WE have come to the end of our pilgrimage through the ages in quest of wise, weighty, light-giving words concerning the moral order of the world and the Providence of God. It remains now to cast a farewell glance backward and a wistful anticipatory glance forwards, that we may sum up our gains and fortify our hopes.

Looking back, then, on the thought of the ancients, we see that the sages of various lands, in far-past ages, unite in the emphatic assertion of a Moral Order as the thing of supreme moment for the faith and life of man. This message, handed on from antiquity, the wisest of our own time earnestly re-affirm, saying to their contemporaries in effect: ‘Believe this and thou shalt live.’ The consensus gentium firmly supports this cardinal article in the religious creed of mankind.

The consensus in favour of a moral order is the more remarkable that it is associated with the most discrepant theological positions, having for their respective watchwords: no god (in the true sense of the word) as in Buddhism, two gods as in Zoroastrianism, many gods as in the religion of the Greeks, one God as in the religion of the Hebrews. In view of this theological diversity, the common faith in an eternal august moral order may be regarded as the fundamental certainty, the vital element in the religion of humanity.

The root of this basal faith is an intense moral consciousness. Men believe in a moral order in the cosmos, because they have found a commanding moral order in their own souls. The prophets of the moral order on the great scale—Buddha, Zoroaster, Æschylus, Zeno, Isaiah, Jesus—have all been conspicuous by the purity and intensity of their own moral nature. In the clear authoritative voice of conscience they have heard the voice of God, or of what stands for God. It is ever so. For no man has a moral order in the universe been a dread, awe-inspiring reality for whom the sense of duty has not been the dominant feeling within his own bosom. Only the pure in heart see God—whether He be called Karma, Ahura, Jove, Jehovah, the Father-in-heaven, or by any other name, or remain nameless. For all others the faith in a moral purpose pervading the world is but a hearsay, and all the elaborate theologies built on that faith which they profess to believe are of little account.

Yet the theological position, though secondary, is not indifferent. Because we see men of all conceivable attitudes towards the question of God's being concurring in a primary belief we are not to argue: ‘It does not matter what we believe concerning the Gods, whether that there are none, or that they are two or many or one, so long as we believe that it goes well with the righteous and ill with the wicked, and join ourselves heart and soul to the company of the righteous.’ It does matter. It is well to believe that there is a reward for the righteous, but it is also well to believe that there is a God who confers the reward. We need a theory of the universe congruous to our ethical faith. It would have been better for Buddha, and for the vast portion of the human race who confess his name, if he had found in the universe a Being who realised his own moral ideal. One who, like Euripides, admires self-sacrifice in noble-minded men and; women needs faith in a God who shares his admiration and who is the fountain of all self-sacrificing love. Moral sentiment and theological theory act and react on each other. Our moral nature creates faith in God, and faith in God invigorates our moral nature. Therefore it is by no means a matter of indifference whether we affirm or deny the being of a God, or what kind of a God we believe in. ‘No faith’ means the individual heroically asserting his moral personality over against an unsympathetic universe. ‘Unworthy faith’ means a man divided against himself, his moral nature asserting one thing, his religious nature holding on to another, with fatal weakness in character and conduct for result.

We have seen that the common faith in a moral order has been associated, not only with diverse theological positions, but with conflicting judgments about human life. In India life appeared an unmixed evil, in Persia a mixture of good and evil, in Israel the prevailing tendency of religious thinkers was to a more or less decided optimism, which found much good in life and viewed the evil as capable of being transmuted into good. In each case the mood corresponded to the estimate. The pessimistic Buddhist was despairing, the dualistic Zoroastrian defiant, and the optimistic Israelite cheerfully trustful. The mood of the Greek also was buoyant and joyous, but his gaiety was eclipsed by the gloomy shadow of fate or destiny which turned trust in a wise, benignant Providence into a grim submission to the inevitable. It is helpful to have it thus conclusively shown that the faith in a moral order and the earnest moral temper congenial to it can maintain themselves alongside of all conceivable moods; that a Buddhist with his pessimism, and a Stoic with his apathy, can be as loyal to duty and as fully alive to the truth that the ethical interest is supreme, as the Zoroastrian with his severe sense of the radical distinction between good and evil, or the Hebrew with his unwavering faith in the unchallengeable sovereignty of a just God. Only we must beware here also of imagining that the mood does not matter so long as the ethical spirit remains. The mood affects the quality of the morality. The Buddhist at his best is as earnest as any one can desire. He is devoted to his moral ideal with a fervour which few adherents of other faiths can excel or even equal. But his ideal takes its shape front his pessimism, and under its influence becomes such as finds its proper home in a monastery. The ethical fervour of the Stoic likewise was above reproach, but his ideal also suffered under the influence of his characteristic mood. If the Buddhist errs on the side of passivity and gentleness, the Stoic erred on the side of inhuman sternness. Strong in the pride of his self-sufficiency, he had no sympathy with the weak who could not rise to the height of his doctrine that pain is no evil.

