The chief end of religion, as we have seen, has been to enable man, through union with a divine power, to obtain deliverance from the actual and the threatened evils of his lot, and to gain a title to the secure possession of the highest blessings. Every faith that has struck its roots deep in the soul of nations has had the character of a gospel for the sorrow-laden or the sin-laden children of men. But if this practical purpose has been chiefly in evidence it certainly has not been the sole purpose. It would, in fact, be a striking anomaly if it should appear that man, in seeking communion with God, has been exclusively determined by a regard to his own interests and well-being, and has not been influenced to some extent by an unmixed sense of duty. Human nature is a complex thing, and in other relationships of life we reckon on the combination of the self-regarding motive with an altruistic spring of action. The constant dynamic of the economic sphere is self-interest—men in general make their plans and perform their work with an eye to profit and power; but it has also been found possible to exercise a craft in the spirit of an artist, and to appreciate a business as a vocation, as on the other hand it has been found possible to carry the spirit of trade into the exercise of a liberal profession. Friendship is a source of happiness, friends are a support and a stay, and there have been those whose maxim has been that of the old Chinese philosopher—‘associate with those who can advantage you, put away from you those who cannot do so.’ It has, however, been the general view that to see in a friendship merely a form of self-seeking is to libel our human kind, and that it has its real basis in affection, and possesses a code of pure obligations. In the life of the family, duty accounts for much more than self-interest, and that on the side of the children as well as the parents. Jacob schemed for the birthright, and Esau said, ‘Bless me, even me also, O my father,’ but at least Esau gets credit for an accompaniment of filial affection and loyalty. It would therefore be passing strange if man, who is quite accustomed to forget the claims of self in his relations with his fellow-creatures, should have been unable to think of aught but his interests when he was ushered into the presence of the Highest. Nor may this be laid to his charge. It has, it is true, been commonly believed that a salvation is needed, and also that the only hope of a true salvation is in God; but it is an additional truth that God has been felt to make imperious claims upon His creatures, and has evoked a constant response from man’s native capacity of reverence and his sense of obligation.

It has been generally recognised that religious duty is a form of obligation, and duty to God has sometimes been fastened on as the most characteristic feature of the religious life. This seems to have been the aspect which impressed the observer who coined the term religion, and also the community which proceeded to give the word a place in its vocabulary. Three different etymologies have been proposed, and it is a curious coincidence that each yields an idea that belongs to the sphere of conscience and duty. Cicero derived the term from relegere, and thought that those had been called religious who ‘handled again and, as it were, conned over (or gathered up) all things which related to the worship of the gods.’1 The essential feature would thus be scrupulosity or conscientiousness. Lactantius connected it with religare, and thus made it a variant of obligation. ‘The name of religion,’ he says, ‘is derived from the bond of piety, because God has tied man to Himself, and bound him by piety; for we must serve Him as a master and be obedient to Him as a father.’2 Some modern scholars have preferred to connect the word with the Sanskrit root which is related to our term look (Ger. lugen),3 in which case it would mirror the spell-bound glance and the spell-bound thought of the devout worshipper, and embody the theory that the essence of religion is reverence. Kant, as we have seen, emphasised the fact that religion makes promise of a future salvation, but he insisted at least as strenuously that in essence it consists in the recognition of duties as divine commands and in the performance of these with a habitual reference to God. ‘Morality,’ he added, ‘besides recognising in the sanctity of its law an object deserving the utmost reverence, at the religious stage has set forth in the supreme cause that executes these, an object which is to be adored, and which is a revelation of its majesty.’4 Rauwenhoff, a weighty member of the Dutch school, has most clearly realised the religious importance of the sense of obligation. Religion, he even maintained, only began to be when the objects of primitive faith evoked some response from the moral consciousness. Reverence, he observes, must have existed from a very early stage, being inspired by the heads of the family and the great men of the tribe, and when any phenomenon occurred which was regarded as the work of a higher being it naturally excited the same sentiment. ‘There was something which manifested itself to man, not as power in general but as power over him, which laid its hand upon him, subjected him to itself, and united him to itself, so that he felt himself bound to it, and placed himself thenceforward at its service. This became his God; and as the religious consciousness is bilateral, the thought of what his God was for him had its counterpart in the thought of what he must be for God.’5

It is indeed patent that man, in cultivating relations with the objects of his religious faith, has been influenced by a sense of duty as well as by a regard to his own wants and the desire of a chief good. It is superficial and unjust to think, as Timon did, that ‘were the godheads to borrow of men, men would forsake the gods.’ Man has been apprehended by the overpowering greatness and the ineffable majesty of the Divine Being. He has thought of God as his king, yea, as King of kings and Lord of lords; and he has also had loyalty enough to think that, the commands of his sovereign being known, they ought to be obeyed. It has been felt in particular that gratitude was due to God for the bounties of His providence; and the sentiment has been deeply intensified, as in the religion of Israel by the knowledge of His mighty works in history, and as in Christianity by the experience of the treasures of His grace. This religious type has been marked on the emotional side by the note of a deep and sensitive reverence. Its practical impulses have been to pay homage to God in appropriate forms of worship, to render obedience to the laws in which His will has been made known, and to submit in humble resignation to the dispensations of His providence.

The obligation-type of religion is met with in two forms which, if they may be so styled without prejudice, can be distinguished as the mixed and the pure. In the mixed form the sense of duty to God has coexisted with faith and hope in a salvation which is of the Lord. In the pure form it has been detached from hope, and has been the sum of the religion of men who cherished no expectations of a future salvation, and who made no corresponding demands on God. In this chapter we shall illustrate and examine these two forms of religious aspiration.

