. The principle which 
 He lays down is, I imagine, this — that the spirit of 
 revenge is bad. The law of Brotherhood requires 
 that we should love every human being, even the man 
 who has done us an injury. His bad conduct cannot 
 alter the fact that he is an end-in-himself, that his 
 good is no less valuable than one's own ; even if he 
 is actually bad, still he has capacities of goodness 
 which give his life a value. The principle is the one 
 which Plato — nearest of the ancients to Christ on this 
 side of his thought, if not on all sides — so strenuously 
 ' Matt. V. 39, 40. Cf. Luke vi. 29. 
 
Objections to the Moral Teaching of Chfist 145 
 
 asserted, that we ought always to do good to every 
 human being, and never evil, and that therefore 
 punishment must be regarded as a medicine for moral 
 maladies. We should never avenge an injury merely 
 because we are angry, because it is I that have been 
 injured, because my personal honour demands it. 
 But there may be occasions when either the good of 
 the offending person or the good of society requires 
 some kind of resentment. The object should always 
 be to do what is best for the person himself, so far as 
 is compatible with the duty that we owe to' other 
 persons. 
 
 The most obvious way of showing another that, in 
 spite of his injury, we care for his good, and of bringing 
 him to repentance, is to forgive. But there may be 
 cases in which some kind of resentment is best both 
 for the individual himself and in the interests of 
 society ; there are occasions when the interests of the 
 individual ought to give way to the interests of society 
 — that is to say, to the interests of a much greater 
 number of persons who are also our brethren. But 
 this is very much less often the case than most of us 
 in our pride and our selfishness are apt to imagine. 
 And when we do determine that some resentment is 
 necessary, the amount and the form of it should be 
 governed by the same principle of Christian love to 
 the offender and to others. Sometimes literal forgive- 
 ness, in the sense of remission of penalty, will be best ; 
 sometimes resentment ; at other times some combina- 
 
146 Conscience and Christ 
 
 tion of the two. Resentment may take a great variety 
 of forms : it may be a rebuke, a protest, the mere 
 showing that we are hurt, renunciation of friendship 
 or diminution of intimacy or a change of manner. 
 At other times the protection of society may make 
 self-defence a duty, and self-defence may sometimes 
 take the form of giving blow for blow, though in a 
 civilized and orderly society for obvious reasons no 
 one should take the law into his own hands (to use 
 the common phrase) except for some very good 
 reason, and on very exceptional occasions. At other 
 times the resentment that is called for will take the 
 form of legal prosecution. In no case, be it remem- 
 bered, is the duty of forgiveness entirely abrogated by 
 the duty of resentment. In the words of Bishop 
 Butler, " Resentment is not inconsistent with good- 
 will : for we often see both together in very high 
 degrees; not only in parents towards their children, 
 but in cases of friendship and dependence, where there 
 is no natural relation. . . . We may therefore love our 
 enemy, and yet have resentment against him for his 
 injurious behaviour towards us. But when this 
 resentment destroys our natural Benevolence towards 
 him, it is excessive and becomes malice or revenge." 
 The injured person (to quote Butler once more) 
 " ought to be affected towards the injurious person in 
 the same way any good man, uninterested in the 
 case, would be, if they had the same just sense which 
 we have supposed the injured person to have of the 
 
Objections to the Moral Teaching of Christ 147 
 
 fault : after which there will yet remain real good- 
 will towards the offender." ^ 
 
 How far, it will be asked, would Christ Himself have 
 recognized this statement of the case ? Are we not, 
 when we adopt such principles of action, really explain- 
 ing away His teaching ? I am quite sure of two things ; 
 {a) that I am correctly stating the principles which 
 flow from that law of mutual love which Christ Him- 
 self laid down as the supreme moral law : and (&) that 
 if in any matter the spirit of Christ's teaching is seen 
 by us, in the light of wider knowledge and experience, 
 to be inconsistent with any application which He 
 actually gave or would have given in particular cases, 
 it is our duty to follow the spirit of that teaching and 
 not the letter, the principle and not the particular 
 application. But I do not think that by interpreting 
 His rule of life as I have interpreted it we are con- 
 travening any command of His which He meant to 
 be literally observed in every possible case. To what 
 extent Christ had actually reflected on the question 
 how far in some cases the requirements of social Well- 
 being made it necessary for men who wish to forgive 
 nevertheless to punish, for men who desire their 
 neighbour's ultimate good to inflict on them immediate 
 evil, how far He would have recognized the exceptions 
 for which I have been pleading in the apphcation of 
 
 * Sermon ix. in Fifteen Sermons. I have fully dealt with the 
 problems of Punishment and Forgiveness in my Theory of Good and 
 Evil, I, Pt. I, chap. ix. 
 
148 Conscience and Christ 
 
 His typical, startling, paradoxical illustrations of the 
 principle which should govern the treatment of 
 injuries by His followers, we simply do not know, and 
 cannot know. But we have enough evidence to indi- 
 cate that our Lord Himself did not intend His precepts 
 to be taken with the deadly literalness which Western 
 minds, bent either on a too literal imitation of the out- 
 ward accidents of the Master's life on the one hand, 
 or anxious to represent them as obsolete and impractic- 
 able on the other, have been disposed to take them. 
 The most unsympathetic modern critic of Christ's utter- 
 ances will not seriously contend that our Lord meant 
 that men were to mutilate themselves in order to 
 observe His precept about the offending member, or 
 that He who bade us love all men really meant that 
 His followers should hate — in the ordinary sense of 
 the word " hate "—father and mother and child, or 
 that forgiveness was to cease after 490 offences.* So 
 to interpret Christ is to reduce His teaching to a mass 
 of inconsistent, self-contradictory nonsense. He de- 
 clared that to call a brother fool might be as bad as 
 murder: yet He is recorded once at least to have 
 used the word Himself, ^ and on other occasions used 
 language of equal vehemence and severity. He forbade 
 
 1 It is rather tempting to add that in accepting the High-Priest's 
 adjurations (Matt. xxvi. 63, 64) Jesus gave evidence on oath before a 
 court of Justice. But the High-Priest's " I adjure thee by the living 
 God" is omitted in Mark xiv. 61 and Luke xxii. 67, and after all 
 the "thou hast said" need not necessarily imply that the speaker 
 accepted the adjuration. 
 
 ? Mfttt. xxiii. 17. Cf. Luke xi. 40 ; Luke xxiv. 25. 
 
Objections to the Moral Teaching of Christ 149 
 
 men to resist evil : yet His driving out the oxen from 
 the Temple, and overthrowing the tables of the money- 
 changers were acts of physical force. ^ The language 
 which He uses towards the Pharisees or in speaking of 
 them is quite inconsistent with the idea that our Lord 
 condemned all self-assertion, all vehemence of ex- 
 pression, all manifestations of hostility against the 
 oppressor, the wrong-doer, the dishonourer of God.^ 
 If we are to regard as part of our Lord's real teaching 
 the injunction to take complaints to the Church or 
 Christian Assembly, to abide by their decision and to 
 treat as a heathen man and a publican the unrepentant 
 Christian offender against his brother, those words 
 sanction the principle of organized social resentment. 
 It is practically certain, indeed, on critical grounds' 
 that we have here a development, an application of 
 Christ's teaching — a quite legitimate application in the 
 
 ' It is just conceivable that our Lord may even have thouglit 
 seriously of using — not against an armed band, but against the 
 attack of an asseissin — the weapons which, according to Luke xxii. 38, 
 He directed His disciples to procure. More probably the words were 
 "apiece of ironical foreboding" (Burkitt, The Gospel History 
 and its Transmission, p. 141) which a disciple took literally. The 
 " it is enough " will then mean : " Drop that idea : my words 
 were not meant seriously." 
 
 ' Of course it is possible (with Mr. Montefiore) to condemn the 
 language used by our Lord against the Pharisees. See below, p. 179. 
 
 ' Matt, xviii. 17. The words are found in a section which has no 
 parallel in the other Synoptists, and is exactly of the same type as 
 not a few other sections peculiar to the first Gospel, passages referring 
 to and intended to support the ecclesiastical institutions which had 
 been developed by the time the Gospel was written. St. Luke 
 (xvii. 3) has : " Take heed to yourselves ; if thy brother sin, re- 
 buke him; and if he repent forgive him" (R.V.). This is no 
 doubt much nearer to what our Lord actually said. 
 
150 Conscience and Christ 
 
 circumstances of the early Christian community^ — 
 but not an actual saying of the Master. Even the 
 words "if he repent, forgive him" are by themselves 
 a serious qualification of the principle that forgiveness 
 is to be unlimited. Even the command to forgive to 
 seven times in a day is confined to the cases in which 
 there is repentance. 
 
 (3) Another detailed criticism of the same order repre- 
 sents our Lord as hostile to the institution of property, 
 as teaching a kind of Communism or complete self- 
 renunciation in the matter of worldly goods. This 
 suggestion is founded chiefly upon the words to the rich 
 young man, " If thou wouldest be perfect, go, sell that 
 thou hast and give to the poor " (Matt. xix. 21). Now 
 here, in addition to the considerations we have already 
 dwelt on, we must remember this fact, which is very 
 essential for the understanding of Christ's teaching — 
 that when Christ called men to " follow " Him, He 
 did not mean merely that they should accept His 
 teaching and endeavour to practise it in their lives. 
 He was calling upon certain of His disciples to devote 
 themselves to His great missionary enterprise, to 
 join Him in going about the world to preach the coming 
 of the Kingdom. It is to such men that the severer 
 injunctions of the Gospel pages are addressed — to take 
 nothing for their journey, save a staff only, no bread, 
 no wallet, no money in their purse, but to go shod 
 
 1 And yet perhaps " Jesus would hardly have spoken so harshly 
 of the 'tax-collector.'" Montefiore, Syn. Gospels, II, 68i. 
 
Objections io the- Moral Teaching of Christ i^l 
 
 with sandals^ and the Uke. The precepts form part not 
 of the Sermon on the Mount, but of what is sometimes 
 called the great ministerial commission. Even the 
 words about hating father and mother may have been 
 intended for those who received this commission.^ To 
 become a disciple of Christ in the strictest sense meant 
 no doubt to join Him in His missionary work. Many 
 of these injunctions have, of course, an application to 
 all who would be in our modem sense of the word 
 followers of Christ, believers in His Gospel, members 
 of His Church ; but in their immediate and primary 
 signification, they were addressed to His Missionaries, 
 not to all His hearers. In the conditions of the time 
 to make such a complete renunciation of worldly 
 goods, to take up something like the life of a mendicant 
 friar, was probably the most effective, perhaps the only, 
 way of carrying on the work which He felt called upon 
 to do, of communicating to mankind the good news 
 which He knew Himself divinely commissioned to im- 
 part. Here for once the anticipation of the immediate 
 Parousia may be allowed to have influenced the specific 
 advice given by Jesus to His hearers. And yet, after 
 all, he surely would be a bold man who would seriously 
 pretend that he knew a way of proclaiming the Kingdom 
 of Heaven, or the eternal truths which were for Jesus 
 
 ^ Mark vi. 8, g (Matt. x. 9, 10 ; Luke ix. 3. There are con- 
 siderable variations in detail). 
 
 ' They are addressed " to the multitudes " (Luke xiv. 25-6), but 
 they refer to him who would be Christ's " disciple." The Matthean 
 equivalent (in a weakened form) is in the Commission to the Twelve 
 (x. 37)- 
 
152 Conscience and Christ 
 
 enshrined in that conception, that would have suc- 
 ceeded better than the way actually adopted by Him. 
 The advice was not given to all His hearers — still less 
 to all mankind — but to those whom He called or who 
 felt themselves called to this special work.^ Jesus 
 never makes such complete renunciation necessary as 
 a condition of entrance into the Kingdom of Heaven. 
 He warmly commended the charity and honesty of 
 Zaccheus, who, under the influence of His preaching, 
 resolved to restore fourfold to the particular persons 
 whom he had wronged and to give half of his remaining 
 goods to the poor.^ " To-day is salvation come to this 
 
 1 This limitation may be thought inconsistent with the words: 
 " So therefore whosoever he be of you that renounceth not all that 
 he hath, cannot be my disciple " (Luke xiv. 33). The words need not 
 necessarily mean more than the words of the preceding verse (26): 
 " If any man cometh unto Me, and hateth not his own father and 
 mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and 
 his own life also, he cannot be My disciple," which no one will 
 understand with absolute literalness — as an injunction to cruelty 
 or self-destruction. It may be understood as recommending com- 
 plete " detachment " from worldly goods as from family ties. 
 Or more historically it may be taken as referring literally to disciples 
 in the full sense — those called to join the missionary band. The 
 saying immediately follows the parables of the man building a town 
 and the King going to war with another King. It occurs in Luke 
 only. Many of the strong sayings about wealth peculiar to Luke 
 are probably genuine, but these particular words (xiv. 33) may very 
 well be suspected of being Luke's amplification of the saying about 
 renouncing father and mother — his way of pointing the moral of 
 the preceding paragraphs. Loisy calls it " une addition redaction- 
 elle." Cf. the same writer on Luke xiv. 26 : " Ce sacrifice est 
 impost 4 qui vent ' suivre ' Jesus, et il n'est dit aucunement 
 que Ton puisse avoir, sans le ' suivre,' une part assuree dans le 
 royaume " {Evan. Syn., I, 894). 
 
 2 Luke xix. 9. The fourfold restitution was required by the 
 Mosaic Law in certain cases of theft, in others double restitution 
 (Exod. xxii. I, 4). 
 
Objections to the Moral Teaching of Chfist 153 
 
 house, forasmuch as he also is a son of Abraham." 
 We must not, of course, allow this consideration to 
 prevent our seeking to penetrate to the eternal 
 principle implied in the advice to the rich young man. 
 The meaning of what our Lord said was surely this : 
 " If you want to do the best thing in the world, sell 
 all that you have and give to the poor, and" (it is 
 no doubt implied) " come and join my missionary band, 
 and preach the coming of the Kingdom." He went 
 away sorrowful, we are told — not because an en- 
 lightened political economy had told him that this 
 renunciation would not be the best thing he could do, 
 not because he doubted whether it would, if generally 
 imitated, be conducive to the true good of humanity, 
 or because he felt a call to other work which could 
 better be done with his possessions than without them, 
 but simply because " he had great possessions." Was 
 our Lord wrong in saying that the reason why the 
 rich young man would not give up his possessions was 
 that he was too fond of them, that he had not love 
 enough to make the sacrifice ? Was He wrong in 
 saying that that is not the ideal of perfect love, or 
 that such an ideal of love and devotion should be striven 
 after ?i 
 
 1 It is important to notice that the words " Thou shalt love thy 
 neighbour as thyself," which in Matthew are included in the com- 
 mandments which the young man had kept from his youth, are 
 absent in Mark and Luke. If they are omitted, it is clear that he 
 was satisfied with bare compliance with the negative commands of 
 the Decalogue. Not only was his love imperfect: he had hardly 
 shown any positive love at all. 
 
154 Conscience and Christ 
 
 What, it may be asked, is the apphcation of this 
 principle to those who in modern times would accept 
 the principle of Christ's teaching ? Surely it is per- 
 fectly true that so long as §, man is not willing, if and 
 so far as he sees it to be for the good of his fellow-men, 
 to renounce all worldly possessions in order to serve 
 them, he is morally imperfect. It does not follow that 
 in the existing state of human society the renunciation 
 of all worldly possessions is the best way for serving 
 our brethren which is open to all of us. There are ways 
 in which those who have love enough, and who feel 
 the call to do so, may serve their brethren most effec- 
 tively by Hterally selling all their goods and giving 
 to the poor, or more probably by renouncing most of 
 the ordinary luxuries and comforts of well-to-do life 
 and devoting life and income to the service of humanity 
 in ways that are economically sound — that is to say, 
 ways which really do benefit the recipients in the long 
 run. It does not follow that this is the best thing for 
 all, or even for all who have the willingness to do it. 
 To love our neighbours enough to be willing to make 
 this sacrifice for them is part of the Christian ideal for 
 all : the duty for each is to make that use of his 
 possessions which, he being what he is, circumstances 
 being what they are, will enable him to do the best 
 service for his fellow-men — the particular service to 
 which he is called. Some even of those who have the 
 love may not be caUed to the more exacting kind of 
 self-renunciation : still more often those whose love is 
 
Objections to the Moral Teaching of CHrist 155 
 
 as yet very imperfect. The actual words, " If thou wilt 
 be perfect," may be an addition of the first Evangelist, 
 but it fairly represents our Lord's probable meaning, 
 and points to the eternally true and important prin- 
 ciple of Vocation. All are called to the loving service 
 of their fellow-men : not all are called to serve in the 
 same way. All modes of service imply self-denial and 
 sacrifice, but not all imply equal self-sacrifice. At all 
 periods of the world's history some- men are called to 
 sacrifices as great and as literal as that which was set 
 before the rich young man, but not all men.^ " Let 
 each man do as he purposeth in his heart, not grudgingly 
 or of necessity, for God loveth a cheerful giver " 
 (2 Cor. ix. 7) . That is a Pauline principle, which is as 
 full of the spirit of Christ as it is of practical wisdom 
 and good sense. 
 
 I may not linger on the wider social application of 
 Christ's teaching about Property. To say that Jesus 
 was a Socialist is, of course, as unhistorical as to say 
 that He condemned Socialism or taught that " Religion 
 has nothing to do with politics." The principle which 
 underlies all His teaching about Property is simply 
 this — that wealth should be treated as completely 
 subordinate to the higher ends of human life, not only 
 for the individual himself, but for the whole com- 
 munity. What is the best way under existing con- 
 
 • For further discussion of the problem, which at bottom in- 
 volves the question of " Works of Supererogation," I may refer 
 to my Theory of Good and Evil, Book II, chap. iv. 
 
156 Conscience and Christ 
 
 ditions of apportioning the enjoyment of the wealth 
 which is created by the common labour is the most 
 important problem which it is incumbent upon Chris- 
 tians of the present age to work out. They must work 
 it out in the spirit of the Master's teaching. But they 
 will not find in His express words any detailed 
 guidance for its solution. The one thing which we can 
 say with absolute confidence is that the present dis- 
 tribution of wealth, and the use made of the wealth 
 which they call their own by most rich men, would have 
 caused His sternest and most uncompromising con- 
 demnation. Many considerations may be urged in 
 favour of a social system which allows some inequality 
 in the distribution of wealth ; many considerations 
 of social utility may be urged in favour of individuals 
 allowing themselves more enjoyment and indulgence 
 than on a system of anything like equal distribution 
 would be possible for all ; but we may be quite 
 certain that now as ever the spirit of Christ, no less 
 than the enlightened Reason of mankind, does call 
 for a much more rigid limitation of personal expendi- 
 ture on the part even of people whom the world would 
 hardly call rich than conventional religious teaching 
 has usually insisted upon. 
 
 (4) The question of Property leads on to the ques- 
 tion of Asceticism in general. It is often suggested 
 by the wilder kind of anti-Christian writers that Christ 
 taught a severe and morose Asceticism in which the 
 modern world does not and will not believe. Now 
 
Objections to the Moral Teaching of Christ 157 
 
 here I do not think the objector has even a plausible 
 case. Our knowledge of Christ and His teaching is 
 undoubtedly incomplete and fragmentary — that is a 
 fact often forgotten both by ardent Christians and by 
 sceptical critics. But, if there is one thing about Jesus 
 which is made perfectly certain by all the records 
 which we have about Him, it is this — that He did not 
 encourage Asceticism in its stricter sense, either by His 
 teaching or by His practice. The hardships which He 
 endured and enjoined upon others were the hardships 
 that were incidental to His mission and His work : 
 their motive was simply love of His fellow-men. 
 There is not the slightest trace of the idea that self- 
 inflicted suffering is well-pleasing to God, or that it 
 possesses any expiatory virtue for the doing away 
 of sin, or that all innocent enjoyment is wrong. There 
 is not even any encouragement of voluntary suffering, 
 in the shape for instance of fasting, as a means of dis- 
 ciplining or strengthening character. The constant 
 reproach hurled against our Lord and His disciples by 
 the reUgious world of His day was that He was not 
 ascetic. " Whereunto shall I liken this generation ? 
 It is like unto children sitting in the market-places 
 which call unto their fellows and say. We piped unto 
 you, and ye did not dance; we wailed and ye did 
 not mourn. For John came neither eating nor 
 drinking, and they say. He hath a devil. The Son 
 of man came eating and drinking, and they say, 
 Behold a gluttonous man, and a wine-bibber, a friend 
 
158 Conscience and Christ 
 
 of publicans and sinners."^ " Why do the disciples 
 of John and of the Pharisees fast, but Thy disciples 
 fast not ? "2 Our Lord accepted invitations to dinner 
 with rich tax-gatherers. Even those who are most 
 sceptical about the historical value of the fourth 
 Gospel may at least accept the story of the marriage 
 in Cana as showing that there was nothing in the 
 early traditions about His life which would make His 
 presence on such an occasion seem incongruous or 
 improbable. The argument from silence is not here the 
 precarious argument that it sometimes is. The legends 
 which grow up about a religious teacher, particularly 
 in the East, delight to represent him as exceeding 
 other men in Asceticism. Both the Jews' and the 
 early Christians believed in Asceticism, though in 
 both cases only to a moderate extent as compared with 
 the ideas of other oriental Religions or of the later 
 Christian Church. Had our Lord favoured Asceticism, 
 His utterances on this head are just those that would 
 most certainly have been reported. If therefore, when 
 critically examined, the records of His life and teaching 
 do not support the charge of Asceticism, we may be 
 quite sure that there were no such utterances to report. 
 It is true that legend has begun, even in the Canoni- 
 cal Gospels, or in the received text of them, to impart 
 an ascetic tinge to His teaching and practice, but 
 
 1 Matt. xi. 17-19 (=Luke vii. 31-4)- 
 ' Mark ii. 18 (=Matt. ix. 14 ; Luke v. 33). 
 ' The Pharisees encouraged the bi-weekly fast, but there was in 
 general among the Jews no tendency to favour celibacy. 
 
Objections to the Moral Teaching of Christ 159 
 
 criticism has here done a valuable service in enabling 
 us to detect its operations. Mere criticism of the text 
 shows that our Lord did not say, " This kind can 
 come forth by nothing but by prayer and fasting " 
 (Mark ix. 29) : in the R.V. you will find that the words 
 " and fasting " have disappeared. In the case of the 
 forty days' fast in the wilderness, we have to go behind 
 the actual text, and apply the methods of historical 
 criticism. It is easy to see how the story grew up. In 
 the first Gospel, it is true, we read that " when He had 
 fasted forty days and forty nights. He afterward 
 hungered." But in the second Gospel we find what 
 surely represents the earlier tradition : " He was in the 
 wilderness forty days tempted of Satan."^ In St. 
 Luke's version also it is the temptation which lasts 
 forty days, though that Evangelist goes on to say 
 that " He did eat nothing in those days ; and when 
 they were completed. He hungered." Is it not probable 
 that the hunger implied by the first temptation sug- 
 gested the idea that the forty days of retirement in 
 the wilderness were also days of fasting ? And after 
 all there is nothing (especially in Luke's version) to 
 suggest that the abstinence from food was anything 
 
 1 Matt. iv. 2 ; Mark i. 13 ; Luke iv. i, 2. I do not think the 
 probability of this view is lessened by the suggestion that Matthew 
 and Luke used Q, and that Q is in general earlier than Mark. If 
 Mark used Q, the absence of the words about fasting makes it 
 doubtful whether they stood in his version of Q. Luke's version 
 of Q does not suggest ' fasting ' as a piece of deliberate ascetism. 
 If Mark did not here use Q, it will hardly be denied that in a 
 particular case Mark may represent the more primitive tradition. 
 
i6o Conscience and Christ 
 
 but the natural consequence of retirement to a food- 
 less region. 
 
 When we have got rid of these allusions to fasting 
 which reflect the Asceticism of a later age, there 
 remain two genuine allusions to the practice. The first 
 is the merely incidental allusion in the Matthean version 
 of the Sermon on the Mount : " When ye fast, be not, 
 as the hypocrites, of a sad countenance . . . but thou 
 when thou fastest, anoint thy head and wash thy face ; 
 that thou be not seen of men to fast, but of thy Father 
 which is in secret ; and thy Father, which seeth in 
 secret, shall recompense thee."^ Here it is undoubtedly 
 assumed that some of our Lord's hearers were in the 
 habit of fasting, just as it is assumed that they would 
 be taking gifts to the altar in the Temple. There is 
 no emphasis on the practice, no express command to 
 fast, but there is also no declared hostility. Not so in 
 the teaching about the new wine and the old bottles.^ 
 It seems to me impossible to deny that our Lord had 
 by this time come to realize that fasting — at least 
 fasting in obedience to definite ecclesiastical injunctions 
 at frequent intervals — was not congenial to the spirit 
 of the new gospel of the Kingdom which He was pro- 
 claiming. ' It belonged to the old system of rites and 
 
 1 Matt. vi. i6, 17. The saying has no parallel in Luke, who 
 would certainly have had no bias against fasting. He might, how- 
 ever, have omitted the saying because it was directed against a 
 kind of hypocrisy which was not common among Gentiles. 
 
 « Matt. ix. 15-16 ; Mark ii. 19-22 ; Luke v. 33-39. 
 
 » It must be remembered that the Law of Moses prescribed but 
 ope fast in the year — the Great Day of Atoijement, 
 
Objections to the Moral Teaching of Christ i6i 
 
 ceremonies, not to the new religion of the heart and 
 the life which He was preaching. There remains the 
 difficulty of interpreting the words, " But the days will 
 come when the Bridegroom shall be taken away from 
 them, and then will they fast in those days." The 
 easiest and most obvious way of understanding these 
 words is to suppose them to mean " Fasting is a 
 natural expression of sorrow, and is therefore unsuit- 
 able now." We must remember that with Orientals 
 fasting was practised not merely as a religious observ- 
 ance, but as a sign of mourning : it was the usual 
 accompaniment of rending the garments. You will 
 recall the surprise of David's servants at his eating and 
 drinking after his son's death. Our Lord's meaning 
 may then be " Fasting will come as a natural expres- 
 sion of sorrow in due time, when the Bridegroom is 
 taken away from them." It is even possible, on the 
 assumption that the words were really uttered by 
 Jesus, that He was not thinking of literal, intentional 
 abstinence from food at all. You must remember the 
 spirit of the objection. The Pharisees had taunted our 
 Lord's disciples with the easy-going, unexacting 
 character of the Religion which their Master preached. 
 He may have met the spirit of the objection by 
 saying : " Don't think the Religion I preach is an 
 easy-going Religion. The call for self-sacrifice and 
 suffering has not come yet, but it will come in due 
 time. My disciples will have plenty to endure and 
 plenty of calls to self-discipline and privation, when 
 
 M 
 
i62 Conscience and Christ 
 
 I am taken away from them. Then it will be seen that 
 the demands which their discipleship makes upon 
 them, though they assume a different form, are not 
 less exacting than the demands which John and the 
 Pharisees made of their disciples."^ But after all, I 
 cannot but feel that the words, taken in any natural 
 sense, are so difficult to reconcile with the previous 
 saying about the new wine and the old bottles that 
 M. Loisy is probably right in suggesting that here, too, 
 we have an addition of the Evangelist, reflecting the 
 growing asceticism of the later Church. 
 
 (5) I turn to another aspect of the ascetic ideal, 
 its attitude towards Marriage. Can we attribute to 
 our Lord any sympathy with the idea that virginity 
 is superior to marriage ? I answer emphatically that 
 we cannot. A high estimate of marriage is implied in 
 this strict rule in regard to its permanence. How then 
 are we to interpret the words " there be eunuchs 
 which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom 
 of heaven's sake. He that is able to receive it, let him 
 receive it." " If the saying be genuine, the most natural 
 way of understanding it is to suppose that our Lord 
 meant that there is a peculiar blessedness in renouncing 
 marriage in order the better to do the work of spread- 
 ing the Kingdom of God among men. Even under 
 normal conditions there are many kinds of spiritual 
 or social work which are best undertaken by those 
 
 * Loisy remarks that our Lord did not usually speak of His 
 " being taken away from them." These words suggest a later date. 
 ? Matt. xix. 12. 
 
Objections to the Moral Teaching of Christ 163 
 
 who are willing to postpone indefinitely, or even totally 
 to renounce, this great source of human happiness. 
 That Jesus might have suggested to His disciples the 
 blessedness of making, in view of the near approach 
 of the Kingdom, such a sacrifice as He had made Him- 
 self is quite conceivable. But it is equally possible 
 that this may be one of the numerous passages 
 pecuHar to Matthew which are due to the ideas of a 
 later age, the days of an organized Christian Church, 
 a more ecclesiastical spirit, a growing respect for 
 celibacy. Under this category may confidently be 
 placed the committal of the keys of the Kingdom of 
 Heaven to St. Peter, the saying about the Church 
 being founded upon him, the command to bring 
 quarrels to the Church to be decided, and many others. 
 The saying about the three kinds of eunuchs may well 
 belong to the same class of ecclesiastical additions. 
 A parallel but stronger instance of this kind of ascetic 
 development may be found in the saying attributed to 
 Jesus by the Gospel of the Egyptians, " I came to 
 destroy the work of the female sex."^ 
 
 (6) The question of Asceticism naturally leads on 
 to the more general suggestion that Christ's ideal is 
 one-sided and incomplete because it preaches the 
 doctrine of self-denial, self-sacrifice, social activity, 
 and says nothing about that other side of the moral 
 
 ' Clem. Alex., Strom. Ill, c. ix. 63. The tone of both sayings 
 has a certain resemblance to the collections of mystical " Logia" 
 of our Lord which have recently been discovered, and few of these 
 have the ring of genuineness. 
 
164 Conscience and Christ 
 
 ideal which is often summed up in the word self- 
 development. The Gospel says nothing about the 
 duty of self-culture, about the value of intellectual 
 activity, or of intellectual knowledge. Two points 
 ought, I think, to be unreservedly admitted about 
 this matter : 
 
 {a) There is thi$-other side to a true ideal of human 
 life. Knowledge and the contemplation of Beauty, 
 intellectual development and aesthetic development. 
 Culture and the pleasures connected with it, are part 
 of the true ideal of man. They are among the best and 
 noblest things in human life : they form part of that 
 good which the ideal man should promote for himself 
 and for others. They are far higher and more valuable 
 than mere pleasure, though not so valuable as good- 
 ness or willingness to do one's duty. Knowledge is 
 good, but love is better. So much is a clear deliver- 
 ance, as it seems to me, of the enHghtened moral 
 consciousness. 
 
 (&) It must be admitted that Christ did not ex- 
 plicitly insist on this side of the moral ideal. There 
 is, indeed, nothing against it. Unlike many of the 
 sterner moral teachers, the prophets of righteousness 
 or enthusiasts of humanity, our Lord never depreciated 
 intellect or culture or the love of beauty. There are, 
 indeed, traces of the love of natural beauty in His 
 teaching : "I say unto you that even Solomon in 
 all his glory was not arrayed like one of these."^ We 
 • Matt. vi. 29 = Luke xii. 27. 
 
Objections to the Moral Teaching of CMst 165 
 
 must remember, too, that our Lord was well acquainted 
 with the only literature which was practically within 
 His reach — the Old Testament and a few books 
 belonging to the post-canonical literature of Judaism. 
 Among the Jews alone in the ancient world, outside 
 the countries affected by Buddhism, was there a 
 system of popular education : and the teaching of 
 Jesus implies a higher culture — even on the strictly 
 intellectual side — than is sometimes admitted. There 
 is no opposition to Culture in our Lord's teaching : but 
 it is, of course, vain to look for any such sense of the 
 high value of purely intellectual activity, of secular 
 literature, of Art, of Science and Music as we find 
 in the literature and philosophy of Greece and 
 Rome. 
 
 And to say this involves the admission that the 
 ethical teaching of Christ does require development, 
 and that it can only be accepted as a final and perma- 
 nent ideal for the modern world on the understanding 
 that such a development is to be allowed. The mere 
 scantiness of the record by itself involves the admission 
 that many rules of conduct are necessary for the 
 guidance of human life which are not explicitly 
 contained in the teaching of Jesus — rules that were 
 necessary even then, and others that have become 
 necessary now. Some such rules are simply pre- 
 supposed by the teaching of Jesus. There was no 
 need to speak of theni just because they were suffi- 
 ciently recognized in the Old Testament and the 
 
1 66 Conscience and Christ 
 
 current moral teaching of the time^ ; and others must 
 be developed out of His teaching if it is to be made 
 adequate to solving the actual problems of a modern 
 Society. The very idea of a detailed code of morals 
 suitable to all conditions of society is an obvious 
 absurdity and impossibility. The details of morality 
 must necessarily vary from age to age. 
 
 If Jesus had, indeed, put forward a set of rules which 
 claimed to prescribe in detail the conduct suitable for 
 all nations, all classes and all individuals in all future 
 periods of the world's history, it would be a perfectly 
 reasonable thing to say that the modern world could 
 not accept such a code. The attempt to guide our 
 conduct by such a code would put a stop to all social 
 progress, and would be fatal to the moral life itself, 
 which at its highest implies that men should be con- 
 tinually acting upon their own judgement, using their 
 own moral and intellectual faculties, basing their lives 
 upon their own sense of right and wrong. That our 
 Lord never attempted to communicate to the world 
 such a code of Ethics, we have already seen. What 
 He did was to lay down a few great principles. These 
 principles, I have contended, do appeal to the moral 
 consciousness of the present as essentially true, and 
 as the foundation-stones of all true Morality. 
 
 In detail the principles require infinite expansion, 
 
 ' still more obvious is the probability that what would be 
 remembered would be the more revolutionary element in the 
 Master's teaching. 
 