These remarks lead up to the observation that in all the types of ancient religious thought which have come under our consideration (leaving Christianity for the present out of account) strength and weakness are curiously combined. It may be worth while to note the strong points and the weak points, respectively, in each case.

The strength of Buddhism lies in its gentle virtues and in its firm faith in the imperious demands of Karma for a retributive moral order under which moral actions shall receive their appropriate awards. Its weaknesses are numerous. There is, first of all, the lack of a religious ideal answering to its ethical ideal, what we may call its atheism. Then there is the extravagant form in which it applies the principle of retribution, viewing each good and evil act by itself and assigning to it its appropriate reward or penalty, instead of regarding the conduct or character of a moral agent as a whole. To these glaring defects must be added the pessimistic estimate of life characteristic of the system, the conception of the summum bonum as consisting in Nirvana or the extinction of desire, and the consequent conviction that the only way in which a wise man can worthily spend his days on earth is by the practice of asceticism within the walls of a monastery.

The strength of Zoroastrianism lay in its manly, militant, moral ideal, and in its devout belief in a Divine Good Spirit for whom moral distinctions are real and vital, and who is the Captain, the inspiring, strengthening Leader, of all who fight for good against evil, as soldiers in the great army of righteousness. Its weakness lay in its dualism, its faith in an antigod, and in its hard, abstract, unsympathetic antithesis between good and evil men. The second of these two defects was probably the true source of the first: the harsh Puritanic ethics the fountain of the crude theology. Had the Persian prophet been able to look on those whom he regarded as the children of Ahriman, even on the neighbouring Turanian nomads, as his brethren, to have thought of them as men and not mere devils, as weak and not absolutely wicked, as having in them, with all their pravity, some rudimentary possibilities of human goodness, and of himself and others likeminded, on the other hand, as far enough from spotless moral purity, it would have been possible for him to conceive of Ahura as the common Father of all men, and to dispense with an antigod in his theory of the universe.

The Greeks were not a whit behind the Asiatics in respect of faith in the reality of a moral order in the life of nations and of individual men. The assertion of this order was a leading didactic aim for the three great dramatists. Taken together, they taught a very full doctrine on the subject. Æschylus laid the foundation in a grand broad proclamation of the principle of nemesis, taking no note of exceptions, either because he was unaware of them, or because he was not in the mood to recognise them. Sophocles followed, saying: ‘The foundation laid by my predecessor is unassailable, but there are exceptions, numerous, perplexing, mysterious, inexplicable.’ Euripides came last, not gainsaying the law enunciated by Æschylus, still less disputing the fact of exceptions insisted on by Sophocles, but throwing light on the darkest cases in the list of exceptions—those presented in the sufferings of the eminently good—by exhibiting them as instances of self-sacrifice for the benefit of others. Yet each of the three was one-sided as a teacher of the common doctrine. Æschylus was, consciously or unconsciously, inobservant of instances in which the great law of Nemesis failed; Sophocles was too conscious of the exceptions; Euripides found in his heroes and heroines of self-sacrifice the one source of light and consolation in an otherwise dark, unintelligible world. And common to all three was this defect, that behind the moral order they saw the dark shadow of necessity (anankē), a blind force exercising a morally indifferent sway over gods and men alike. This was the tribute paid by the Tragic Drama of Greece to the principle of dualism embodied in the Persian doctrine of the Twin Spirits, and which in one form or another has so often made its appearance in the history of religious thought.

The Stoics were strong in their conception of man's sovereign place in the universe, and in their firm, cheerful faith in the rationality of the cosmos. They saw and said that in the world, after God, there is nothing so important as man, and in man nothing so important as reason; that, therefore, the true theology is that which offers to faith a rational divinity, and the true life that which consists in following the dictates of reason as active in the individual and immanent in the universe. But their errors were serious. They starved and blighted human nature by finding no place or function for passion, and worshipping as their ethical ideal apathetic wisdom. They shut their eyes to patent facts of experience by pretending to regard outward events as insignificant and pain as no evil. They silenced the voice of humanity in their hearts by indulging in merciless contempt for the weak arid the foolish; that is to say, for the great mass of mankind who have not mastered the art of treating pain as a trifle, and gained complete victory over passionate impulse.