I

It is difficult to suppose that there ever was a time when it was not realised that there are religious duties which one ought to perform as well as blessings for which one might hope and pray. This must have been realised ever since man fulfilled two conditions—that he believed in the existence of beings mightier than himself, which had some claim on his respect, and that he had the moral sense which prompted him to render their due to his superiors. The first of these conditions has been satisfied in some degree at every stage of religious history, and the second in some degree so long as man has been man.

Even in the religions of the lower culture there are some objects which appeal to the sentiment of duty. At the totemistic stage the clan-feeling was of great intensity; and when the totem-species was regarded as the progenitor and the patron of the tribe, it was naturally regarded with feelings that combined something of filial piety with something of patriotic loyalty, and that sought expression in suitable forms of homage and service. When the religious life has been dominated by the animistic philosophy which encompasses the tribe with a great cloud of ghosts and devils, some venerable figures have stood out against the background of the host of evil-minded and capricious spirits, and have urged a claim upon the conscience of the worshippers. The spirit of the great chief or of the wise father could be felt to be still entitled to respect; and as it was believed that they had the same wants as during life in the matter of food, raiment, and shelter, while they were more sensitive than ever to attentions and slights, the counsels of prudence were at least reinforced by the ethical impulse to offer to them gifts which were at once complimentary and beneficial. The obligation to pay honour to the ancestral spirits, and to make some effort to provide them with necessaries and comforts, has been an immemorial feature of the popular religion of China. There the offices of domestic piety have been supplemented by a festival of All Souls, when the ancestral spirits of a region were invited to a banquet at which every arrangement was made for their comfort and enjoyment; and while this was doubtless deemed to be in the interests of the community, it would be uncharitable not to give credit for the same spirit of hospitality which prompts a western city to honour and entertain a company of distinguished visitors.6 The picturesque incident of the military funeral, in which the charger of the deceased general is led in the procession, reminds us of the animistic past at which the belongings of a chief were despatched after him for his use in his new world, and when human sacrifice could be added in order to provide him with a bodyguard of warriors and a staff of servants.

In the polytheistic period in which faith had its vision of nobler objects, reverence was deepened, the voice of adoration began to be heard, and there was an earnest of the attitude of self-surrender to the Divine Being. The Vedic hymns, while ever insistent on the needs of the worshippers, and pushing their claims to prosperity with childish frankness and painful importunity, nevertheless contain passages which breathe the spirit of heartfelt piety. This higher note has illustrations in the hymns addressed to Indra and Agni, in which the singer can forget that his chosen divinity is one of gods many and lords many, and can praise the object of worship as the fount of all blessings, ‘the worker of mighty deeds beyond compare, and the ruler as well as the joy of his life.’ The hymns to Varuna, ‘the self of all the Gods,’ are practically monotheistic, and the praises rise to the celebration of the moral attributes of God and of His moral government of the world, while the sentiment of obligation finds expression in self-dedication to the truthful and righteous life which is well-pleasing in God’s sight.7 The religion of Greece had a similar strain of devout feeling, and the demands of the worldly eudaemonism were modified by a kindred development of the spirit of moral obligation. The Homeric Hymns picture the great gods as worthy to be praised for their majesty and their wondrous works—Pallas Athene, Ares, and not least Apollo, ‘at whose step down the hall of Zeus the gods tremble, yea, they all start up from their seats when he cometh nigh, holding fast his shining bow.’ And in fit words though fewer, the singer magnifies the name of Zeus, ‘the best and greatest of the gods, far-glancer, king, fulfiller, who holdeth frequent converse with Themis as she reclines on her seat.’8 In the golden age of Greece the Olympian Gods fell into discredit, chiefly because too much human nature had been mixed with their divinity, while the hopes of salvation became fluctuating and uncertain; but a greater God emerged to be the sterner guardian of the moral law, and the religion of obligation was established on deeper foundations. Aeschylus and Sophocles bowed in awe before the mighty power that casts down the proud, and fills the earth with the works of retributive justice. Plato taught that the true service of God is moral obedience. Pindar celebrated the beneficent deities that had equipped a world of light and beauty to be the theatre of noble deeds, and he encouraged the good man to accept his calamities, even when they seemed to be causeless and unmerited, without defiance and without repining.

With the pantheistic development of Indian religion which followed upon the Vedic period the feeling of dependence on God was naturally intensified, and even became overwhelming. The Being of whom and through whom and to whom were all things, who was in truth the one truly existent Being whereof all else was a manifestation or a shadow, is adored in the Upanishads in terms that seem to express the uttermost reach of self-forgetting reverence and self-annihilating devotion of which the human soul is capable. As to the duties which God requires of man there was some uncertainty. The Vedas had been chiefly concerned with the religious duty of sacrifice, and the saintly philosophers were more than doubtful of its value. To some it seemed that the sum of man’s duty toward God was that he should strive after the mystical union with the Supreme through the exercises of the ascetic and contemplative life. To others it appeared that man had been placed on earth that he might work, but on condition that he sought no profit for himself cither here or hereafter. So it was written:

Perform all necessary acts, for action

Is better than inaction; yet in working

Work not for recompense, let the sole motive

Be in the act itself.

And in so doing, it was added, they would be imitators of God, who had said:

nought remains for me

To gain by action, yet I work for man

Unweariedly, and the whole universe

Would perish if I did not do my work.9

For Buddha it was possible to fear, but not to adore, the cosmic system of which the individual found himself an item and the victim—which had dealt out misery with such merciless prodigality, and which had taken measures to perpetuate woe throughout endless aeons. Who could feel it a duty to offer worship to the principle of this grim world-order? There was, however, one aspect of Buddhism which made it a representative of the religion of obligation. It took the universe as it found it; and it held that the highest wisdom lies in ascertaining the laws to which human life is subject, and the manner of their working, and in winning such salvation as is possible by the accommodation of aspiration and purpose to the unchanging and inexorable scheme of things.