Objections to the Moral Teaching of Christ 167 
 
 application, development, in accordance with the 
 growing experience of the race, and the altered needs 
 and circumstances of successive ages. To effect this 
 development is, according to the true idea of it, the 
 work of the Church of Christ — that religious com- 
 munity which should be the highest organized expres- 
 sion of the enlightened Christian consciousness of the 
 time.^ The development began so early that the most 
 minute criticism can hardly draw the line with precision 
 between the authentic utterances of the Master and 
 the development which they received in the conscious- 
 ness of the Church. Belief in the continuous activity 
 of the Holy Spirit in human hearts and human 
 society is the necessary complement and corrective of 
 the doctrine of a unique Revelation of God in a single 
 historical Personality. Only on condition that that 
 doctrine is firmly held and duly insisted upon can it 
 be morally healthy — as I believe that, subject to that 
 condition, it is morally healthy and expedient in the 
 highest degree — to put the historical Christ in the 
 centre of our ethical as well as of our religious life, and 
 to make the imitation and the following of Christ into 
 
 1 Father Tyrrell, after noticing the authority which may be 
 claimed by any good man, goes on to say, " Such too in kind, 
 though indefinitely greater in degree, is the authority of the Church, 
 that is, of the Saints and of all good men gathered round and 
 organised into one society under Christ, the Incarnation of Con- 
 science. It is as the formulation of their collective experience that 
 Catholic teaching commends itself to my reverence and assiduous 
 meditation" [Essays on Faith and Immortality, p. 22). No words 
 could better express the right relation between the three great 
 authorities — Conscience, Christ, the Church. 
 
i68 Conscience and Christ 
 
 the supreme concrete expression of our ethical ideal. 
 The Christian Church has accepted and expressed that 
 principle by making belief in the Holy Ghost and in 
 a Holy Catholic Church into articles of its Creed side 
 by side with belief in an historic Son of God. ^ 
 
 ' " La Vie de J6sus et I'Histoire de la redaction des fivangiles 
 sont deux sujets qui se pta6trent de telle sorte qu'il faut laisser 
 autre eux la limite ind^cise, au risque de paraitre se contradire. 
 En r^alit^ cette contradiction est de peu de consequence. J&us 
 est le veritable Cr6ateur de I'fivangile ; J&us a tout fait, meme 
 ce qu'on lui a prSte : sa l^gende et lui-mgme sont inseparables : 
 il fut tenement identififi avec son id6e, que son idee deviut lui- 
 mSme, I'absorba, fit de son biographie ce qu'elle devait etre" 
 (Renan, Les Evangiles, p. 204) . The passage is quoted with approval 
 by Mr. Montefiore, Syn. Gospels, I, p. lix. 
 
ADDITIONAL NOTE ON SOME DETAILED 
 
 OBJECTIONS TO THE MORAL TEACHING 
 
 OF CHRIST 
 
 It may be weU at this point briefly to examine a few of 
 the minor and more detailed objections which are made in 
 various quarters to the ethical teaching, and in some cases 
 the character, of our Lord : 
 
 (i) The Unjust Steward {Lukexvi. 1-8). The author of JAe 
 Diary of a Church-goer writes (p. 211) : " Which of us has not 
 been conscious of something like a gulp in accepting the 
 parable of the Unjust Steward ? If the fraud of the Steward 
 is not approved it is certainly not reprobated. We are left 
 with an uneasy consciousness that we are invited to admire 
 the clever trick of escaping suffering through the success of 
 a dishonest manoeuvre." It seems to me that this objection 
 entirely misses the point of the parable. That point, as 
 I take it, is just what is expressed by our Lord Himself in 
 the words " The children of this world are in their genera- 
 tion wiser than the children of light " ; they show in the 
 pursuit of their selfish and worldly ends a contrivance, 
 a foresight, a common sense which the men of better 
 intentions and higher aspirations too often fail to show in 
 the pursuit of their higher ends. It is probable that the 
 words were spoken by our Lord with more or less special 
 reference to the use of wealth for purposes of Almsgiving. 
 Wealth spent in this way will meet with its due reward in 
 the Kingdom of Heaven. Certainly this is what was 
 intended by the Evangelist, who adds to it a number of 
 
 169 
 
170 Conscience and Christ 
 
 sayings, perhaps originally independent, on the same 
 subject : " Make to yourselves friends out of the mammon of 
 unrighteousness " (Luke xvi. 9), etc. Wealth may be used 
 in such a way as to secure something much better and 
 more durable than wealth. Our Lord would hardly, 
 perhaps, have thought of asking whether this reward — the 
 " everlasting habitations " — was to consist in goodness 
 or in happiness : had He asked it, it would (if we may 
 judge from His general teaching) have said " both." If 
 happiness is not a worthless thing, is there anything to 
 object to in such teaching as this ? On the whole subject 
 of our Lord's teaching about reward and punishment, see 
 Appendix IL 
 
 (2) The parable of the Householder (Matthew xx. 1-15). 
 The same writer continues : " In the parable of the House- 
 holder and his Servants we are not exposed to so severe 
 a strain, but we are still uncomfortable at the apparent 
 inequity of the remuneration of the labourers. We 
 do not allow, in judging the conduct of our fellows 
 to-day, that the plea of contract is an answer to all 
 complaints ; whilst the doctrine involved in the question 
 ' Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own ? ' 
 is repudiated altogether as inconsistent with the obliga- 
 tions of morality which bind us in the disposition of what 
 is legally wholly under our control." The author goes on 
 to say (p. 212) : " Enough of these captious criticisms. 
 Let them be so called. I have no pleasure in them. Their 
 strength lies in the claim of flawless perfection which 
 provokes them, and against which a single fault is fatal. 
 Considered by themselves, they are insignificant : they are 
 lost in the beauty and the loveliness which break through 
 the narrative of acts and words contained in the Gospels." 
 How far I claim " flawless perfection " for the teaching of 
 Christ will sufficiently have appeared from the preceding 
 
Objections to the Moral Teaching of Christ * 171 
 
 lectures. Assuredly there is nothing in this parable to 
 detract from it. Christ was not thinking of the question 
 how labourers were to be paid or of any other economic 
 problem. What he was denouncing was the claim that 
 those who accepted the call to discipleship earlier in the 
 day should have a reward greater than those who accepted 
 it later.^ (" What shall we have, therefore ? " they asked 
 on another occasion.) He rebukes the commercial view of 
 Morality which this spirit implied. " God," He tells them, 
 " does no wrong by offering to those who repent at a later 
 date the same full and free forgiveness which was offered 
 to those who repented and became disciples earlier." " If 
 you insist on discussing the question in the terms of 
 ordinary commercial justice," He may be supposed to 
 suggest, " this involves no wrong to the later comers." 
 Would the writer really insist that God is bound to pro- 
 portion reward in this life or the next exactly to the 
 number of years of good service in the past, and not to 
 the actual and present moral condition of the person ? 
 Undoubtedly there are questions about the proper reward 
 of labour which lay whoUy beyond our Lord's mental 
 horizon or beyond what He would have regarded it as 
 His province to deal with — questions as to which it would 
 be in vain to look for guidance in His teaching. But would 
 the writer say that, even in the light of the coldest modern 
 economics, an employer of labour, having paid to his 
 employee the stipulated wage (assuming it to be whatever 
 we understand by a just wage) was forbidden voluntarily, 
 out of profits which he might justly have retained, to 
 provide a club-house which should be open equally to his 
 
 ' It may be that the Evangelist means to suggest that the 
 Gentile was now spiritually on a level with the Jew. Our Lord, so 
 £ar as there was any special application in His mind, would rather 
 be thinking of the " publicans and sinners " as compared with the 
 Pharisees and other respectable religious persons. 
 
172 Conscience and Christ 
 
 oldest and his newest employees ? If a body of modern 
 workmen were to make such conduct the motive for a 
 strike, I feel sure that the author of The Diary of a Church- 
 goer would be against them. Of course it might be argued 
 that these conventional notions about Justice and Benevo- 
 lence, about money which I am bound to pay and money 
 with which I may do what I like, do not represent the 
 highest moral ideal ; but that objection can hardly be 
 urged by those who insist that the owner of the Vineyard 
 was bound to make pay exactly equal to work done. If we 
 are to argue the matter on grounds of economic justice, 
 the argument of the owner is a good one : if we say " these 
 ideas of economic justice do not represent the highest 
 Morality," then the objection has no relevance : the 
 argument was addressed to people who accepted these 
 ideas, and had never heard of Socialism. The lesson sought 
 to be conveyed is simply " Admittance to the privileges 
 implied by the Kingdom of Heaven is the free gift of God : 
 you must not be jealous because they are offered to others 
 who have done less for it, as you think, than you have 
 yourself." Would the writer seriously maintain that such 
 jealousy would be the note of a high morality, and that 
 a man who had gone to heaven after twenty years of a 
 good Christian life would be justified in complaining if he 
 found someone else there who had only been a Christian 
 for ten ? After all, the lesson meant to be taught by the 
 parable is only " God forgives the past freely when there 
 has been sincere repentance : the Pharisee must not 
 expect a higher place in the Kingdom than the converted 
 PubUcan." Well may Loisy remark : " Au fond la 
 parabole est la meme que celle du Fils prodigue."^ He 
 » Evan. Syn., II, 229. Loisy regards Matt. xx. i5 (" So the last 
 shall be first and the first last " — the conclusion of the verse is 
 omitted by the best MSS.) as a saying not originally connected 
 with the parable (found also in Matt. xxii. 14). 
 
Objections to the Moral Teaching of Christ ' 173 
 
 adds that the teaching of this parable must be balanced by 
 others which speak of higher and lower places in the 
 Kingdom (e.g. the parable of the talents, Luke xix. 11-27 '• 
 Matt. XXV. 14-30). Mr. Montefiore, who is assuredly no 
 official apologist, pronounces this parable " one of the 
 greatest and most glorious of all.''^ Much the same 
 lesson is taught by the parable of the Servant, concluding 
 with the words " Even so ye also, when ye shall have done all 
 the things that are commanded you, say. We are un- 
 profitable servants ; we have done that which it was our 
 duty to do " (Luke xvii. 10) — which Mr. Montefiore 
 pronounces to be " a highly noble, notable and important 
 passage." 
 
 (3) The cursing of the fig-tree (Matt. xxi. 19 ; Mark 
 xi. 12-14, 20). The same writer treats the cursing of the 
 fig-tree as an exhibition of " petulance " (p. 209). There 
 is a general disposition among critics to regard the whole 
 story as a misunderstanding or materialization of the 
 parable of the fig-tree. The story of the miracle occurs in 
 Matthew and Mark : and is omitted in Luke, who inserts 
 the parable (xiii. 6, 7. But cf. Matt. xxiv. 32 ; Mark xiii. 
 28). Even apart from this, there would be little ground 
 for accepting the saying by anyone who rejected the 
 miracle, and surely a writer who so freely criticizes the 
 morality of Christ is not likely to accept as historical a 
 miracle of this character. It will be observed that in 
 Matthew the miracle is exaggerated. In Mark it was on 
 the return journey that the fig-tree was found to be 
 withered : in Matthew it withers " immediately." 
 
 (4) The cleansing of the Temple. Other writers have 
 criticized the violent cleansing of the Temple. Our Lord's 
 conduct on this occasion cannot be understood without 
 bearing in mind His conviction that He was the Messiah of 
 
 1 Syn. Gospels, II, 700. 
 
174 Conscience and Chrisi 
 
 His nation. It is impossible here to discuss the exact 
 sense in which the claim was made or the grounds which 
 justified the claim :^ it is enough for our present purpose to 
 assume that He identified Himself in some sense with the 
 Messiah of Jewish prophecy and expectation. As such He 
 would naturally regard Himself as free to act in the way in 
 which the Messiah was represented in prophecy as acting. 
 The sight of the profanation would remind Him of the 
 passage in Malachi (iii. 1-3) about the Lord suddenly 
 coming to His Temple and purif57ing the sons of Levi. 
 The thought would occur to Him : " Is not someone called 
 upon to protest against these things ? And who more so 
 than I, if I am indeed the Messiah ? " Nay, might not any 
 Jew, conscious of a divine call to preach righteousness, 
 conceive that he was justified in correcting what he 
 regarded as a flagrant breach of the Mosaic Law ? Can we 
 say that such a one was not justified in committing what 
 possibly from the point of view of Roman (hardly perhaps 
 of Jewish) Law may have been an illegality, as a means of 
 protesting against what Jewish Priests and Rabbis must in 
 their conscience have admitted to be inconsistent with the 
 divine Law supposed to be contained in the Old Testa- 
 ment ? That the rebuke went home, is evident from the 
 fact that the interference was, for the moment, quietly 
 submitted to ; though it was, of course, the act which 
 eventually provoked the arrest and crucifixion. As an 
 illustration of the fact that " Criticism " can sometimes be 
 as rash in its assertions as Orthodoxy, I may mention that 
 I recently read an otherwise able Unitarian sermon in 
 which it was assumed that the " scourge of small cords " 
 was used on the owners as well as on the beasts. Of this, 
 of course, there is no suggestion in the text, and it is ob- 
 servable that the scourge is only mentioned in the fourth 
 1 I have said what seemed to me necessary in Lecture II. 
 
Objections to the Moral Teaching of Christ ' 175 
 
 Gospel. The Synoptists do not say exactly how the 
 dealers were "cast out."^ 
 
 If we do venture to conclude (which I for one should not 
 do) that in the light of full knowledge of all the facts, 
 the course adopted by Jesus was not the ideally best course, 
 it will be because : (a) in the light of subsequent events 
 and the inspiration vouchsafed to Christ's Church, we are 
 able to see that Jesus was Messiah in a higher sense than 
 the prophets conceived, and that not all the details of 
 prophecy could properly be taken as precedents for His 
 action, or (b) because we do not conceive of the inspira- 
 tion of the Law and the prophets in the way in which they 
 were commonly understood in His day,^ and which to 
 some extent — to some extent only, for He was far from 
 giving a very literal interpretation to them — He shared ; 
 or lastly (c) because we may have a stronger sense of the 
 importance of social order in matters of this kind. There 
 was nothing in the spirit or motive or principle of His 
 action which does not appeal to the modern conscience as 
 in accordance with the highest Morality. It does not 
 foUow, of course, that a modern man, full of the spirit of 
 Christ and thoroughly accepting the principles of His 
 action, should in an analogous case (so far as there can be 
 an analogous case) act in precisely the same manner. 
 
 (5) Alleged harshness : the words to the Syro-Phmnician 
 woman (Matt. xv. 26 ; Mark vii. 27). There are a few 
 cases in which our Lord is alleged to have shown a harsh- 
 ness not in accordance with the spirit of His own teaching 
 
 * Matt. xxi. 12 ; Mark xi. 15 ; Luke xix. 45 ; John ii. 15. 
 
 ' Perhaps we ought to add that this difference would carry 
 with it some conclusions which were outside of our Lord's mental 
 vision, as to the importance of civil order and the proper relation 
 of the civil government to the ecclesiastical. But we must remember 
 that the police of the Temple belonged to the Sanhedrin, and they 
 were both a religious and a secular authority, basing their whole 
 polity upon the Old Testament. 
 
176 Conscience and Christ 
 
 at its best. In particular there are the words addressed to 
 the Syro-Phoenician woman : "It is not meet to take the 
 children's bread, and cast it to the dogs." I do not think 
 that here we can quite accept the conventional explanation 
 that our Lord was only assuming the tone of one con- 
 temptuously rejecting the Woman's petition with a view 
 to a trial of her faith. On the other hand, we need not see 
 in them a piece of personal harshness, an actual defect of 
 character. This incident may possibly represent a moment 
 in the process of Jesus' emancipation from the ideas of His 
 environment. He was, as it were, talking aloud to Him- 
 self. The woman asks Jesus to heal her : He says : " Can 
 it be really part of the Father's will that I should use the 
 powers which He has given me, for the benefit not of 
 Israel, the children of God, but of those whom Israel has 
 always regarded as no more than mere outcasts ? " The 
 woman's humble acceptance of the situation, her plea to 
 be accepted as one who can hope for the leavings, as it were, 
 of God's promises to Israel makes it easy for Him to decide 
 the question in her favour. And thereby, perhaps, the 
 mind of Jesus was led one step onwards in the road to that 
 recognition of God's equal love of all men to which it is 
 clear that He ultimately attained. Progress in moral 
 insight there must certainly have been in Christ's case, as 
 in that of all other human beings, if we accept the Evangel- 
 ist's statement that " Jesus advanced in wisdom and 
 stature."! 
 
 So far I have assumed the trustworthiness of the 
 narrative. At the same time I may remark that it is open 
 to some suspicion, not because it is connected with a 
 narrative of miraculous cure, but because it presupposes 
 a kind of miracle much more difficult to understand than 
 most of our Lord's cures, which were by present, personal 
 ' Luke ii. 52. 
 
Objections to the Moral Teaching of Christ * 177 
 
 influence. Alleged cures from a distance are open to 
 peculiar suspicion. Still, we are hardly entitled to treat 
 the saying as altogether without historical foundation. 
 Loisy remarks : "En soi, I'incident n'autorisait pas la 
 predication de I'fivangile aux paiens. II est vrai seule- 
 ment que la presence de Jesus en terre paienne, dans une 
 maison qui est sans doute habitee par des paiens, et ou il 
 revolt rhospitalite, temoigne, comme sa reponse touchant 
 la purete des mets, qu'il ne partage aucunement les 
 scrupules pharisaiques sur les relations avec les strangers " 
 [jkvan. Syn., I, p. 971). 
 
 The words " I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of 
 the house of Israel " are in Matthew only (xv. 24) and 
 possibly represent the ideas of the Evangelist as to the 
 personal mission of Christ (see Loisy, I.e., p. 973) : he was 
 not of course opposed to the Gentile mission in his own 
 days. It is natural enough that St. Luke should have 
 omitted the whole incident. 
 
 (6) Give not that which is holy unto the dogs. " Give not 
 that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast your pearls 
 before the swine, lest haply they trample them under 
 their feet, and turn and rend you." 
 
 The passage occurs in Matthew only.^ He places it just 
 after the command not to say " let me pull out the mote 
 out of thine eye, and lo ! a beam is in thine own eye." If 
 Matthew has preserved the context, the words might well 
 mean " Do not be too eager to offer good advice or rebuke, 
 even when it is called for, unless you are sure that it will be 
 well received. Do not be censorious : be tactful in dealing 
 with others." But the passage has rather the appearance 
 of an isolated saying. To see in these words a prohibition 
 to preach the Gospel of the Kingdom to Gentiles would be 
 to attribute to our Lord an attitude unsupported by any- 
 ' Matt. vii. 6. 
 
178 Conscience and Christ 
 
 thing else which He ever said or did. It is certain that not 
 even the most Jewish of the Evangelists would have 
 inserted it in his Gospel if he had understood it in this 
 sense. It is not easy to find a meaning for the saying which 
 is in harmony with the general teaching of our Lord on the 
 assumption of its genuineness. It is far more probably an 
 " ecclesiastical addition." In the Didache it is interpreted 
 to mean " Do not admit the unbaptized to the Eucharist."^ 
 And something not quite so definite but in the same 
 spirit may well have been the meaning which it bore for 
 the Judseo-Christian consciousness. As Loisy suggests, it 
 may have grown out of the saying to the Syro-Phcenician 
 woman. 
 
 (7) Depreciation of family ties. I do not feel that the 
 sayings about leaving father and mother to preach the 
 coming of the Kingdom require any apology. The saying 
 in which our Lord in a sense repudiates His earthly parent- 
 age (" Who is My mother and My brethren ? ")^ was 
 provoked by an attempt on their part to keep Him back 
 from His mission on the ground that He was mad. There 
 are occasions when family ties must give way to wider 
 duties. No one would now blame such language in a 
 tatesman calling upon his countrymen to take up arms at 
 a supreme crisis in the history of his country. No Christian 
 ought to object to similar language in an advocate of 
 Missions calling upon men to become missionaries, provided 
 he does not suggest that this particular call is one which 
 comes to all men in all circumstances. Our Lord is not 
 responsible for the monastic abuse of this principle. 
 
 1 Didache, ix., 5. 
 
 a Mark iii. 33=Matt. xii. 48. Matthew from mistaken reverence 
 omits the words about being "beside Himself." Luke omits even 
 the words " Who are My mother and My brethren ? " but retains the 
 characteristic saying " My mother and My brethren are these which 
 hear the word of God and do it " (Luke viii. 21). 
 
Objections to the Moral Teaching of Christ 179 
 
 Equally true is it that the spiritual union between the 
 true servants of God is closer than the ties of blood. If so, 
 " Whosoever shall do the will of God, the same is My brother 
 and sister and mother" requires equally little apology. 
 
 (8) Let the dead bury their own dead. Another saying of 
 the same class is " Let the (spiritually) dead bury their own 
 dead " (Matt. viii. 22 ; Luke ix. 60). This also might well 
 be justified by the circumstances, even if taken literally : 
 but, considering the short interval which in the East 
 commonly elapses between death and burial, it is extremely 
 improbable that the father was actually lying dead at the 
 time. " Suffer me first to go and bury my father " no 
 doubt means " let me wait till the old man dies." I have 
 met in some commentary with the remark of an Eastern 
 traveller who was always sceptical of this explanation till 
 similar language was actually used to him in Palestine of 
 a still living parent ; but I cannot find the reference. 
 
 (9) The denunciation of the Pharisees. Mr. Montefiore, 
 from the standpoint of liberal Judaism, condemns severely 
 the attacks by Jesus on the Pharisees both as being un- 
 justified in themselves and as inconsistent with His own 
 teaching. To use the language of severe denunciation does 
 not appear to me ethically unjustified or inconsistent with 
 the spirit of the teaching which, in general, Mr. Montefiore 
 approves : and what Jesus denounces in the teaching and 
 conduct of the Pharisees certainly deserved such condemna- 
 tion. It does not appear to me at all self-evident that 
 Jesus, " if he had loved his enemies, would not have called 
 them vipers, or enthusiastically predicted their arrival in 
 hell " (Syn. Gospels, II, p. 524). The adverb, of course, is 
 Mr. Montefiore's. That there was another side to the 
 teaching perhaps of those very Pharisees whom Jesus 
 denounced, and certainly of other Pharisees, Mr. Monte- 
 fiore is quite entitled to point out, and Christians ought 
 
i8o Conscience and Christ 
 
 freely to admit the fact. But it is hardly fair to speak of 
 such denunciations as merely calling " religious enemies 
 hard names " {ib., II, p. 526). It was not the theological 
 doctrine of the Pharisees that Jesus denounced, but (i) the 
 immorality of their teaching and (2) their hypocrisy — the 
 contrast between their exacting teaching and their Hves 
 of what seemed to Him easy, self-complacent religious 
 exclusiveness. In the very same page on which this 
 criticism occurs, Mr. Montefiore has some reflections— too 
 well deserved— on the intolerance shown by Christians 
 towards Jews which, though expressed in a more modern 
 dialect, mean much the same thing as the denunciations 
 of Jesus. That we have learned better to understand the 
 psychological causes of such aberrations as those of the 
 Pharisees may be admitted by any Christian who does not 
 assert that Jesus was omniscient. If some of the Pharisees 
 were not justly chargeable with all the bad motives which 
 Jesus attributed to them, or if there was more good in 
 them than He supposed, that is a question of fact. It may 
 be admitted that the historian's judgement about the 
 matter should not be based on these sayings alone. 
 But the important thing for us is whether He was right in 
 severely condemning certain elements in their teaching 
 and the state of mind from which He supposed it to spring. 
 I do not see in these denunciations any defect of ethical 
 principle. The denunciation of the Friars as a class by 
 men like Wychffe and Luther seems to me a fairly parallel 
 case, and was equally justified, though, of course, there 
 were good Friars even in the worst periods of medieval 
 history. That there has been a further and fuller develop- 
 ment of that principle of Universal Love which Jesus 
 taught should be fully admitted. The principle of religious 
 toleration was not actually taught by Jesus, though He 
 taught nothing contrary to it. It is a further development 
 
Objections to the Moral Teaching of Christ' i8i 
 
 of the principle which He did lay down, and yet, after all, 
 this question is not much in point in this particular 
 connexion, for there was no question of persecuting the 
 Pharisees. 
 
 I am not competent to discuss the question whether 
 Mr. Montefiore does not as much overrate the Pharisees 
 as some Christian Theologians (liberal as well as orthodox) 
 have unjustly depreciated them ; I will only say that he 
 himself in his indignant protests against the onesidedness 
 of Christian Theologians seems occasionally to forget the 
 admissions that he elsewhere makes. That there was much 
 in the teaching and conduct of the Pharisees which was 
 justly rebuked by our Lord, could be proved out of Mr. 
 Montefiore's own writings. Moreover, he is (if I may 
 venture to say so) too apt to assume that all that is best in 
 the rabbinic teaching of all ages must be supposed to have 
 been equally characteristic of these particular Rabbis and 
 Pharisees with whom our Lord had to deal. On the face of 
 it, it is probable that the Pharisees in the day of their 
 political ascendancy would show the characteristic vices 
 of a dominant clergy more frequently than in the days of 
 national humiliation and persecution. It would be grossly 
 unjust to the French clergy of to-day to say of them what 
 might justly be said of their predecessors in the time of 
 Louis XIV. Nor can I discuss the question of reflex 
 Christian influence on the later rabbinic teaching. It is 
 improbable that the teaching of Christianity (however 
 little illustrated by average Christian practice) should have 
 produced no influence on their Jewish critics. It would be 
 equally absurd to assume that the views about toleration 
 or the relative unimportance of ritual now adopted by the 
 best Roman Cathohcs owe nothing to Protestantism. 
 
 This will be a convenient place to examine another of 
 Mr. Montefiore's reflections. " I thank thee. J^o/xoAoyov/xai 
 
i82 Conscience and Christ 
 
 [which may have its usual meaning of ' confess, acknow- 
 ledge '], O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou 
 didst hide these things from the wise and understanding, 
 and didst reveal them unto babes " (Matt. xi. 25 =Luke 
 X. 21). 
 
 Mr. Montefiore asks : " Is he not only glad that God has 
 revealed the truth about himself to the simple, but that 
 he has not revealed it to the wise and the clever ? Woe to 
 the unbelieving Scribes, and yet thank God for their 
 unbelief ! It is not pleasing to have to believe that Jesus 
 said this."i For once Mr. Montefiore, in his resentment at 
 Christ's language towards the Scribes, seems to me a little 
 too prosaic and literal. If Jesus had been educated as 
 a Jewish scribe or a western philosopher, and had carefully 
 weighed His words before giving utterance to this sudden 
 access of emotion, He would perhaps have said " I thank 
 thee that thou hast revealed to the simple what those who 
 pride themselves on their knowledge and their insight 
 have failed, with all their education and their wisdom, to 
 understand." If He did think of this " withholding " as 
 a sort of penalty for the pride of learning, would such a point 
 of view be wholly unjustified ? There is such a thing as 
 the " pride of knowledge," though it seldom equals the 
 pride of half-educated ignorance. I don't think Mr. 
 Montefiore would have quarrelled much with this saying 
 if he had found it in the Old Testament or the Talmud. 
 That not all the Rabbis of our Lord's time or any other 
 deserved such a censure, I have fully acknowledged. 
 
 Our Lord's denunciation of the cities which had rejected 
 Him (Matt. xi. 21 ; Luke x. 13) may be dealt with in 
 much the same way. The denunciation, according to 
 St. Matthew, was called forth " because they repented 
 not " : and this is implied in the words. There is nothing 
 ' Syn. Gospels, II, 604. 
 
Objections to the Moral Teaching of Christ, 183 
 
 personal about the resentment. The strongest saying, 
 "Thou shalt be brought down to hell," clearly cannot be 
 taken literally to naean that every man, woman and child 
 in Capernaum would go to hell. In so far as they are 
 applied to the whole city collectively, the words are clearly 
 metaphorical — as much so as the previous words "which 
 art exalted to heaven" or (R.V.) "shalt thou be exalted 
 into heaven ? " 
 
 (10) Undue Self-exaltation ? The much-disputed doc- 
 trinal passage " no man knoweth the Son but the 
 Father," etc.^ is followed by the words : " Come unto 
 Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I 
 will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn 
 of Me ; for I am meek and lowly in heart " (Matt. xi. 
 28-29). These last words have been thought to imply 
 undue self-approbation. Martineau, for instance, rejected 
 them as inconsistent with the character of Jesus. 
 Taken in their context — ^in connexion with the contrast 
 (which immediately follows) between the light yoke of 
 His teaching and the heavy burden laid on man by the 
 Pharisees, I do not see that Jesus — quite independently of 
 any claim to Divinity or even to Messiahship — should not 
 have endeavoured to attract men by saying in Wellhausen's 
 words "that He is not haughty, and does not, like the 
 Scribes, despise the people, which knows nothing of the 
 Law." But the passage is in Matthew only, and is of the 
 kind which might weU be an ecclesiastical addition. 
 Beautiful as the words are, spiritually true as they have 
 
 1 It would be out of place to discuss the genuineness of this 
 passage here. The differences exhibited by Matthew and Luke and 
 by different MSS. and versions are considerable. Harnack (Sayings 
 of Jesus, p. 295) accepts them in their simplest and least elaborated 
 form. It is probable that they represent some genuine saying, but 
 it is difiScult to be confident that even Hamack's reading is abso- 
 lutely primitive. 
 
184 Conscience and Christ 
 
 abundantly been shown to be, they are not unUkely in 
 their present form to represent the experience of the 
 early Church, though it is quite conceivable that some 
 genuine saying of Jesus about the lightness of His yoke may 
 underlie them. The words are largely inspired by a passage 
 from Jeremiah and the praise of Wisdom in Ecclesiasticus.* 
 Loisy doubts their historicity in the mouth of Jesus, and 
 remarks that for the Evangelist they mean, " le joug de 
 Jesus est la loi chr^tienne, si douce et legere relativement k 
 la Loi mosaique interpretee par les pharisiens " {£van. Syn., 
 I, 913-14)- 
 
 (11) Alleged admission of moral imperfection. " Why 
 callest thou Me good ? none is good save one " (Mark x. 
 18) . These words are appealed to as a proof of our Lord's 
 consciousness of moral shortcoming. That they represent 
 the true version of the saying (which the true text of Matt. 
 xix. 17 waters down — " Why askest thou Me concerning 
 the good ? ") no one who takes criticism seriously can 
 doubt ; nor can I regard them as merely spoken ad hominem, 
 from the point of view of the questioner, ignorant of the 
 divine nature of Him who spake. They constitute, it seems 
 to me, a real disclaimer of such absolute goodness as He 
 ascribed to the Father. Yet I do not think that they 
 amount to the admission of actual sin. The only evidence 
 for the belief in the absolute sinlessness of Jesus that can 
 be produced is negative evidence — the marked absence of 
 that sense of sin which is so prominent a feature of the 
 religious consciousness in the men who have otherwise 
 most closely approximated to the goodness of Christ. 
 (I assume that our view of the fourth Gospel will not 
 permit of our appeahng to John viii. 46.) He appears not 
 to have felt oppressed by any consciousness of sin or 
 sinfulness which would constitute an obstacle to complete 
 ^ Jer. vi. i6 ; Ecclus. li. 23 sq. 
 
Objections to the Moral Teaching of Christ ' 185 
 
 communion with God. Still, it is so difficult to form a clear 
 conception of what we mean by absolute sinlessness, and 
 so impossible, considering the extreme imperfection of our 
 record, to prove such sinlessness, that it seems to me best 
 to avoid attempts at definition. The picture handed down 
 by the Gospels presents to us the character of one in whom 
 we can see no consciousness or evidence of sinfulness. 
 That is as far as we need go. Throughout this book I have 
 assumed that it is because it is confirmed by the moral 
 consciousness of the modern world that we accept the 
 moral teaching and character of Jesus as the highest 
 expression of absolute and permanent moral truth that we 
 possess. It is chiefly the essential principles of Christian 
 Morality that are of importance to us, and I have admitted 
 the need of development in the light of later knowledge, 
 thought, and experience. Still, I do not allow that any 
 particular precept is inconsistent with these general 
 principles, viewed in the hght of existing social conditions 
 and of what was then known of social laws, or that on any 
 occasion whatever our Lord (so far as we know) acted in 
 a way, or exhibited a character and temper, which can be 
 pronounced inconsistent with them. 
 
 I have said nothing in this connexion about the saying 
 in the fourth Gospel : " Which of you convicteth Me of 
 sin ? " (John viii. 46), or other passages which involve 
 similar self-assertion. The self-assertion of the Johannine 
 Christ does strike us just occasionally as a little harsh, and 
 inconsistent with the moral ideal which we should recognize 
 as becoming in a thoroughly human consciousness, and 
 with the character actually exhibited by the Synoptic 
 narratives. It is not that the things which the Johannine 
 Christ says about Himself may not be regarded as having 
 truth in them ; but it is difficult to understand how Jesus 
 could have thought and said such things about Himself, 
 
1 86 Conscience and Christ 
 
 and retained the limitations without which a human 
 consciousness ceases to be human. To my mind it is one 
 of the positive religious gains of Criticism that we can read 
 the statements of the Johannine Christ as expressing a 
 disciple's sense of the value of Christ and His revelation 
 of the Father, and not as assertions actually made about 
 himself by an historical person engaged in controversy with 
 his opponents. So considered, many of these statements 
 may be regarded as eternal truths of the highest religious 
 value. There is real truth in the statement that Christ 
 was the light of the world, and that no man can come to 
 the Father — in the fullest and completest degree — except 
 through the avenue of approach instituted by this historical 
 revelation. But it is difficult to think of a perfectly good 
 human being actually making such a declaration about 
 Himself ; and in the hght of the Synoptic Gospels it is 
 extremely improbable that He did so. There are no doubt 
 many pieces of strong, though legitimate, self-assertion in 
 the Synoptists, but they are of a different kind — of a 
 kind intelligible enough in the hght of Jesus' belief in His 
 own Messianic calling. There are, too, in the Synoptists 
 severe things said of the Pharisaic opponents, but they are 
 different in character from the tremendous denunciations 
 ofthe Johanni ne Christ. It is a relief to be able to regard 
 these last, not for purely subjective reasons, but on the 
 strongest critical grounds, as the work of a disciple who 
 had in general marvellously entered into the spirit of his 
 Master's teaching, but who was consciously developing 
 rather than reporting that teaching, and who looked at it 
 in the light of a theological theory, which was itself part of 
 the development. I prefer to think of sayings hke "All 
 who came before me were thieves and robbers " as a 
 disciple's impassioned tribute to his Master rather than 
 as the Master's words about Himself. 
 