Passing from the Stoic philosophers to the Hebrew prophets, we find in them more to admire and less to censure. They do not, by extravagances like those of the Stoics, lay themselves open to ridicule. Their sound Hebrew sense keeps them from thinking that any part of human nature is there to be extirpated, or that any part of human experience can be valueless or meaningless. Passion has its place in their anthropology as well as reason, and prosperity in their view is worth having and adversity a thing by all legitimate means to be shunned. These are among their negative virtues. To their positive merits belong their inextinguishable passion for righteousness; their faith in a God who loves right and hates ill, and in one God over all, or, putting the two together, their great doctrine of ethical monotheism; and, finally, their firm belief that the present world is, if not the sole, at least a very real theatre wherein the moral government of God is exercised. But even they had the defects of their qualities. While doing full justice to the prophetic doctrine of the moral order as against the diviner's doctrine of a merely physical order of interpretable signs premonitory of the future, we were constrained to acknowledge three defects in their teaching. These were: (1) a tendency to assert in an extreme form the connection between the physical order and the moral order, between particular events in national or individual history, and particular actions of which they are supposed to be the reward and punishment; (2) a tendency to lay undue emphasis on the vindictive action of divine providence; and (3) the tendency to attach too much value to outward good and ill as the divinely appointed rewards and penalties of conduct. In the first of these defects, the prophetic doctrine bears a certain resemblance to the atomistic way of applying the principle of Karma characteristic of Buddhism, according to which each separate act finds in some future time its own appropriate recompense. It is, however, unnecessary to remark that of the extravagance wherewith Buddhism doles out the awards due to separate deeds there is no trace in prophetic literature. In the third of the defects above specified the Hebrew prophet presents, not a resemblance, but a contrast to the Greek Stoic. While the Stoic reckoned outward good and ill matters of indifference, the prophet, on the other hand, all but found in these things the chief good and the chief ill. At this point the Stoic position represents an advance in ethical thought; but both positions are one-sided: the truth lies between them.

One does not need to be a clergyman or a professed apologist, but only a candid student of comparative religion, to satisfy himself that the teaching of Christ combines the merits and avoids the defects specified in the foregoing review. On all subjects that teaching shuns absolute antitheses, onesidedness, the falsehood of extremes. In its moral ideal it unites the gentleness of Buddhism with the militant virtue of Zoroastrianism. Its doctrine of God satisfies all rational requirements. In contrast to Buddhism it teaches that there is a God, to Zoroastrianism that there is one God over all, Lord of heaven and earth; for the Jehovah of Hebrew prophecy, whose chief attribute is retributive justice, it substitutes a Divine Father in whose character the most conspicuous quality is benignity, mercy, gracious love. Its doctrine of man equally commends itself to the instructed reason and conscience as all that can be desired. With Stoicism it affirms the supreme, incomparable worth of man, but, unlike Stoicism, it does not nullify the significance of its affirmation by creating a great impassable gulf between wise men and fools, saints and sinners. Its assertion of the moral order reaches the highest degree of emphasis. In common with the sages of India, Persia, Greece, and Israel, Jesus found in the world clear traces of a Power making for righteousness and against unrighteousness; and, far from exempting His own people from the scope of its action, He saw in her approaching doom the most terrific exemplification of its destructive energy. But He interpreted the laws of the moral order with unique discrimination. He did not, like Buddha, and to a certain extent the Hebrew prophets also, assert the existence of a retributive bond between individual moral acts and particular experiences, but broadly recognised that there is a large sphere of human life in which good comes to men irrespective of character, and wherein not Divine Justice but Divine Benignity is revealed. With the Stoics He recognised the inner life of the soul as the region within which the rewards and punishments of conduct are chiefly to be sought; but He did not, like them, regard outward events as wholly without moral significance. With the Greek poet Euripides, and the author of the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah, He perceived that the doom of the best in this world is to suffer as the worst, but more clearly than either He saw that such sufferers need no pity, that to describe them as men of sorrow is to utter only a half-truth, that an exultant, irrepressibly glad temper is the concomitant and appointed guerdon of all heroic conduct.