Although the Hebrew prophets habitually thought and taught in terms of judgment and salvation, the Old Testament doctrine of God was well fitted to awaken and to foster the spirit of selfless piety. The God of Moses and of the prophets was so unspeakably great that constraint was laid on the worshipper to bow before Him in lowly reverence, to make His glory the chief end, and to lay all the powers and the possessions of the creature as a willing sacrifice on the altar. Isaiah was dominated by a sense of the ineffable majesty of the Almighty, and it seemed to him to be dictated by the eternal fitness of things that ‘the lofty looks of man shall be brought low, and the haughtiness of men shall be bowed down, and the Lord alone shall be exalted in that day’ (ii. 11). It was the doctrine of the prophets that righteousness exalteth a nation, which was therefore wise to follow after righteousness, but they also proclaimed that God is King of kings and the Lawgiver of lawgivers, who as such has a sovereign title to the homage and the obedience of His earthly subjects. In the later literature the Law could be spoken of as God’s great gift to Israel, and obedience to its precepts as the chiefest privilege and the source of a holy gladness (Ps. 119). The author of the Book of Job disliked the wearisome emphasis on the utility of religion, which, as popularly conceived, he thought to be very doubtful; and he proposed as the exemplar of piety the patriarch who could trust and adore though he did not comprehend, and who when bereft of his children and his goods, and sorely smitten in his flesh, could nevertheless say, ‘the Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord’ (i. 21).

Mohammed had the prophet’s sense of the awful majesty of the Most High, and also the prophet’s abhorrence of the idols that rob God of His honour.

Say, God is one God, the eternal God; He begetteth not,10 neither is He begotten, and there is not any one like unto Him.

God! there is no God but He; the living, the self-subsisting, neither slumber nor sleep seizeth Him, to Him belongeth whatsoever is in heaven and on earth.

O ye misbelievers! I do not serve what ye serve.

Islam means the religion of resignation. It may be that in the original usage the term laid stress on the external and legal side of religion, rather than on the ethical idea of submission to the will of God.11 But while something has been read into the name, it has been read into it from the Koran, and from the behaviour of the devout Moslem. If reverence and resignation were the essence of religion, and if the worth of a faith were to be determined by its success in propagating these as habits, it would be difficult to dispute the pre-eminence of Mohammedanism. Prayer was called by Mohammed the pillar of religion and the key of paradise, and it is due to his influence that millions of human beings in three continents prostrate themselves before God five times a day, and offer prayers that sound the note of adoration. He also preached a high doctrine of predestination, with the corollary of unquestioning and unrepining acquiescence in the divine appointments, and the teaching has borne abundant fruits in the heroism of the warrior as well as in the patience of the sufferer. On the positive side, duty to God was summed up in the commandment to confess the true God, and in four points of practice—prayer, alms, fasting and the pilgrimage to Mecca. There are, indeed, obvious defects from the ethical standpoint. The will of God is very inadequately comprehended in a code of which three points belong to ceremonial religion, while moral obedience is only represented by the practice of almsgiving. And the God of Mohammed, while the god of the infinite attributes, falls short of the highest that is suggested from the witness of conscience and that has been revealed in the teaching and the life of Jesus. But in spite of its ethical defects Islam is a notable example of the religion of obligation. The central fact of Mohammed’s own experience was his profound sense of the greatness of God and of His rights over His creatures; and though he owed much of his influence to the fact that he made men believe with all their heart in a real Heaven and a real Hell, it is incontestable that the success of his cause was due in part to the fact that he brought the sense of duty into the service of the one God, and made men feel that the Supreme Being had an indisputable claim to be honoured and obeyed.

The sense of duty toward God is strikingly emphasised in the records of the teaching and of the example of Jesus. It is notable that the three petitions which have the place of honour in the Lord’s prayer—‘hallowed be Thy name, Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done’—have regard to the glory and the dominion of God and only indirectly to the interests of sinful and suffering man. The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews says of our Lord that ‘for the joy that was set before Him He endured the cross, despising shame’ (Heb. xii. 2), but the same writer bore better witness to the Jesus of the Gospels when he summed up His earthly mission in the words, ‘Lo, I am come (in the roll of the book it is written of me) to do Thy will, O God’ (x. 7). The spirit of His ministry was anticipated in the one saying that is recorded from the years of His childhood: ‘Wist ye not that I must be about My father’s business?’ (Luke ii. 49), and the spirit of the Man of Sorrows was uttered in the cry of Gethsemane: ‘Father, not what I will, but what Thou wilt’ (Mark xiv. 36). It is the central message of the Fourth Gospel that Christ was the incarnation of the eternal Logos; but the same Gospel is at pains to emphasise the self-subjection and the obedience of the Son, and the earthly mission is summed up in the words, ‘I glorified Thee on the earth, having accomplished the work which Thou hast given me to do’ (John xvii. 4). St. Paul, while pre-eminently the apostle of redemption, was possessed from first to last by a deep sense of obligation towards Him ‘of whom and through whom and to whom are all things.’