Objections to the Moral Teaching of Christ ' 187 
 
 (12) The Parable of the Marriage Feast : Humility for 
 the sake of Reward (Luke xiv. 7-11). " When thou art 
 bidden, go and sit down in the lowest place, that when he 
 that hath bidden thee cometh, he may say unto thee. Friend, 
 go up higher : then shalt thou have glory in the presence of 
 aU that sit at meat with thee." This has been objected to on 
 the ground that it makes the desire for honour the motive 
 for humility, and Jo. Weiss has suggested that it is a 
 certain section of the Christian community that is here 
 speaking rather than Jesus. I imagine that to win the 
 favour of God would have seemed to Jesus too pure a 
 motive to be identified with ordinary ambition or love of 
 honour. And no one could well demur to His thinking so, if 
 only the conception of God is kept high and pure enough. 
 There cannot be too much desire to be approved by One 
 whose judgements are absolutely just. It is the form 
 which the desire to obey the Categorical Imperative 
 necessarily assumes to the Theist, though, no doubt, the 
 desire to win favour with God may easily degenerate into 
 an ambition which is none the less selfish because the 
 reward is posthumous. Others have taken it merely as a 
 piece of practical advice. It is not bad or degrading advice 
 to say, " It is better to leave it to others to give you a high 
 place than to take it yourself." But this does not seem to 
 me much in the spirit of Jesus, though there is no reason 
 why the greatest of ethical teachers should not sometimes 
 have given homely, practical advice in matters of the 
 minor morals. It is quite possible that the Evangelist or 
 tradition may have given some genuine saying of Jesus 
 a turn which made it a warning against undue ambition 
 for ecclesiastical office. 
 
 (13) The discouragement of Prudence. It has often been 
 suggested that the teaching of Christ omits that whole side 
 of Morality which may be summed up in the word Prudence, 
 
i88 Conscience and Christ 
 
 The command not to be anxious for the morrow (Matt. vi. 
 34) may be taken as a sufficient illustration of the teaching 
 which is objected to. Such an injunction, it may be said, 
 would, if generally acted upon, be in the highest degree 
 injurious to the interests of Society. It would tend to 
 destroy the commercial prosperity of a modern industrial 
 community, and would produce a population of Neapolitan 
 beggars. What are we to say to this suggestion ? In the 
 first place, I would submit that the objection probably 
 owes a good deal of its plausibility to the mistranslation 
 " Take no thought " instead of " Be not anxious." In the 
 second place, it must be remembered that the neglect of 
 material interests which was prescribed by Christ was only 
 comparative. It was in comparison with the Kingdom of 
 Heaven that the question of meat and drink was un- 
 important. And, thirdly, we must remember that in a 
 community which did systematically put the Kingdom of 
 God first, no socially injurious consequences could result 
 from the preference. In a community in which everyone 
 did systematically care for the things of others and not for 
 his own things, there could be no neglect of the general 
 welfare in material any more than in higher ways. If all its 
 members did systematically seek first the Kingdom of God 
 and His righteousness, the other things certainly would be 
 added to such a community. Unselfishness would be as 
 powerful a stimulus to industry and invention as selfishness. 
 That is a proposition which can be established from the 
 point of view of the most severe economic Science. When 
 anything like a sociahstic or communistic community has 
 been reaUzed, it has often been attended by the highest 
 economic prosperity. Whatever difficulties may have 
 arisen, whatever objections there may be to such com- 
 munities from other points of view, want of sufficient food 
 and raiment has rarely been among them. The practical 
 
Objections to the Moral Teaching of Christ ' 189 
 
 difficulty Kes in extending such systems from a com- 
 munity of carefully selected enthusiasts to communities in 
 which men of all characters have to be included. When 
 the teaching of Jesus comes to be taken as the working 
 rule of life for communities of average men, it undoubtedly 
 needs to be interpreted by much complementary teach- 
 ing. It can be easily shown that to earn one's own living 
 and not become burdensome to others is a duty which 
 results directly from the fundamental Christian principle of 
 love to one's neighbour ; but undoubtedly it is a deduction 
 or corollary which required to be pointed out and insisted 
 upon. St. Paul discovered that necessity, and supphed the 
 complementary teaching required. 
 
 Mr. Montefiore has some fine remarks on this text : 
 " ' Not to be anxious ' means to have a free heart, to be 
 courageous and active, to accept our life every day fresh 
 from God's hand and to trust in Him. But such com- 
 posure of mind is not only not a hindrance, but is even an 
 inexhaustible source of strength for a successful struggle 
 for existence. And how shall we attain such freedom from 
 anxiety ? Jesus says to us, ' Fill your soul with a great 
 purpose, endeavour after the kingdom of God, battle for 
 the victory of good in the world, strive after personal 
 perfection, and then what has hitherto oppressed you will 
 appear to you petty and insignificant ' " {Syn. Gospels, 
 
 n, 545). 
 
 (14) The alleged impossibility of Universal Love. It is 
 surprising to find intelligent persons finding a difficulty 
 in Christ's requirement of Universal Love on the ground 
 that it is impossible to love all men equally. It is not 
 Christ alone but almost all the higher Moralists who have 
 used the term " love " to indicate two things : (i) a state 
 of the desires, emotions, and will directed towards the good 
 of one's fellows, and (2) the spontaneous feehng of special 
 
I go Conscience and Christ 
 
 attachment to particular persons — affection such as our 
 Lord is recorded to have expressed for the rich young man, 
 for Lazarus and his sisters, for the " disciple whom Jesus 
 loved." 1 This fact — I suspect a universal fact — of language 
 has obviously a foundation in the facts of moral Psychology. 
 The ideal relation between human beings is one in which 
 the will of each is as steadily directed towards the good of 
 every other human being as it is towards his own good or 
 that of persons towards whom he feels the strongest 
 emotional attraction ; and in proportion as this attitude is 
 realized, an emotion is felt which is to some extent the same, 
 though to some extent different, from the feeling entertained 
 towards friends. The feeling entertained towards the per- 
 sonal friend is the feeling of good-will based upon personal 
 liking or attraction. Language can only express the ideal 
 feeling towards one's fellows as such by generahzing the 
 terms naturally used to indicate personal affection (dyaTrij, 
 (piXia, amor, dilectio, caritas). A reasonable Ethic will 
 approve of this generalization without denying that the 
 feehng becomes in some ways different by being extended 
 towards a large circle of persons, known and unknown. 
 When Aristotle said that one ought to be a greater friend 
 to truth than to beloved individuals, nobody takes him to 
 mean that one must feel towards truth exactly as one does 
 towards one's nearest friends or relations. There is a kind 
 of thoughtlessness which is possible in theological (or anti- 
 theological) discussion which cultivated men are never 
 guilty of in any other connexion. 
 
 Sometimes the same kind of objection is made to the 
 place which the love of God occupies in the Christian ideal. 
 The objector asks, for instance : " Did any man ever love 
 
 1 Mark x. 21 ; John xi. 5, xx. 2. Cf. Aristotle's use of ^Ata 
 for a universal human duty and for a special social relation. E(h. 
 Hie, iv., 1126 b. ; viii., 1155 a., 1161 b., etc. 
 
Objections to the Moral Teaching of Christ* 191 
 
 God as he has loved some human beings ? Did he ever 
 derive from the love of God a greater inspiration for all 
 good things and thoughts than from the love of some one 
 or other child of earth ? " (Garrod, The Religion of All Good 
 Men, Ed. I, p. 169). On this objection I would remark 
 (i) that the author seems naively to suppose that an ideal 
 is shown to be false because it is not fully realized by most 
 of us : on this side the objection would best be met by some 
 well-known quotations from Plato. (2) He has largely 
 answered himself when he goes on to say, " Did he never 
 feel that in the love of some single human being he was 
 loving God ? " If the love of God not only does not 
 exclude, but expresses itself in the love of particular 
 persons, why does he object to the Christian language ? 
 If the writer does not mean that the moral ideal is adequately 
 satisfied by the love of a single human being to the ex- 
 clusion of aU others, it is clear that the love of all Good 
 will express itself in the love, not merely of a single human 
 being, but of aU human beings. 
 
 The love which ought to be felt towards aU men as such 
 is the desire of the true good for particular human beings, 
 and such love is the same in principle as the love of God, in 
 whom whatever is good in human beings is realized in 
 a transcendent degree, and whose Will is (as Christians 
 believe) directed towards the good of those beings. The 
 emotion which naturally accompanies such a direction of 
 the will normally shows itself in the love of particular 
 individuals, or quite as often in devotion to particular 
 societies of individuals. Love of country, of Church, of the 
 ideal represented by Christ has often, in point of fact, been 
 quite as intense as that felt for a wife or a friend. The 
 highest degree of devotion to the general good does not 
 exclude the existence of feeUngs towards particular persons 
 which it would be a psychological impossibihty to feel 
 
192 Conscience and Christ 
 
 towards all. Nor does it follow that on all occasions the 
 best man will behave towards all as he does towards his 
 best friend. The love of Humanity shows itself largely, 
 though not entirely, in performing services for particular 
 individuals. The extent to which, and the ways in which 
 the good man will promote the good of any particular 
 individual will depend upon the nature of his relation 
 towards them. There are obvious reasons why a man 
 should in practice promote the good of his own family 
 more actively and persistently in certain ways than the 
 good of strangers. Somewhat similar considerations will 
 prescribe that in certain other ways we should promote the 
 good of those to whom we are attracted by natural and 
 spontaneous affection rather than that of strangers. The 
 existence of such natural affection is one of the things — but 
 only one — which determines for which of all possible 
 human beings we should specially perform good of&ces. 
 What I imagine the Christian and rational precept 
 of love towards mankind as such to prescribe is that the 
 ultimate laws of human conduct should be determined by 
 the principle that every man should be treated as an 
 end-in-himself according to his intrinsic value. This 
 ultimate law will prescribe that our conduct even towards 
 those for whom we have most natural affection should be 
 duly controlled by, and subordinated to, the requirements 
 of general social well-being. The selection of the persons 
 towards whom should be performed the kind of services 
 which cannot be performed towards all should be deter- 
 mined likewise by the supreme rule of promoting universal 
 well-being. This supreme rule will prescribe, for instance, 
 that a man is free to a large extent to choose his com- 
 panions according to his own tastes, and that he may 
 spend much of his leisure in their company. It would, 
 however, clearly not be a rule fit for law universal that he 
 
Objections to the Moral Teaching of Christ 193 
 
 should leave to his personal friend the money which by 
 the social custom of his community and the implied under- 
 standing at his marriage should go to his wife and her 
 children, even if he chanced to feel more affection for the 
 friend than for the wife. And the same principle will re- 
 quire that neither personal friend nor wife and children 
 should interfere with the discharge of his professional 
 duties or his willingness to fight for his country in the hour 
 of need. But I feel I am here straying into broad questions 
 of Moral Philosophy which it would take too long to 
 discuss here. 
 
 It may be suggested that, while it is possible for a man 
 to act upon such principles, it is not possible for him to 
 control his feehngs and emotions and affections to the same 
 extent. I should reply briefly (i) that the man whose will 
 is steadily directed towards such a rule of conduct does 
 fulfil the command of universal love : the love towards all 
 men which the Christian rule and rational Morality demand 
 is primarily a direction of the will. The fact that a man 
 is willing to prefer the interests of Humanity to those of 
 his wife and family (where such a preference is really 
 demanded), actually proves that he does desire their good 
 more than that of wife and children. Will is a name for the 
 dominant desire which has passed into action, (ii) In so 
 far as the emotional accompaniments of such a desire can 
 be distinguished from the desire itself, they will tend to 
 grow into conformity with the rule upon which the man 
 habitually wills to act. (iii) In so far as the emotion that 
 we feel towards particular persons is of a kind that we 
 cannot feel towards strangers or towards collective 
 humanity, there is no inconsistency between the strongest 
 devotion to Humanity and the tenderest affections towards 
 individuals. 
 
 After all, the best answer to Mr. Garrod is to point to the 
 o 
 
194 Conscience and Christ 
 
 actual character and conduct of the best Christians in all 
 ages. The Christians who have left home and family and 
 friends to become missionaries, or who have refused to 
 seek safety in time of danger for fear of leaving their 
 wives widows and their children fatherless, or who have 
 done things which involved the risk of pecuniary ruin to 
 their families rather than be dishonest, have felt the ties 
 of kinship and personal affection as keenly as other men : 
 yet the fact that they acted as they did is a proof that they 
 did love God or Christ or Humanity more than all these. 
 The candour and sincerity of Mr. Garrod's enquiry deserve 
 respect, but he is not the only writer who has criticized 
 Christianity without showing much knowledge of what 
 the best actual Christians have shown themselves to be 
 like either in history or in his own day. When personal 
 experience fails, a little study of Christian biography may 
 be recommended as an essential qualification for writing 
 upon the comparative merits of the Christian, the Hellenic, 
 and the " Gothic " ideals of life. 
 
LECTURE V 
 THE PRINCIPLE OF DEVELOPMENT 
 
 IN my last lecture I endeavoured to make it plain 
 that the ethical teaching of Jesus could be regarded 
 as the supreme guide for conduct in modern life on 
 two conditions only — firstly, that that teaching is 
 understood as laying down general principles and 
 not detailed regulations of eternal obligation : secondly, 
 that the necessity for development is admitted in the 
 amplest possible manner. The first condition is one 
 which may be said to have been fully recognized by 
 Jesus Himself, since He never attempts to do more than 
 lay down principles : any applications which He gives 
 to them are avowedly mere illustrations or applica- 
 tions of those principles to the conduct of particular 
 individuals under particular circumstances, which can 
 only be applied to other individuals and other cir- 
 cumstances by disengaging the general principle from 
 the particular application. And this implicitly carries 
 with it the other principle, the principle of Develop 
 ment ; for, if one can discover no detailed rules in the 
 teaching of Christ, it is obvious that we must make 
 them for ourselves. How far we can discover any ex- 
 
 195 
 
196 Conscience and Christ 
 
 press recognition of that necessity for development in 
 the teaching of the Master Himself will depend largely 
 upon the view that we take of the fourth Gospel. The 
 doctrine of the Holy Ghost contained in that Gospel 
 obviously implies this principle. It was to be the 
 object of the Spirit's indwelling to take of Christ's and 
 show it unto His disciples. The Spirit was to say to 
 them many things which at present they could not 
 bear, and therefore His going away from them was the 
 very condition of their moral and spiritual advance- 
 ment. I do not myself think that this teaching about 
 the Paraclete in the Church can have had more than 
 a rudimentary germ in the teaching of Jesus Himself. 
 There was a germ of it in that recognition of the 
 existence of Conscience on which I have already 
 dwelt, and in the many sayings which speak of a Holy 
 Spirit working in the hearts of men. The fourth 
 Evangelist's doctrine of the Paraclete, and of the 
 Church as the Society in which the Spirit dwells and 
 works, is just an illustration of that very development 
 of which I am speaking. It involves the principle both 
 in the region of Theology and in that of Ethics. In 
 the present lecture I must confine myself to the ethical 
 side of this development. 
 
 It is well that we should set before our minds quite 
 clearly and definitely what is meant by this principle 
 of ethical Development. We have already dealt with 
 the kind of ethical evolution which went on in the 
 Jewish mind before the time of Christ, and which cul- 
 
The Principle of Development • 197 
 
 minates in His teaching. In that teaching, as I have 
 tried to show you, we do discover a supreme and 
 final principle which we do not expect to be tran- 
 scended — the rule of universal love, which (expressed 
 in cold philosophical terms) implies that human duty 
 consists in the promotion of the true good for all man- 
 kind, the good of one being considered as of equal 
 intrinsic value with the like good of every other. Why 
 is this principle insufficient for the guidance of life 
 without any further expansion ? For two reasons : 
 in the first place we want to know the means by which 
 human good is to be promoted : and in the second 
 place we must know what in detail constitutes this 
 " good " which we are to promote for all mankind. 
 It is obvious from the nature of the case that there can 
 be no finality in either of these directions. The dis- 
 covery of any fresh means of promoting human good 
 not only adds new rules of life to the ethical code ; 
 it actually cancels old rules. Not only has the course 
 of social and intellectual development opened up a 
 thousand duties of which no one living in the time 
 of Jesus could well have dreamed, of which the 
 wisest of men, Jewish, pagan or Christian, never had 
 dreamed, but many acts which to the world of that 
 day seemed right have become wrong in the light of 
 fuller knowledge of detailed fact and of natural or 
 social law. Indiscriminate almsgiving became wrong 
 when it was discovered that it does more harm than 
 good — generally to the actual recipient, always to 
 
igS Conscience and Christ 
 
 others. It has become wrong to spend time in organ- 
 izing solemn processions as a means of averting 
 plague now that we know that plague is produced by 
 neglect of sanitary precautions, and that energy 
 devoted to sanitary reform is a more effective way of 
 averting it than the organization of processions. It 
 has become wrong for religious men to turn aside from 
 politics now that we realize how much improved 
 social arrangements may do not merely for human 
 happiness but for the improvement of human character 
 and for the elevation of human life on its most spiritual 
 side. This principle, when once pointed out, is too 
 obvious to need further illustration ; and yet it 
 involves the absolute abandonment of the attempt 
 to derive detailed guidance in matters of conduct 
 from any final and closed system of moral rules, 
 whether it be the teaching of Christ or of the New 
 Testament or of the most elaborate authoritative 
 Casuistry. The more elaborate and detailed the rules 
 become, the greater ere long becomes their inapplica- 
 bility to a world in which circumstances are con- 
 stantly changing and knowledge advancing. Simple 
 as the principle is, I do not think it has ever yet 
 been sufficiently grasped by the mass of religious 
 people or by their religious guides. It is still too often 
 assumed that we cannot make the promotion of 
 Socialism a Christian duty unless we can show that 
 Christ Himself was a Socialist, or that we can refute 
 Socialism by showing that He was not. There is still 
 
The Principle of Development • 199 
 
 too much disposition among Christian people to settle 
 ethical controversies by the appeal to isolated texts 
 or to ancient ecclesiastical rules. ^ 
 
 It is the other kind of development which creates 
 the most difficulty — the development in our concep- 
 tion of what this ideal consists in, this " good " which 
 we recognize it as a duty to promote for all mankind. 
 It is here that it may most plausibly be contended 
 that the principle of development has actually been 
 carried by almost all modern Christians to a point 
 which really makes it impossible to treat the moral 
 teaching of Jesus as any longer expressing an ideal 
 which enlightened modern minds can recognize as their 
 own. It has become fashionable to express the con- 
 trast between the ethical teaching of Jesus and the 
 ideal which most modem men profess by saying that 
 the ethics of Jesus were " world-renouncing " and 
 that ours are "world-affirming."' I should like to 
 face that question as honestly as I can — to ask firstly 
 how far this contrast holds between the teaching of 
 Jesus and the ethical ideal which most cultivated 
 modern Christians actually profess ; and secondly, 
 whether, in so far as this is the case, it prevents our 
 
 ' I am afraid that some of the publications even of so enlightened 
 a body as the Christian Social Union have not been altogether free 
 from the tendency to erect a social system upon the basis of texts 
 from the Old and New Testaments. 
 
 ' See, for instance. Professor Troeltsch's brilliant work Protestant- 
 ism and Progress (trans, by W. Montgomery). The weak point of 
 that Otherwise valuable enquiry seems to me to lie in the acceptance 
 of this distinction, without much analysis, as adequate and absolute, 
 
200 Conscience and Christ 
 
 sincerely giving to that teaching the supremacy which 
 Christians have always claimed, and still claim, for it. 
 To a great extent I have already dealt with these 
 questions in asking how far the eschatological ideas 
 of Jesus really prevent our accepting His fundamental 
 ethical principles. In fact, I do not think I need do 
 much more than remind you of the conclusions at 
 which we have already arrived. If these conclusions 
 are true, we shall answer our present problem by 
 saying two things : (i) That there is room for much 
 development in our conception of what the ideal good 
 consists in without giving up the fundamental prin- 
 ciple that the supreme precept in Morality is that which 
 enjoins the promotion of this good for all mankind : 
 and (2) that the extent to which it can justly be said 
 that the ideal of Jesus was world-renouncing has been 
 greatly exaggerated. Undoubtedly the ideal of Jesus 
 was world-renouncing, if that means the renunciation 
 of selfishness, of selfish ambitions, of sensuality, of 
 pride ; if it means that in the ideal life the highest 
 place was to be given to a goodness of which love is 
 the supreme element, and in which the spiritual is 
 regarded as of much more importance than the carnal. 
 Nobody who does not acknowledge the truth of His 
 teaching on such fundamental points as this — nobody 
 (to put it more definitely) whose ideal does not include 
 the condemnation of adultery and fornication and 
 sensuality in thought, of drunkenness and every exces- 
 sive indulgence of appetite— is likely even to claim that 
 
The Principle of Development ' 201 
 
 his ethical ideal is a legitimate development of Christ's. 
 But neither His ideal nor His practice were world- 
 renouncing in the sense of despising and condemning 
 all ordinary human pleasure — still less in the extremer 
 sense of positively courting pain. He, as we have 
 already seen, neither practised nor enjoined fasting. 
 He spent much of His time and energy in curing 
 diseases of mind and body. He made little of bodily 
 pleasures and satisfactions in comparison with higher 
 things. But He never condemned them, or urged that 
 they should be given up except as a means to some- 
 thing higher — that something being, for His im- 
 mediate disciples, the preaching of the Kingdom of 
 Heaven and, for all, the effort to become fit for entrance 
 into that Kingdom. And that really implies that in 
 principle His ideal was not world-renouncing. There 
 is absolutely no idea or suggestion in His teaching of 
 self-renunciation for its own sake — of the ideal which 
 would extinguish all pleasure, all desire, all in- 
 dividuality. If in the exercise of our moral conscious- 
 ness we judge many things in life to be good of which 
 He knew little and thought little, it is a quite legitimate 
 extension and development of His teaching to include 
 these things in our conception of the good which the 
 rule of Universal Love bids us promote for others. 
 
 Indeed, it may, I think, be shown that the ascetic 
 view of life is logically inconsistent with the teaching 
 which makes the heart of Morality consist in love — 
 love as Jesus understood it. He certainly recognized 
 
202 Conscience and Christ 
 
 it as a duty to promote bodily health, and a certain 
 measure of enjoyment for others. His injunctions 
 to charity are constantly directed towards the satis- 
 faction of bodily wants, and no sober criticism can 
 well deny that He claimed to heal some kinds of 
 bodily disease by spiritual influence. If these things 
 are good for others, they must be good for myself also 
 — ^in due subordination to the claims of others : up to 
 that point therefore it cannot be wrong for me to enjoy 
 them myself. Nor is there any reason why, whether 
 for ourselves or for others, we should stop at precisely 
 that minimum of enjoyment which is represented by 
 a sufficiency of food and clothing. We cannot set up 
 a rule of unlimited giving or self-sacrifice for the sake 
 of others without raising the question : "To what 
 shall the energies of a community be devoted when 
 once food and clothing have been seciired to every- 
 one ? " If it is suggested that the rest of their energies 
 ought to be devoted to the promotion of righteousness, 
 it must be remembered that there is a limit to the 
 extent to which time can effectively be spent in the 
 promotion of righteousness. Too much zeal for 
 edification ceases to edify. Let us suppose that we 
 have secured a community in which nobody takes 
 more than his share of the lower goods, and in which, 
 so far, nobody is wanting in love. Is all the rest 
 of the time and energy of the community to be spent 
 in religioiis contemplation or spiritual exercises ? If 
 not, to what is their time to be devoted if not either 
 
The Principle of Development ' 203 
 
 to some increase of lower pleasures or enjoyments 
 above what is absolutely necessary for life and health, 
 or to such higher enjoyments as Science, Art, Litera- 
 ture, and the like ? Are we not then to include these 
 things in our conception of the ideal life ? 
 
 It might, indeed, be contended that from the 
 actual nature of things it is impossible that everyone 
 should enjoy more than a very moderate amount of 
 such higher goods as Art, Knowledge, Culture, and 
 that no one ought to get more of these things than is 
 possible for everyone. But, as a matter of fact, it is 
 quite impossible that all should enjoy even a moderate 
 amount of culture unless some men enjoy a much 
 higher amount. The scientific discoveries which all 
 may know of, and the scientific inventions which all 
 may use, have resulted from the labours of men who 
 have devoted the bulk of their time and energy to 
 Science. The books which all may read have been 
 written by men who have devoted their lives to reading 
 more, and thinking more, than those who read them. 
 The little insight into the nature of the Universe and 
 the Uttle enjoyment of beauty which are possible to 
 those who spend most of their days in manual labour, 
 come from the work of those who have spent most of 
 their time in intellectual or artistic pursuits. In this 
 way it may be shown that there is an inner contra- 
 diction in the position of those who, without denying 
 that some enjoyment of the best things is part of the 
 ideal life, would set very severe limits to that enjoy- 
 
204 Conscience and Christ 
 
 ment, and practically look askance upon any serious 
 devotion to artistic or scientific or literary pursuits 
 by anyone professing to accept the Christian ideal of 
 mutual service. The severer the Asceticism, the more 
 logical it becomes. Only when Asceticism becomes 
 severe, it becomes hopelessly irreconcilable with the 
 teaching and practice of Him whose example Chris- 
 tians profess to respect. If the Science which has 
 resulted in so much saving of pain to humanity is a 
 bad thing, why was it right for Jesus to go about 
 curing disease ? If a ball is in itself wrong (I am putting 
 aside for the present the question how much time and 
 money ought to be spent upon such enio3mients), 
 why not the simple village wedding feast ? If absti- 
 nence and the depression which it causes are really 
 better than the health and cheerfulness which springs 
 from moderate eating and drinldng, why did not 
 Jesus teach His disciples to fast as the disciples of 
 John and of the Pharisees fasted ? 
 
 After all, there is no arguing about these ultimate 
 judgements of value. Physical Science it is difficult to 
 condemn for anyone who shares the Christian ideal of 
 Brotherhood, on account of its practical appUcations : 
 but if anybody Hkes to say that the world would be 
 a better world if there were in it no drama, no novels, 
 no poetry except hymns, no music except hymn-tunes, 
 no Art except what is directly conducive to edification, 
 no learning beyond the bibHcal exegesis of the Sunday 
 School, no Philosophy which seriously faces ultimate 
 
The Principle of Development ■ 205 
 
 questions, he cannot be positively refuted. If this 
 be the result of appeal to the moral consciousness, 
 there is no more to be said. I can only say to my own 
 mind this is certainly not the case ; my own moral 
 consciousness unhesitatingly affirms that these things 
 are good ; and so does that of most modem men. The 
 austere religionists who even now are inclined to 
 depreciate all employments which do not minister to 
 the relief of strict bodily necessities on the one hand or 
 to immediate edification on the other, generally admit 
 so much of the modern view of life that they can be 
 convicted of intellectual inconsistency, or at least of 
 arbitrary limitations, if they refuse to go further. They 
 look with suspicion on the man of Science ; yet they 
 will travel in railway trains, and use telephones, and 
 regard it as a thoroughly religious task to secure the 
 best medical treatment for the sick. They cannot 
 quite get over the suspicion that there is something 
 profane and presumably godless about the occupation 
 of a Philosopher, or a researcher, or an Artist ; yet 
 they will hang photographs of the Artist's picture on 
 their walls, and, when the ideas of the Philosopher or 
 the discoveries of the researcher have filtered down 
 into school text-books, they will be heartily zealous 
 that children should read them. They condemn the 
 stage, but they will read Shakespeare at home — and so 
 forth. The most hopelessly inconsistent of all are the 
 religious people who do not condemn a very consider- 
 able indulgence in the lower good things of life, but 
 
2o6 Conscience and Christ 
 
 reserve all their asceticism for the higher intellectual 
 pursuits. Have we not known of rich bankers or wine- 
 merchants who spend their lives in ministering to the 
 luxuries of other rich persons and much of their profits 
 in luxury for themselves, but who would regard almost 
 as a lost soul a son who wanted to become a philosopher 
 or a scholar or a painter ? I have myself heard a clergy- 
 man speak about a brilliant school contemporary of his 
 who had remained all his life an Oxford don as one 
 would speak of a respectable man who had taken to 
 drink or otherwise gone to the bad. Had he gone to 
 the Bar and made a fortune, that would have been all 
 right : had he taken Orders and worked in the slums, 
 that would have been still better. Had he emerged 
 from the slums to become a Bishop, that would have 
 been best of all. But the work of a "mere scholar," 
 why, that was to make the worst of both worlds ! 
 
 Once again then, if we accept this modern view of 
 Morality, which after all by this time most Christian 
 people do accept, does it not imply that we are desert- 
 ing the teaching of Christ ? Most emphatically I 
 maintain that we are not — under two conditions, two 
 conditions which practically come to very much the 
 same thing : (i) In the first place, we must recognize 
 that these things, which we consider to be elements in 
 the true good for ourselves, are elements in the true 
 good for others also ; and that therefore it becomes a 
 Christian duty to promote them for others as well as 
 for ourselves — for the many as well as the few— for 
 
The Principle of Development ■ 207 
 
 other people, other classes, other races than our own. 
 Selfish, dilettante, anti-social iEstheticism is, indeed, 
 hopelessly at variance with the fundamental principle of 
 Christ's teaching. A specialized devotion of one's life 
 to Art or Science, to Literature or to learning, can only 
 be justified from the Christian point of view when in 
 some way or other the results of such a life-work are 
 shared by the community in general or some part of 
 it. For the Christian the intellectual or artistic life 
 must become a Ministry. (2) Secondly, even for our- 
 selves moral goodness must be put higher than intel- 
 lectual excellence of whatever kind. The view of life 
 which regards Art as a sort of optional alternative or 
 substitute for Religion and Morality — a view of which 
 there are traces in the language of many Philosophers 
 and other writers besides those who would seriously 
 maintain such a thesis — cannot by any ingenuity 
 whatever be represented as a legitimate development 
 of Christ's Morality. The Morality which I have 
 sketched — that is to say, the Morality practically 
 accepted by most cultivated Christians of the present 
 day — is not inconsistent with the fundamental prin- 
 ciples of Christ's teaching ; but it involves, and it 
 should be most fully recognized that it involves, a con- 
 siderable development of what actually was taught by 
 Christ Himself. 
 
 Christ's teaching was world-renouncing, if by that 
 is meant that He put universal human interests before 
 self and the spiritual above the carnal : and in that 
 
2o8 Conscience and Christ 
 
 sense Christian Morality must always be world- 
 renouncing. Christ's teaching was world-affirming in 
 so far as He held that there are many good things in life 
 which should not be renounced, but, on the contrary, 
 should be promoted for others as well as for ourselves. 
 In that sense there was for Him no incompatibility 
 between world-renunciation and world-affirmation. 
 Nor need there be for us, though we may recognize 
 the value of many things which are not explicitly recog- 
 nized in His actual ideal : and so long as we limit our 
 own enjoyment of these good things by the claims of 
 others to their due share in them. 
 
 No doubt when we turn from Christ's own teaching 
 to the Morality of the Christian Church in the past, 
 there is more truth in the contrast — more ground for 
 the complaint that Christian Morality has been world- 
 renouncing, in a sense in which ours is not and cannot 
 be. And yet, after all, this is by no means the whole 
 truth. Up to a certain point the actual development 
 of the Christian ideal has been towards an increasing 
 recognition of the value of many things in life from 
 which Christ's own immediate followers turned aside. 
 Those very complaints of the "acute secularizing" 
 of the Church in the post-apostolic age with which 
 Harnack has made us familiar, testify to the fact that 
 the development was not all in the direction of in- 
 creasing renunciation of things in the world which 
 were harmless or even desirable. Unless Harnack 
 is really prepared to say that all these things are 
 
The Principle of Development ^ 209 
 
 wrong (which it is impossible to suppose), it may be 
 doubted whether he is justified in speaking of such 
 "secularizing" as though it necessarily involved a 
 decline from the true Christian ideal, and whether he 
 ought not to regard it rather as an evidence of that 
 work of the Spirit in the Christian Society which the 
 fourth Gospel had foretold. Even St. Paul himself, 
 though his ideal was more affected than that of his 
 Master by the thought of the coming Parousia, found 
 that an excessive preoccupation with that thought, 
 an excessive devotion to talking, speculating, medi- 
 tating about spiritual things, militated against true 
 spirituality. He therefore laid down in a very emphatic 
 way the paramount duty of earning one's own living, 
 — and something more that we may have to give to 
 those who are in need.^ All the industrial virtues to 
 which Christianity has sometimes been supposed to be 
 indifferent are enjoined by implication in St. Paul's 
 precepts to the idle busybodies of Thessalonica. This 
 so-called secularizing of the Christian ideal may better 
 be described as a perfectly legitimate and indispensable 
 development of it. 
 