Christ's doctrine of Providence possessed the same circumspect, balanced character. He taught that God's providence is over all His creatures—plants, animals, human beings; over all men, good or evil, wise or foolish, great or small. ‘God cares for great things, neglects small,’ said the Stoic. ‘A sparrow shall not fall on the ground without your Father; the very hairs of your head are all numbered,’ said Jesus. Yet this minutely particular Divine Care is not conceived of as working spasmodically and miraculously, but quietly, noiselessly, incessantly, through the course of nature. God adds a cubit and more to the stature of men, but not per saltum, rather through the slow unobserved process of growth from childhood to maturity. Growth is the law everywhere, even in the moral world, there trying to an uninstructed faith which expects consummation of desire in a day. The clear recognition of this law by Jesus shows that, if His habitual mood was optimistic, His optimism was not blind or shallow. He saw that the highest good in all spheres was to be attained only gradually, and He was content that it should be so. One other element in His doctrine of Providence remains to be specified. Providence, as He conceived it, is not only universal, and at the same time minutely particular, but likewise mindful of all human interests. It cares for the body as well as for the soul, for time as well as for eternity, for social as well as for spiritual well-being. Yet an order of importance is duly recognised. To the Kingdom of God is assigned the first place, to food and raiment and all they represent only the second. By this balanced view of providential action the teaching of Jesus steers a middle course between the opposite extremes of asceticism and secularism, between the morbid mood for which the temporal is nothing, and the worldly mind for which it is everything.

From all this it would seem to follow that the path of progress for the future must lie along the line of Christ's teaching; that the least thing men who seek the good of our race can do is to serve themselves heir to the thoughts of Jesus concerning God, man, the world, and their relations, and work these out under modern conditions. Reversion to the things behind is surely a mistake. No good can come of a return, with Schopenhauer, to the pessimistic despair of Buddhism, or, with other modern thinkers, to the dualism of Zoroaster, or, under the sturdy leadership of a Huxley, to the grim, defiant mood of Stoicism. Such movements are to be regarded as excusable but temporary reactions, and the Christian attitude is to be viewed as that which must gain more and more the upper hand. For men thus minded the summary of faith and practice will be: ‘One supreme Will at the heart of the universe, good and ever working for good; man's chief end to serve this supreme will in filial freedom, and in loyal devotion to righteousness; life on earth on these terms worth living, full of joy if not without tribulation, to be spent in cheerfulness and without ascetic austerities; life beyond the tomb an object of rational hope, if not of undoubting certainty.’

It would, however, be too sanguine a forecast which would anticipate for this short Christian creed a speedy universal acceptance even within the bounds of Christendom. It is natural that we who stand on the margin between two centuries should wistfully inquire, What is before us? what is our prospect for the future? By way of answer to this question three competing programmes present themselves. One has for its watchword: ‘No religion with a definite theological belief, however brief; at most, a purely ethical religion.’ A second offers us a perennial ultra-rational religion, with awful sanctions steadily promoting social well-being. A third claims that for all the higher interests of life the best thing that could happen would be the revival of the simple Christianity of Christ and the working out of His great thoughts.

The first of these programmes indicates fairly well the position of those who have devoted their efforts to the promotion of what is known as the ethical movement. This movement, which originated in America and is spreading in Europe, is one of the significant spiritual phenomena of our time. Its avowed aim is to insist upon the supreme importance of the moral nature of man, apart altogether from theological dogmas and religious sanctions. Its promoters think that, without bringing a railing accusation against the Church, it may be affirmed with truth that organised Christianity does not provide for ethical interests in a manner so effectual, and in all respects so satisfactory, as to make a special effort outside the Churches by men having that one end in view superfluous. This opinion it is not necessary to contest. Churchmen have no occasion to be jealous of a new departure in the interest of morality, or to resent any criticism on the Church as an institute for the culture of morality offered by supporters of the movement in justification of their conduct. There need be no hesitation in recognising the value of the aim which the ethical movement sets before itself. It directs attention to what is undoubtedly the main interest of human life, the maintenance in strength and purity of the moral sentiments. If it can do this more impressively than the Church, which has many other interests to care for besides ethics—creed, ritual, government, finance—why, then, in God's name let it bestir itself in the good work. Let ethical societies spring up on every side, and do their utmost to impress on men's minds that conduct is the supremely important matter, the test of the worth of all religion and the fruit by which it is known what any religion is good for, and that this life and its affairs are the theatre in which right conduct is to be practiced. If they succeed in this, a one-sided emphasis on ethics as man's exclusive concern, and as an interest much neglected by religious communities, will be very pardonable.