There is a vulgar opinion, for which philosophers have some responsibility, that Christian morality is mercenary—having its sole spring in the fear of punishment and the expectation of heavenly rewards. What is of course true is that the Christian has believed in Heaven and Hell, but it is also true that in every age of the Church there have been many who declared that it was not only or chiefly because of the promises and the threatenings of God that they strove to keep His commandments. Their obedience had other roots—reverence for the divine majesty, loyalty to the heavenly King, gratitude to the God of providence and the God of grace. Clement of Alexandria gives prominence to this feature in his picture of the Christian Gnostic:

The Gnostic does not do good out of fear. And no more does he do it from hope of promised recompense. His choice is to do good out of love, and for the sake of its own excellence, and so as to live his life after the image and likeness of the Lord. It is for the sake of the commandment, not of the promise, that he chooses good. It is on God, not on His gifts, that his heart is set. ‘Let me be in what is Thine, O omnipotent God,’ is his prayer; ‘and if I am there, I am near Thee.’12

Augustine, like Paul before him, ascribed his conversion, not to the attraction of a great and precious promise, but to a rebuke and a command of the King that bore down opposition. The text that came to him in power as he agonised in the garden was ‘not in revelling and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and jealousy, but put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof (Rom. xiii. 13–14). And if Paul had been willing to be accursed for the sake of his brethren, Augustine was at least prepared to serve God with the fidelity of a loyal subject even if it should please Him to ordain that he was to go on battling for evermore with temptations and miseries like those of earth. The conversion of St. Francis of Assisi, who in his youth had had dreams of worldly greatness, was chiefly due to the spell that was laid on his soul by the Saviour’s example of self-renunciation, and by the sternness of the demands which were made in the charter and the commission of the disciples (Matt. x. 5 ff.).

The asceticism of the ancient Church had its roots, not merely in the hope of heavenly compensations, but also in the delight of obeying to the uttermost. The following, from a discourse ascribed to Tauler, illustrates the measure of abandonment to the will of God which was attained by the medieval saint:

An eminent theologian, who was also of a humble heart, desired to meet a servant of God well advanced towards perfection in order that he might know the way of truth. Having asked this favour, he heard a voice saying unto him: ‘Go to the door of a certain church and there thou shalt find the man who will teach thee the way of truth.’ On hearing these words, he went to the vestibule of the church, and there he found a mendicant, a pale and emaciated figure, bare-footed and clothed in rags. On questioning him he found that the man was full of celestial wisdom. Then they conversed.

The theologian wished him good day, and the mendicant replied that he did not remember ever to have had a bad day.

‘God give thee prosperity, my son.’

‘I have never been discontented with my lot.’

‘God give thee happiness.’

‘I have always had happiness.’

‘Pray explain,’ said the theologian. ‘Willingly,’ he replied. ‘I have said that I have never had an unhappy day. When I am hungry, I praise God. If it is cold, if rain, snow or hail fall on me, I praise God; if the tempest rage, I still praise Him. If I am miserable and despised, I praise Him still. I have said that I am always content with my lot. I know that I live with God, and I am therefore persuaded that whatever He does is for the best. Whatever He permits to happen, be it sweet or bitter, I receive from His hands with joy as a perfect gift. I have said that I am always happy. I am devoted to the divine will, and all that God wishes I wish also. How could I lose my happiness?’

‘But what,’ said the theologian, ‘if the Divine Majesty willed to plunge thee into the abyss?’

‘If He wished to plunge me into the abyss,’ replied the mendicant, ‘would I not have my two arms with which to embrace Him? One is humility, the other is love, and so my God would go down with me to the bottom of the abyss, which would become Heaven because God would be there.’

The theologian continued:

‘When didst thou find God?’

‘When I ceased from all creatures.’

‘Wherewith is God pleased?’

‘With pure hearts and men of good will.’

‘What art thou?’

‘A king.’

‘Where is thy kingdom?’

‘In my soul. I have learned so to rule it, that all the feelings and all the powers of my soul are subject unto me. I prefer my kingdom to all the kingdoms of this world.’

‘How hast thou reached this perfection?’

‘By silence, meditation, and union with God. In nothing that is lower than God did I find rest. But I have found God, and in Him repose and peace eternal.’

These sentiments doubtless do not now excite the unqualified admiration which they won from devout souls of the Middle Ages. We must think that there is a large positive side of duty towards God; and that the godly mendicant was guilty of a sin of omission in his failure to realise that God had given him work to do, if not as a duty to himself, at least as a service to the society which had to board and clothe him, and which later on would be at the expense of his funeral. But at least it was a great example of the spirit in which duty to God requires us to front the irretrievable calamities and the inexorable ills. ‘The saints,’ says Fénelon, ‘have uttered many things which may be reduced to this saying—“that one hath no longer any self and interested desire, neither about merit, perfection nor eternal happiness.”’ ‘They see Heaven open for them,’ says St. Francis of Sales, ‘they see a thousand miseries and labours upon the earth; the one and the other are indifferent to their choice; and nothing but the will of God can give the counterpoise to their hearts.’13

It is an honourable distinction of the Reformed Church strictly so-called, that it has given impressive utterance to the conviction that duty to God is an essential part, if not even the most distinctive part, of religion. For Calvin as for Luther there was a gospel whose core was the doctrine of Justification by Faith, but Calvin laid still more emphasis on the doctrine of the Sovereignty of God. It may be said to be the keynote of his system that all created things, visible and invisible, the whole furniture of earth and the choir of Heaven, angels fallen and unfallen, un-regenerate and regenerate sinners of mankind, have existed and exist to the end that, wittingly or unwittingly, voluntarily or involuntarily, by their obedience or their rebellion, their salvation or their doom, they may contribute to the exhibition of the divine perfections and to the fulfilment of the divine purposes. This theocentric idea is put in the forefront of the Shorter Catechism: man’s chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy Him for ever. And in summing up the end as the glory of God it certainly was not meant, as Heine has mockingly said, that God had created man and other intelligent beings so that there might be a circle of readers to study the works of the divine author and to applaud them. The essence of the conception was that finite beings were created that they might reproduce the excellences of the all-perfect Being according to their several capacities, and also further His beneficent and holy plans according to the measure of their powers. In the Calvinistic Confessions, which seem to have been little consulted by critics of theological ethics, it is emphatically denied that the hope of Heaven and the fear of Hell are the proper motives of good works. The chief stress was laid on the claims of God and the motive of gratitude.