 The history of the first four Christian centuries is 
 to a large extent a record of the gradual absorption 
 into Christian life of what was best in pagan Literature, 
 Art, Philosophy, even Ethics and Theology. From 
 political life Christians were necessarily excluded, 
 though they had politics of their own within the Church 
 
 • 2 Thess. iii. 6-14 ; Rom. xii. 11 ; Eph. iv. 28. Of. i Tim. v. 13. 
 P 
 
210 Conscience and Christ 
 
 which afforded a sphere for great statesmen and 
 administrators and for much social activity of a 
 highly democratic kind. When the Christianization 
 of the Empire threw open political office to Chris- 
 tians, the work of Government came to be recog- 
 nized as a possible sphere of Christian service; and 
 much of what we may call the political morality 
 of the ancient world was embodied in the current 
 conceptions of Christian duty. Though the old 
 sharp distinction between the Church (now very 
 largely identified with the clergy and the monks) 
 and the world to a large extent survived, the mere 
 fact that the writings of Cicero were highly popular 
 with the Fathers, and the Ethics and PoUtics of 
 Aristotle with the Schoolmen, shows how much of 
 the ancient ideal of life was absorbed into the current 
 teaching of the Church. Hundreds of pages of St. 
 Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologica are little more than 
 a reduction to scholastic form of the Ethics of Aristotle. 
 The highest Ethics of the ancient world were, to use 
 Professor Gardner's happy expression, " baptized into 
 Christ " ; and that means that the ideal practically 
 accepted by the Christian world absorbed considerable 
 elements of the best pagan thought. Protestantism 
 has still more fully and unreservedly recognized all 
 kinds of public ofhce and all lay callings as possible 
 spheres for the exercise of the highest Christian 
 virtues. The very Theology of the Church represents 
 a fusion of ancient Philosophy with the Theology of 
 
The Principle of Development * 211 
 
 Judaism and the teaching of Jesus and His Apostles. 
 After a long struggle, pagan literature was accepted 
 as part of the training of Christian youth; and the 
 pretence that Grammar and Rhetoric were cultivated 
 only as conducive to the understanding of Holy Scrip- 
 ture was laid aside. In the later Middle Ages it is not 
 too much to say that the promotion of Culture was 
 recognized as one of the duties of the clergy — even of 
 the Friars, although there was still a disposition to 
 justify secular knowledge either (as in the case of Law 
 and Medicine) on account of its practical utility to the 
 commonwealth, or (in the case of liberal studies) to 
 regard them as in some way preparatory and con- 
 ducive to the all-important study of Theology. The 
 Renaissance led to a still further relaxation of the 
 ancient Christian austerity and a still further recog- 
 nition of Culture — even in the Catholicism of the 
 Counter-reformation, still more so in Protestantism. 
 
 But, of course, there was another side to this matter. 
 Side by side with this broadening and expansion in the 
 Christian conception of life — this absorption into it 
 of the best elements in the pagan world which it had 
 killed— there was a continuous narrowing of it ; an 
 increase of Asceticism, anti-intellectualism, other- 
 worldliness. The tendency began to assert itself very 
 early. Even the Apostolic Church never quite ac- 
 quiesced in Christ's refusal to enjoin fasting ; the 
 post-apostolic Church began to tamper with the text 
 of the New Testament to conceal the fact, although 
 
212 Conscience and Christ 
 
 even in the Pastoral Epistles it is recognized that 
 " bodily exercise [i.e. Asceticism] profiteth little."^ The 
 severer Asceticism was at first a characteristic rather 
 of heresy than of the Church. But even within the 
 Church there was an increasing tendency both toward 
 Asceticism in its ordinary sense and towards the 
 devotion of life to religious observances and religious 
 contemplation. And this gradually hardened into 
 Monasticism. It is important to note that the 
 tendency to exalt contemplation, asceticism, and 
 celibacy was a tendency of the times by no means 
 peculiar to Christianity. Neo-platonism had more 
 to do with it than the teaching of Jesus or of His 
 Apostles. It is not improbable that definite Monasticism 
 was an imitation of paganism. And the introduction 
 of Monasticism implies that the coUision between the 
 two kinds of development which we have seen going 
 on in the Christian Church has now become so marked 
 that the Church has split up into two sections. 
 There is now an increased toleration of " worldly " 
 pursuits, amusements, culture for the many ; while 
 the renunciation of these things which is demanded 
 of the few — of those who aim at a perfect fulfilment of 
 the Christian ideal — has become more extreme. More- 
 over, the doctrine of original sin and the whole system 
 of thought which is associated with it — the idea that 
 the world is wholly under the dominion of the wicked 
 one — though its influence has, I think, been exag- 
 * I Tim. iv. 8. Some translate " for a little time." 
 
The Principle of Development * 213 
 
 gerated, undoubtedly deepened the cleavage between 
 those ideals of life which we commonly associate with 
 the ancient Greeks and the ideal which was set before 
 Christians. Thus there was a tendency all through 
 the patristic and medieval periods to an ideal of 
 life which was gloomy, austere, intensely other- 
 worldly. Even in the austerest Religionists of these 
 periods there are, indeed, to be found many sayings 
 and ideas which are quite inconsistent with the view 
 that the world lay under a curse, that all its good 
 things were created by God simply to give men the 
 opportunity of earning merit by renouncing them. 
 St. Augustine admits that there is some good in all 
 that exists. The patristic writings — those of St. 
 Chrysostom, for instance — show an appreciation of 
 the beauty of Nature of a kind which we are accus- 
 tomed to think of as peculiarly modern, and which 
 we certainly should find it hard to parallel in the 
 classical writers of Antiquity. The doctrine of original 
 sin in its Augustinian form was not universally held, 
 nor the view of the Universe which was associated 
 with it. 
 
 Ascetic as they are in their attitude towards all 
 bodily pleasures, there is no anti-intellectualism in the 
 great Alexandrians, Clement and Origen ; and in 
 the Greek Church generally there was much less of it 
 than in the West. On the whole even the Latins do 
 not condemn intellectual activities, though their 
 attitude towards the pagan classics was hesitating and 
 
214 Conscience and Christ 
 
 uncertain. Art, too, was never condemned (except in 
 so far as it involved Idolatry), though it was largely 
 consecrated to the service of Religion. Immense 
 qualifications must be introduced before the epithet 
 " world-renouncing " can be accepted as a true 
 account even of the patristic and medieval ideals. 
 On the whole, however, it must be admitted that the 
 ideal of other-worldliness — the ideal which made it 
 the chief object of the present life to escape the pains 
 of Hell and to win the joys of Heaven largely by the 
 renunciation of all joy in the present — does represent 
 the predominant tone both of the later patristic and 
 of the medieval Church. 
 
 And it is true also (as has recently been contended 
 by Professor Troeltsch) that Protestantism— as judged 
 by its formal expressions, by its of&cial professions, 
 and by the vein of sentiment prevalent in some of its 
 religious circles — has not wholly thrown off this other- 
 worldliness. By aboUshing purgatory, by the em- 
 phasis which it laid on the Augustinian doctrines of 
 election and arbitrary decrees, by withdrawing to 
 a great extent the encouragement which medieval 
 Christianity practically conceded to Art under cover 
 of an often merely nominal enlistment of it in the 
 service of Religion, it has even in some ways em- 
 phasized the austerity of the ecclesiastical ideal, and 
 diminished the joy of human existence. On the other 
 hand, in other ways it has enormously mitigated the 
 antagonism between ecclesiastical Christianity and 
 
The Principle of Development ' 215 
 
 the best elements of the old Hellenic ideal in more, 
 and more direct, ways, I think, than Troeltsch is dis- 
 posed to admit. Protestantism has never favoured 
 the more extreme kinds of Asceticism. Its doctrine 
 of salvation by faith only, anti-moral as its tendency 
 has often been, did at least put a stop to all devices 
 for winning Heaven or escaping Hell by self-torture 
 or mere ecclesiastical observance. It abolished the 
 hard-and-fast distinction between the religious and 
 the secular life, and discouraged all monastic with- 
 drawal from the world. It peremptorily refused to 
 recognize any moral superiority in the celibate life. 
 It has always acknowledged, fully and ungrudgingly, 
 the possibility of leading the most religious life in the 
 most secular callings. If the clergy of Protestantism 
 have sometimes claimed a control over life which, if 
 conceded, would have been injurious to liberty and 
 intellectual progress, they have claimed it rather as 
 exponents and interpreters of a divine law, than as 
 having any jus divinum to rule men's consciences : 
 and consequently Protestant pastors have seldom been 
 able effectively to exercise this control except where 
 they have really represented the moral consciousness 
 of the community for the time being. 
 
 It is possible, of course, to suggest (as has been done 
 by Professor Troeltsch) that the contribution of 
 Protestantism to intellectual progress and emancipa- 
 tion has been due rather to its accidental association 
 with the Renaissance than to its own official prin- 
 
2i6 Conscience and Christ 
 
 ciples. But the Renaissance had so large a share in 
 producing Protestantism that it becomes a very 
 speculative enquiry to ask how much was due to 
 Protestantism, and how much to the Renaissance. 
 Protestantism without the Renaissance is a mere 
 abstraction. Protestantism without the Renaissance 
 would certainly not be the Protestantism that we 
 know. Doubtless there was from the first an inherent 
 inconsistency between some of the ideas which Protes- 
 tantism took over from medieval Catholicism and other 
 ideas which it owed to the New Learning, or to that 
 New Testament which the New Learning had given 
 back to the Church. And the change which has taken 
 place in the ethical development of Protestantism 
 since the days of the Reformers and of the Puritan 
 Revolution in England may be said to be due to a 
 gradual triumph of the Renaissance-element in Protes- 
 tantism over its medieval element. But, whether we 
 put it down to a direct or to an indirect effect of 
 Protestantism, there can be no doubt that the ideal 
 which most modern Christians in their hearts accept 
 does involve a very considerable departure from the 
 ideals either of the Middle Ages or of early Protestant- 
 ism. There is then a certain, but only a certain, 
 measure of truth in the now somewhat hackneyed 
 assertion that Christianity in the past has been " world- 
 renouncing," while, in the form in which most modern 
 Christians accept it, it has become " world-affirming." 
 Of course, it may be contended that, in so far as this 
 
The Principle of Development ' 217 
 
 is so, modern Christianity is wrong. There are people 
 who will be prepared to contend that the world- 
 renouncing medieval ideal was right, that it alone is 
 faithful to the spirit of the Master's teaching, and that, 
 if it differed in any way from that teaching, it was the 
 legitimate development of it. This view is sufficiently 
 often asserted — sometimes in real earnest, more often, 
 I think, in a spirit of sentimental admiration for a past 
 which the critics know cannot be revived and have no 
 intention of imitating even at a discreet distance — to 
 make it worth while for us seriously to ask ourselves 
 whether we are really prepared to accept this world- 
 renouncing interpretation of Christianity. Few, I sup- 
 pose, will quarrel with my taking the " Imitatio Christi" 
 as a representative of the old medieval ideal on its 
 monastic and world-renouncing side. It is by no means 
 an extreme representation of that ideal. It emanates 
 from that religious movement of the later Middle Age 
 in Germany and the Low Countries which was largely 
 a movement towards a more spiritual Christianity, and 
 which culminated in the Reformation. There is in it 
 little advocacy of austerities. It is full of moral 
 maxims which go straight home to the most modern 
 conscience — maxims about the control of temper, 
 charity towards individuals, abstinence from severe 
 judgements of others, patience, humility, self-examina- 
 tion, penitence. But most of us do not really think 
 that the highest kind of life is to renounce all liberty or 
 responsibility for one's own acts, to be under complete 
 
2i8 Conscience and Christ 
 
 obedience to another human being, to be alone and 
 in a cell for as many hours a day as possible, and to 
 occupy nearly the whole day in religious services, prayer, 
 or meditation. The main theme of the "Imitatio" 
 is the disparagement of all worldly affairs, of business 
 as well as pleasure, of all secular joys, of all secular 
 learning and literature — even of sacred learning 
 beyond what is absolutely required for instructing the 
 individual soul how to get to heaven. There is singu- 
 larly little about works of charity or philanthropy 
 even in their most conventional forms, or about being 
 useful to other people even in the most directly 
 spiritual ways. We do, indeed, know that Thomas 
 a Kempis sometimes preached and taught ; and the 
 mere fact that he wrote his reflections down for the 
 benefit of others shows that he was by no means an idle 
 or useless or spiritually selfish person. But even this 
 measure of altruistic work seems almost a deviation 
 from the ideal which he sets before his readers. Most 
 modern Christians outside the Roman Catholic Church 
 and many of those within it would regard the ideal of 
 Thomas a Kempis, taken seriously and literally, as at 
 the best a very one-sided ideal. Even those who would 
 defend it as an ideal life for some persons would wholly 
 refuse to follow him in condemning or at least dis- 
 paraging, as he would actually have done, the Ufe of 
 the politician, of the lawyer, the merchant, the crafts- 
 man, the scholar, the artist. If we do reject it, we 
 have to admit that the ideal of modern Christianity 
 
The Principle of Development 219 
 
 is not the same as that of the Middle Ages. The 
 "Imitatio" does, indeed, represent only one of the 
 numerous ideals which express themselves in the life of 
 the patristic and the medieval Church. It is far more 
 world-renouncing, for instance, than the vigorous and 
 highly intellectual ideal of St. Thomas Aquinas. But 
 it does represent a type of life which it has been the 
 general tendency of the Christianity of the past to 
 put highest. There is, as I have so often said, no 
 arguing about ultimate ideals. I can only say that 
 most of our contemporaries — most of the very best 
 men in instructed Christian circles — do fully recognize 
 the value in different degrees of many things which 
 Thomas a Kempis treats as contemptible vanities. 
 And I believe that the modern world is right. A 
 development has taken place, and a development in 
 which I for one am prepared to recognize the work of 
 God's Spirit. In so far as the austere religionists are 
 still disposed to the disparagement of Art and Science 
 and Literature and Learning, I believe them to be 
 wrong, and I recognize the necessity for a still further 
 development of the Christian ideal in this direction. 
 
 But in this development are we moving further and 
 further away from the Christianity of Christ ? Most 
 emphatically I believe we are not. The ideal of 
 Thomas a Kempis was very unlike the ideal of Jesus — 
 much more so than the ideal of the best modern 
 Christianity. The view of God's character which 
 Christ taught was quite unlike that of those who made 
 
220 Conscience and Christ 
 
 all life an anxious striving to escape from Hell. The 
 idea of God's Fatherhood is scarcely to be detected in 
 the meditations of Thomas a Kempis. The God of 
 Jesus promised forgiveness of sins on the one condition 
 of sincere repentance : a life of solitary meditation — 
 to say nothing of self-torture — was not required as 
 the price of forgiveness. The Christ of whom we hear 
 so much in the " Imitatio " has not very much in 
 common with the Christ of the Gospels. The historical 
 Christ did not live in a cell, but did go about doing good. 
 That solitary, world-renouncing absorption in one's 
 own soul which commended itself to Thomas a Kempis 
 would have seemed to Him mere selfishness, and not 
 at all the way to enter the Kingdom. 
 
 It will no doubt be thought by some that the element 
 of Christ's teaching which we have left standing, if 
 we fully accept this principle of Development, is a 
 very small one. It comes, it may be said, to little 
 more than this — that Morality consists in the unsel- 
 fish pursuit of the good for all men, and in the recog- 
 nition of the supreme value of moral goodness as the 
 highest and most important element of that good. 
 And that, it may be urged, is a very small element in 
 a moral system — one which might be equally accepted 
 by those who in practice would adopt very different 
 maxims of conduct and recognize very different ideals 
 of life. I should reply. Yes, if you compare the sheer 
 bulk of these precepts with the mass of detailed rules 
 which are required in practice for the guidance of our 
 
The Principle of Development . 221 
 
 complicated modern life, their bulk is, indeed, small ; 
 but ethically speaking it is the one thing needful. And 
 no one has ever taught this supremely important 
 truth with the same clearness, consistency, and force 
 as Jesus, or illustrated it so forcibly by the whole of 
 the life and character. And, therefore, in spite of all 
 the enormous development which has taken place in 
 the past, and which doubtless will take place in the 
 future in our conception of the good in detail, and in 
 the rules which we recognize as necessary to the 
 promotion of it, those who accept this principle of 
 universal love as the supreme and all-important ethical 
 command — with all the corollaries and implications of 
 it taught by none so penetratingly as by Him — are 
 true disciples of Christ. And, in so far as the modern 
 Church is getting rid of so many elements of the eccle- 
 siastical ideal which were inconsistent with this 
 supreme principle, we may claim that it is only going 
 back to Christ — to the very heart of Christ's own 
 teaching. From one point of view the difference 
 between the moral standard (say) of the Middle Age 
 and that of the best modern Christianity is undoubtedly 
 a development which owes much to other sources than 
 the actual teaching of Christ and His Apostles — the 
 teaching of ancient Greece and Rome, of the Renais- 
 sance, of modern teachers and modern movements 
 which have not been avowedly and at all points 
 Christian ; but from another point of view it has been 
 a real return to the Christianity of Christ. In its 
 
222 Conscience and Christ 
 
 broader philanthropy, in its tolerance, in the rejection 
 of immoral devices for getting rid of punishment 
 without getting rid of sin, in the more systematic 
 effort not merely to cure existing evils, but to prevent 
 their recurrence, in the attempt to remould all social 
 life in accordance with the ideal of human brother- 
 hood—in the Christianity which recognizes these 
 things as part of the Christian ideal, however Uttle 
 as yet they form part of average Christian practice, we 
 may recognize that there has really been a return 
 to the spirit of the Master's teaching even when these 
 things involve much development of the letter. There 
 is more of the spirit of Christ in the modern ideal than 
 there was in the teaching of St. Augustine or of Thomas 
 a Kempis. 
 
 And here I should like to guard against two possible 
 misunderstandings of what I have said. In the first 
 place do not suppose for one moment that I am at- 
 tempting to represent that all the current modem 
 ideals are in harmony with a legitimate development 
 of Christ's own ideal. It is, indeed, an absurdity to 
 talk as though there was only one ideal of MoraUty in 
 existence at any one time or place. It is absurd to do 
 this in regard to the patristic age or the medieval period, 
 although at that time all the competing ideals pro- 
 fessed at least to be Christian. It is a still greater 
 absurdity at the present day to speak as though there 
 were one single ideal of life which we can call essentially 
 the modern view whether within the limits of professed 
 
The Principle of Development ^ 223 
 
 Christianity or outside it. And some of our modern 
 ideals I do not attempt to represent as Christian at all. 
 More and more in fact the real battleground between 
 the Church and its foes will turn, I believe, on this 
 question of the moral ideal : more and more the 
 theological differences themselves will be such as 
 directly flow from the ethical differences. Of those 
 who seriously accept the Christian ideal of self-sacrifice 
 for the common good and whose conception of that 
 good is not mere indulgence of the flesh, we can say 
 that, inasmuch as they are not against us they are for 
 us — even though they may not always follow with us 
 on theological matters. Nietzsche's ideal of pure 
 selfishness ; the ideals of Mr. H. G. Wells in the 
 matter of sexual relations ; the exaltation of aesthetic 
 culture above humanity and charity to which there is 
 at least a strong tendency in many quarters ; the 
 defence of unlimited, cruel, relentless competition 
 which sometimes (quite illogically I venture to think) 
 attempts to ground itself on the Darwinian survival 
 of the fittest — these and many other current moralities 
 or immoralities can never be " baptized into Christ." ^ 
 There is a sense in which we may justly say that the 
 modern Christian ideal " accepts " or " affirms " the 
 world, but not the world just as it stands with all its 
 commonplace, conventional moralities and its still 
 
 • I might add now the international Immoralism of Treitschke 
 and Bemhardi, more or less sanctioned by not a few German 
 Theologians, Roman Catholic, Liberal, and Orthodox Protestant. 
 
224 Conscience and Christ 
 
 lower practice. There is still and always will be a 
 " world " which the Christian has got to renounce, as 
 remorselessly as ever. 
 
 Secondly, it must not be supposed that in what I 
 have said as to the return of the modern Church to the 
 ideal of Christ Himself, I am attempting to defend the 
 version of the Christian ideal which is often accepted 
 even in professedly religious communities and circles 
 as one which is really in accordance with the ideas of 
 Christ. The most that I have ventured to claim for 
 the ideal which modern Christians acknowledge is 
 that we have made a beginning towards a return to 
 the true spirit of Jesus. If there is one thing which can 
 be claimed as a definite discovery of modern Chris- 
 tianity, as a really new idea in Christian Ethics, it is 
 this — that we have got not merely to remedy social 
 evils when they have once arisen, but to take measures 
 against their arising. The great defect of the Chris- 
 tian ideal as it has commonly been understood in all 
 past times, whether we think of the ApostoHc Church, 
 of the patristic Church, of medieval Christendom, or 
 of modern Protestantism, is this — that Christian 
 Charity has contented itself far too much with curing 
 sin, with relieving suffering, with removing injustices, 
 with mitigating poverty, instead of trying so syste- 
 matically to organize human society that suffering and 
 injustice shall, as far as possible, not arise, and that 
 undeserved poverty shall altogether cease. We have 
 only just begun to recognize this as the true aim of 
 
The Principle of Development * 225 
 
 Christian morality : how much remains to be altered 
 in our ordinary manner of living, in our ordinary 
 standards of comfort and expenditure, in our ordinary 
 manner of doing business, in the manners and view of 
 life which are practically received and acted upon by 
 most religious people, I must forbear to estimate. I 
 will only insist that the change that seems to be called 
 for is very great and far-reaching. There may be many 
 different opinions as to the way in which human 
 society ought to be reorganized so as to realize the 
 closest possible approximation to Christ's ideal of a 
 society in which all men treat each other as brothers. 
 That such a reorganization is required, and that 
 Christians are bound to strive for it, is a matter about 
 which there ought to be no doubt or difference of 
 opinion among Christians. We have not the excuses 
 which Christians of past ages could plead for neglect- 
 ing this side of Christian Ethics. We do not believe 
 that in consequence of the first man's sin the world has 
 been given over to the dominion of the devil. We do 
 not believe that human nature has been so deeply 
 corrupted that no trace of the divine image is left in it ; 
 we do not believe that the world is just on the point 
 of coming to an end, so that there is no use in trying 
 to make things better for those who come after us ; 
 we do not believe that in moderation the pleasure and 
 enjoyment in which rich people indulge — still less 
 their education and their intellectual activities — are 
 so hopelessly vile and contemptible that it would be 
 Q 
 
226 Conscience and Christ 
 
 positively wrong to try and extend them in some 
 measure to the poor. And therefore, whatever the 
 spirit of Christ may have prescribed to those who did 
 entertain these beUefs, that same spirit prescribes a 
 very different course to ourselves. And, whatever 
 view we may hold as to the proper means of social 
 regeneration, one thing is certain. It is simply im- 
 possible that the poor can ever be made even a 
 little richer without the rich being made, whether 
 by legislation or by their own voluntary action, a good 
 deal poorer. And therefore it must not be supposed 
 that the modern interpretation of Christ's ideal will 
 ever cease to include the element of self-sacrifice. Self- 
 inflicted pain, pain for its own sake, is no part of 
 Christ's ideal : self-sacrifice for the sake of others — as 
 a means to social good — represents the very central 
 idea of all Morality ; and it is just because it does 
 assert the supreme value and necessity of this self- 
 sacrifice for the good of all in a way that no other 
 historical religion has done, that Christ's ideal main- 
 tains its identity through all the inevitable and legiti- 
 mate developments in detail which it has undergone ; 
 that it is still the ideal which the modern world wants, 
 and which all that is best in the modern world con- 
 sciously or unconsciously acknowledges. 
 
ADDITIONAL NOTE ON CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN 
 THE APOSTOLIC WRITINGS 
 
 In a more extended course the natural sequel of Lecture V 
 would be a lecture, or several lectures, on the Ethics of the 
 New Testament outside the actual teaching of Christ, but 
 to attempt such a task with any thoroughness would carry 
 me beyond the hmits prescribed by the scheme of these 
 lectures ; and if all the New Testament writings were to be 
 included, it would be difificult to avoid extending the 
 enquiry some way into the early history of the Church, for 
 the latest New Testament writings are possibly later than 
 some uncanonical writings. In lieu of any such systematic 
 treatment, I will endeavour to exhibit in very brief outline 
 the chief lines of development which Christian Ethics 
 underwent in the hands of the most important New 
 Testament writers. 
 
 (i) St. Paul was probably the first fully to grasp the 
 Universalism implied in the teaching of our Lord Himself, 
 and formally to proclaim that the Jewish ceremonial law 
 was not binding on Gentiles ; though the way for his work 
 was largely prepared for him by St. Stephen (Acts vii.), and 
 the men of Cyprus and Cyrene who for the first time 
 preached Christianity to Gentiles at Antioch (Acts viii. 4 ; 
 xi. 20). St. Paul seems personally to have observed the 
 Law, but to have done so rather as a matter of expediency 
 and national custom than as a matter of strict moral 
 obUgation. He refused to observe the letter of the law, 
 or at least the rabbinical amplification of it, in so far as 
 
 227 
 
228 Conscience and Christ 
 
 that forbade social and religious intercourse with Gentiles. 
 This principle is fully accepted by all the other New 
 Testament writings, where they expHcitly touch upon the 
 subject. This Universalism is especially prominent in the 
 Johannine writings, which (whoever was their author) are 
 assuredly not independent of Pauline influence. 
 
 (2) The distinction thus effected between the moral and 
 the ceremonial law made it possible for the Apostles to 
 assert the essential principles of our Lord's teaching — the 
 inclusion of all Morality in the duty of brotherly love — in 
 an absolutely expHcit way. " Owe no man anything, save 
 to love one another : for he that loveth his neighbour 
 hath fulfilled the law. For this, Thou shalt not commit 
 adultery. Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not steal, 
 Thou shalt not covet, and if there be any other command- 
 ment, it is summed up in this word, namely. Thou shalt 
 love thy neighbour as thyself " (Rom. xiii. 8, 9 ; cf. 
 also Gal. v. 14). In the same spirit love is recognized 
 as superior in intrinsic value to all other personal qualities, 
 even to spiritual gifts of the highest value, even to Faith 
 and to Hope : " but the greatest of these is Charity " 
 (i Cor. xiii. 13). Completely consonant with this is the 
 teaching of the Johannine writings. " This is the message 
 which ye heard from the beginning, that we should love 
 one another " (i John iii. 11). " He that loveth not 
 knoweth not God ; for God is love " (i John iv. 8). The 
 whole of the first Epistle is a magnificent embodiment of 
 the inmost essence of Christ's own teaching. 1 The Epistle 
 of St. James has been supposed to have a Jewish tone 
 about it, but nowhere is the supremacy and all-inclusive- 
 ness of the command " Thou shalt love thy neighbour as 
 
 • The same may be said of many portions of the fourth Gospel, 
 even where the sayings cannot be treated as actual records of the 
 Master's teaching. 
 
The Apostolic Teaching , 229 
 
 thyself " more fully recognized (James ii.). Cf. i Peter 
 i. 22, iii. 8, iv. 8 ; Heb. xiii. i. 
 
 (3) Those special virtues and duties which, though they 
 may in a sense be regarded as all embraced in Love (since 
 they all contribute to the true good of Humanity), are not 
 obviously coincident with mere kindness, are enforced 
 with more detail than in the teaching of our Lord. The 
 necessity for such enforcement naturally arose with the 
 growth of organized Christian communities, especially of 
 Gentile communities in which ordinary Jewish moral ideas 
 could not be taken for granted. In particular it became 
 necessary to insist emphatically on abstinence from various 
 sins of the flesh, from drunkenness and revelling, and from 
 " filthy talking" (Rom. xiii. 13 ; i Cor. v., vi. g-20 ; Eph. iv. 
 19, 29 ; V. 3-12 ; I Thess. iv. 3-8 ; i Peter ii. 11, 12 ; iv. 
 1-7). There is for the most part nothing in this teaching 
 which goes beyond ordinary Jewish ideals, except that our 
 Lord's teaching about the permanence of marriage is pre- 
 supposed wherever the subject is touched upon. The 
 doctrine of love is further developed and applied to the 
 details of personal conduct with far greater minuteness 
 than is the case in the teaching of Christ, who could pre- 
 suppose the ordinary Jewish Morality, and who aimed 
 chiefly at arousing conscience and insisting upon a few 
 great principles, especially those not generally recognized. 
 Thus we get in St. Paul long lists of virtues or qualities 
 which may be said to be closely akin to love, and of the 
 vices which are opposed to it. See Rom. i. 28-31 ; xii. 
 9-19 ; Gal. V. 16-26 ; Col. iii. 5-14. 
 
 Among the virtues specially insisted upon are Veracity 
 and Humility. Both of these are based upon the principle 
 of Love. " Wherefore, putting away falsehood, speak ye 
 truth each one with his neighbour ; for we are members 
 one of another " (Eph. iv. 25 ; cf. Col. iii. 9). " In love of 
 
230 Conscience and Christ 
 
 the brethren be tenderly affectioned one to another, in 
 honour preferring one another " (Rom. xii. lo ; cf. Phil, 
 ii. 3, 4 ; i Peter v. 5 ; James iv. 6). In various other 
 directions the duty of love is translated into distinct 
 precepts. In all the Apostolic writings there is a strong 
 insistence upon the duty of Almsgiving, which was made 
 particularly necessary by the circumstances of the early 
 Christian Church at Jerusalem and by the prevalence of 
 petty persecution : the organization of Charity was one 
 main function of the Christian communities and their 
 leaders (Rom. xii. 8; i Cor. ix., xvi. ; 2 Cor. viii., ix., xi. 8, 9). 
 The expectation of the Parousia and the reliance upon 
 extensive Charity from the Church made it necessary to 
 insist with peculiar emphasis on the duty of all to work for 
 the support of themselves and their families (Eph. iv. 28 ; 
 I Thess. iv. 11 ; 2 Thess. iii. 10-12). 
 
 (4) The circumstances of the early Church raised various 
 questions of Casuistry, which demanded exphcit solution 
 for the guidance both of individual Christians and of the 
 Christian Communities and their rulers. Of these the 
 most important were the question of meats offered to idols 
 (Rom. xiv. 14 ; i Cor. viii., x.) ; intermarriage with the 
 heathen (i Cor. vii. 12-17 ; 2 Cor. vi. 14-18) ; the marital 
 relations of Christians (i Cor. vii. 3-5) ; divorce (i Cor. 
 vii. 39). It will be generally admitted that the decisions 
 of St. Paul were on the whole entirely in accordance with 
 the dictates of Christian common sense. As to divorce 
 (i Cor. vii. 39) St. Paul seems to forbid remarriage on the 
 part of the wife, apparently even if divorced by her husband: 
 he does not deal with the parallel case of the husband, nor 
 explicitly with the question of divorce in the case of 
 adultery. In one matter he defines a point which his 
 Master had naturally not defined ; he allows a husband 
 or wife converted from heathenism, whose partner 
 
The Apostolic Teaching ^ 231 
 
 refuses to continue the co-habitation, freedom to de- 
 part, and apparently to marry again. And this is the 
 principle upon which the Christian Church has always 
 acted, so far as the dissolution of the heathen mar- 
 riage is recognized by the civil law of the country 
 (i Cor. vii. 15). 
 
 (5) The organization of the Christian Churches called 
 for the enforcement upon Christians of a number of new 
 duties — duties of attendance at public worship and 
 perseverance in Christian devotion, public and private 
 (Col. iii. 16) ; proper behaviour at the love-feasts and 
 other rehgious gatherings (i Cor. xi., xii., xiv.) ; good 
 government on the part of rulers, obedience to ecclesiastical 
 authority on the part of those ruled (i Cor. xvi. 15-18 ; 
 I Thess. V. 12) ; the promotion of internal harmony and 
 the avoidance of quarrelling or litigation among fellow- 
 Christians and of party spirit (Rom. xii. 17-19 ; i Cor. i. 
 10-12 ; vi. 1-8 ; 2 Cor. xii. ig-21 ; Phil. ii. 1-3 ; Col. iii. 12, 
 13) ; zealous performance of various functions in connexion 
 with the spiritual as well as the charitable work of the 
 community (Rom. xii. ; i Cor. xii., xiv.) ; a combination of 
 severity with mercy in the exercise of discipline by rulers 
 and communities (i Cor. v. ; 2 Cor. vii., xiii. ; 2 Thess. 
 iii. 6) ; hospitality to fellow-Christians (Rom. xii. 13) ; 
 the duty of supporting those who devote themselves to 
 Apostolic work, though St. Paul personally dechned to 
 avail himself of such support (i Cor. ix.). The exact 
 degree of value — temporary or permanent — which we 
 ought to recognize in aU these regulations would involve a 
 treatise upon the Church, its functions, and its organization. 
 Suffice it to say that anyone who recognizes the absolute 
 necessity of ecclesiastical organization for the carrying 
 out of Christ's work and the diffusion of His principles 
 throughout the world must admit the necessity of some 
 
2^2 Conscience and Christ 
 
 such rules ; and few will be disposed to deny that on the 
 whole the precepts of St. Paul and the other Apostolic 
 writers on this head do represent a thoroughly legitimate 
 application to the circumstances of the early Christian 
 communities of the fundamental ideas of our Lord's own 
 ethical teaching. The obUgation to obey such rules is 
 based upon the principle of mutual Love, which carries 
 with it the duty of co-operating with others, of sub- 
 ordinating individual interests and inclinations, and even 
 to some extent private judgement in matters of unessential 
 detail, for the good of the Christian community and the 
 extension of its work among " those that are without." 
 The chief point on which exception might be taken to St. 
 Paul's actual rulings is his treatment of the position of 
 women in the Church Association (i Cor. xiv. 34-36). 
 This is a point on which the Christian world is still divided ; 
 but few will dispute the wisdom for St. Paul and the Church 
 of his day in deferring to the general sentiment of their 
 time. 
 