The representatives and literary interpreters of this new movement do not repudiate the Christian name. They accept in the main the ethical teaching of Jesus, and they value Christian civilisation. One of the most influential of their number, Mr. Bosanquet, advises the brotherhood to keep their minds alive to the grand tradition of their spiritual ancestry, ‘the tradition that human or Christian life is the full and continuous realisation in mind and act of the better self of mankind.’1 Neither he nor any other representative man connected with the movement would care to be described as irreligious, or would, with M. Guyau, adopt as his watchword ‘Non-Religion,’ as the goal towards which Society is moving. They seem rather inclined to claim for their cause a religious character, and to give Duty something like the place of Deity. Their tone, indeed, is not quite uniform. Mr. Leslie Stephen, e.g. says: ‘We, as members of ethical societies, have no claim to be, even in the humblest way, missionaries of a new religion; but are simply interested in doing what we can to discuss in a profitable way the truths which it ought to embody or reflect.’2 But another of more devout temper, and not less intellectual competency, Mr. Sheldon, speaks in this wise: ‘To me this movement is not a philosophy but a religion.’3 Of the sense of duty he writes: ‘It is to me what the word “God” has stood for; it represents to me what the phrase “for Christ's sake” has implied; it means to me what I once attributed to the unconditional authority of the Bible.’4 Mr. Bosanquet expressly repudiates the designation ‘agnostic’ for this significant reason: ‘Strictly, to be an agnostic is to be a heathen, and we are not heathens, for we are members of Christendom.’5 His dislike of the title is so strong that he devotes a whole discourse to the discussion of the question, ‘Are we Agnostics?’ his answer being an emphatic negative: not, of course, because he has no sympathy with the agnostic's position, but because he does not care to be defined by a negative, or to spend his life in reiterating the barren thesis that God is unknowable, and would rather be occupied ‘with the life and with the good that we know, and with what can be made of them.’6 This position one can understand and respect. At the same time, it cannot be said that great injustice is done by applying the epithet ‘agnostic’ to a system which recognises Mr. Leslie Stephen as one of its accredited teachers, and whose raison d'être is to exalt ethics as the supremely important interest, as the one indubitable certainty in the region of the spirit, and as able to stand alone without theistic and theological buttressing.

The importance, certainty, and independence of ethics no earnest man can have any zeal in calling in question. Least of all the first of these three affirmations. On the contrary, we must wish god-speed to all who make it their business to impress upon their fellow-men that duty is the supreme fact of human life, duty understood as ‘the command of our highest self, bidding us, in scorn of transient consequences, to act as if we belonged not to ourselves, but to a universal system or order, and to render unconditional obedience to the highest law or highest measure of value that we know of.’7 In spite of the variations in moral judgments, we admit with equal readiness the second proposition: the certainty of man's moral nature as a great fact. Whatever may pass away, the human soul remains. Theologies may come and go, but conscience abides. Mr. Leslie Stephen says: ‘I believe in heat, and I believe in the conscience. I reject the atoms, and I reject the doctrine of the atonement.’8 The meaning is that heat and conscience are ultimate undeniable facts, while atoms and the atonement are but theories about these facts. So be it; let the theories go for what they are worth, and let it be admitted that the facts do not depend on the theories, and that they would remain if the theories were demonstrated to be fallacious. This is tantamount to admitting the third contention also: the capacity of ethics to stand alone without theistic or theological buttresses. The admission is made willingly. The dilapidation of the buttresses would not, I acknowledge, involve the tumbling into ruin of the moral edifice. I do not believe that the decay of religious faith would necessarily lead to the withering of moral sentiment and the demoralisation of conduct. So far from thinking that religion creates conscience, I rather incline to the view that conscience creates religion.

But just on this account I am persuaded that the new ethical movement will not long remain merely ethical. If it has real vitality and fervour, it will blossom out into a religious creed of some kind. It will do so if it enlist in its service all the powers of the soul, the heart and the imagination as well as the conscience and the reason. It must do so if it is to escape from the aridity of prose into the fertility and beauty of poetry. It must do so, once more, if it is to pass from the lecture-hall into the market-place and become, a great power in the community. Indications are not wanting that the apostles of the new movement are half-conscious that this is their inevitable destiny. Germs of a new creed indeed can be discovered in their writings. They do not care for the word ‘God’; they sympathise with those who, like Goethe, Carlyle, and Arnold, have tried to invent new names for the Ineffable, but they acknowledge that there is Something in the universe calling for a name, a mystery, a unity, yea even a bias on the side of goodness. One writes: ‘We fancy somehow that the nature of things “takes sides,” as it were, in the struggle going on within itself—not, however, in reference to every form of conflict, but in the great battle between good and evil’—is, in short, ‘on the side of those who devote themselves to the ideally Good.’9 Hence the comforting assurance that ‘a divine providence is taking our side in the conflict,’ or, if you prefer to put it so, ‘that we are taking sides with the divine providence.’10 To the same effect another writes: ‘I do not believe that ethical faith—faith in the reality of the good—is the spirit of a forlorn hope, though, if it were so, it would still be the only spirit possible for us.’11 He means thereby to express faith in God, shorn of some useless or distracting accessories, that faith which still governs life under the new name of faith in the reality of the good.12 The same author ascribes to the universe ‘a reasonable tendency,’13 and even ‘grace,’ manifesting itself through heredity and education, which confer on the individual unmerited good gifts,14 and declares ‘that man's goodness consists in being effectually inspired by divine ideas.’15