‘Good works,’ it is said in the Second Helvetic Confession, ‘ought not to be performed to the end that we may thereby merit eternal life, which is the gift of God, nor out of ostentation, which our Lord condemned, nor for gain, which He also condemned, but with an eye to the glory of God, and the adornment of our vocation, and the manifestation of gratitude, and the good of our neighbour.’14

The same theocentric attitude is found in the great Puritans.

‘We cannot but note,’ says Howe, ‘how altered a thing religion is now become. Almost the whole business of it, even among them that more seriously mind anything belonging to it, is a fear of going to Hell, and hence perpetual endless scruples, doubts and inquiries about marks and signs of that grace which is necessary to their being saved—as if the intention were to beat down the price to the very lowest, and dodge always, and cheapen Heaven to the utmost.15 Learn to look on things as they are, and not according to their aspect in your affairs. Is it not a greater thing that He is God than that He is your God? It is a purer, a more noble and generous affection to Him you are to aim at than what is measured only by your private interest. Is that boundless fulness of life, glory and all perfection to be all estimated by the capacity and concerns of a silly worm?’16 ‘To taste and prove the acceptableness of His will, to reckon it a royal law of liberty, so as to account ourselves the more free by how much we are the more bound, to become patient of government, not apt to chafe at the bridle, or spurn and kick at the boundaries that hem us in: this is a temper that hath not more of duty in it than it hath of delight.’17

Calvinism engendered a sense of responsibility to God which had notable products and by-products. It gave rise to an ideal of family life which might not be that of the bright and happy home, but which at least made the home to be a realm of duty and a nursery of character. It fostered a sense of political duty which made man willing to endure persecution, or to avert it by taking a hand in a revolution. There was also an interesting by-product in the economic sphere. Calvinistic Christianity produced a type of man who, while rejoicing in the gospel, looked on his secular business as a vital part of the work which God had given him to do; he made no demands in the matter of pleasure—Troeltsch calls him an intramundane ascetic; but just because of his industry and his simple life he was bound to prosper in business and even to lay the foundations of a fortune; and the result was that in Scotland and elsewhere he proved to be a most important factor in the accumulation of the stock of capital which, however it may eventually be decided to administer it, must continue to be the material foundation of national well-being.18

The Scottish Moderates of the eighteenth century represented a different variety of the obligation-type of religion. In some histories of the Scottish Church they are depicted as crypto-pagans, whose creed supplied little except the doctrines of morality on which to discourse, and who also exemplified their ethical precepts very poorly in their lives. This account has some support in the autobiography of Carlyle of Inveresk, but it is very unjust to the acknowledged heads of the school, who shared the apologetic zeal of Butler and Paley, and were no less respected for their character than for their abilities and their learning. On a broad view of Scottish Pro-testantism it may be said, if we may use the Hegelian formula, that Evangelicalism and Moderatism were the antitheses which resulted from the development of the two principles that had been peacefully associated in primitive Calvinism. The Evangelical fastened on the great salvation, the Moderate on duty to God, and each could seem to put asunder the things that Paul and Calvin had joined together. A quotation from Leechman may illustrate the stress laid on religion as a service of adoration and obedience which is due to God:

Let us consider that mankind are intended to pay homage to their Creator. We not only claim to be distinguished from the brute creation, but we boast that we are a more dignified rank of creatures. One principal part of this superior dignity is that, of all the inhabitants of this lower world, man is the only creature who can contemplate the grandeur, the beauty, the order and harmony of the universe. Without man all these astonishing scenes which we behold around us would have been displayed in vain to any inhabitant of this earth. Man, therefore, as he only is capable of being, seems intended to be the high priest of nature, and is placed in this magnificent temple of God, that he may offer up the incense of thanks for himself, and for the brute and insensible part of creation.19

In the Evangelical Revival of the late eighteenth and the early nineteenth century, the Scottish pulpit laid the chief emphasis on what Chalmers called the peculiar doctrines of Christianity which were summed up as ruin, redemption and regeneration. More recently the Scottish Church has developed an eclectic combination of the features of the two schools, which the old Moderate would have pronounced to be a kind of Evangelicalism, and the old Evangelical would still more confidently have declared to be an insidious and more dangerous form of Moderatism. Whether it is or is not a higher synthesis is matter of opinion. What is obvious is that during the last half-century the mind of the Protestant Church has more and more laid the accent on the obligational side of Christianity. This feature has been noticeable in the religion of youth, especially as developed in the Student Christian Movement, in which Christ is set forth as one worthy to be crowned the king over the lives of men, and as the leader whom it is the joy of loyal hearts to follow and to serve. And the same spirit is widely diffused throughout the Churches. The modern congregation is less sympathetic towards the hymns of mystical union than towards the appeal to ‘fight the good fight with all thy might,’ and the songs of the New Jerusalem are not thought to evoke the same response as the call to ‘build Jerusalem in England’s green and pleasant land.’

II

Thus far we have been considering the mixed form of the religion of obligation, in which the sense of duty to God has been conjoined with, and also in some degree has been nourished by, the worshipper’s faith and hope in the God of his salvation. We have next to consider the pure form, in which the feeling of obligation towards God has been completely detached from the expectation of special divine protection and blessing. This religious rigorism has been widely diffused in space and time, and it has also been very influentially voiced—in oriental antiquity by the Confucianism of Confucius, in the classical world by the Stoic philosophers, and in modern Europe by the theological Rationalism of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