 (6) Another department of duty which called for more 
 explicit treatment than was required in our Lord's own 
 teaching was that of obedience to the State. This is 
 enforced by St. Paul and by the author of i Peter in a 
 way which was no doubt demanded by the circumstances 
 of the time, however unfortunate the precedent they have 
 supphed for doctrines of " divine right " and absolute 
 non-resistance in later ages (Rom. xiii. 1-7). The principle 
 that the State, according to the true idea of it — even a 
 non-Christian State — is a minister of God for good to its 
 subjects, may be regarded as a new ethical principle of 
 enduring value (cf. i Peter ii. 13-17). 
 
 (7) Patient endurance of suffering is one of the duties 
 which the circumstances of the first Christians obviously 
 called upon their teachers to enforce. It is frequently 
 
The Apostolic Teaching . 233 
 
 insisted on in all the Epistles, and is the main subject of 
 the first Epistle ascribed to St. Peter. Since effective 
 resistance to the State was for the first Christians whoUy 
 out of the question, and would have been absolutely 
 fatal to the progress of the Christian faith, it cannot be 
 said that there is undue insistence upon the idea of passive 
 submission. The prominence of such exhortations in the 
 Epistles has no doubt sometimes suggested a too passive 
 interpretation of the Christian ideal ; but this tendency 
 has been chiefly theoretical except when the abuse of 
 these passages suited the purpose of a political or ecclesias- 
 tical party. 
 
 (8) Another kind of development is to be found in the 
 application of general principles of Christian conduct to 
 the various special relations of life. St. Paul in particular 
 insists on the mutual obligations of husband and wife 
 (Eph. V. 22-33 ; Col. iii. 18, 19 ; i Peter iii. 1-7), of parents 
 and children (Eph. vi. 1-4 ; Col. iii. 20, 21) ; of master 
 and slave (i Cor. vii. 21-24 '< Eph. vi. 5-9 ; Col. iii. 22-25 ! 
 I Peter ii. 18-20). The details of these duties are conceived 
 of in accordance with the best ideas of the time alike among 
 Jews and Gentiles ; but a new spirit is infused into them 
 by the prominence which Christian teaching gave to Love 
 and mutual goodwill in all the relations of life. This is 
 especially prominent in the case of the mutual obUgations 
 of slave and slave-master. There is of course no opposition 
 to the institution of slavery in itself. It required a thousand 
 or eighteen hundred years more of development before 
 anything of the kind became possible. But the principles 
 laid down by St. Paul contain in themselves, if duly carried 
 out, the condemnation of the whole institution. Doubtless 
 St. Paul never contemplated that they would have that 
 effect ; but, if he had done so, the course which he took 
 would still have been regarded by wise men as the only 
 
234 Conscience and Christ 
 
 one immediately practicable — to lay down moral principles 
 and leave the political applications to the future. The only 
 point of immediate application on which a modern Christian 
 would be likely to differ from him would be in his advice 
 to the slave to remain a slave if he had the opportunity of 
 being free ; but it is not certain that his " Use it rather " 
 {jxaXkov xPV'^°-h I Cor. vii. 21) does not mean " Avail 
 yourselves of the opportunity." 
 
 So far we may, I think, recognize the ethical teaching of 
 the Epistles as a legitimate development of our Lord's 
 actual teaching, and as supplying a type and pattern for 
 the kind of development which must always be going on 
 if the Christian spirit is to be appUed to the needs of widely 
 different ages and countries, and if what is true and noble 
 in other ethical ideals and systems is to be accepted and 
 brought into its proper relation with those fundamental 
 Christian ideas. But it would be too much to say that the 
 spirit of the Apostolic and Sub-apostolic age was altogether 
 after the mind of Christ, or represents in every respect a 
 model for our own imitation. It may be well briefly to 
 notice the points on which some reservation is necessary : 
 
 (i) There is something in the spirit of the Apocalypse 
 which may be thought Jewish rather than Christian. The 
 book is probably based upon an old Jewish Apocalypse, 
 or rather many Apocalypses, edited by a Christian hand 
 or hands ; but the editing — whoever was responsible for it 
 — is hardly sufficient to warrant its use as an authority 
 for Christian conduct. It exhibits a certain ferocity 
 towards heathen persecutors, but it does not contain 
 much in the way of ethical precept. We know too little 
 of the errors denounced in the Epistles to the Churches 
 to be able to judge how far they were merely theological 
 mistakes or how far they involved a moral laxity which 
 
The Apostolic Teaching , 235 
 
 justified strong denunciation. To a considerable extent 
 it is probable that this last was the case. 
 
 (2) The expectation of the Parousia narrowed the 
 Christian outlook upon life. For the most part the 
 ethical deficiencies which it brought with it were negative. 
 Men expecting a catastrophic judgement of the world 
 in a few years' time were not likely to attach their true 
 value to Art, Knowledge, schemes of widely expanded 
 and gradual social improvement (such a limitation, by the 
 way, is almost equally characteristic of the best philo- 
 sophic Ethics of the time) . It involved almost inevitably 
 (though not perhaps logically) some tendency to other- 
 worldliness — ^though the extent of this may very easily 
 be exaggerated. The temptations which it brought with 
 it to idleness, undue religious excitement, neglect of 
 family obligations and the Uke were fully appreciated 
 and corrected by the Apostolic leaders themselves (see 
 especially i Thess. iv. 11 ; 2 Thess. iii. 6-15). 
 
 (3) There are few traces of excessive Asceticism in the 
 Apostolic or Post-apostolic ideals. Extreme asceticism, 
 and a disposition to rely upon it, was a characteristic of 
 the heresies with which they were engaged in combating. 
 Dogmatic prohibitions or scruples about particular kinds 
 of food or drink are severely condemned. Still, we cannot 
 quite positively say that even St. Paul actually adopted 
 our Lord's attitude towards fasting (see above, p. i6o sq.). 
 If we may rely upon Acts (x. 30 ; xiii. 3 ; xiv. 23), the 
 practice of fasting was kept up in the earliest Church. 
 But the allusion to fasting in i Corinthians vii. 5 is due 
 to a transcriber (rejected in R.V.) ; and it is doubtful 
 whether in 2 Corinthians vi. 5, xi. 27, St. Paul is referring 
 to ecclesiastical fasting or (as seems more probable) to 
 privations endured in the course of Apostolic journeys. 
 I Cor. ix. 27 is too vague to be appealed to in this con- 
 
236 Conscience and Christ 
 
 nexion ; all Christians recognize the duty of self-control 
 in the matter of bodily appetites. 
 
 (4) St. Paul's idealization of the married relation, 
 which he used to typify the relation between Christ and 
 His Church, began that spiritualization of the marriage 
 ideal which has been one of the most undoubted achieve- 
 ments of later Christianity. But in practice he does not 
 seem himself to have advanced very much beyond the 
 average Jewish view of marriage. He looks upon it too 
 much as a mere preservative against worse evils (i Cor. 
 vii.) . All through his treatment of the subject, especially 
 in his condemnation of second marriages, there is a 
 distinct inclination to the ascetic disparagement of 
 Marriage, though his strong common sense and ex- 
 perience of the evils arising from the undue exaltation 
 of celibacy prevented his carrying the tendency far. His 
 attitude was largely no doubt due to the expectation of an 
 immediate Parousia. The emphatic contradiction of St. 
 Paul's advice in i Timothy v. 14 (" that the younger 
 widows marry ") may no doubt be attributed to a 
 waning confidence in the nearness of this event, and to 
 experience of the evils which the exaltation of virginity 
 and widowhood had brought with it. 
 
 (5) The most serious deduction from what has been 
 said as to the generally Christian temper of the Apostolic 
 Morality is to be found in the attitude which the 
 development of the visible Church (considering the 
 intellectual hmitations of its leaders) almost necessarily 
 involved towards heresy, schism, and every form of 
 rebellion against ecclesiastical authority. The Christian 
 Conscience can hardly approve " the Lord reward him 
 according to his works " (2 Tim. iv. 14, there is much 
 MS. authority for " shall reward "). But it is in 
 the Johannine writings that the tendency towards the 
 
The Apostolic Teaching • 237 
 
 identification of all persons, all forms of life, and all 
 forms of belief outside the legitimate Church with the 
 " world " — a world regarded as actively hostile to 
 Christ and all good— is carried furthest. The existence 
 of quite unjustified and savage persecution from out- 
 side and the strong disposition of the early heresies to 
 associate themselves with moral laxity may go far to 
 excuse this temper as regards heretics within (or claiming 
 to be within) the Christian fold ; while the moral con- 
 dition of the pagan world (especially as regards sexual 
 morality) fully justified the conception of a broad 
 ethical contrast between the two worlds. Christians 
 were justified in regarding with horror and hostility the 
 dominant temper of ordinary pagan hfe, though doubtless 
 there, was more good in the best circles of the pagan 
 world than some of them could recognize. But it is 
 hardly possible to deny that the germs are to be found 
 in the New Testament itself of that tendency to attribute 
 high merit to orthodoxy of belief and of that intoler- 
 ance towards unbelievers or unorthodox believers which 
 constitute such an appalling set-off to the enormous 
 benefits which the Christian Church has conferred upon 
 the world. So far even the best and greatest of Apostles 
 and Apostolic men fell below the spiritual level of their 
 Master. Even in the attitude adopted towards actual sin, 
 the doctrine of the Epistle to the Hebrews (vi. 6) that 
 no repentance for wilful post-baptismal sin was possible 
 must be regarded as a falling off from our Lord's own 
 teaching on the forgivingness of God. Happily that atti- 
 tude was soon corrected by the charity and the common 
 sense of the Church. 
 
 I have rarely used the Pastoral Epistles for illustration ; 
 though much in them may well come from the pen of 
 
238 Conscience and Christ 
 
 St. Paul, it is probable that, in their present form, they rep- 
 resent the ideas of a generation later than the Apostohc age : 
 but there is in them, in the way of positive precept, little 
 which is not quite in the spirit of St. Paul. They consist 
 for the most part in the application of the general principles 
 of Christian Morality to a more developed — but still 
 fairly simple — ecclesiastical organization. 
 
 For an elaborate examination of the moral ideal and 
 especially the internal moral condition of the early Christian 
 communities I may refer to the excellent work of Prof, 
 von Dobschiitz, Christian Life in the Primitive Church 
 (Trans, by Rev. G. Bremner). Though the Professor 
 belongs to a school rather disposed to deny the necessity 
 or value of " development," the book affords striking 
 testimony to the historical fact of such development at 
 least within the ethical region, and constitutes on the 
 whole a vindication of the form which it assumed. 
 
LECTURE VI 
 CHRISTIAN ETHICS AND OTHER SYSTEMS 
 
 I HAVE endeavoured in previous lectures to es- 
 tablish three points : (i) That in its fundamental 
 principles the ideal of life presented to us by Christ 
 Himself still commends itself to our moral conscious- 
 ness ; (2) that these principles require development, 
 and (3) that the development which is demanded by the 
 Christian consciousness of to-day is one which can be 
 recognized as a true and legitimate outgrowth of the 
 Master's own teaching. At this point the question 
 may be raised, " Granted that this ethical ideal is true, 
 is it at all peculiar to Jesus ? Can we not find in other 
 ethical systems the same fimdamental principles, and 
 are not those principles equally capable of such a 
 development as is being actually given to them in 
 the Christian Church of to-day ? Is there any reason 
 why at the present day we should regard ourselves 
 as in any paramount or exclusive sense disciples of 
 Jesus ? " These are the questions which I propose to 
 discuss in the present lecture. 
 
 I should like to begin by saying that from a practical 
 point of view — for the purposes of the individual re- 
 
 239 
 
240 Conscience and Christ 
 
 ligious life — it is not a matter of primary importance to 
 determine how far the ethical teaching of Jesus was 
 original when it was first given to the world, or how 
 far other teachers may or may not have taught the 
 same principles since His time. If those principles are 
 true, if the development that has been, or at all events 
 may now be, given to them within the limits of the 
 Christian Church is a legitimate development, they 
 will be none the less true because the same truths may 
 have been taught by other teachers also. That remark 
 holds also of the distinctively religious or theological 
 side of Christianity. The fact that the same truths had 
 been revealed to others through other teachers would 
 not alter the truth of the revelation in Christ. To admit 
 that might no doubt involve some change in our ideas 
 about the Person of Jesus Himself ; but so long as we 
 are looking upon Him simply as an ethical Teacher, 
 the fact that other teachers have taught the same 
 things, will not supply us with any reason for ceasing 
 to regard ourselves as disciples of Christ. 
 
 We ought therefore to examine the originality and 
 distinctiveness of Christ's teaching with a perfectly 
 open mind. How far then, to take the central point of 
 His teaching, has the doctrine of universal Brother- 
 hood been taught by others besides Christ and inde- 
 pendently of Him ? First, I will say something as to 
 the teaching of Moralists outside the great historical 
 Religions. I have already endeavoured to show how 
 far Aristotle fell below the teaching of Jesus — how far 
 
Christian Ethics and other Systems 241 
 
 in many respects he fell below the moral standard of 
 the later Judaism — the standard which is presupposed 
 by the teaching of Jesus Himself. But it would be 
 quite unfair to look upon Aristotle as representing 
 the highest ethical thought of the ancient world. Some 
 writers — notably the revered Thomas Hill Green — 
 have at times encouraged the notion that such was 
 the case. They have written as though the Morality 
 we now profess was substantially the Morality of 
 Aristotle a little widened and expanded by Christianity 
 as though no important ethical development had 
 intervened between Aristotle and Christianity. As a 
 matter of fact, Aristotle represents not the highest 
 ethical standard of the ancient world, but in some 
 respects one of the lowest among highly civilized 
 Moralities. His is the least modern, the least universal- 
 istic, the least humane — the most intensely aristo- 
 cratic, particularistic, and intellectualistic — of ancient 
 Moralities. It is the Morality of the little slave-holding 
 aristocratic class in the autonomous City-state. In the 
 very next generation, when the destruction of the 
 ancient Polls system by Aristotle's friend and master 
 Alexander the Great had begun to do its work, we 
 find a higher and more cosmopolitan Morality. You 
 find little or nothing about the brotherhood of man in 
 Aristotle. You begin to find it in the writings of 
 Aristotle's own pupils — in Theophrastus, for instance 
 There had been a little more of it in Plato, and there 
 was much more of it in the later Platonists. But it is 
 
 R 
 
242 Conscience and Christ 
 
 above all in the writers of the Stoic school that we 
 encounter the closest parallels to the teaching of Jesus 
 and of primitive Christianity. Is there anything in the 
 teaching of Jesus — I am confining myself now to His 
 ethical teaching — which you do not find in the Stoics ? 
 I think it may fairly be said that the fundamental 
 principles of the Sermon on the Mount are to be found 
 in the great Stoic writers. The essential principle that 
 we ought to treat every human being as an end in 
 himself as philosophers say — that we ought to love our 
 neighbour as ourselves or to treat him as a brother 
 as Christian Morality more simply expresses it — is 
 fully taught by such writers as Zeno, Seneca, Epictetus, 
 and Marcus Aurelius. The supreme value of moral 
 goodness — as the most important element in human 
 good — is as fully and completely expressed by them 
 as it has been by any Christian writer. The superiority 
 of spiritual good to carnal is duly emphasized, nor 
 can it be said that there is any over-estimation of 
 intellectual activity — rather perhaps too little appre- 
 ciation of any knowledge or culture which has no 
 direct bearing upon individual character or social 
 welfare. 
 
 Here are a few of the passages in Seneca which 
 afford the closest approximation to the Sermon on 
 the Mount. " We will enjoin him to hold out his 
 hand to the shipwrecked, to point out the way to 
 the wanderer, to divide his bread with the hungry,"^ 
 
 • Ep. Mor., XCV. Seneca is singing the praises of Friendship. 
 
Christian Ethics and other Systems 243 
 
 " You must live for another if you would live 
 for yourself," 1 " I will so live as if I knew that I was 
 born for others. "^ There is no fundamental distinction 
 between the slave and the freeman. " They are slaves," 
 you urge, "nay, they are men. . . . They are slaves, nay, 
 they are humble friends. They are slaves, nay, they are 
 fellow-slaves, if you reflect that fortune has the same 
 power over both. . . . Let some of them dine with you, 
 because they are worthy— others that they may become 
 worthy. ... He is a slave, you say, yet perchance he is 
 free in spirit."* " I will be agreeable to friends, gentle 
 and yielding to enemies."* "We will not cease to 
 serve the common good, to help individuals, to give 
 aid even to enemies."^ " If you imitate the gods, 
 confer benefits even on the unthankful : for the Sun 
 arises even on the wicked, and the seas are open 
 to pirates."* " One ought so to give that another 
 may receive. It is not giving or receiving to transfer 
 to the right hand or to the left."' "Expect from 
 others what you have done to another."* " Let us 
 so give as we would wish to receive."* The intrinsic 
 value of goodness, the importance of pure inten- 
 tion, the inwardness of true virtue, are taught 
 in language which, both on its strictly ethical and 
 on its religious side, is closely parallel to sayings 
 
 » Ep. Mor., XLVIir. ^ De vit. beat., 20. 
 
 ' Ep. Mor., XLVII. » De vit. beat., 20. 
 
 > De Otio, 28. « De Benef., iv. 26. 
 
 ' lb., V. 8. « Ep. Mor., XCIV (in a quotation). 
 • De Benef., ii. i. 
 
244 Conscience and Christ 
 
 of Jesus. " So live with men, as if God saw you ; 
 so speak with God, as if men heard you."i " Cast 
 out whatsoever things rend thy heart ; nay, if 
 they could not be extracted otherwise, then thou 
 shouldest have plucked out thy heart itself with 
 them."* " Apply thyself rather to true riches. ... It 
 is shameful to depend for a happy life on gold and 
 silver."^ There are a number of other parallels (col- 
 lected in the well-known Essay of Bishop Lightfoot),* 
 both to the teaching of our Lord and of St. Paul so 
 close that, if it were not quite impossible in the case 
 of our Lord and highly improbable in the case of 
 St. Paul, an incautious critic would be certain to 
 pronounce that there must have been borrowing on 
 one side or the other. 
 
 Much the same spirit pervades the writings of 
 M. Aurelius and Epictetus. " Love the human race. 
 Follow God," says M. Aurelius.^ " It is the character- 
 istic of man to love even those who do wrong."' 
 " Whatever action of thine has no bearing, either 
 directly or indirectly, upon the social end, tears thy 
 life asunder and destroys its unity and involves 
 sedition"' {<rTaa-iwSt]s) . "Anger is not manly; but 
 meekness and gentleness, as they are more human, so 
 they are more mascuUne."* M. Aurelius is particularly 
 full of exhortations to forgiveness and gentleness towards 
 
 1 Ep. Mor., X. = lb., LI. ' lb., CX. 
 
 ' Appended to his edition of the Epistle to the Philippians. 
 
 « Meditations, VII, 31. « lb., VII, 22. 
 
 ' Jb., IX, 23. ' lb., XI, 18. Cf. the whole chapter. 
 
Christian Ethics and other Systems 245 
 
 those who injure or revile one : and he was a man who 
 had opportunities of dealing with detractors as Nero 
 and Domitian dealt with them. 
 
 Exhortation to universal Benevolence is a little less 
 prominent in Epictetus, but he is full of the thought 
 that man is a citizen of the world/ and the religious 
 aspect of Morality is more marked in him than in the 
 other two writers. His conception of God is a distinctly 
 ethical conception, if he more often speaks of His 
 essential rationality than of His love.^ 
 
 As far as they go, such maxims as I have quoted 
 must be pronounced wholly in accordance with the 
 spirit of Christ. But, as I have so often found it 
 necessary to observe, the real concrete meaning of an 
 ethical formula can only be discovered from its con- 
 text — the context in which it stands in the whole 
 teaching and ideal of the teacher. It would be possible 
 to collect from the great Stoic writers a considerable 
 list of maxims quite inconsistent with the Christian 
 
 1 " Thou art a citizen of the world and a part of it, not one of 
 its subjects but of its rulers. . . . The whole is more important 
 than the part, and the city than the individual citizen " (Arrian, 
 Discourses of Epictetus, ii. lo). 
 
 ' God is " Intellect, Knowledge, Right Reason " (I.e., ii. 8). 
 Man is " a spark of God ; thou hast a piece of Him in thee " (ib.). 
 " Philosophers say that we ought first of all to learn that God exists 
 and takes thought for the Universe, and that we cannot escape His 
 notice not only in what we do but even in the secret thoughts of our 
 hearts." " He who would please the Gods must endeavour to 
 become like them so far as he can. If the Divinity is faithful, he 
 too must be faithful : if free, he too must be free ; if beneficent 
 {eiepycTLKiv) , he too must be beneficent ; if generous, he too must 
 be generous. And so in everything else he must act and speak 
 as befits an imitator of God " (ib., ii. 14). 
 
246 Conscience and Christ 
 
 principles which they elsewhere profess. At one time, 
 for instance, Seneca urges forgiveness ; at other times 
 he practically adopts the maxim, " Thou shalt love thy 
 friend, and hate thine enemy." He has not fully under- 
 stood the principle which Plato might have taught him, 
 that, when punishment should be inflicted, it is really 
 a kindness. It is only consistent with this cruder and 
 lower side of Stoic morality that, though personal in- 
 sults are often to be ignored, forgiveness of moral 
 wrong-doing is actually condemned. ^ As to their teach- 
 ing on the sexual side of Morality, I will only say 
 that there is some difficulty in understanding what it 
 was, and that it seems to have fallen far short of the 
 Christian standard. ^ 
 
 Moreover, if we penetrate to the fundamental prin- 
 ciples of the Stoic school, we shall find in them three 
 elements which were really inconsistent with their own 
 teaching about universal Benevolence, [a) In the 
 first place the very exaggeration of their doctrine that 
 moral goodness was the sole good of Humanity, the 
 
 ' De Clem,, ii. 5-7. So to be indulgent to the sinner would imply 
 tliat the man had not sinned voluntarily (m irap avriy jj/iapriiKivai). 
 Stobaeus, Floril., 46. 50. The paradoxical doctrine that there are 
 no degrees of virtue, and that all sins are equal, is in accordance 
 with this line of thought. The parable of the talents and the 
 saying about many stripes and few stripes correspond much better 
 to the moral instincts of unsophisticated Humanity. 
 
 * The idea of living according to Nature seems sometimes to 
 have been understood in a coarse and immoral sense. It is sug- 
 gested that in an ideal state there would be a community of wives, 
 and the duty of recognizing the accepted restrictions is based solely 
 on the authority of the State. See Zeller's Stoics, Epicureans and 
 Sceptics, E.T., 1870, p. 290 sq., and the passages there quoted. 
 
Christian Ethics and other Systems 247 
 
 only thing necessary to happiness, miUtated against 
 Benevolence. If pleasure is no good for myself, it is 
 no good for others, and I need not trouble myself 
 about other people's pleasures : if pain is no evil, why 
 should I seek to mitigate it ? The Stoic idea of 
 Apathy required the suppression of the altruistic as 
 much as of the egoistic passions. And this conclusion 
 was explicitly drawn by the Stoics themselves. They 
 often (though happily not with complete consistency) 
 despised and condemned pity, and their exhortations 
 to forgiveness were too often tinged with contempt. 
 " There is no reason why thou shouldest be angry; 
 pardon them, they are all mad."^ {b) Secondly, this 
 condemnation of pity was only a part of a general 
 condemnation of feeling. They deliberately attempted 
 to suppress and exterminate all emotion. They held, 
 no doubt, that the wise man will often do in obedience 
 to Reason the things which less wise men do from 
 emotion. He will relieve suffering, but he feels no 
 pity for the sufferer. He will punish the wrong-doer, 
 but righteous indignation must be suppressed no less 
 than the spirit of personal revenge. The Stoics were 
 right, no doubt, in thinking that mere affection for 
 individuals not guided or controlled by a Reason which 
 attempts to be impartial or universal is not Virtue at 
 its highest. But it was scarcely possible that thinkers 
 who condemned the emotion which is and practically 
 always must be the chief inspiring source of Benevo- 
 
 1 De Beneficiis, v. 17. 
 
248 Conscience and Christ 
 
 lence, should give its right place in Ethics to Love. 
 Nobody ever served men more heartily and con- 
 scientiously than M. Aurelius. Perhaps he loved them 
 too : but in his attitude towards the vast majority 
 there was a touch of contempt. It is impossible to dis- 
 cover in him that recognition of undeveloped possi- 
 bilities of goodness in the publican and the sinner 
 which was so conspicuous a feature in the character of 
 Jesus. Virtue was only possible to the wise man. And 
 wise men, it was admitted, must always be few even 
 among the intellectual. Wisdom, and therefore the 
 highest virtue, was not possible for the uneducated or 
 the stupid. And this is closely connected with a third 
 radical defect in Stoic Morality, (c) The starting-point 
 of the Stoic Morality was the desire to find peace or 
 unruffled tranquillity for the individual soul. The 
 fundamental tenet of the school was-that nothing was 
 really good or evil which was not dependent solely on 
 the will. Virtue was recommended because it was 
 the only good which depended entirely upon the man 
 himself. Thus the Stoic was too much disposed to 
 commend Virtue not because it was good, but because 
 it was his good. Such an ideal produced a self-suffi- 
 ciency and self-absorption which did not conduce to — 
 perhaps were hardly compatible with — the highest 
 unselfishness. And it certainly tended towards that 
 excessive sense of personal dignity which we com- 
 monly call pride. Hence the encouragement to suicide, 
 even in cases where a man's opportunities of social 
 
Christian Ethics and other Systems 249 
 
 service were by no means at an end. It was in order 
 to be independent of the accidents of human life, to 
 be sure of attaining the true good for himself, that the 
 Stoic school originally recommended men to think of 
 nothing but Virtue. 
 
 I do not, indeed, hold, as has been strangely sug- 
 gested in some quarters, that whereas all the other 
 virtues could be discovered by the natural capacity of 
 the moral consciousness, a special and strictly super- 
 natural revelation was required to teach the value of 
 Humility. There is something singularly grotesque 
 in the notion of a man being humble because, though 
 he could not see any essential beauty or excellence in 
 it, he had received a supernatural communication of 
 the fact that he ought to be humble. Rather should 
 we say that Humility at bottom (in the form in which 
 it really is a virtue) is only a particular form or mani- 
 festation of the love which cares for others, for their 
 rights and their virtues and their achievements, as 
 much as for self. The want of humility in the Stoic 
 ideal is just one of the little indications that, in spite 
 of all the formal correctness of its maxims, the beauty 
 of unselfishness was not yet fully appreciated. There 
 was an ambiguity about their fundamental principle 
 of living agreeably to nature. In so far as this meant 
 living in accordance with the true nature of man, it 
 was a sound and Christian maxim. ^ But its original 
 meaning was perhaps simply to live in accordance 
 
 1 Cf. Butler, Sermon I. 
 
250 Conscience and Christ 
 
 with the actual nature of the physical Universe ; and 
 it never altogether lost this side of its significance. So 
 understood, it amounted to little more than a pru- 
 dential counsel to avoid setting one's heart upon 
 things which fortune might take away. There was, 
 indeed, the root of all true Morality in the idea 
 that moral conduct was to act on universal principles, 
 and this implied that a man should regard himself as 
 a citizen of the world and promote its good. But the 
 school never quite succeeded in escaping from what 
 seems to have been the original thought of its founder 
 — that virtue was the right means to that un- 
 ruffled tranquillity of the whole life which the Epi- 
 curians less wisely sought in pleasure. The Stoic 
 Apathy {a-n-aQela) was not so very far in principle 
 from the untroubled calm [arapa^la) of the Epicurean, 
 though much nobler in practice. The later develop- 
 ment of the school was on the whole away from this 
 original Egoism. The altruistic, universalistic side of 
 Stoicism steadily gained upon the individualistic, and 
 reached its final achievement in the teaching and the 
 life of M. Aurelius Antoninus.^ 
 
 ' The opinions of Zeno himself, as distinct from those of his 
 followers, are not known with much certainty, but on the whole the 
 account of the growth of Stoicism in Zeller and the authorities 
 which he cites support this view of its development. The origin of 
 Stoicism was a pessimistic turning away from politics and social 
 life in its old narrow, civic form. The individual, unable to find 
 true happiness in active political life, was thrown back upon him- 
 self. It was only gradually that the growth of the Roman Empire, 
 and the widening of ethical ideals which accompanied it, suggested 
 that the service of Humanity supplied a nobler sphere for practical 
 activity than the ancient Polls. 
 
Christian Ethics and other System% 251 
 
 And yet, apart from all dogmatic considerations, few 
 people feel that M. Aurelius is the equal of Jesus. 
 The defects of Stoic Morality on which I have already 
 dwelt are discernible even in him — in his teaching 
 and in his character. It was not altogether through 
 mere accident or mere misunderstanding that the best 
 of pagans became the persecutor of the community in 
 which his own ideal of life was more nearly realized 
 than it was among any other section of his subjects. 
 Under no possible circumstances can we imagine Jesus 
 becoming the persecutor of a group of men who, 
 whatever their tenets, worshipped that common 
 Father of whom M. Aurelius vaguely spoke, and made 
 it their chief aim to love one another. When Christians 
 took to persecution, they had largely ceased to be fol- 
 lowers of Jesus, and one great source of the corrup- 
 tion lay in an infusion of that very imperial spirit of 
 ancient Rome which, with all his cosmopolitanism, 
 revealed itself in M. Aurelius' persecution of the 
 Christians. 
 
 And then I would once again call your attention to 
 the principle that, when we are treating of an ethical 
 system not as formal Philosophy but as practical 
 teaching intended to appeal to the emotions and 
 inspire the will, the form is as important as the sub- 
 stance. You can find, as we have seen, beautiful 
 expressions of the duty of love and mercy and forgive- 
 ness — some of them so closely parallel to passages of 
 the New Testament as to produce a fallacious appear- 
 
252 Conscience and Christ 
 
 ance of imitation. And yet, taken as a whole, they do 
 not appeal to us as the Sermon on the Mount and the 
 parables of the good Samaritan and the Prodigal Son. 
 They do not make so deep an appeal to the educated — 
 still less to the uneducated. Stoicism was no Gospel 
 for the mass of men. And therefore it was no mere 
 historical accident that, in so far as the Stoic Religion 
 and the Stoic Morality were identical with the Chris- 
 tian, it was not through the Stoic school, but through 
 the Christian Church, that they came to be the accepted 
 Morality of the modern Western world. 
 
 Even if we could get over the shortcomings and 
 inconsistencies of Stoicism, if we could identify its 
 theological and ethical teaching with that of Chris- 
 tianity to a greater extent than we can reasonably do, 
 there would still remain this fundamental difference 
 between M. Aurelius and Christ. Christ founded a 
 Religion and a Church : the Stoics founded neither. 
 This is a point of immense importance when we are 
 considering the personal greatness and the historical 
 position of Christ : it is simply decisive when we are 
 discussing the reasons for transferring to M. Aurelius 
 or some other Stoic hero anything like the allegiance 
 that Christians actually own to Christ. There is, 
 indeed, much truth in Mark Pattison's view that, 
 during the three centuries or so before Constantine, 
 Philosophy had been working out a creed which on its 
 ethical side, and to a great extent even on the theological 
 side, was identical with the creed at which the Christian 
 
Christian Ethics and other Systems 253 
 
 Church had arrived by quite another route — ^through 
 the adoption of the Jewish ideal, universalized and 
 completed by Christ and developed by His disciples. ^ 
 But the fact remains that it was Christianity and not 
 the Stoic or any other Philosophy which converted the 
 world to Monotheism and the Ethics of universal 
 Brotherhood. And, further, when Christianity came 
 into contact with Grseco-Roman culture, the two 
 parallel currents of spiritual development began to 
 fuse. The teaching of the Christian Fathers absorbed 
 much of what was best in the teaching of Philosophy — 
 especially of this Stoic Philosophy with which we are 
 immediately dealing. There is no need whatever to 
 minimize the close resemblance between the Stoic 
 ideal at its best and the teaching of Christ and of 
 those who drank most deeply of His spirit. The early 
 Apologists were right in appealing to the correspond- 
 ence between the best teaching of Philosophy and that 
 of the Christian Religion as so much evidence in favour 
 of Christianity, when taken in connexion with the 
 enormously greater success of Christianity in moulding 
 men's lives into conformity with that teaching. To 
 anyone who seriously proposed to revive the Stoicism 
 or the Eclecticism of the later Roman world as a 
 working xule of modern life I should say, " You need 
 not trouble to do that. The Christian Church has 
 already absorbed what Stoicism had to teach. The 
 
 1 See his Sermons, which are almost all devoted to the working 
 out of this idea. 
 
254 Conscience and Christ 
 
 best way of practising all that is best in Stoicism — all 
 in it that any modern Conscience is really likely to 
 accept — ^is to be a Christian." 
 
 I do not, of course, deny that at some periods the 
 actual working ideal of Christendom fell in some 
 respects far below Stoicism, or that there were 
 unchristlike elements in it which a renewed study of 
 Stoicism might help us to get rid of. All that is 
 said of " Christianity " here must be taken to mean 
 " Christianity in so far as it has remained faithful to 
 the spirit of its Founder." 
 