Here are germs of a new faith in a wise, righteous, benignant Providence. They are only germs, but all vital beginnings are significant and potent. They are very vague and colourless in expression. They are indeed but the shadowy ghosts of old Christian beliefs which were embodied in fuller, richer, more inspiring forms of language. The Father in heaven of Jesus has become the universe, or nature endowed with reasonable, righteous, and gracious tendencies, but denuded of personality and intelligence. The question forces itself upon us: What is gained by the change of nomenclature? At most, a temporary escape from religious phrases which had become threadbare, or debased by vulgar, unintelligent, insincere use. The dislike of cant in religion all earnest men feel, but, that allowed for, it may reasonably be maintained that for permanent purposes the old dialect is better than the new. Better every way, even in point of intellectual consistency. Surely it is more philosophic to connect reasonable, righteous, gracious tendencies in the universe with personality and intelligence than to dissociate the two sets of qualities! As for impressiveness, there is no comparison between the two dialects. You could not go before a popular audience with such bloodless phrases as Mr. Bosanquet has coined. They would appear either unintelligible or ludicrous. But speak of a Father in heaven, then all people, learned and unlearned, know what you mean when you talk of the reason, justice and grace immanent in the universe. They not only understand you, but they are touched by what you say. They admire the felicitous fitness between name and thing; they are moved by the pathos of the name; they are stirred to religious affection—to faith in the goodwill of the Supreme, to cheerful confidence in His providence, to an inspiring, invigorating sense of dignity as His sons, and of the high responsibilities arising out of filial relations. The ethical movement aspires to be a new reformation. If it desires to realise the ambition implied in the name it will have to recognise more unreservedly the Mastership of Jesus.16 The Ethical Movement must become an Ethical Theism, with this for its message to men: ‘We love virtue for its own sake and desire the prevalence of disinterested devotion to the good. But it is no easy thing in this world to live up to one's moral ideal. We need Divine inspiration and aid. And what we need we have. There is an Almighty One who sympathises with Our aim, and who will help and guide us in our endeavour after its attainment.’ Morality must be touched with emotion to become infectious, and emotion springs out of religious faith. The world belongs to the religious ‘enthusiast, for enthusiasm is necessary to mankind; it is the genius of the masses and the productive element in the genius of individuals.’17

2. Of the theory which offers non-rational religion as the great propelling power in social evolution, enough has already been said in the way of exposition and criticism. Only a few words need here be added regarding it as an alternative gospel of hope for the future.

It will be obvious in what radical antagonism this theory stands to the view which has just been considered. Morality independent of religion and capable of flourishing in vigour when religion has become a thing of the past—such is the watchword of men like Guyau and Renan, and, less bluntly expressed, as becomes the gravity of English-speaking men, of the American aud British apostles of the ethical movement. Morality, in the sense of altruism, devoted self-sacrificing regard for the well-being of others, impossible without the compelling influence of non-rational religious beliefs, supported by sanctions which powerfully appeal to men's hopes and fears, and make it their interest to be disinterested—such is the watchword of the author of Social Evolution and of all who accept him as their spokesman. Positions more utterly opposed it is impossible to conceive. It is surprising and discouraging that at this time of day views so absolutely incompatible in their direct statements and in their whole implications can find advocates in a Christian community. Both positions are tainted with the falsehood of extremes. The motto, Morality without religion, divorces two things which nature has joined together as cause and effect, as reality and ideal. Given morality with the needful depth and intensity, and it will inevitably create a Deity and a religion congenial to itself wherein all the cherished ideals towards which it incessantly aspires and struggles find rest-giving realisation. The motto: Altruistic morality impossible, without religion furnished with compulsory sanctions, means, in the ultimate result: such morality impossible even with such a religion. For it implies that love, care for others, sociality, is foreign to human nature. That being so, how vain to think of driving men into love through fear! It can at most only produce a simulated love, an interested disinterestedness which may bear some fruit in socially beneficial acts, but has no part or lot in the spirit of self-devotion. That even so much good will be reaped is far from certain; for, as we saw in last Lecture, the law without to which nothing within responds is more likely to produce reaction against itself than to ensure even feigned submission to its behests. A loveless nature will either sweep away a religion which seeks to curb its individualistic impulses, or it will alter it to suit its taste. It will have no affection for a religion with a lofty, pure, humane, ethical ideal. It will eliminate the humanity and transform the religion in question, retaining the name, into a scheme of self-salvation for the next world, combined with a life dominated by covetousness in this world.