1. The religion of Confucius was a striking illustration of dutiful religion, for he hoped for nothing from Bod, and yet he believed in God, he revered God, and he cast his thought and his life in the moulds of obedience and submission. Certainly he was no prophet. The prophet has a message concerning God which burns as a fire within him until it be delivered, and Confucius was more than reticent about divine things. ‘The subjects on which the Master did not talk were these: extraordinary things, feats of strength, disorder, and spiritual beings.’20 He preferred, he said, to imitate the silence of God. Asked to speak, the Master said, ‘Does Heaven speak? The four seasons pursue their courses and all things are continually being produced, but does Heaven say anything?’ When he did open his mouth on divine things it was often to profess his ignorance. He had no message about the after life. ‘While you do not know life,’ he said, ‘how can you know about death?’ The meaning of sacrifice was a mystery to him. Asked the meaning of the great sacrifice, he said, ‘I do not know: he that knew its meaning could govern an empire.’ Confucius had no gospel of supernatural deliverance, and indeed on his principles redemption and grace were unnecessary. A nation only needed to be well governed. ‘If a kingly sovereign were to appear, by the end of one generation natural goodness would prevail.’ The individual did not require it, for goodness was the principal thing, and goodness was in his own power. ‘Is any one able for one day to apply his strength to virtue? I have not seen the case in which his strength would be insufficient.’ And again the Master said, ‘Is virtue a thing remote? I wish to be virtuous, and lo! virtue is at hand.’ When he fell grievously ill it did not occur to him that he might have benefit from prayer, and when a disciple reminded him that it was an ancient rule he said that his praying—probably meaning that laborare est orare—had been for a long time. But if Confucius was no prophet, and had no evangel, he was at least a devout man, and with enough of a creed to sustain his piety. He has been called an Agnostic, but his sayings imply that he knew much more than that the Supreme Being exists. He spoke of the majesty of Heaven: ‘it is only Heaven that is grand.’ He had a firm belief in the divine sovereignty. ‘It is so ordered,’ was a favourite expression. The sickness or the death of a friend was spoken of as an appointment of Heaven. And he attributed to Heaven the properties of personal spirit. He said that Heaven knew him—however men might misknow him. Moreover, Heaven was righteous: the source of all good gifts, it had implanted virtue in men, and it raised up instruments from time to time to promote the cause of truth. And Heaven judges the world in righteousness. There were those who thought that it was more useful to pray to the spirits than to honour the Highest—which was expressed in the adage that ‘it is better to be civil to the kitchen-god than to the god of the inner sanctum.’ The Master said, ‘It is false: he who sins against Heaven can rely on the intercession of none.’ The essence of the piety of Confucius was reverence, and his actions, as he would have expressed it, were conformable. His reverence for Heaven and its dispensations was profound. ‘There are three things,’ he said, ‘of which the superior man stands in awe—the ordinances of Heaven, great men, and the words of the sages.’ He was deeply affected by the great sacrifice in which homage was paid to Heaven; and he also praised the scrupulous performance of the rites, hallowed by the practice of antiquity, by which respect was shown to the spirits of the mighty dead and other ancestral spirits. He praised great men of old for the homage which they rendered to God and to their ancestors. ‘Parents when dead should be sacrificed to according to propriety.’ He loved the sacrificial ritual, and was of opinion that the ceremony was well worth maintaining ‘even at the cost of a sheep and more.’ And if Heaven was honoured by sacrifice, still more was it honoured by righteousness. It is not indeed so explicitly affirmed as in the Old Testament that morality is the service of God, but the ethical code which it was his great aim in life to enforce was undoubtedly chief among the ordinances of Heaven of which he claimed to have knowledge, and which he called on man to revere. And if righteousness was according to the will of Heaven, wickedness was sin against Heaven, which only Heaven could forgive. With obedience was conjoined submission to the will of Heaven. ‘The superior man,’ he said, ‘is satisfied and composed, the mean man is always full of distress.’ Among his heroes were men of former days who had suffered the loss of all temporal goods, and who ‘did not utter a murmuring word.’ For himself he said, ‘I do not murmur against Heaven.’

2. The religion of reverence and submission has its classical monument in Stoicism. The typical Stoic made no demands on God for any blessings other than those which are bestowed by Providence in the course of nature. The things that are in a man’s own power, it was held, include virtuous thoughts, feelings and actions, and there was therefore no need for a salvation of the soul. A particular Providence also was unnecessary. The Gods, said Marcus Aurelius, had at least taken counsel for the interests of the universe; and if they had taken no counsel for the unit in the crowd, the individual had good cause, not only to make the best of, but even to welcome, those things which befell him as a corollary of the system which was conceived in the general interests.21 Nor did the Stoic make any claim for immortality. The chief consolation offered by Seneca for the brevity of human life is that it is really a long life if a full and good use be made of it. Marcus Aurelius stated a case in support of the doctrine of immortality, but he thought it probable that God in His wisdom had decreed against it. But though nothing more was expected at the hand of God, reason enough was found in God Himself—even were He no more than the impersonal soul of the world—and in His mighty works and bountiful gifts, why man should adore, obey and submit. The three characteristic notes may be illustrated from Epictetus. This is his tribute of adoring reverence:

What words are enough to praise the works of Providence? If we had sense we ought to do nothing else, in public and in private, than praise God and give Him due thanks. Ought we not, as we dig and plough and eat, to sing the hymn to God—‘Great is God that He gave us these instruments wherewith we till the earth; that He gave us hands, and a belly, and the power to grow without knowing it, and draw our breath in sleep.’ At every moment we ought to sing these praises, and above all the greatest and divinest praise, that God gave us the faculty to comprehend these gifts and to use the way of reason. More than that: since most of you are walking in blindness, should there not be some one to discharge the duty for you all? What else can a lame old man as I am do but chant the praise of God? If, indeed, I were a nightingale, I should sing as a nightingale; if a swan, as a swan; but as I am a rational creature, I must praise God.22

By the soul which thus bowed before God duty was naturally construed as obedience to the will of God. The duty of the rational creature was to attach himself to God, ‘so that what God wills he may will to do, and what God wills not he may not will either.’23 Especially was God to be magnified by patient and cheerful endurance. ‘I must die, but must I die groaning? I must be imprisoned, but must I whine as well? I must suffer exile: can any one then hinder me from going with a smile, and a good courage and at peace?’24