 I have dwelt thus elaborately on the differences 
 between Stoicism and Christianity because, if one 
 wishes to establish the supremacy of the Christian 
 Ethic, it is fair to compare it with the highest non- 
 Christian ethical system that one knows. Outside 
 Christianity I know of no higher Morality than that 
 of the Stoics. But to those who feel the need for a 
 Religion and a Church or religious community, Stoicism 
 could not possibly be an alternative to Christianity, 
 even if the parallelism between their teaching were 
 closer than it is. In the rest of this lecture I shall 
 speak only of systems or ideals which have embodied 
 themselves in still living historical Rehgions. 
 
 There are at the present day many people who would 
 heartily admit the difference between an ethical 
 philosophy and a religion, and who would freely 
 recognize that Religion is possible on a large scale only 
 in and through some actual historical religion, but who 
 
Christian Ethics and other Systems 255 
 
 seem to think that it makes little or no difference 
 which, at least among the higher religions, a man 
 belongs to. They will, it may be, consider themselves 
 Christians because they happen to be born in a Christian 
 country, but they do not think the difference between 
 Christianity and other religions — they often forget to 
 mention precisely which religions — sufficient to justify 
 them in supporting a mission whose object it is to 
 invite members of other religions to become Christians. 
 Such persons talk about a " religious experience " 
 which they assume to be the same in all the higher 
 religions. The Theology of the various religions is for 
 them merely the outward historical embodiment of 
 this religious experience, and is an unessential and 
 separable element of such religions. As a matter of 
 history and psychological fact, I believe this position 
 to be profoundly mistaken. I do not mean, of course, 
 that there are no common elements in the higher 
 historical religions, or that there is any great religion 
 in which there is not a measure of truth. The best 
 missionaries of the present day fully and gladly 
 recognize that the Spirit of God has spoken to men 
 through many religions besides the Jewish and the 
 Christian. But two things I regard as certain — 
 (i) That every religion, whatever else it is, always 
 includes a theory of the Universe, and incompatible 
 theories of the Universe cannot all be true. It is as 
 absurd to talk about all the religions being equally 
 true as to talk about all philosophies, or all systems of 
 
256 Conscience and Christ 
 
 Astronomy, being equally true ; (2) that the character 
 of the religious experience which is possible to any 
 individual is largely determined by the theory of the 
 Universe at which he has already and independently 
 arrived. To get the religious experience characteristic 
 of a religion, you must believe in its theory of the 
 Universe. The experience of communion with or love 
 of a personal God is only possible if one believes in 
 a God who is capable of loving and being loved. The 
 experience which Hindoo mystics attempt to describe, 
 the experience of union with an All which is essentially 
 non-personal and non-moral (whatever may be its 
 value), is only possible to one who already believes in 
 such a non-personal and non-moral Absolute, and 
 who can share the genuine Hindoo contempt for 
 Morality as a purely human and transitory affair. 
 And the two experiences, so far as can be judged 
 from the expressions of them in language and litera- 
 ture, are profoundly different and incompatible. I 
 must not enlarge further upon the difference between 
 the great historical religions on their theological side. 
 My subject confines me to the ethical differences. And 
 here, by way of focussing the problem with which we 
 are concerned, I will allude to a letter which appeared 
 during one of those correspondences on religious sub- 
 jects in the newspapers in which the most prominent 
 part is usually taken on both sides by the now large 
 class of half-educated persons who believe themselves 
 to know all about everything. The gentleman in 
 
Christian Ethics and other Systems 257 
 
 question informed the world that after a comprehen- 
 sive survey of all the religions of mankind he had 
 made a great discovery. He had come to the con- 
 clusion that there were two elements in every religion 
 — a theological element which varied but was unim- 
 portant, and an ethical element which was important 
 but was always the same. Is this really the fact ? 
 Could anyone who has arrived at the conclusion that 
 the ethical teaching of Christianity, as we have under- 
 stood it, is true reasonably transfer his allegiance to any 
 other Religion on the assumption that its Ethics were 
 the same, even supposing he were right in imagining 
 that the theological differences were unimportant ? 
 
 Now in the first place we may, I think, put aside 
 for practical purposes all the lower religions. Roughly 
 and broadly speaking, the higher religions are dis- 
 tinguished from the lower just by the fact that they 
 are, in the full sense of the term, ethical rehgions. 
 That does not mean that the lower religions have in 
 them no ethical element. There has always been a 
 very close connexion between Religion and Morality : 
 but the nature of this connexion is variable. The 
 primitive religions were primarily systems of rites 
 and ceremonies by which it was thought possible to 
 procure the favour of the gods : and the favour of the 
 gods was not supposed to depend wholly or mainly 
 upon the moral conduct of their worshippers.^ Some 
 
 ' It may be said that there was always this much that was 
 ethical even in the lowest religions — that they alwaj^ prescribed 
 the doing of what was beneficial to the tribe ; and attempts have 
 
258 Conscience and Christ 
 
 gods, no doubt, did punish some kinds of moral offence : 
 but the gods were not all of them thought of as ideally 
 moral beings — some of them were thought of as 
 grossly immoral and as delighting in certain kinds of 
 immorality. Unless a religion at least professes to 
 identify the will of the supernatural being or beings 
 whom it worships with the morally good, we need not 
 seriously discuss its claims to be considered on ethical 
 grounds an optional alternative to Christianity. And 
 this consideration at once Umits the religions which it 
 is necessary to consider to a much smaller number than 
 might be supposed from the airy talk which we often 
 hear about the substantial identity of all rehgions. 
 Is there then among the few higher religions of the 
 world any one which teaches substantially the same 
 Ethics as Christianity ? 
 
 I need not say much more than has already been 
 said about Judaism. Judaism, as we have seen, 
 before the coming of Christ never quite rose to the 
 Christian ideal of universal Brotherhood. Undoubtedly 
 there are enlightened Jews of the present day who 
 heartily accept that supreme ethical truth ; but they 
 have certainly not arrived at it without direct or 
 
 been made to draw a sharp line between Religion and Magic on 
 this basis, practices which were supposed to benefit the indi- 
 vidual only being treated as belonging to Magic, and not to Religion. 
 For some purposes this may be a convenient distinction, but the 
 distinction cannot be made very sharply. Even the early Jewish 
 prophet was much concerned with the recovery of lost property, 
 and yet it would be absurd to treat Samuel as only a magician and 
 as having nothing to do with the religion of Israel. 
 
Christian Ethics and other Systems 259 
 
 indirect help from Christianity, and they can only 
 consistently teach it by repudiating (as of course is done 
 by Jewish teachers who have accepted the critical 
 position as to the Old Testament) much of the official 
 teaching of their religion.^ I am not now speaking 
 of possible reforms of the Jewish or other historical 
 religions, but of the religions in their historical, tra- 
 ditional, and official forms. Taking Judaism in that 
 sense, the Ethics of Judaism must be pronounced (to 
 say the least of it) very defective by anyone who 
 has accepted the Christian doctrine that men of all races 
 are equal in the sight of God and equally neighbours 
 to one another, and who denies that the performance 
 of rites and ceremonies such as those prescribed by the 
 Jewish Law can be matters of ethical obligation. 
 
 Of Mohammedanism it may still more unequivocally 
 be said that it is founded upon a doctrine of inequality. 
 It is, indeed, universalistic inasmuch as it recognizes 
 no distinctions of race, and has abolished such dis- 
 tinctions in practice more completely than is un- 
 fortunately the case with large numbers of professing 
 Christians. But it does not recognize the duty of 
 brotherhood towards men of all creeds. The Koran 
 requires idolaters to be slain, and the Mussiilman to 
 be treated as intrinsically the superior of Jew or of 
 
 ' No doubt this was already done to some extent in the teach- 
 ing of the Hellenistic Judaism of the Dispersion, and possibly in the 
 teaching of some of the Rabbis, as regards the duty of Gentiles ; ^but 
 I do not know that any Jewish teacher actually put the righteous 
 " worshippers of God " spiritually on a level with the observers of 
 the Law. 
 
26o Conscience and Christ 
 
 Christian. That doctrine of Intolerance which was 
 only introduced into Christianity by the malign in- 
 fluence of St. Augustine, is included in the original 
 and fundamental title deeds of Mohammedanism. That 
 religion recognizes a limited polygamy and an unlimited 
 concubinage. It proclaims the essential and enormous 
 inferiority of women. It avowedly bases morality 
 upon the arbitrary will of God. And the plenary 
 inspiration which the Koran claims for itself creates 
 a serious and probably insurmountable obstacle to any 
 development of the Religion which shall practically 
 emancipate it from these limitations. It is incon- 
 ceivable that any man who really beUeves in the 
 essential principles of Christian morality should regard 
 it as a matter of indifference to a people or to an 
 individual whether they accept the moraUty of the 
 New Testament or that of the Koran. Expressions 
 of sentimental sympathy with Mohammedanism 
 generally come from people who do not seriously 
 profess to accept the most characteristic elements of 
 Christian Morality. Anti-religious writers have, for 
 instance, sometimes represented Mohammedanism as 
 the least objectionable of all religions precisely on 
 account of its indulgence to human frailty in the 
 matter of sexual relations :^ while those who look at 
 
 ' See, for instance, Lanessan, La Morale des Religions. As a 
 specimen of the gross ignorance exhibited by this ostensibly 
 scientific work, I may mention that the author treats St. Paul as 
 the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews without a word of apology 
 (P- 381). 
 
Christian Ethics and other Systems 261 
 
 Religion chiefly from a political point of view often 
 regard Mohammedan missions with more favour than 
 Christian just because they avowedly treat Moham- 
 medanism as an inferior religion suitable for inferior 
 races, and one useful to their rulers on account of the 
 support which it affords to arbitrary and anti- 
 democratic systems of government. 
 
 Far more might be said in favour of an attempt 
 to represent the ancient Zoroastrianism — now repre- 
 sented by Parseeism — as a religion which a Christian 
 might accept. Its original Dualism is believed to have 
 passed into a practical Monotheism at an early date : 
 and at all events modern educated Parsees are Mono- 
 theists. And their Monotheism is of an essentially 
 ethical caste. But in the Ethics of the Zend-Avesta 
 ceremonial transgressions are regarded as far more 
 grievous than moral. ^ The greater part of the Vendi- 
 
 * " Thereupon came Angra Mainya, who is all death, and he 
 counter-created by his witchcraft a sin for which there is no atone- 
 ment, the burying of the dead." Zend-Avesta, Vendideld, Fargand, 
 i, 13. Trans, by Darmesteter (Sacred Books of the East, Vol. IV). 
 
 " O Maker of the material world, thou Holy One ! If a man 
 shall bury in the earth either the corpse of a dog or the corpse of 
 a man, and if he shall not disinter it within half a year, what is the 
 penalty that he shall pay ? Ahura Mazda answered : ' Five hundred 
 stripes with the Aspahe-astra, five hundred stripes with the Sraosho- 
 karana ' " (I.e., F., iii, 36). But he may inflict a wound which is 
 healed in three days for fifteen stripes (I.e., iv, 26), or if he hurts 
 a man " sorely," the penalty is thirty (I.e., 30). If he smite him 
 " so that he gives up the ghost," the penalty is only ninety stripes 
 (J.c, 40). On the other hand, the law of Mazda (i.e. acceptance of it) 
 " takes away from him who confesses it the bonds of his sin ; it 
 takes away (the sin of) breach of trust ; it takes away (the sin of) 
 murdering one of the faithful," etc. (I.e., iii, 41). But this is ap- 
 parently only in the case of one who has not previously professed 
 
262 Conscience and Christ 
 
 dad — the most ancient portion of the Zend-Avesta — 
 is taken up with the mode of avoiding ceremonial 
 pollutions and warding off the influence of evil spirits, 
 many of its rites being of a rather disgusting character. 
 Like the Koran, it recognizes a fundamental distinc- 
 tion between a man's duty towards fellow-believers 
 and his duty towards others. ^ Its ethical precepts 
 never rise above the level of the Pentateuch : it 
 never, I should say, comes up to the level of Deuter- 
 onomy. Doubtless many modern Parsees neglect 
 many of its almost intolerable restrictions ; they may 
 read into its exhortations to goodness and purity 
 an Ethic which is largely identical with that of Chris- 
 tianity. But it is impossible to represent that Par- 
 
 the law of Mazda, and who " confesses it and resolves never to 
 commit again such forbidden deeds " (iii, 40). 
 
 " He who has riches is far above him who has none " (I.e., iv, 
 47). And " he who fills himself with meat is filled with the good 
 spirit much more than he who does not do so " (I.e., iv, 48). 
 
 " If a man shall throw on the ground the whole body of a dead 
 dog, or of a dead man, and if grease or marrow flow from it on to the 
 ground, what penalty shall he pay ? Ahura Mazda answered : ' A 
 thousand stripes with the Aspahe-astra, a thousand stripes with the 
 Sraosho-karana ' " (I.e., vi, 24, 25). 
 
 The moral teaching of the Zend-Avesta contains many fine 
 sayings about Benevolence, Humility, and Chastity ; but it nowhere 
 lays down the principle of Universal Benevolence as the law of life. 
 Its teaching is not without elevation but it is vague : and the form 
 in which it is conveyed can nowhere be compared whether in literary 
 beauty or in practical impressiveness with the noblest passages of 
 the Old Testament — to say nothing of the New. 
 
 ^ " If a worshipper of Mazda wants to practise the art of healing, 
 on whom shall he prove his skill ? On worshippers of Mazda or on 
 worshippers of the DaSvaS ? Ahura Mazda answered : ' On 
 worshippers of the Dadvas shall he first prove himself,' " etc. (I.e., F., 
 vii, 36, 37)- 
 
Christian Ethics and other Systef^is 263 
 
 seeism, taken in its traditional and official form, 
 teaches an Ethic which would make Christian Missions 
 a superfluity — even if the matter is to be decided on 
 ethical grounds alone. 
 
 Turning to the indigenous religions of India, it will 
 not be necessary to say much of orthodox Hindooism. 
 Its system of caste is absolutely opposed to the funda- 
 mental principle of Christian Ethics. A religion which 
 forbids an out-caste to come within so many paces of a 
 Brahmin, which denies that the Brahmin has any 
 duties to the Sudra, and which, to speak generally, 
 interprets the neighbour to whom duties are owed as 
 the member of one's own caste or (for some purposes) 
 of a caste superior to one's own, cannot be said to teach 
 the Christian doctrine of Brotherhood. When Indian 
 civil servants defend such a system, as they some- 
 times do, they only show how little they have really 
 grasped the principle of human brotherhood which (if 
 Christians) they profess with their lips ; and which 
 if they do not make any such professions, they would 
 theoretically perhaps admit to be the teaching of 
 enhghtened Philosophy.^ All that is enHghtened and 
 progressive in Hindoo thought is already revolting 
 against the system, however much social tradition 
 may still secure the observance in practice of caste 
 rules. It is not really of Hindooism as it is, but only of 
 
 ' Of course if all that they urge is that the destruction of the 
 system would be bad, unless its place was taken by a higher religion, 
 they would have much to say for themselves. 
 
264 Conscience and Christ 
 
 some actual or possible reformation of it, that the 
 defender of what we call Equi-religionism can reason- 
 ably be supposed to be thinking when he suggests 
 that, though Christianity may be a suitable religion 
 for Europeans, there is no reason for the Oriental to 
 abandon his ancient faith. 
 
 Among the attempts at a reform of Hindooism, the 
 most ancient and the most important is, of course, the 
 religion known as Buddhism. There we do, indeed, 
 encounter a religion which is, in a sense, on the same 
 level as Christianity. It is absolutely universalistic. 
 It has repudiated caste and all exclusive priestly pre- 
 tensions. It is highly ethical, and its Ethics are of an 
 elevated and exacting order. It rests on a philosophy 
 which is at all events highly metaphysical and highly 
 intellectual. In its earlier and purer forms it commits 
 its adherents to no belief that is obviously impossible 
 to highly educated Westerners. Rites and ceremonies 
 are completely subordinated to a purely ethical end. 
 Even in its lowest and most degraded form it has 
 hardly sunk lower than Christianity at its worst. 
 It is sufficiently free from stereotyped and authorita- 
 tive standards of doctrine to admit much liberty of 
 thought, and much development both of doctrine and 
 of practice. In some of its sects there actually has 
 been much development ; and it is capable of more 
 development in a direction which increases the resem- 
 blance of both its Ethics and its Theology to Chris- 
 tianity. It is not too much to say that here we have 
 
Christian Ethics and other Systems 265 
 
 the one ancient historical religion of the East that 
 could conceivably be regarded by the civilized Euro- 
 pean as a possible alternative to Christianity for 
 himself. It is the one religion which a few educated 
 and intelligent Europeans have formally joined,^ 
 and which powerfully attracts the sympathy of many 
 who have not done so. But are its Theology and its 
 Ethics the same as those of Christianity ? Most 
 assuredly not. Of its Theology it is enough to say 
 that in its original and most philosophical form it is 
 strictly atheistic : in popular forms of it its atheistic 
 Founder has been deified. ^ And this is certainly not 
 the same Theology as that of Christianity. But once 
 more I must confine myself to the ethical side of the 
 Religion. Now here, so long as we think only of 
 practical precepts which Buddhism sets before the 
 average man, there is a very close resemblance between 
 its teaching and that of Christianity at its best. It 
 does teach universal Benevolence, Humanity not 
 merely towards men but towards animals, Chastity, 
 Humility ; and it cannot fairly be said that it teaches 
 anything inconsistent with these virtues as regards the 
 duties of the ordinary man living in the world. The 
 Christian may very well see in these teachings an out- 
 pouring of the Spirit of God second only to that which 
 he recognizes in the highest Judaism and the Chris- 
 
 ' The Englishmen who have become Mohammedans may fairly 
 be regarded as " cranks." 
 
 ' Of course not to the exclusion of other " Buddhas," or incar- 
 nations of Deity. 
 
266 Conscience and Christ 
 
 tianity in which it culminated. But, when we turn 
 from the precepts for outward conduct to its inner- 
 most ethical temper, and in particvilar when we turn 
 from the ideal which it sets before the average man to 
 the ideal of perfection which it holds up to its monks 
 and its saints, then, amid much which attracts us, 
 we cannot but recognize that there is also much which 
 is absolutely contradictory to the Christianity of 
 Jesus. The charity preached by Jesus was a dis- 
 interested desire for the good of others : the Asceticism 
 which He approved (if it is to be called Asceticism) was 
 self-denial for the sake of others — for the sake of bring- 
 ing others into the Kingdom and procuring for them 
 health of body or health of soul. To the Buddhist, we 
 are told, self-denial is prescribed for its own sake : the 
 others whom he benefits are treated not as ends-in- 
 themselves, but as a means to his own good. The 
 supreme ideal is not Love, but Self-renunciation. 
 And the rationale of that self-renunciation is that all 
 personal existence, and all the desire which springs 
 from personal existence, are bad.'^ The object of life 
 
 1 Cf . the following passages from Buddhist Scriptures : 
 
 " By passing quite beyond the mere consciousness of the infinity 
 of reason, he, thinking ' nothing at all exists,' reaches (mentally) 
 and remains in the state of mind to which nothing at all is specially 
 present — this is the sixth stage of deliverance." 
 
 " By passing quite beyond all idea of nothingness he reaches 
 (mentally) and remains in the state of mind to which neither ideas 
 nor the absence of ideas are specially present — this is the seventh 
 stage of deliverance." 
 
 " By passing quite beyond the state of ' neither ideas nor the 
 absence of ideas ' he reaches (mentally) and remains in the state 
 of mind in which both sensations and ideas have ceased to be — 
 
Christian Ethics and other Systems 267 
 
 is to escape from life — to escape from desire, to escape 
 from personality, perhaps (according to some inter- 
 pretations of Nirvana) to escape from consciousness 
 itself. Nobody, it must be remembered, can be a 
 true Buddhist but the monk or the nun : the life 
 of the layman is a mere concession to human weak- 
 ness. Salvation can never be attained by a layman 
 till his soul has been reincarnated in a monk. And 
 the ideal of the monks — ^though in practice, like their 
 Western equivalents, they have not been so socially 
 useless as might be supposed from their ideal — is in 
 the main renunciation of all ordinary human duties 
 and human enjoyments, a life of solitary meditation 
 and absorption in the Absolute. And even in laymen 
 the most necessary duties of good citizenship are at 
 best tolerated. It is strictly inconsistent with Buddhist 
 principles to use force even in the most necessary 
 administration of Justice. War is practised, but the 
 Buddhist admits that, in however just and necessary 
 a cause, it is not strictly lawful.^ The Jew or the 
 Christian will justify war as a necessary means to 
 securing the best things of life and the just distribution 
 
 this is the eighth stage of dehverance " (Book of the Great Decease, 
 iii, 39-41, Sacred Books of the East, Vol. XI). 
 
 " Hinder not yourselves, Ananda, by honouring the remains 
 of the Tathagata. Be zealous, I beseech you, Ananda, in your own 
 behalf 1 Devote yourselves to your own good I Be earnest, be 
 zealous, be intent on your own good ! " (I.e., chap, v, 24). 
 
 " You have done well, Ananda ! Be earnest in effort, and you 
 too shall soon be free from the great evils — from sensuality, from 
 individuality, from delusion, and from ignorance " (I.e., chap, v, 35), 
 
 1 Cf. Fielding Hall, The Soul of a People (chap. vi). 
 
268 Conscience and Christ 
 
 of such things : to the genuine Buddhist nothing in 
 life can be worth fighting for, or even struggUng or 
 laboriously working for. Can anything be more 
 wholly opposed to the ideals whether of the best 
 modern Christians who labour for the improvement 
 of human life or of the average Western man who, 
 whatever his professed religious or non-religious 
 belief, is profoundly convinced that business, politics, 
 culture, and ordinary social life are worthy spheres of 
 human activity ? It is possible, of course, to suggest 
 that the Buddhist ideal is true and the Christian false : 
 it is simply trifling with the subject to maintain that 
 they are the same.^ 
 
 It may, no doubt, be suggested that Christianity 
 has in the past at times approximated to the Buddhist 
 ideal. No doubt it has. Asceticism has sometimes 
 been far more extravagant among Christians than 
 among the followers of Gautama, who had a very 
 limited belief in the spiritual value of positive as 
 distinct from the negative kind of Asceticism. The 
 ideal of Christian Monasticism, especially in its earlier 
 form, is open to precisely the same objections as the 
 ideal of Buddhism. Those Christians who are called 
 in the narrow and more technical sense of the term 
 mystics have often approximated to the Buddhist 
 type of religious thought and feeling, though some of 
 
 • It is true that the selfishness of the Buddhist ideal is practi- 
 cally (if illogically) redeemed by its insistence upon the duty of 
 inducing others to make similar self-renunciation : the monk must 
 make other monks. But this only emphasizes the anti-social 
 character of the ideal. 
 
Christian Ethics and other Systems 269 
 
 them have at the same time practised laborious works 
 of Charity which to the strict Buddhist would seem 
 but so many fallings off from the true ideal. And even 
 in the ecstasies of the Christian mystic, the " love " 
 of which their utterances are so full has never quite 
 forgotten that it is a desire for the good of other 
 persons, and has seldom become merely a name for 
 the destruction of all desire in order to attain that 
 true good of self which is the extinction of self. As to 
 certain modern and quite unmonastic mystics who 
 profess much sympathy with quasi-Buddhist modes 
 of thought and expression, I will only say that their 
 ideal appears to be consistent with an attitude towards 
 the pleasures, enjoyments, and ambitions of this life 
 which does not perceptibly differ from that of non- 
 mystical Christians, and which would seem to the 
 really Buddhist monk as inconsistent with the life of 
 the true philosopher as it is with that of the true 
 religionist. But in so far as the Western man is ever 
 sincere in his professions of sympathy with the 
 thoroughgoing Buddhist ideal, I freely admit that I 
 do not see why he should ask a Buddhist to become 
 a Christian. I will go further, and say that the diffi- 
 culty is to justify his remaining a Christian and not 
 becoming a professed Buddhist. The attitude that is 
 really intolerable is first to complain of Christianity 
 on the ground that it is too " world-renouncing," and 
 then to patronize a religion which is on any view 
 vastly more world-renouncing, world-contemning. 
 
270 Conscience and Christ 
 
 progress-hating, other-worldly than Christianity has 
 ever been at any period of its history — certainly 
 more so than it is now. In one respect the most 
 ascetic and world-renouncing form of Christianity has 
 always been poles apart from Buddhism. World- 
 renouncing Christianity — except in mystics who have 
 fairly passed outside the bounds of Christian orthodoxy 
 — has always aspired after a better life hereafter : to 
 the Buddhist hope of a future life is one of the deadly 
 sins.^ 
 
 It is true that just as Christianity has sometimes 
 been tinged with Buddhist ideas, so it is possible to find 
 in some phases of Buddhism a much closer approxima- 
 tion to the best Christian ideas. Among the practical 
 Japanese, for instance, the speculative, world-renounc- 
 ing, anti-social side of Buddhism has never had any 
 profound influence. One of its sects has become much 
 more theistic than the religion of Gautama. ^ The 
 language used about salvation by belief in Amida 
 closely resembles the Christian language about salva- 
 tion through Christ.^ Its Eschatology, through 
 association with the Shinto ancestor-worship, has 
 become more like the Christian hope of personal 
 
 * " The virtues which . . . are untarnished by the desire of 
 future life " — Mah4-Parinibbana-Sutta, ii. 9 {Sacred Books of the 
 East, Vol. XI.). 
 
 2 The Jodo Shin Shu. See two very interesting articles by 
 Dr. Estlin Carpenter on " Religion in the Far East " in The Quest 
 (Vol. I, Nos. 3 and 4, 1910). 
 
 ' See The Praises of A mida. Seven Buddhist Sermons, translated 
 from the Japanese of Tada Kanai. By Arthur Lloyd. Tokyo, 
 published by the Kyobunkwan : Yokohama, Kelly and Walsh, 1907. 
 
Christian Ethics and other Systems 271 
 
 Immortality. And the Ethics of the sect have under- 
 gone corresponding developments. The ascetic world- 
 renunciation tends to disappear, and to be trans- 
 formed into a high standard of social duty such as 
 would be recognized by the modern Christian as the 
 true interpretation of Christian Love. This develop- 
 ment has been, up to a certain point, quite independent 
 of Christianity : but in recent times the Buddhist 
 ideal has shown a strong tendency to assimilate 
 avowedly and consciously the ideal of Christ. Buddhist 
 priests sometimes boast that they are teaching Chris- 
 tian Morality. 
 
 In the same way, in India and elsewhere, attempts 
 are being made to regenerate the old historical Re- 
 ligions in a way which is obviously due, sometimes to 
 an unavowed, sometimes to an avowed, influence of 
 the Christian ideal. The best known of such attempts 
 are the movements or rather religious communities 
 known as the Arya Soma] and the Brahmo Somaj. In 
 the Brahmo Somaj the iniluence of Christianity is 
 particularly conspicuous. Its Theism, its hope of 
 Immortality, and its Ethics are often quite of the 
 Christian type. The language in which Keshub 
 Chunder Sen, the founder of its most liberal branch, ^ 
 
 1 The original sect was founded by Rajah Rammshun Roy in 
 1844. There is another branch of the Brahmo Somaj founded by 
 Debendranath Tagore in 1844; Keshub Chunder Sen in 1866 
 founded the " Brahmo Somaj of India," which became so famous 
 that its connexion with the older movement which, though in- 
 fluenced by Christian thought, professes closer affinity with a 
 regenerated Hindooism, was often ignored. 
 
272 Conscience and Christ 
 
 speaks of Christ is very much what would be 
 used by many Unitarian Christians. Somewhat 
 similar tendencies may be detected within the old 
 Persian religion now known as Parseeism. As to 
 Judaism it is difficult to say when it did not begin to 
 be iniluenced by Christianity. And certainly there 
 are many modern Jews whose Ethic is practically at 
 all points Christian. Some modern Jewish Reformers 
 advocate the reading of the New Testament, and 
 regard Jesus as at least one of the prophets — if not 
 as the prophet by whom at last the eternally true 
 element of Judaism has been fully brought out and 
 separated from the element in Judaism which was 
 particularistic, unethical, transitory.^ If they still 
 advocate a modified observance of the ceremonial 
 law, it is only as a particular form of universalistic 
 Theism, suitable to the needs of a particular race 
 with a special history but by no means of any strictly 
 ethical or universal obligation. 
 
 It is only, as it seems to me, as regards these modem 
 attempts to reform ancient religions under the avowed 
 or unavowed influence of Christianity ^ that the 
 question can seriously arise whether they can be 
 regarded as alternative forms of Religion which could 
 
 1 See, for instance, the Liberal Judaism and other writings of 
 Mr. Claude Montefiore. 
 
 ' The argument will not be much aSeeted if it is contended that 
 the approximation to Christianity has been independent of even 
 indirect Christian influence — very dif&cult as such a contention 
 appears to me to be. 
 
Christian Ethics and other Systems 273 
 
 possibly appear so far satisfactory to one who shares 
 the Christian ideal that he would feel himself pre- 
 cluded from asking their adherents to leave their old 
 rehgions and to join the Christian Church. As regards 
 members of such bodies, we ought, I think, seriously to 
 face the question what ought to be the attitude of the 
 Christian to them. Ought we to abandon direct 
 proselytizing propaganda in countries where such 
 religious communities exist, and to direct our mis- 
 sionaries' energies rather towards helping and assisting 
 such efforts at reform from within ? In answer to 
 this question I would say three things : 
 
 (i) We ought to recognize that this Christianizing 
 of other bodies is distinctly one of the ways in which 
 the Kingdoms of the world are already becoming, and 
 are likely in the future still more to become, the 
 Kingdom of our God and of His Christ. In so far as 
 these reforms mean the practical acceptance of that 
 conception of God and that ideal of life which Jesus 
 taught, Christians must rejoice, and thank God that 
 such a work is going on. Already the best Missionaries 
 recognize that the indirect results of missionary effort 
 are as important — perhaps more important — than the 
 direct results as regards the more civilized races and 
 the more educated classes in them. These results by 
 themselves constitute a sufficient and splendid justifi- 
 cation of those missionary efforts in the past towards 
 which some of our enlightened Equi-religionists adopt 
 such a supercilious and depreciatory attitude. We 
 
274 Conscience and Christ 
 
 must not let the mere non-use of the word Christianity 
 bhnd us to the presence of the spiritual reality when 
 it is actually there. The attitude of Christians towards 
 such religious movements ought to be in the highest 
 degree friendly and sympathetic. It does not follow 
 that we can remain wholly satisfied with their posi- 
 tion ; or that, even if we could, avowedly Christian 
 missions ought to cease. Even if the Brahmo Soma] 
 were a completely satisfactory equivalent of Chris- 
 tianity, the forces of all the Christians and all the 
 reformed Hindooisms between them would assuredly 
 be no more than adequate to the task of fighting 
 against the idolatries and superstitions and the caste- 
 moralities of unreformed Hindooism. We may freely 
 admit that direct proselytizing effort had better be 
 concentrated rather upon those who are in the most 
 spiritual need of it than upon those who have adopted 
 some quasi-Christian form of belief under another 
 name. And yet it is probable that the more complete 
 Christianization of such movements will be best carried 
 on by the continuance of independent missionary 
 effort directed towards the making of avowed members 
 of the Christian Church. The people of India are quite 
 capable of appreciating the idea that the same God 
 can be worshipped under many forms : they are not 
 likely to be much impressed by a Religion which does 
 not believe in itself sufficiently to proselytize. 
 
 (2) I think it should very distinctly be realized that 
 the truth and value of the Christian Ethic does not 
 
Christian Ethics and other Systems 275 
 
 depend upon the fact of its having been taught by 
 Jesus Himself — still less upon its having been taught 
 by Jesus exclusively. If it could be shown that the 
 sayings which we have been in the habit of regarding 
 as most characteristic of the historical Jesus were in 
 reality none of His, if it could be shown that there 
 never was an historical Jesus or that we know nothing 
 to speak of about His teaching, the truth and the 
 value of the teaching attributed to our Lord in the 
 Gospels would not be one whit diminished. Still less 
 could it be affected by the fact that others have taught 
 the same ideal. And what is true of the ethical teaching 
 is true equally of the religious teaching of Jesus — if 
 we put aside those few genuine sayings which speak of 
 His own divine Sonship or Messiahship. If that is so, 
 it is a possibility that a religious community which did 
 not formally adopt the name of Christian might come 
 to teach the Ethics and the Theism of the Christian 
 Church. Whether any actual religious community has 
 reached this position is a question of fact upon 
 which I will not venture to pronounce any positive 
 opinion. 
 
 (3) There remains the question, "If an individual 
 or a community has reached this position, what would 
 be still lacking to them ? " That is a large question, 
 to answer which fully would involve almost a treatise 
 on dogmatic Theology. But, so far as the answer can 
 be given in a single word, I believe the answer to be this. 
 If it could be shown that the Jesus of the Gospels was un- 
 
276 Conscience and Christ 
 
 historical, what we should lose would be the personality 
 of Jesus. The Christian ideal might be recognized 
 where the words of Jesus are not known or reverenced, 
 or the words might be accepted where the historic 
 Jesus was not believed in : but they would not come 
 home and appeal to us as powerfully as they do when 
 we think of them as the expression of an actual Person 
 who once lived in this world of ours, who once enjoyed 
 and still enjoys that loving and intimate communion 
 with the heavenly Father of which the Gospel pages 
 tell us. The influence of an ethical ideal embodied in 
 a Person is greater — I do not think it easy to say how 
 much greater — than the influence of an ideal con- 
 sidered as a body of ideas or of precepts. And for this 
 influence of the personality of Jesus to reach its 
 highest efficacy, it must be recognized as supreme and 
 paramount. Assuredly, if we believe the words of the 
 Gospel, there are many who have in various degrees 
 lived out Christ's ideal, though they have not taken 
 His name upon their lips. " Inasmuch as ye have done 
 it unto one of these My brethren, even these least, ye 
 havedoneit unto Me." But, speaking broadly, it is easier 
 to follow Christ when we know whom we are following. 
 The influence of Jesus will not be supremely felt in 
 a community which puts Him side by side with the 
 Buddha or the Bab or Keshub Chunder Sen. The 
 embodiment of the moral ideal in a Person, the con- 
 centration of moral effort upon the following of that 
 Person, the recognition of a unique spiritual authority 
 
Christian Ethics and other Systems 277 
 
 and supremacy in that Person, the belief in the possi- 
 biUty of approach to God through Him — these have 
 always been characteristic notes of the Christian 
 Religion : and to these it has always, I believe, owed 
 its highest spiritual effectiveness. A Christianity 
 without Christ — or a Christianity in which Christ is 
 not emphatically put above other masters — ^will always 
 be a maimed and not very effective Christianity. 
 