Neither of these extremes is to be accepted as a satisfactory programme, but of the two evils the first-named is the lesser. It gives at least one good thing—altruism, social instinct, as an inalienable element of human nature. This undoubtedly it is. There is more to be said of man in the average than that he is rational, and that he has religious instincts—even this, that he is essentially social. When you tell him that God is a Father, there is that in him which helps him in some measure to appreciate the moral significance of the name. Though there be much evil in him, yet he has the heart to give good gifts to his children.18 Man had in his nature the rudiments of sociality from the day he began to belong to a family. Sociality in the form of family life is the primary datum, the foundation, of human civilisation, and its root and source was, not any religion furnished with awful sanctions, but the prolonged dependence of the human child upon the care of its parents. And there is still a real, valuable morality independent of religion, depending simply on ‘the facts that men have certain emotions; that mothers love their children; that there are such things as pity, and sympathy, and public spirit, and that there are social instincts upon the growth of which depends the vitality of the race.’19

3. But there is a better way than either, even the acceptance of the teaching of Jesus concerning God and man and Providence as the wisest and most reasonable the world has yet known, and the surest guide to all who seek the higher good of humanity. On the religious side, those who adopt this position differ from both the parties previously described. They differ from the ethicists in attaching importance to the religious element, that is to say, to a definite, earnest belief in a God who is best named Father, and in a benignant providence answering to the name. In this faith they find inspiration for endeavour, and hope for ultimate success, and in the correlate conception of man as son of God they find a strong support to that sense of the moral worth of human nature which is the fundamental postulate of Christian civilisation, but which many anti-social influences tend to weaken. On the other hand, while at one with the class of thinkers of whom Mr. Kidd is the spokesman in attaching high value to religion, they differ radically from them in their conception of the nature of the Christian religion and in their views as to the secret of its power. That religion appears to their minds intrinsically reasonable, credible, and acceptable, and in their judgment its power lies, not in mystery revealed either in dogma or in sacrament, nor in awe-inspiring vistas of a future existence, but in its capacity to satisfy the whole spiritual nature of man, including reason, conscience, and heart. Its great, grand thoughts of God, man, and duty are its best credentials and persuasives. These speak for themselves to the human soul; they awaken a response in manly natures utterly indifferent to eternal terrors; their very elevation is their charm, for lofty ideals appeal to the heroic in our nature, and so make way when low accommodating ideals are treated with contempt. ‘ “Love ye one another; by this shall all men know that ye are My disciples, if ye have love one to another.” In this admirable and eternal precept there is more of inexhaustible, practical power than in: Ye shall be cast into the fire; there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth.’20 The fact is so, because there is that in man which is able to respond to such teaching, and which gives its response with the greatest promptitude and earnestness when the doctrine is made to rest on its own intrinsic merits.

Men who profess to be disciples of Jesus cannot consistently ignore the hope of a life beyond the tomb, or refuse it a place among the motives to right conduct. But, if they be intelligent disciples, they will not allow the eternal to swallow up the temporal. They will recognise the substantial value of the present life, and see in social well-being the practical outcome of the Christian faith. In this respect leaders of thought, amid all variations of opinion, are happily agreed. Secularism, in a good sense, is a phase of the modern spirit. There is no reason in this fact for alienation from the Christianity of Christ. For Christ's doctrine of providence, as we saw, included all the good elements of secularism, asserting divine care for man's body as well as for his soul, for social as well as for spiritual health.

While that doctrine should commend itself to all men of goodwill, it contains little or nothing that can offend philosophers and men of science. For Jesus taught a providence that works and achieves its ends through the processes of nature, and that reaches the accomplishment of its purpose gradually, not per saltum. In His conception of Divine Providence Jesus gave no undue prominence to the unusual and the catastrophic. His watchwords were: Nature God's instrument; and, Growth the law of the moral as of the physical world.