‘In reverence,’ he says, ‘lies the worth, here lies the business of all true religions; whereof there are only three, according to the objects towards which they direct our attention. The religion which founds itself on reverence for what is above us, we denominate the ethnic. The second, which founds itself on reverence for what is around us, we denominate the philosophical. The third religion, grounded on reverence for what is beneath us, we name the Christian. What a task was it, not only to be patient with the earth, and let it lie beneath us, we appealing to a higher birthplace; but also to recognise humility and poverty, mockery and despite, disgrace and wretchedness, suffering and death, to recognise these things as divine; nay, even on sin and crime to look not as hindrances, hut to honour and love them as furtherances of what is holy! This being attained the human species cannot retrograde, and we may say that the Christian religion having once appeared cannot again vanish.’26

The doctrine of Goethe was adopted by Carlyle, who exhorted men to adore in presence of the ‘unspeakable perfect miracle’ of the universe, and to look with a godly fear upon the God who has made bare His holy arm in the sight of the nations, and wrought terrible things in His wrath against sin. Matthew Arnold taught that religion is morality, but a morality that is touched with emotion because of the accompanying confidence in a divine power that makes for righteousness.

III

The obligation-type of religion, representing as it does the response of the moral nature to the manifestation of the Divine Being, is entitled to be treated with the utmost respect. Its claims may, indeed, be rated much higher. There is nothing greater than the mixed form in which man has firmly believed in the salvation of God, at the same time that he deemed it a sufficient reason for doing and enduring the will of Bod that it was His holy and righteous will. The pure form, in which duty to God is isolated from hope in Bod, has a moral grandeur which makes it easy to overlook or to condone its religious inadequacy. We conclude with some observations on the two forms.

Our review has made it sufficiently clear that the sense of duty to God can be a prominent element in experience even when the soul confidently rejoices in the promises of God. The combination, as was pointed out, is a perfectly natural one. Should it be said to be impossible, then by parity of reasoning it should be impossible for a son to know that he was his father’s heir and at the same time to be actuated in his conduct by filial piety and duty. It may even be held that the sentiment of obligation is deepened and strengthened through faith in the God of salvation; for the ethical purity of the motive of gratitude is above suspicion, and if Epictetus was moved to praise God for the bounties of His providence, much more was Paul so moved when in addition to the providential bounties he could make mention of the riches of His grace.

The sense of duty to God which has been conspicuous on the heights of religious thought and endeavour has also been a considerable factor in the religious life of the many. It was the multitude, it is true, which was responsible for the generalisation that the exclusively Christian motives for well doing are the fear of Hell and the hope of Heaven. At the same time it has recognised that there are duties which it owes to God, as evidenced by the general agreement to assemble for common worship. The motives of worship are various; and it is observable that the crowded churches have been those in which attendance was reckoned as a merit, and in which the soul was thrilled by the repetition of the great sacrifice, or again those in which an arresting gospel was preached and real illumination was received touching the truths and the requirements of the faith. But it is also obvious that another incentive has been the conviction that it is required by a special code of duty to pay homage to the Highest, and to rededicate oneself to His service. And though the disposition of the multitude has been to render the easier service of ceremonial obedience, it cannot be doubted that many of the great deeds of the world, and much of its drudgery, has been done in the Taskmaster’s eye, and still less that much of its work and labour of love has been inspired by the precepts and the example of Jesus Christ. In the recent Protestant period, as was observed, the emphasis has shifted from salvation to obligation, and this may be welcomed even by those who believe that religion and salvation should be synonyms. For Christianity, which has everything to fear from moral indifference and moral scepticism, has everything to hope from the heightening of moral ideals and the deepening of moral earnestness. It may therefore be made a question whether sufficient account has been taken, in the theory of Christian education, of the necessity of laying the foundations of religious character in the inculcation of reverence and of the sense of duty to Almighty God. The way of the God of history was to place His people under the stern dispensation of the Law so that they might be educated to the appreciation of the gospel of forgiveness and liberty, and it may be that this should be followed as the model in the spiritual education of the individual. It has to be added that the Protestant Church has too little taken to heart the lesson which is taught by the patristic and the medieval Church, and which was realised by Calvin—that man can be brought to admit the claims of the Highest and to find his deepest joy in self-forgetting conformity to the divine will in obedience and resignation. In certain past ages in which there was a weakening and a wavering of faith in a traditional creed, religion survived in the form of duty to God, and the nobler kind of man fell back on the witness of his spirit to the existence of a Supreme Being, and to the authority of the law which had conscience for its herald. And it is in this mould, doubtless, that the religious life of high-souled men would be cast in the future if it should become the verdict of the intellectual world that the knowledge of divine things possessed by the Church had been greatly overestimated, and that there was a flaw in the title-deeds on which so high hopes had been built. Even if the light in which the world has rejoiced were reduced to a twilight, it would still be as obvious as it was to Seneca and Marcus Aurelius that the universe manifests a majestic and mighty Power to which a man owes his being, his marvellous endowment, and the thrilling adventure of the life on earth; and a constraint would still be felt, and perhaps more deeply than in the limited universe of antiquity, to bow in adoring reverence before the Lord of the unmeasured systems and the unnumbered aeons. As before, also, it is to be expected that duty would be recognised as the chiefest ordinance of this sovereign Power, and resignation as the grace which is the seemly complement of the service of virtue. There is, in fact, much of this attitude and spirit in the religious confessions of the poets of our troubled age, so many of whom