 While therefore we may recognize to the full that 
 there may be many genuine followers of Jesus in the 
 Brahmo Soma] or in some reformed Jewish Society, 
 I believe that Jesus will always be better followed in 
 a society which actually recognizes His unique posi- 
 tion. If a community actually came consciously to 
 realize this unique position of Jesus, it would, I should 
 imagine, sooner or later wish to acknowledge the fact 
 by adopting the name of Christian, by identifying 
 itself with the body of Christ's followers throughout 
 the world, and by claiming as its own, deliberately and 
 consciously, the whole spiritual treasure which has 
 come down to them from the Christianity of the past. 
 It would not follow, of course, that it would renounce 
 all spiritual affinity with the spiritual past of its own 
 race. Christianity has already appropriated much 
 spiritual truth which is not of Christian origin. What 
 it has done in the past, it will probably do in the 
 future. The Christianity of the East may hereafter 
 appropriate to itself, and be palpably coloured by, all 
 that is best in the teaching of Confucianism, of 
 
278 Conscience and Christ 
 
 Hindooism or of Buddhism. But these teachings are 
 not very likely to be " baptized into Christ " as fully as 
 truth demands where the central position of Jesus in the 
 religious history of the world is not formally recog- 
 nized. Even from the point of view of Psychology — 
 that science to which our Equi-religionists are so fond 
 of appealing — we may treat it as an established fact 
 that a certain exclusiveness and concentration of 
 devotion is essential to the religion producing its 
 fullest effect upon heart and life. No teacher ever 
 did much who only believed in his religion as one of 
 many equally permissible forms of approach to God. 
 This consideration would not justify our professing to 
 find in Christianity a uniqueness or a superiority to other 
 religions which is inconsistent with the facts of history. 
 But it does make it important that we should not 
 suffer ourselves to drift into these fashionable modes 
 of exaggerated toleration unless we feel absolutely 
 compelled to do so by loyalty to truth. As far as I 
 understand them, the facts of rehgious history support 
 the unique position which Christianity claims for its 
 Founder. 
 
 I have so far avoided the use of definite dogmatic 
 language or reference to the dogmatic formulae of 
 Catholic Christianity. I have so far said nothing 
 which might not be accepted by those Unitarians who 
 do actually give Jesus a supreme and central position 
 in their envisagement of the Universe— such Uni- 
 
Christian Ethics and other Systmns 279 
 
 tarians, I mean, as Channing or Martineau or Dr. 
 Drummond. But if we do agree to put Jesus in this 
 supreme place — to regard Him as the supreme Example, 
 the supreme Prophet, the supreme Revealer of God — 
 if we come to regard the Religion which He founded 
 not merely as one of many parallel Religions, but as 
 the final or absolute Religion, the culminating product 
 of all religious evolution, then the question will arise 
 in what language this conviction may be most suitably 
 expressed ; or, better, what view of the relation of 
 Christ to God supplies the best interpretation of the 
 facts revealed by history and religious experience. 
 On this very difficult enquiry it is no part of my 
 present task to enter. I will only say a very few words 
 as to the relation in which it stands to the question 
 I have been actually discussing. 
 
 We have most of us come, I imagine, to recognize 
 the historical fact that traditional Christian doctrine 
 is the result of the Church's reflection about its 
 Founder. It expresses the sense which Christ's 
 followers have entertained of His unique spiritual 
 importance. It has expressed that sense in terms 
 which were taken from the metaphysical dialect of the 
 ancient Graeco-Roman world, and which implied the 
 ideas of that metaphysic. That metaphysical dialect 
 is not ours : some of the metaphysical conceptions 
 which it implies are not ours. We do not naturally 
 think in terms of Ousia and Hypostasis, Logos and 
 Perichoresis, Generation and Procession. And there- 
 
28o Conscience and Christ 
 
 fore I do not believe that Christianity is eternally 
 committed to the formulse of the past : we may not 
 say that a reUgious body has ceased to be Christian 
 which has abandoned some of these terms and adopted 
 others. But there is always an enormous presumption, 
 within the religious sphere, in favour of keeping up our 
 spiritual continuity with our own past. If we are 
 agreed that it is ethically and religiously healthy to 
 give Christ a supreme and a unique position in our 
 religious and ethical life — to think of Him as occupy- 
 ing a unique position in relation both to God and to 
 Humanity — the traditional Cathohc language has a 
 strong presumption in its favour. Whether we can 
 put Christ into this position depends in the main upon 
 the importance which we attach to His moral and 
 religious teaching, and to the estimate which we form 
 of His character considered as an expression of His 
 ideal. The strictly religious side of His teaching is 
 excluded from our present subject. In these lectures 
 I have endeavoured to give reasons for thinking that we 
 can attribute a supreme position and unique value to the 
 moral teaching of Jesus Christ and to the character 
 which is disclosed in His teaching. His life, and His 
 death. I believe that an examination of the strictly 
 religious or theological side of Christ's teaching would 
 yield the same result — that we should find His teach- 
 ing about God, and about man's relation to Him, the 
 highest teaching that the world has known. And it 
 is a teaching which is not altogether separable from a 
 
Christian Ethics and other Systerhs 281 
 
 certain view about His own nature and relation to 
 God. For it is just in His supreme consciousness of a 
 filial relation to God, of intimate union witli God, in 
 which we see exhibited the true attitude of Humanity 
 in general to God. And the two lines of enquiry — the 
 ethical and the religious — are closely connected. For 
 if we start with the conviction that God exists and 
 that He may best be thought of in the light of the 
 highest moral ideal known to Humanity, then it 
 follows that, wherever we discover this highest moral 
 ideal, there we must recognize the highest revelation 
 of God which the human mind can apprehend. We 
 have seen that Jesus was the first to teach in its full 
 purity that moral ideal which, so far as it can be 
 condensed into a single principle, expresses itself in 
 the words that Love is the fulfilling of the Law. He 
 was the first to teach also — with full clearness and 
 purity — the idea that God must be thought of in the 
 light of this ideal, as the common Father of Humanity 
 whose nature is best expressed by the word Love.^ 
 
 1 In The Teaching of Christ, by the Rev. E. G. Selwjm, an attempt 
 is made to deny that Jesus " revealed God as ' Father ' " (p. 56). 
 The grounds for this somewhat surprising statement seem to be 
 that " the teaching about the Father, where it is direct and not 
 parabolic, is given to those who have already responded to His 
 preaching. . . . The Sermon on the Mount, we are told, was uttered 
 after ' His disciples came unto Him.' " Surely if this last statement 
 be accepted, it would not alter the fact that Christ did teach it ; but, 
 if there is a certain result of criticism, it is that the introductions to 
 our Lord's discourses and the joinings of His sayings are frequently 
 literary devices of the compilers and cannot be implicitly relied 
 upon as history. Nobody now supposes that the Sermon on the 
 Mount as a whole was delivered on any one occasion. Further, he 
 
282 Conscience and Christ 
 
 And His life and the character which it reveals im- 
 press us as having been in completest harmony with 
 that ideal. This is briefly the line of thought which 
 leads us up to the conclusion that it is in the teaching, 
 the mind, the Personality of Christ that the highest 
 
 contends that (i) the idea of God's Fatherhood was already known 
 to the Jews, and (2) that Jesus did not teach that " God's Father- 
 hood was a truth independent of the believer's relation to Himself." 
 Surely these two reasons are mutually exclusive, unless Mr. Selwyn 
 is actually prepared to say that the prophetic belief in the Father- 
 hood of God was unfounded, and the second assertion chiefly rests 
 upon the fourth Gospel. If he appeals to that Gospel, will he say 
 that, even to its author, " God is love " means merely " God loves 
 all members of the Christian Church " ? 
 
 Mr. Selwyn further asserts that " He no more teaches the Brother- 
 hood of Man than the Fatherhood of God " (p. 109) on the ground 
 that the early Christian writers only apply the word " brother " or 
 " brethren " to fellow-Christians, and not to the Gentiles. Even 
 if this were true, it would not show that our Lord did not teach the 
 wider truth Himself. No doubt Jesus was always speaking to Jews, 
 and did not often explicitly consider the case of Gentiles. But does 
 Mr. Selwyn seriously mean to say that our Lord — e.g. in the parable 
 of the Good Samaritan — meant that the term " neighbour " was to 
 be understood only of the brother Jew or the fellow-Christian ? If 
 not, the idea of the Brotherhood of all men is clearly latent in that 
 parable as in all the teaching which implies the doctrine of universal 
 love. The question whether the word " brother " is used is com- 
 paratively unimportant. 
 
 With regard to the later Christian Church it is true that " brother " 
 meant primarily " fellow-Christian," but it would be a libel on the 
 early Church and opposed to all the historical evidence to say that 
 it did not teach the duty of loving pagans. What is the difference 
 between loving a man as oneself and treating him as a " brother " ? 
 No doubt the ideal of love is not fully reached till it is mutual, but 
 that fact does not destroy the duty of trying to realize it. It is a 
 pity that a writer otherwise not illiberal or uncritical should have 
 allowed the desire to prove that the " liberal Protestant " has 
 always been wrong to get the better of him, and should so frequently 
 insist on reading back into the teaching of Jesus not merely the 
 germs but the developed ideas of later " Catholicism." In the 
 writings of liberal Protestants he complains of " the sudden and 
 secret irruption of the subjective element into discussions which 
 purport to be objective and scientific " (p. 56). I do not deny that 
 
Christian Ethics and other Systems 283 
 
 and completes! Revelation of God has been made. 
 And this is the fundamental truth which Greek re- 
 ligious Philosophy expressed by saying that the Son 
 or Logos, the Reason or Word of God, was incarnate in 
 Him. " The Word took flesh and dwelt among us, 
 and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only- 
 begotten of the Father." If I were to develope the 
 arguments which justify the application to Jesus of 
 theological language such as is used by the Christian 
 Creeds, I should lay the chief stress upon this — that 
 now after the lapse of nearly two thousand years the 
 teaching of Jesus about God and about the moral 
 ideal still appeals to us as containing the vital essence 
 of all Religion and of all Morality ; that it presents 
 itself to us as the true basis of all further development 
 whether in the sphere of Theology or of Morality, and 
 that it is in the Church which Jesus founded that such 
 a development has taken place and is taking place in 
 the fullest and richest measure. I do not believe that 
 Jesus is the only man in whom the Word or Reason 
 or Wisdom of God has dwelt. That God has been 
 revealed in some measure by other great prophets and 
 teachers, that He dwells to some extent in the Con- 
 science of all men, was fully and cordially recognized 
 
 the complaint has sometimes been justified, but Mr. Selwyn seems 
 to me to have merely exchanged one subjective bias for another. 
 The fact that he has done so is to my mind the chief defect in an 
 otherwise excellent book. Fortunately the belief that God is the 
 common Father of men, and that Christ taught the Brotherhood of 
 man is not often explicitly repudiated either by Catholics or 
 Protestants. 
 
284 Conscience and Christ 
 
 by the philosophical Greek Fathers. But the unique 
 appeal which Christ still makes to our Conscience 
 both by His teaching and by His hfe and death of self- 
 sacrifice, taken together with the supreme place which 
 the reUgion founded by Him has occupied, and still 
 occupies, in the spiritual history of the world, justifies 
 us in saying that with Him the Logos was united in 
 a supreme manner, that in Him God is most fully 
 revealed to men, or, in the language of St. Paul, 
 that in Him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead 
 bodily. And the greatest advantage of putting Christ 
 in this position is that it enormously strengthens the 
 influence of Jesus and the ideal which He represents, 
 over the moral and religious life. And therefore I 
 believe that it is in religious communities which retain 
 the ancient Catholic tradition, or at least recognize in 
 some explicit way the fundamental idea which has 
 expressed itself in that tradition, that the influence of 
 Christ's ideal is likely to attain its maximum intensity. 
 There are followers of Christ who have not taken 
 His name upon their lips. There are others who do 
 assume that name but who scruple to speak of Him as 
 God incarnate. That should not prevent our recog- 
 nizing these last as fellow-Christians and co-operating 
 with them in all manner of Christian activities ; but 
 equally it should not prevent us from affirming that for 
 ourselves the following of Christ is made easier by think- 
 ing of Him not only as the supreme Teacher and the 
 supreme Example, but as the Being in whom that 
 
Christian Ethics and other Systems 285 
 
 union of God and Man after which all ethical Religion 
 aspires, is most fully accomplished, and through whom 
 the individual soul can attain in the fullest measure 
 that degree of complete likeness to God which its 
 spiritual capacity admits. 
 
APPENDIX I. ON THE LOVE OF GOD 
 
 The question may be raised, " In what relation does the 
 love of God stand to the love of man ? " There is no 
 explicit attempt to reconcile or reduce to unity the two 
 commandments in the teaching of Jesus Himself. But if 
 the conception of God taught by Him is that of a loving 
 and righteous Father who wills the true good of all His 
 creatures, it is a fair deduction that the love of God will 
 show itself in the love of man. WiU it show itself in 
 nothing else ? The answer to that question will depend 
 upon the view we take of the attitude of Jesus to the 
 ceremonial law, a subject which has already been briefly 
 discussed. If the view I have taken on that subject be 
 correct, we may say that, in so far as Jesus recognized the 
 non-permanence and non-essentiality of the Mosaic Law, 
 He must be taken by implication to have recognized that 
 in their actual content the two commandments come to 
 the same thing. The love of God can express itself in 
 actual conduct only by the doing of God's will. If God 
 wills nothing but the true good of man (and, as we might 
 be inclined to add, all sentient beings), the conduct to 
 which the love of God prompts will be the same as that 
 enjoined by the second great commandment which, in the 
 words of the Gospel, is " like unto " the first. ^ The 
 performance of ritual ordinances, sacrifices, acts of worship, 
 
 * Matt. xxii. 39, probably an addition of the Evangelist ; Mark 
 (xii. 31) has simply " the second is this." 
 
 286 
 
On the Love of God • 287 
 
 etc., will thus only be valuable in so far as they stimulate 
 to the doing of God's will in the service of man. It is true 
 that, if " on these commandments hang all the law and 
 prophets," be treated as an addition of the Evangelist, 
 Jesus does not explicitly recognize that there are no other 
 commandments not included in the two, but in many 
 passages He implies it : for the other commandments 
 cease to be binding when they conflict with them, and 
 they do conflict the moment they are not duly subordi- 
 nated to the two. To spend time and money on sacrifices, 
 except so far as to do so will make the sacrificer or others 
 more willing to perform the two great commandments, 
 would be to put the command to sacrifice above the 
 command to love. The implication was fully developed by 
 St. Paul and the Church. 
 
 Does this imply that the first commandment becomes 
 superfluous, and that it may in practice be superseded by 
 the second ? Not at all. For, (i) it is of extreme importance 
 to recognize that the service of man is the Will of God — 
 that religious motives should be brought to bear upon and 
 invoked to secure the performance of the duties prescribed 
 by abstract morality. (2) In particular the love of ideal 
 perfection is likely to be stimulated by the belief in an 
 ideally perfect Being. Devotion to a Person is a stronger 
 motive than devotion to an idea. (3) The insistence upon 
 the love of God is particularly valuable in preventing " the 
 enthusiasm of humanity " from degenerating into mere 
 hedonistic UtUitarianism. It tends to emphasize the 
 truth that the good of man which the Christian is to pro- 
 mote is not his mere pleasure but his true good — that 
 ideal of Humanity which constitutes the true end for 
 which his life was designed by God, and which is an ex- 
 pression of the character which belongs eternally to God. 
 The love of God is love of the moral ideal considered 
 
288 Conscience and Christ 
 
 not as a mere ideal, but an ideal realized in a personal 
 Being. '^ 
 
 The teaching of Christ recognizes two motives for 
 Morality which prompt to the same conduct — love of God 
 and love of man. There is no trace in His teaching of the 
 monstrous doctrine which I have heard preached by men 
 who are regarded as typical (if rather old-fashioned) repre- 
 sentatives of Anglican doctrine — that love of man is 
 impossible without the love of God consciously present 
 and recognized as such in the mind of the agent. This 
 doctrine is, indeed, opposed to an explicit declaration of 
 Jesus : " Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of these My 
 brethren, even these least, ye did it unto Me."^ (It 
 is possible that "brethren" may mean merely "followers 
 of Christ," but this is hardly likely if the words be a genuine 
 utterance of Jesus.) This beautiful saying imphes that 
 there may be much true Christian morality in those who 
 have not used the name of Christ, or been consciously 
 inspired by the love of God. This is quite consistent with 
 the assertion that ideally the love of God ought to be 
 combined with the love of man, and that the first may be 
 a most valuable mode of inspiring the second. Both, in 
 fact, spring from the same root — the love of all that is 
 worthy of love, love of what is good absolutely or universally. 
 The later doctrine of the Church brought the two motives 
 together by its insistence upon the love of Christ — the 
 ideal Man in whom the perfection of God was most fully 
 revealed and reahzed — at once the highest revelation of 
 the divine character and the supreme example of human 
 goodness. This union of the two ideal motives to Morality 
 
 * " Conscientiousness is the sum and substance of the love of 
 God." Tyrrell, Essays on Faith and Immortality, p. 26. The 
 saying may be accepted with the proviso mentioned above. 
 
 ' Matt. XXV. 40. 
 
On the Love of God • 289 
 
 has, no doubt, been one of the ideas to which the Christian 
 ReUgion owes its strength. It still possesses enormous 
 value ; but it should always be insisted on in such a way 
 as (i) to keep prominent the idea that Christ is the Revealer 
 of God, and not to substitute the Son for the Father or 
 encourage the idea that the Father's character is unlike 
 the Son's, or that the Father is too far off and impersonal a 
 Being to be loved and prayed to ; (2) to treat the historic 
 Christ as the symbol and embodiment of ideal Humanity, 
 without resolving Him into a Christ who is ideal in the 
 sense of being unhistorical. It is right to do good to man 
 " for the sake of Christ " ; we cannot legitimately say " we 
 wiU do good to man only for the sake of Christ : if it were 
 not for Christ, we should do nothing of the kind." True 
 Christian love, as has been finely said by Seeley, is " the 
 love of the ideal Man in each man, or, as Christ Himself 
 might have said, the love of God in each man " [Ecce Homo, 
 chap, xviii). It is a love of the possible Christ in every 
 man. 
 
 Further to discuss this subject would involve an 
 examination of the whole question of the relation of 
 Religion to Morality, which I have dealt with somewhat 
 fully in The Theory of Good and. Evil, Book III, chap. ii. 
 
APPENDIX II. ON CHRIST'S TEACHING ABOUT 
 FUTURE REWARD. AND PUNISHMENT i 
 
 The question of our Lord's teaching about the future life 
 does not strictly belong to our subject, but it is so closely 
 connected with it that it seems advisable to add a short 
 discussion of it to these lectures. It is, indeed, scarcely 
 possible to draw a strict line between the ethical teaching 
 of any teacher and his attitude towards the future life. 
 The teacher's ideal comes out in his conception of the 
 future life itself and of the relation in which it stands to 
 the life of action and aspiration here and now. We cannot 
 help facing the question whether there is anything in our 
 Lord's teaching upon this subject which prevents our 
 accepting Him as our supreme moral Authority. 
 
 Attempts are sometimes made to disparage the moral 
 teaching of Jesus Christ on the ground that He invited men 
 to be good and to do good from hope of future reward and 
 dread of future punishment. Sometimes it is even suggested 
 that such hopes and fears are set before men as the sole 
 motives for righteousness and the avoidance of sin. This 
 suggestion can, I think, be definitely refuted. Christ did 
 appreciate and teach the intrinsic value of goodness and 
 the intrinsic evil of sin. The question was, of course, one 
 which had never been presented to Him in the technical 
 language of philosophy. But the idea that goodness is to be 
 valued solely on account of its posthumous reward is in- 
 
 1 This note is reprinted from the Modern Churchman by kind 
 permission of the editor. 
 
 290 
 
Reward and Punishment - 291 
 
 consistent with the whole tone of His teaching both about 
 God and about human duty. He distinctly makes the love 
 of God the supreme and ideal motive for goodness. You 
 cannot love from hope of reward or fear of punishment. 
 God was to Him a loving Father, intrinsically righteous and 
 beneficent ; and that is quite inconsistent with the theory 
 that the divine commands are wholly arbitrary, that virtue 
 means merely the doing of what is commanded by God for 
 the sake of reward and the avoidance of what is forbidden 
 under penalties : and nothing less than this is imphed in 
 the theory that the mere hope of reward or fear of punish- 
 ment are the sole motives for right conduct. But it is quite 
 undeniable that He did also seek to encourage men to do 
 right and to resist temptation by the thought of a future 
 life, the character of which would depend upon the use they 
 made of their wills in this life. If this is to be regarded as 
 demorahzing " Eudaemonism," most of the MoraHsts who 
 have seriously beUeved in Immortality will incur the same 
 condemnation. There is nothing demoralizing in such 
 teaching if it is not made the sole or the chief motive for 
 virtue, and this most certainly our Lord never did. I 
 deliberately exclude from this enquiry all other aspects of 
 our Lord's " Eschatology " — the question what He meant 
 by the Kingdom, when and how it was to come, etc. That 
 question has already been discussed, so far as seemed neces- 
 sary, in the second lecture. We must treat the Eschatology, 
 for the present purpose, as a doctrine about the future life. 
 Whether this hfe was to be lived " in Heaven " or on a 
 regenerated earth, is a question of no ethical importance. 
 The hope of future blessedness has ethical value (i) 
 educationally, as leading up to and preparing men for a 
 more disinterested goodness ; (2) as affording help and 
 encouragement to those who are indeed hungering and 
 thirsting after righteousness, but are as yet far from being 
 
292 Conscience and Christ 
 
 perfected Christians or from having (in Kantian phrase) 
 perfectly " autonomous " wills. (3) In so far as the reward 
 is thought of as itself consisting in a state of greater moral 
 perfection or as a happiness which is the natural and 
 necessary consequence of goodness, the doctrine of reward 
 and punishment begins to assume a form in which it is not 
 only consistent with the belief in the intrinsic value of 
 goodness, but becomes hard to distinguish from it. It is, 
 indeed, not the whole object of the good man to win peace 
 of conscience or " inward harmony " whether in this life 
 or the next ; but, in so far as he cares about goodness, he 
 will not be able to win inward peace or happiness without 
 it ; nobody can value goodness without valuing a good 
 conscience. Thus the ethical value of the belief in a future 
 life depends largely upon the character of the Heaven and 
 the Hell which it encourages men to expect. That the 
 Kingdom of Heaven which Christ invites men to qualify 
 for was thought of in a spiritual and ethical manner I 
 believe to be undeniable. There is no reason why this 
 should not be admitted even by those who refuse to allow 
 that our Lord's " Eschatology " in any way went beyond 
 the level reached by the prophetic and apocalyptic teaching 
 of Judaism. The " Kingdom of Heaven " was always to 
 the Jew a " Kingdom of righteousness and peace," what- 
 ever else it may have been. 
 
 I confess I feel some indignation at the insincerity and 
 superficiality with which these cant objections to any moral 
 teaching which is connected with the hopes of a future life 
 are often repeated. What Moralist, except perhaps an 
 ultra-Kantian rigorist of a type which is not now much in 
 fashion, objects to a teacher trying to keep boys and girls 
 ■ — or men and women — from yielding to temptations to 
 drunkenness or impurity by teUing them that they will be 
 ruining their future happiness in this present life by so 
 
Reward and Punishment 293 
 
 doing ? Why is happiness — whether we think of ordinary 
 enjoyment or of higher aesthetic and intellectual pleasures, 
 of human affections or of peace of conscience — any the less 
 valuable or less noble because it is thought of as lasting 
 for ever ? Undoubtedly the idea of " right for the sake of 
 right " — of the perseitas honi (as the Schoolmen called it), 
 of duty for duty's sake, of the autonomous will and the like 
 • — was not set forth by Jesus in the abstract way in which 
 it has been taught by the best later philosophy, though not 
 always by the philosophy of those who disparage Christian 
 teaching on this head. In the insistence on this idea by 
 later Christian teachers we may recognize a real develop- 
 ment of the teaching of Jesus — a development which only 
 brings out and emphasizes what is always implied in the 
 teaching of the Master Himself. This is doubtless one of 
 the truths which have been brought out into fuller light by 
 the later work of the Spirit in the Church, but it is clearly 
 implicit in His own teaching. If we ask ourselves how the 
 relation between virtue and its " reward " presented itself 
 to Jesus Himself, the following remarks of Mr. Montefiore 
 probably get as near to His real conception as we shall 
 succeed in doing : — 
 
 " It may also be observed that the ' eudaemonism ' of 
 the beatitudes is of a special kind. They do not say, ' Do 
 this, or be this, because you will gain a reward,' or, ' do not 
 do this because you will be punished.' But they say, ' A 
 certain line of action, a certain disposition of mind 
 bring happiness now and hereafter.' The result follows 
 necessarily from the cause. It is the law of God. ' Heaven' 
 and happiness follow as certainly from goodness as their 
 opposites follow from wickedness. The one is not an 
 arbitrarily added reward ; the other is not an arbitrarily 
 added punishment. The result is contained in the pre- 
 
294 Conscience and Christ 
 
 miss, as surely as the result of health-giving medicines 
 or death-dealing drugs is already contained within them. 
 The bliss of virtue, both ' now ' and ' hereafter,' is a 
 continuous state, and not a something added ab extra to 
 form a reward, and mutatis mutandis, the same may be 
 said of vice. Thus the sting of the supposed ' eudaemon- 
 ism ' is removed." ^ 
 
 It is not, indeed, and could not truthfully be asserted 
 that peace of conscience or " the goodwill," is all that is 
 necessary to happiness, and anyone who beheves that the 
 Power who rules the world is loving cannot but believe 
 that the other things necessary to happiness wiU ultimately 
 be added for those who already possess this its most 
 essential element, and so much was certainly taught by 
 our Lord. 
 
 Much more might very weU be said upon this most 
 important topic, but my special object in these pages is to 
 ask : " What was the actual teaching of Jesus as to the 
 duration of future punishment ? " Mr. Montefiore, who so 
 admirably defends our Lord from the charge of eudae- 
 monism, expresses great horror at what he supposes to be 
 His teaching about everlasting punishment, a doctrine 
 which even orthodox modern Judaism has repudiated. 
 Upon this subject I would make the following remarks : — 
 
 (i) I should like to begin by stating quite definitely that 
 the doctrine of everlasting punishment — in its ordinary, 
 traditional acceptation — presents us with a view of the 
 character of God so clearly revolting to the modern con- 
 science, and so inconsistent with the general teaching of 
 our Lord Himself about the Love of God, that we could 
 not accept it in deference to any external authority what- 
 ever. I make this remark in order that I may not be 
 * The Synoptic Gospels, II, p. 485. 
 
Reward and Punishment ' :295 
 
 accused of approaching the subject with a fixed deter- 
 mination neither to accept the doctrine of everlasting 
 punishment, nor to question the view usually accepted by 
 Christians as to the moral authority of their Master. If 
 Jesus did indeed teach the doctrine of everlasting punish- 
 ment, and meant by it what the words naturally and 
 obviously suggest, modern Christians would have to 
 recognize in such an unquestioning acceptance of a 
 traditional Jewish view another of those limitations of 
 His knowledge which in some matters Orthodoxy itself 
 has been compelled to acknowledge. It is not perhaps quite 
 inconceivable — if we approach the subject without pre- 
 suppositions—that He might have taught the traditional 
 view in the traditional words without seeing how incon- 
 sistent it was with His own conception of the loving Father 
 who is always ready to forgive the penitent ; but anyone 
 who takes a high view of the ethical elevation of Christ's 
 teaching — even apart from any theological or Christo- 
 logical theory about His divine nature ^ — is justified in 
 approaching the subject with a strong indisposition to 
 believe that He did so. 
 
 (2) AU the teaching whether about future reward or 
 future punishment is of a metaphorical character. If the 
 Messianic banquet is not to be taken in a naively reaUstic 
 sense (and even some Rabbis taught that the " eating and 
 drinking " were not to be taken literally ^), neither is the 
 fate of those excluded to be so understood. They are shut 
 
 * It would be out of place to take such views into consideration, 
 inasmuch as the moral impression created by the religious and 
 ethical teaching of Jesus, and the character which they reveal, is the 
 chief ground of the Church's teaching about His Person. 
 
 ' We know that Jesus taught there was to be no marrying or 
 giving in marriage, and that the righteous would be " as angels in 
 heaven." The angels were never, I imagine, supposed to eat and 
 drink. 
 
296 Conscience and Christ 
 
 out in the " outer darkness " — outside the brilliantly 
 lighted banqueting hall — where there is " weeping and 
 gnashing of teeth" (Matt. xxv. 30). Moreover, the 
 metaphor here used is of a kind which vividly suggests the 
 pains of remorse, though I am far from suggesting that 
 these are the only pains which Jesus thought of, or 
 which a truly ethical conception of punishment can approve. 
 As to that other metaphor, " where their worm dieth not, 
 and the fire is not quenched " (Mark ix. 48), it is probable 
 that the primary thought is simply that of corruption — 
 the corruption of the tomb — rather than of punishment, 
 and of a fire which consumes what is corrupt. The words 
 are vague, and they are derived from Isaiah Ixvi. 24, where 
 it is distinctly " the carcases of the men that have trans- 
 gressed against me " which are to be consumed. Here the 
 meaning of " unquenchable " is clearly " that which will 
 not be quenched till it has consumed what is put into it." 
 (3) The only passages in the Synoptic Gospels which 
 quite explicitly teach that the punishment will be 
 " aeonian " are as follows : — 
 
 (a) It is good for thee to enter into life maimed or halt, 
 rather than having two hands or two feet to be cast into 
 the aeonian fire (Matt, xviii. 8). 
 
 (b) Depart from me, ye cursed, into the aeonian fire 
 which is prepared for the devil and his angels (Matt. 
 xxv. 41). 
 
 (c) And these shall go away into aeonian punishment, 
 but the righteous into aeonian life (Matt. xxv. 46). 
 
 To these three passages may be added a fourth, which, 
 prima facie, may be held to imply the doctrine of everlasting 
 punishment : — 
 
 {d) " Whosoever shall speak against the Holy Spirit, 
 
Reward and Punishment ' 297 
 
 it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world [aeon] 
 nor in that which is to come " (Matt. xii. 32). 
 
 I will not here discuss at length the doubts which may be 
 raised as to the meaning of this term " aeonian " [aiwvtos] 
 or the probable Aramaic original which it may represent. 
 It is enough to say that it need not necessarily mean 
 the same as di'Sios, which is the ordinary Greek word for 
 " everlasting " ; and that over and over again in the LXX 
 and elsewhere it is used of things which clearly are not 
 endless. It may mean " agelong," " very long," or 
 " belonging to the future aeon," and so be virtually 
 equivalent to " future." It is pretty certain that for the 
 Jew of our Lord's time it had acquired the more definite 
 meaning " belonging to the Messianic age " ; if so, the 
 fire will be the fire connected with the Messianic Judge- 
 ment, the punishment will be the Messianic punishment. 
 Nothing will be determined as to its duration. It has, 
 moreover, often been remarked that the word used for 
 punishment (KoAoo-ts) is one which distinctly suggests 
 corrective, disciplinary, reformatory punishment. There 
 were other Greek words for retributive punishment which 
 the Evangelist might have employed if he had wished to 
 do so. But such explanations will probably seem to some 
 minds not very satisfying. After all, the term " aeonian " 
 is apphed also to the life of the blest, and there is no doubt 
 that this was, thought of as everlasting, though it may still 
 be that the word does not mean " everlasting." Assuming 
 that it does imply or include the idea of endless duration, 
 it is fair to point out that these passages are all derived 
 from the first Gospel ; and, if there is a conclusion to 
 which the general results of recent Gospel criticism point 
 (no one insists upon it more strongly than Mr. Montefiore), 
 it is that sayings in the first Gospel, unsupported by the 
 
298 Conscience and Christ 
 
 other Synoptists, are very frequently coloured by the 
 doctrinal beliefs or ecclesiastical arrangements of the 
 Judaeo-Christian Church at the end of the first century 
 A.D. These passages may well be " ecclesiastical additions " 
 , — ^like the authority to bind and loose, the committal of the 
 keys of the Kingdom to St. Peter, the command to bring 
 quarrels to be settled by the Church, etc. ; or at least they 
 are in all probability very much modified by the un- 
 conscious influence of ecclesiastical tradition. And it is 
 observable that the whole of the passage in which the 
 second and third allusions to aeonian punishment occur 
 (" I was a stranger and ye took me in," etc.) is one which 
 on grounds quite unconnected with this question is 
 by many critics suspected of being influenced by later 
 tradition. 
 