Know not what to fear or hope,

But only that His will is best.27

While, however, it need not be expected that mankind will ever fall below the theory of the religion of obligation, it has to be observed that when it has been proposed as the whole of religion this has been rejected as insufficient to meet the needs of the human situation. Three instances have been given when the doctrine has been impressively preached, and in each case it came to be weighed in the balances by the religious mind and was found wanting. This may be said to have been the verdict of China. The popular religion which bears the name of Confucius made much of the protection and prosperity to be hoped for through commerce with the spirits; but China also found room for Taoism, which was understood by the mystical to offer union with God and by the vulgar to promise length of days; while at a later date it gave a warm welcome to Buddhism, which, in its popularised form, alleviated the ills of human life by the consolation of a heavenly friendship, and gave to Nirvana the characters of a Paradise. When the Graeco-Roman world was in quest of a higher religion it had the choice of deciding between Stoicism and Christianity; but though Stoicism had many circumstances in its favour, the decision was emphatically given for the system which had not only a sublime moral code, but had also at the heart of it the gospel of the living Saviour, of the forgiveness of sins and of the eternal salvation. There was a similar sequel, though less decisive and lasting, to the moralisation of religion which was attempted in the rationalistic schools of the eighteenth century. Throughout a great part of Europe, and notably in the Protestant countries, there arose a hunger for a religious message which should have the riches of a gospel commensurate with the spiritual distress of the human lot, and the sequel was another period of evangelical faith and fervour.

The moral from these historical cases seems clearly to be that mankind expects a religion to be a salvation, and that a scheme of thought which reduces it to reverence and the service of God is adjudged to leave out the essential element. This judgment, it has to be added, is supported by arguments and testimonies which the school of religious obligation has itself supplied. When it has been held that the essence of religion is to glorify and to serve God, and when this has been accepted as man’s chief end, it has been usual to make the discovery that the help of God is needed, if not that His will should be known, at least that it should be faithfully done and patiently endured. It was the doctrine of the Old Testament prophets that the people ought to win the divine favour by keeping the divine commandments, but it appeared that the keeping of the commandments was the insuperable difficulty for flesh and blood, and so they looked to God to write His law in the hearts of the people, and to pour out His spirit upon all flesh. In his Pharisaic period Paul realised that the religion of obligation made an impossible demand on human nature, and perhaps the deepest reason for his rejoicing in Christ was that he had received from Him through life in the Spirit an endowment of moral power which made it possible to render the obedience that would otherwise have continued to mock him as an unattainable ideal. And similarly certain of the Stoics made the discovery that the help of God was necessary in order to the perfect service of God. Cleanthes at least prayed for light. ‘Do thou,’ so he prays in the famous hymn, ‘Zeus, wrapt in cloud and bright lightnings, save mankind from woful ignorance; do thou, Father, dispel it from the soul that so we may requite thee with honour.’ Marcus Aurelius speaks respectfully of the doctrine of his school that virtue was one of the things which had been put in our own power, and that no supernatural help is needed, but apparently his own opinion was that grace is needed and that gracious help is given. ‘The gods, you say, have put this in my power. Who told thee that the gods do not cooperate with us even in the things that are in our power? Begin at any rate with prayers for the clean heart and the like, and see what comes of it.’28 The religion of unmixed and unassisted obligation has an impressive aspect of moral grandeur and of selfless sublimity, and it may be, as has been indicated, that it is sometimes a necessary stage in the education of a people or of a generation; but the truth is that it is not adequate to the terrestrial situation, and in view of the grim conditions of man’s lot, and especially of the urgency of his spiritual needs, it is not strange that in the witness and the experience of the greatest in the Kingdom of God it has been associated with the faith and the hopes that lay hold on the plenitude of the mercies and of the resources of the infinite Being.

• 1.

  De Natura Deorum, ii. 28.

• 2.

  The Divine Institutes (Eng. tr.), Ante-Nicene Library, 1871, iv. 28.

• 3.

  Leidenroth, quoted by Nitzsch, op. cit., p. 81.

• 4.

  Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der blossen Vernunft, Vorrede.

• 5.

  Religionsphilosophie, 2 (Ger. tr.) 1894, p. 59.

• 6.

  Doolittle, Social Life of the Chinese, 1866.

• 7.

  The higher elements in the doctrine and worship of Varuna are combined in one of the pieces in Muir, Metrical Translations from the Hymns of the Veda, 1873.

• 8.

  Edgar, Homeric Hymns, 1891, pp. 29, 115.

• 9.

  Bhagavad-Gita, iii. 9, 19.

• 10.

  Koran, cxii., 2, ix.

• 11.

  Sell, art. ‘Islam,’ Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, vol. v.

• 12.

  ’ Stromateis, iv. 22, 3.

• 13.

  Maxims of the Saints, p. 30.

• 14.

  Chap. xvi. 6.

• 15.

  Works, ii. p. 237.

• 16.

  Ibid., p. 231.

• 17.

  Ibid., p. 41. See also Jonathan Edwards. On the Religious Affections, iii. 2.

• 18.

  Cf. Troeltsch, Die Soziallehren der christlichen Kirchen, 1919, iii. 3; Max Weber, Religionssosiologie, 1920, i. pp. 84 ff.

• 19.

  Sermons, 1789.

• 20.

  This and the following quotations are taken from The Confucian Analects: vol. i. of Legge’s Chinese Classics, 1861. Giles, The Sayings of Confucius, 1907, has some variant renderings.

• 21.

  Meditations, vi. 14.

• 22.

  The Discourses (Eng. tr.), 1916, i. 16.

• 23.

  Ibid., iv. I.

• 24.

  Ibid., i. I.

• 25.

  Quoted by Heiler, Das Gebet ⁴, 1921, who has collected other examples of the philosophical prayer.

• 26.

  Wilhelm Meister’s Travels (trans. by Carlyle), chap. x.

• 27.

  For other examples see Oxford Book of English Mystical Verse, 1924.

• 28.

  Meditations, ix. 40.