 (4) I should say that this might be accepted as by far the 
 most probable solution but for the fact that the last of the 
 four Matthean passages has a parallel in St. Mark (iii. 29) : — 
 " Whosoever shall blaspheme against the Holy Spirit hath 
 never forgiveness, but is guilty of an aeonian sin,"i and 
 is found in another form in St. Luke. Now in this 
 passage I would observe (a) that the idea of " everlasting " 
 or " eternal " sin (if it is to be so translated) is not neces- 
 sarily the same as that of " eternal punishment " ; (b) it is 
 not said that the sinner against the Holy Spirit has actually 
 committed an " eternal sin," but only that he is " hable to 
 it," " in danger of it." This does no doubt imply that a 
 state of eternal sin is possible, but not necessarily that 
 the sinner's doom is finally fixed at the moment of 
 death, (c) The simplest and possibly the original form 
 of this part of the saying is that found in Luke (xii. 10), 
 which has nothing about an " eternal sin," but simply 
 
 1 So the revised text for the textus receptus translated "in 
 danger of eternal damnation" (more strictly " judgement"). 
 
Reward and Punishment ' 299 
 
 " it shall not be forgiven." Luke is here probably 
 following Q (cf. Streeter in Oxf. Studies in the Syn. 
 Probl.,-p. 171). " Ecclesiastical additions " are certainly not 
 peculiar to the first Gospel, though they are more frequent 
 in that Gospel than elsewhere, and it is quite possible that 
 Mark's " but is guilty of an eternal sin," and Matthew's 
 " neither in this age nor in that which is to come," may be 
 varying attempts to explain and emphasize the simple " it 
 shall not be forgiven." {d) If Mark's " aeonian sin " be 
 regarded as original, the meaning may be " a sin which will 
 be condemned at the Judgement, which will exclude from 
 the Messianic Kingdom." We may then suppose that both 
 Matthew and Luke have attempted to explain in different 
 ways a word not easily intelhgible to Gentile readers. 
 (e) If Luke's version be accepted as the original, it may still 
 be contended that even the Lukan saying implies the 
 severer doctrine. If there is a sin which cannot be forgiven, 
 and if there is to be a punishment for unforgiven sin, does 
 not this, it may be asked, imply an everlasting punishment? 
 I should answer " Certainly not." It would be quite 
 compatible with the belief in the extinction of unrepentant 
 sinners at the Judgement or after an interval (and this was 
 one of the recognized forms of Jewish opinion on the 
 subject), or with a terminable punishment. One who has 
 suffered the full punishment due to his sin has not, in the 
 obvious sense of the word, been forgiven. There is the 
 utmost uncertainty about the exact form and original 
 import of this mysterious saying about "sinning against the 
 Holy Ghost," and these doubts must cast a certain amount 
 of suspicion upon the whole saying. Without asserting 
 that the expression " Holy Ghost " was unknown to the 
 rehgious vocabulary of Jesus, it is eminently characteristic 
 of the Evangelists. It is, to say the least of it, quite possible 
 that the whole passage, in spite of its high external attesta- 
 
300 Conscience and Christ 
 
 tion, may have grown out of some misunderstood saying of 
 a much less definite character. But, if it is genuine, it says 
 no more than this : " Other sins may be forgiven at the 
 Judgement, this one will not be so forgiven." As to the 
 consequence of condemnation, nothing is determined. 
 
 (5) There is one other passage in Mark which may be held 
 prima facie to imply the doctrine of everlasting punishment. 
 " It is good for thee to enter into life maimed rather than 
 having two hands to go into Gehenna, into the unquench- 
 able fire," and the following verses ending " where their 
 worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched " (Mark ix. 
 43-48). 
 
 Now this passage is the equivalent in St. Mark of the 
 passage cited above from the first Gospel (xviii. 8). If it 
 is treated as the original form of the saying, then we get rid 
 altogether of one of the Matthean passages in which the 
 word aeonian is used, and the suspicion is strengthened that 
 the word " aeonian " belongs to the ecclesiastical vocabu- 
 lary of the two first Evangelists. In that case all the 
 Matthean passages will be shown not to be exact reports of 
 the Lord's saying. But it may be asked whether Mark's 
 " unquenchable fire " does not imply the idea of an ever- 
 lasting punishment no less explicitly and even in a more 
 terrible form. I do not think so. To say that the fire is 
 unquenchable does not necessarily imply that every one 
 who is plunged into it will remain in it for ever. If I say 
 that at a certain time somebody was suffering from " an 
 unquenchable thirst," I do not say that he continued to 
 suffer from it even for the rest of his life, still less for ever ; 
 I only mean that he would like to have quenched his thirst, 
 perhaps tried to quench it, but could not. The fire is one 
 which those who find themselves in it have no power to 
 quench. The same remark applies to the expression in a 
 later verse, " where their worm dieth not, and the fire is 
 
Reward and Punishment ' 301 
 
 not quenched" (Mark ix. 48), which is not found in 
 Matthew. I do not, therefore, regard these passages as 
 teaching or necessarily implying the doctrine of an ever- 
 lasting punishment which no repentance can avail to end. 
 
 Moreover, in spite of the prejudice which is always 
 excited by critical conjectures which may be branded as 
 " convenient," I cannot help feehng a strong suspicion 
 that " into the unquenchable fire " is a gloss of the Evan- 
 gelist, and that the original saying had only " Gehenna " 
 or " the Gehenna of fire " (as in Matt, xviii. 9 and v. 29, 30), 
 for which the first Evangelist has substituted " the aeonian 
 fire," while St. Mark has expanded it by an explanation — 
 an explanation by no means superfluous for Gentile 
 readers.^ This is the version of the original saying which 
 most easily explains both variants. I have already pointed 
 out that all the expressions used by our Lord — Gehenna, 
 unquenchable fire, " weeping and gnashing of teeth," etc., 
 were traditional Jewish terms, which need not be sup- 
 posed to imply " everlasting punishment " if they did 
 not invariably do so in the current rabbinic teaching of 
 the time. 
 
 (6) And this last remark brings us to the whole question 
 of contemporary Jewish opinion on the subject. I admit 
 that, if it could be shown that the behef in everlasting 
 punishment was the established Jewish belief of the time 
 (outside the conservative Sadducean circles), the prima facie 
 conclusion would be — for those who are unwilling to admit 
 that the religious insight of Jesus rose far above the general 
 level of His time — that Jesus shared that belief. But this 
 is not the conclusion to which the best authorities on the 
 
 ' Dalman pronounces that the Aramaic equivalent of Gehenna 
 " is the one term whose use by Jesus is assured, since all three 
 Synoptists record it among the words of Jesus " (The Words of 
 Jesus, I, 161 ). 
 
302 Conscience and Christ 
 
 subject have actually come. There were many views 
 current as to the future destiny of the wicked. And among 
 them was certainly the view that the wicked were ulti- 
 mately extinguished. 1 Our Lord cannot be definitely shown 
 to have adopted the severest view. We are surely not called 
 upon to believe that He adopted that one of the current 
 opinions which was most difficult to reconcile with His own 
 teaching about the Fatherhood of God, though it may well 
 be that, in the depth of His stern indignation against sin. 
 He may have used severe but vague prophetic language 
 without expressly attempting to reconcile it with His 
 other great conviction about the love of God. 
 
 (7) There are a few passages which, without expUcitly 
 teaching the doctrine of an everlasting Hell, have sometimes 
 been regarded as pointing in that direction, e.g. the saying 
 " broad is the way that leadeth to destruction " (Matt, 
 vii. 13). This saying is Matthean only, but it has a fairly 
 close Lukan parallel in " Many . . . shall seek to enter in, 
 and shall not be able " (Luke xiii. 24). These words in Luke 
 are followed by the passage beginning " When once the 
 master of the house " and ending " Depart from me, all ye 
 workers of iniquity. There shall be the weeping and 
 gnashing of teeth, when ye shall see Abraham and Isaac 
 and Jacob, and all the prophets, in the Kingdom of God, 
 and yourselves cast forth without. And they shall come 
 from the east and west," etc. (xiii. 25-28). Now here it 
 may be observed that these last words are freely rejected 
 by many critics (including Mr. Montefiore) for their 
 Universalism,^ and on that hypothesis the whole passage 
 
 1 In the Ethiopic Enoch the Messiah will " destroy them from 
 the faee of the earth " (Sim. xlv. 6, cf. Ixii. 2). I will not attempt to 
 collect the views of other Apocalyptists, but will refer generally to 
 Canon Charles's Eschatology. Cf. Thackeray, The Relation of St. 
 Paul to Contemporary Jewish Thought, p. 116. 
 
 ? But see above, p. no. 
 
Reward and Punishment ♦ 303 
 
 might be considered doubtful. But I am not myself dis- 
 posed to adopt this view, and apart from this I see no 
 reason for doubting the genuineness of the passage except 
 that xiii. 28 follows rather abruptly upon xiii. 27, and 
 suggests a separate sajring brought into this context. 
 But to say that some of the consequences of persistent sin 
 against the light are irreversible, is a very different thing 
 from saying that its punishment shall be endless. All the 
 sayings would be compatible with extinction ; indeed, 
 Matthew's " destruction " might naturally be understood 
 as pointing to that view. But they need not imply any- 
 thing so definite as that. There is, indeed, nothing about 
 punishment at all, but only about an irreversible loss. To 
 suppose that opportunities lost in this hfe may never recur 
 is certainly not an immoral opinion, or one which implies 
 a low conception of the divine character. 1 And if any- 
 one feels bound to hold that in some sense that belief in 
 everlasting punishment which eventually became the tra- 
 ditional tenet of the Church must be true, he can 
 rationalize it by understanding it in this sense, and saying 
 that the punishment is simply a " poena damni," which 
 need not exclude the hope of much progress in goodness or 
 of much happiness. 
 
 The parable of Dives and Lazarus, as reported by St. 
 Luke (xvi. 24), is the only passage in his Gospel in which 
 Hell (Hades) is actually spoken of as a place of torment, 
 but here there is nothing to indicate whether the torment 
 was to have an end or not. It was for the time being im- 
 possible for Lazarus to revisit the earth during the hfetime 
 of his brethren, not necessarily for ever. That is all that 
 the words need mean. It may even be suggested that 
 
 ^ Other passages sometimes appealed to are Matt. vii. 21-23, 
 X. 33 ; Luke ix. 26. But they do not necessarily or even naturally 
 imply anything more than condemnation at the Judgement. 
 
304 Conscience and Christ 
 
 our Lord's reply implies that it was still open to them to 
 hear Moses and the prophets. 
 
 (8) On the other hand there are a few passages which 
 certainly suggest that the punishment of the wicked is not 
 endless. The most definite is, " But rather fear Him which 
 is able to destroy both soul and body in Gehenna " (Matt. 
 X. 28). Luke has simply " hath power to cast into Gehenna" 
 (xii. 5). If the Matthean version be accepted, we shall have 
 a distinct reason for supposing that our Lord did not think 
 of punishment in Gehenna as involving everlasting torment. 
 And, indeed, the inconsistency of this passage, taken in its 
 literal and natural sense, with the doctrine of everlasting 
 punishment will be additional evidence either for doubting 
 the genuineness of the " aeonian " passages in Matthew or 
 for supposing that our Lord did not regard " aeonian 
 punishment " as implying everlasting continuance in 
 suffering. But perhaps, after all, the probabiUties are 
 rather in favour of Luke's simpler version — " to cast into 
 Gehenna." 
 
 Then there is the saying, " What doth it profit a 
 man to gain the whole world and forfeit his life ? " 
 (Mark viii. 36). If we must not modernize so far as 
 to give the passage a meaning which has no reference 
 at all to the question of future reward and punish- 
 ment, the obvious implication certainly is that the wicked 
 ultimately cease to live. Another passage which may 
 be appealed to in this connexion is " many that are 
 first shall be last " (Matt. xix. 30). To be last in entering 
 the Kingdom (if this be the meaning of being " last ") is 
 not the same thing as being shut out from it altogether. 
 (But perhaps, as Dr. Moffat suggests, this was originally 
 a quite uneschatological saying. Cf. Mark ix. 35.) 
 " Thou shalt by no means come out thence till thou hast 
 paid the uttermost farthing " (Matt. v. 26 ; Luke xii. 59) 
 
Reward and Punishment 305 
 
 may be cited as suggesting that there is a possibility of 
 coming out (cf. Matt. xii. 32). Still more noticeable is 
 " resurrection of the just" in Luke xiv. 14. Cf. xx. 35. 
 
 If these passages are not sufficiently trustworthy or 
 explicit to enable us definitely to attribute to our Lord the 
 doctrine that the punishment of the wicked is not endless, 
 we have at least some reason for suspecting or otherwise 
 interpreting every passage which is used to defend the 
 opposite doctrine. On the whole, the truth of the matter 
 seems to be that the thoughts of Jesus about the future 
 of human souls did not generally travel far beyond the 
 moment of the Kingdom's coming. Unrepented sin would 
 involve condemnation at the Judgement and exclusion 
 from the Kingdom, which was thought of as in itself the 
 direst of penalties, and doubtless as involving further 
 penalties. What those penalties were, and whether after 
 a period of suffering there woiild be further opportunities 
 of repentance — these are questions which Jesus does not 
 answer, perhaps did not put to Himself, still more probably 
 did not feel to be revealed to Him^any more than the day 
 and the hour of the Judgement were revealed to Him. 
 
 On the whole then we may say that from the most 
 severely critical and objective point of view the answer to 
 our question as to whether Jesus taught the doctrine of 
 everlasting punishment must be non liquet ; the evidence 
 that He did is quite inadequate to prove that He did, if 
 the suggestion cannot be decisively refuted. Those to 
 whom, from their belief in the supreme depth of His moral 
 and spiritual insight, there seems to be a great improba- 
 bility in His having held a doctrine which strikes them as 
 religiously shocking and inconsistent with the general 
 tenor of His own teaching about God, will feel themselves 
 justified in going a step further and saying, " It is probable 
 that He did not teach it." The most that seems at all 
 
3o6 Conscience and Christ 
 
 likely is that He may have acquiesced in conventional 
 representations of the punishment of sin which, without 
 actually speaking of everlasting torments, did not explicitly 
 contemplate a place for repentance after the Judgement or 
 a termination of penal suffering. 
 
 The probability of this conclusion may be strengthened 
 by the consideration that such a doctrine is conspicuously 
 absent from St. Paul (this is evidence also against the 
 general acceptance of it by contemporary Rabbinism), 
 and by the fact that it was long before it became the 
 settled beUef of the Church. 
 
INDEX OF PASSAGES IN THE GOSPELS 
 COMMENTED ON OR REFERRED TO 
 
 Matt 
 
 iv. 2 . 
 
 PAGE 
 • 159 
 
 Matt 
 
 X. 5 . 
 
 PAGE 
 . 110 
 
 — 
 
 iv. 17 . 
 
 . 13° 
 
 — 
 
 x. 9, 10 
 
 . 151 
 
 — 
 
 V. 3 
 
 . 124 
 
 — 
 
 X. 23 . 
 
 45,46 
 
 — 
 
 V. 1 7-1 8 
 
 . 96 
 
 — 
 
 X. 28 . 
 
 • 304 
 
 — 
 
 v. 17-20 
 
 . 96 
 
 — 
 
 X. 33 • 
 
 • 303 
 
 — 
 
 V. 20 
 
 • 57 
 
 — 
 
 X. 37 . 
 
 • 151 
 
 — 
 
 V. 24 . 
 
 121 
 
 — 
 
 X.38 . . 
 
 . 122 
 
 — 
 
 V. 26 
 
 • 304 
 
 — 
 
 xi. 7-30 
 
 183-4 
 
 — 
 
 V. 28 . 
 
 . 127 
 
 — 
 
 xi. 12 . 
 
 • 52 
 
 — 
 
 V. 29-30 
 
 . 301 
 
 — 
 
 xi. 17-19 
 
 . 158 
 
 — 
 
 V. 32 
 
 . 104 
 
 — 
 
 xi. 21-5 
 
 . 182 
 
 — 
 
 V. 39-40 
 
 143-4 
 
 — 
 
 xii. 1-8 
 
 100 
 
 — 
 
 V. 42 . 
 
 . 141 
 
 — 
 
 xii. 9-14 
 
 ICO 
 
 — 
 
 V. 43-8 
 
 . 120 
 
 — 
 
 xii. 12 . 
 
 • 95 
 
 — 
 
 V. 45 • 
 vi. 1-6 . 
 vi. 16-18 
 
 . 113 
 
 • 133 
 
 133, 160 
 
 
 xii. 32 . 
 xii. 48 . 
 xiii. 24 . 
 
 296-7, 304 
 . 178 
 • 53 
 
 — 
 
 vi. 19-34 
 
 . 124 
 
 — 
 
 xiii. 31 . 
 
 . 52 
 
 — 
 
 vi. 29 . 
 
 . 164 
 
 — 
 
 xiii. 33 . 
 
 • 53 
 
 — 
 
 vi. 34 . 
 
 . 188 
 
 — 
 
 xiii. 41 . 
 
 . 49 
 
 — 
 
 vii. 1-3 
 vii. 6 . 
 
 . 126 
 
 • 177 
 
 ^"^ 
 
 xiii. 52 . 
 XV. 5 . 
 
 55 
 87, 88 
 
 — 
 
 vii. 13 . 
 
 . 302 
 
 — 
 
 XV. 11-20 
 
 . lOI 
 
 — 
 
 vii. 21 . 
 
 . 57 
 
 — 
 
 XV. 24 . 
 
 . no 
 
 — 
 
 vii. 21-3 
 
 . 303 
 
 — 
 
 XV. 26 . 
 
 175-5 
 
 — 
 
 viii. 4 . 
 
 . 97 
 
 — 
 
 xvi. 24-6 
 
 122-3 
 
 — 
 
 viii. II . 
 
 . 110 
 
 — 
 
 xvi. 28 . 
 
 • 45 
 
 — 
 
 viii. 22 . 
 
 . 179 
 
 — 
 
 xviii. 1-4 
 
 . 124 
 
 — 
 
 viii. 36 . 
 ix. 14 . 
 ix. 15-16 
 
 • 304 
 . 158 
 . 160 
 
 — 
 
 xviii. 3 . 
 xviii. 6, 7 
 xviii. 8 . 
 
 . 53 
 • 133 
 . 296 
 
 — 
 
 X. 1-15 
 
 . 124 
 
 — 
 
 xviii. 9 . 
 
 . 301 
 
 3«7 
 
3o8 Index of Passages in the Gospels 
 
 
 PAGE 
 
 
 
 FAGB 
 
 Matt, xviii. lo 
 
 . 133 
 
 Mark ii. 18-22 
 
 158-60 
 
 — xviii. 13 
 
 . 132 
 
 — ii. 23-8 . 
 
 
 100 
 
 — xviii. 17 
 
 . 149 
 
 — ii. 27 
 
 
 95 
 
 — xviii. 21-35 . 
 
 . 121 
 
 — ii. 28 
 
 
 95 
 
 — xix. 3-10 
 
 104, 127 
 
 — iii. 1-5 . 
 
 
 100 
 
 — xix. 12 . 
 
 162, 163 
 
 — iii. 29 
 
 
 298 
 
 — xix. 13-4 
 
 124-5 
 
 — iii- 33 • 
 
 
 178 
 
 — xix. 19 . 
 
 108 seq. 
 
 — iv. 26 . 
 
 
 53 
 
 — xix. 21 . 
 
 . 124 
 
 — iv. 31 . 
 
 
 52 
 
 — xix. 24 . 
 
 . 124 
 
 — vi. 5 • 
 
 
 95 
 
 — xix. 28 . 
 
 • 51 
 
 — vi. 8, 9 
 
 . 150. 151 
 
 — xix. 30 . 
 
 • 304 
 
 — vii. 4 
 
 87, 88 
 
 — XX. 1-15 
 
 132, 170-2 
 
 — vii. 18-2 
 
 2 . .101 
 
 — XX. 16 . 
 
 . 172 
 
 — vii. 27 
 
 . 175- 175 
 
 — XX. 23 . 
 
 • 51 
 
 — viii. 34 
 
 122, 123 
 
 — xxi. 12 . 
 
 173-5 
 
 — viii. 36 
 
 • 304 
 
 — xxi. 19 . 
 
 • 173 
 
 — ix. I 
 
 
 ■ 45 
 
 — xxi. 28, 29 
 
 112,131 
 
 — ix. 29 
 
 
 . 159 
 
 — xxi. 31 . 
 
 • 52 
 
 — ix. 35 
 
 
 ■ 304 
 
 — xxii. 11 
 
 • 57 
 
 — ix. 42 
 
 
 ■ 133 
 
 — xxii. 14 
 
 . 172 
 
 — ix. 43-8 
 
 296, 300. 301 
 
 — xxii. 39 
 
 108 seq., 286 
 
 — X. II, 12 
 
 104, 105 
 
 — xxiii. 2-3 
 
 . 98 
 
 — X. 14 
 
 . 125 
 
 -~- xxiii. 17 
 
 . 148 
 
 — X. 15 
 
 • 53 
 
 — xxiii. 23 
 
 . 98 
 
 — X. i8 
 
 126, 184 
 
 — xxiii. 39 
 
 . 45 
 
 X. 21 
 
 . 190 
 
 — xxiv. 32 
 
 • 173 
 
 — X. 25 
 
 . 124 
 
 — xxiv. 36 
 
 . 46 
 
 — X. 40 
 
 . 51 
 
 — XXV. 14-30 
 
 . 173 
 
 xi. I2-2< 
 
 3 . .173 
 
 — XXV. 19 
 
 . 48 
 
 — xi. 15 
 
 173-5 
 
 — XXV. 30 
 
 . 296 
 
 — xi. 25 
 
 . 121 
 
 — XXV. 31 
 
 . . 48 
 
 — xii. 31 
 
 108 seq., 286 
 
 — XXV. 40 
 
 . 288 
 
 — xii. 34 
 
 • 53 
 
 — XXV. 41 
 
 . 296 
 
 — xiii. 10 
 
 . no 
 
 • — ■ XXV. 46 
 
 . 296 
 
 — xiii. 28 
 
 • 173 
 
 — xxvi. 29 
 
 • 45 
 
 — xiii. 32 
 
 . 46 
 
 — xxvi. 63-4 
 
 47. 148 
 
 — xiv. 9 
 
 . no 
 
 — xxviii. 19 
 
 no 
 
 — xiv. 25 
 
 . 45 
 
 
 
 — xiv. 62 
 
 . 47 
 
 Mark i. 13 
 
 . 159 
 
 
 
 — i. 15 - 
 
 . 130 
 
 Luke ii. 52 
 
 . 176 
 
 — i. 44 . 
 
 . 97 
 
 — iv. 1-2 
 
 
 . 159 
 
Index of Passages in the Gospels 309 
 
 Luke V. 14 . 
 
 PAGB 
 
 • 97 
 
 Luke xiv. 7-1 1 
 
 PAGE 
 . . 187 
 
 
 
 V. 33-9 . • I 
 vi. 1-5 . 
 
 38, 160 
 
 . 100 
 
 — xiv. 14 . 
 
 — xiv. 25-6 
 
 • 305 
 . 151 
 
 — 
 
 vi. 6-1 1 
 
 100 
 
 — xiv. 26 . 
 
 . 152 
 
 — 
 
 vi. 20 
 
 vi. 27-35 . I 
 
 . 124 
 
 13, 120 
 
 — xiv. 33 
 
 XV. 7-8 . 
 
 ■ 152 
 . 132 
 
 — 
 
 vi. 29 . . I 
 
 43. 144 
 
 — XV. 11-32 
 
 121, 130 
 
 — 
 
 vi. 30 
 
 . 141 
 
 — xvi. 1-8 
 
 . 169 
 
 z 
 
 vi. 35 . 
 vi. 37 . 
 
 • 113 
 . 126 
 
 — xvi. g 
 
 — xvi. 16 . 
 
 . 170 
 . 52 
 
 — 
 
 vi. 41 . 
 
 . 126 
 
 — xvi. 17 . 
 
 . g6 
 
 — 
 
 vi. 46-8 
 
 • 57 
 
 — xvi. ig . 
 
 . 124 
 
 
 
 vii. 9 . 
 vii. 31-4 
 
 . Ill 
 
 . 158 
 
 — xvi. 24 . 
 
 — xvii. I, 2 
 
 • 303 
 
 • 133 
 
 — 
 
 viii. 21 . 
 
 . 178 
 
 — xvii. 3, 4 
 
 121,149 
 
 — 
 
 ix. 3 . 
 
 • 151 
 
 — xvii. 10 . 
 
 ■ 173 
 
 — 
 
 ix. 23 
 
 . 122 
 
 — xvii. 20-1 
 
 • 52 
 
 z 
 
 ix. 26 
 ix. 27 
 
 ■ 303 
 
 ■ 45 
 
 — xvii. 33 . 
 
 — xviii. g-14 
 
 • 123 
 126, 130 
 
 — 
 
 ix. 55 . 
 
 . 100 
 
 — xviii. 16 
 
 • 125 
 
 
 
 ix. 60 
 X. 13 . 
 
 179 
 182 
 
 — xviii. 17 
 
 — xviii. 19 
 
 • 53 
 . 126 
 
 — 
 
 X. 21 . 
 
 182 
 
 — xviii. 25 
 
 . 124 
 
 — 
 
 X. 27 . . I 
 
 08 seq. 
 
 — xix. g . 
 
 . 152 
 
 — 
 
 X. 30 seq. 
 
 112 
 
 — xix. 11-27 
 
 48, 173 
 
 — 
 
 xi. 20 . 
 xi. 40 . 
 xi. 42 . 
 
 51 
 
 148 
 
 98 
 
 — xix. 45 . 
 
 — XX. 35 . 
 
 — xxi. 36 . 
 
 173-5 
 • 305 
 . 49 
 
 — 
 
 xii. 5 . . . 
 
 304 
 
 — xxii. 18 . 
 
 ■ 45 
 
 — 
 
 xii. 16 . 
 
 J24 
 
 — xxii. 26 . 
 
 • 125 
 
 — 
 
 xii. 27 . 
 
 165 
 
 — xxii. 30 . 
 
 • 51 
 
 — 
 
 xii. 59 . 
 
 304 
 
 — xxii. 6g . 
 
 • 47 
 
 I 
 
 xiii. 6-7 
 xili. 19 . 
 
 173 
 52 
 
 — xxiv. 25 
 
 . 148 
 
 —^ 
 
 xiii. 21 . 
 
 xiii. 24-8 . 3c 
 
 53 
 2.3°3 
 
 John ii. 15 
 — viii. 46 . 
 
 173-5 
 . 185 
 
 — 
 
 xiii. 25 . 
 
 49 
 
 — xi. 5 
 
 190 
 
 — 
 
 xiii. 29 . 
 
 no 
 
 — xiv. II . 
 
 . 35 
 
 — 
 
 xiii. 35 . 
 
 45 1 
 
 XX. 2 
 
 . 190 
 
INDEX 
 
 Almsgiving, 83, 91, 141, 150, 
 
 230 
 Amos, 80, 84 
 Aristotle, 80, 82, 129, 190. 210, 
 
 241 
 Arnold, Matthew, 102 
 Arya Somaj, 271 
 Asceticism, 156-65, 211-13, 
 
 235-6 
 Augustine, St., 213, 260 
 Aurelius, Marcus, 242, 244 seq., 
 
 248-52 
 Authority in Ethics, 14 seq. 
 
 Bacon, Prof. R. W., 76 
 
 Bemhardi, Gen., 223 n. 
 
 Bradley, F. H., ig 
 
 Bradley, Prof. Andrew, 115 
 
 Brahmo Somaj, 271 seq., 277 
 
 Buddhism, 264-71 
 
 Burkitt, Prof., 92 n., 105 n., 
 
 149 n. 
 Butler, Bishop, 3, 249 n. 
 
 Charles, Canon, 92 n., 302 
 Cicero, 210 
 
 Clement of Alexandria, 163, 213 
 Confucianism, 277 
 Conscience, Nature and au- 
 thority of, 7-35 
 Corban, 87-8 
 
 Caiman, Prof., 54 n., 301 n. 
 
 Development in Ethics, 167-8, 
 
 195-238 
 Divorce, 32, 81, 103-7, 230 
 Dobschiitz, Prof, von, 51, 52 n., 
 
 238 
 
 Ecclesiasticus, 82, 92 
 Egoism, 137 
 
 Egyptians, Gospel of, 163 
 Emmet, Rev. C. W., 76 n. 
 Enoch, Book of, 42, 48 n., 302 
 Epictetus, 242, 245 seq. 
 Eschatology, 36-76, 151, 235-6. 
 
 See also Punishment 
 Ezekiel, 8g 
 
 Fasting, 95, 157-62, 235 
 Forgiveness, 120-2, 145 seq., 237 
 
 Gardner, Prof., 210 
 Garrod, H. W., igo-i, 194 
 Good, Christian conception of, 
 
 126-7, 1*55 seq., 199 seq. 
 Gore, Dr. Charles, Bishop of 
 
 Oxford, 105 
 Green, T. H., 241 
 
 HalSvy, M., 112 n. 
 Harnack, Prof., 183 n., 208 
 Hartmann, E. von, 137 n. 
 Hebrews, Epistle to, 237 
 Hegel, 19, 21 
 
 311 
 
312 
 
 Index 
 
 Herford, R. T., son., 57 n., 5811., 
 
 87 n., 88 n. 
 Hillel, 92, 105 
 Hindooism, 263-4 
 Holtzmann, Oscar, 100 n. 
 Humility, 124-6, 229 seq., 249 
 Hypocrisy, 133 
 
 Interimsethik, 44 seq. 
 Tsaiah, 80, 84, 85 
 
 Jackson, Dr. Latimer, 76 n. 
 John, St., Gospel and Epistles of, 
 
 185-6, 228 seq. ; Apocalypse 
 
 of, 234 
 Judaism, 84 seq., 258-9, 272 
 
 seq., etc. 
 Justice, 84 seq. 
 
 Kant, 3, II, 58, 70, 71 n. 
 
 Lindsay, Dr. T. M., 48 
 
 Lodge, Prof. Oliver, 130 
 
 Loisy, 43 n., 45 n., 96 n., 100 n., 
 
 loi n., 152 n., 162, 172, 177, 
 
 178 
 Love, Christian law of, 108-14, 
 
 150 seq., 163 seq., 189 seq., 
 
 228 seq., 286-9, etc. 
 
 MacDougall, W., g 
 
 Marriage, 81, 103-4, 162-3, 223 
 
 seq., 230, 236. See also 
 
 Divorce 
 Martineau, James, 183 
 Maurice, F. D., 40, 41 
 Mercy, 83, 85 
 Mohammedanism, 259-61 
 Montefiore, Claude, 59 n., 75 n., 
 
 76 n., 88 n., 105 n., 112 n., 
 
 116 n., 123, 150 n., 179-83, 
 
 189, 293-4 
 
 Moore, G. A., 137 n. 
 Moral Sense, doctrine of, 9 
 
 Neo-platonism, 212 
 Newman, Cardinal, 31 
 Nicholas de Ultricuria, 139 n. 
 Nietzsche, 137, 223 
 
 Oaths, 106, 148 n. 
 
 Origen, 213 
 
 Oxford, Bishop of, 105 
 
 Parousia. See Eschatology 
 Parsee Religion, 261-3 
 Pattison, Mark, 252-3 
 Paul, St., 100, 155, 227 seq., 306 
 Peter, St., Epistles of, 232 seq. 
 Pharisees, Stseq., 95 seq., lyg seq. 
 Philanthropy, 83. See also Love 
 Plato, 58, 79, 80, 83, 129, 241 
 Polygamy, 80, 103 
 Property, Christ's teaching 
 
 about, 150-6 
 Protestantism, 214 seq. 
 Proverbs, Book of, 82 
 Prudence, 187-9 
 Punishment, Future, 290-306 
 Purity, 81, 103, 127, 128 
 
 Repentance, 129-31 
 Riches, Christ's attitude to- 
 wards, 123 seq. 
 Royce, Prof., 126-7 
 
 Sabbath, Christ's attitude to- 
 wards, 95 
 
 Schmiedel, Prof., 46 
 
 Schweitzer, Dr., 38 n., 43, 44 n., 
 57 n. 
 
 Self-sacrifice, 122 
 
 Selwyn, Rev. E. G., 78n., 106 n., 
 281-2 n. 
 
 Seneca, 242-4, 246-7 
 
Index 
 
 313 
 
 Shammai, 92, 105 
 Sinlessness of Jesus, 184-6 
 Slavery, 233-4 
 
 Socialism, 155-6, 198-9, 225-6 
 Socrates, 79, 80, 83, 84 
 Stephen, St., 227 
 Stephen, Sir Leslie, 142 
 Stoics, 78, 129, 242-54 
 Streeter, Canon, 52 n., 76 n., 299 
 Supererogation, Works of, 155 
 Swearing. See Oaths 
 
 Talmud, 92-4, etc. 
 
 Testaments of the Twelve 
 
 Patriarchs, 51 n., 92 
 Thackeray, H. St. J., 302 
 Theophrastus, 241 
 Thomas k Kempis, 217 seq. 
 Thomas Aquinas, 210, 219 
 Toleration, 180-1, 237, 251 
 
 Tolstoi, Count, 140 
 Treitschke, 223 n. 
 Troeltsch, Prof., 199 n., 214 
 Tyrrell, Father, 67, 68, 167 n., 
 288 n. 
 
 Universalism, 109-13, 227-8 
 Utilitarianism, 11-13 
 
 Veracity, 107, 229 seq. See also 
 Oaths 
 
 Wellhausen, Prof., 93-4, 183 
 Wells, H. G., 233 
 Westermarck, Prof., 9 
 Wisdom, Book of, 82, 92 
 
 Zeno, 79, 242, 250 n. See also 
 
 Stoics 
 Zoroastrianism, 261-2 
 
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