Men of all schools, therefore—moralists, religionists, philanthropists, philosophers, scientists—might reasonably be expected to march together under Christ's banner, and fight with one heart for the sacred cause of humanity in the name of God the Father, for men, His sons. Or, if it be too much to hope for general agreement as to the religious aspect of Christ's teaching, one may surely count on a cordial consensus as to the rational, wholesome, beneficent tendency of the ethical principles enunciated in His recorded sayings! Dissent, vehement contradiction, may indeed be encountered even here; but those who at present take up this attitude are not a numerous body, and it may be hoped that they will become fewer in the course of time. Intelligent, cordial acceptance of the Christian ethic will mean much, e.g., a conservative view of marriage, the family, and the state, as institutions rooted in the nature of things, the subversion of which is not to be thought of, but at most only their improvement in the light of experience. Whether it should mean conservation of certain other things, e.g., private property, is a question on which much wider divergence of opinion may be looked for. There are some so hostile to property, or ‘capital,’ that to destroy it they would be ready to destroy other things hitherto held sacred—Deity, government, wedlock. One can guess what such revolutionaries would have to say to the Founder of the Christian faith. They would offer Him the peremptory alternatives: ‘Take our side, or we renounce you.’

What the bearing of Christ's teaching on the Socialistic movement of our day really is, is not a question that can be answered offhand. It is not, as religious conservatives may imagine, a matter of course that it is against that movement simply because the latter would amount to a social revolution; for the words of Jesus have acted, in certain instances, as a revolutionary force in the past, and they may do so again. As little is it a matter of course that it is on its side. As to the general tendency of Christ's doctrine, there is no room for doubt. It is emphatically humane. Jesus was on the side of the weak, of the little child and all that the little child represents. Therefore He was the friend of the poor; and were He living amongst us now He would regard with intense compassion the many whose lives are made wretched by the burden of abject, hopeless poverty. In not a few instances His keen eye might perceive that the poverty was the natural penalty of the poor man's folly. But in many others He would with equal clearness discern in poverty the undeserved result of social injustice, and therefore a wrong to be righted by a return to justice and mercy on the part of the wrong-doers.

What such a return would imply is the abstruse question. The humanity of the Gospel ultimately led to the abolition of slavery, because slavery was slowly discovered to be an inhuman thing. Must it likewise, sooner or later, lead to the abolition of property or capitalism and the introduction of a Collectivist millennium? That depends on the character of said millennium. Is it to be an economical one mainly, or is the ethical to be in the ascendant? For Christianity the ethical is the supreme category, and it judges all things by their bearing thereon. How, then, does it stand with Socialism? Does it place ethical interests first? does it even tend to promote the higher morality as a secondary interest? That it does is by no means so clear as one could desire. It is a significant fact that the thinkers of the day who have devoted themselves to ethical propagandism express grave doubts on the subject. Mr. Bosanquet is of opinion that Economic Socialism does not tend to Moral Socialism, or altruism, but rather to Moral Individualism, or selfishness.21 Mr. Leslie Stephen contends for the moral value of competition, and hints that the Socialist ideal is a land in which the chickens run about ready-roasted, and the curse of labour is finally removed from mankind.22 M. Guyau bluntly describes the Socialist ideal as ‘a life which is completely foreseen, ensured—with the element of fortune and of hope left out, with the heights and the depths of human life levelled away—an existence somewhat utilitarian and uniform, regularly plotted off like the squares on a checker board, incapable of satisfying the ambitious desires of the mass of mankind.’23 Mr. Sheldon is more sympathetic in his tone. Taking his stand ‘at a spiritual distance from all the scramble, the strikes and the lock-outs, the boycotts, the turmoil and the violence, the accusations and recriminations,’24 he tries to see what the movement implies as a whole, what it means ‘as a historic wave-movement.’ He hopes that in spite of all the materialism, selfishness, petty rivalries and ambitions connected with it in the meantime, the trend is towards higher moral manhood, and that at the end of another century, when the ideal industrial system of Socialist expectations shall have been proved to be a dream, the prevailing enthusiasm will be for the ethical ideal.25 Socialists will probably not thank him for his charitable forecast. It virtually makes their case analogous to that of the Jews, who looked for a political Messiah and an ideal national prosperity that never came, and got instead a spiritual Christ and a Kingdom of heaven which they did not appreciate.

But no estimate of Socialism emanating from the ethical school is so unfavourable as that formed by Mr. Kidd. It is to the following effect: The aim of Socialists is perfectly natural. It is simply a case of men who toil trying to better themselves by asserting what they believe to be the just claims of labour against capital. Nevertheless the carrying out of the Socialist programme would be ultimately ruinous. But on mere grounds of reason that is no sufficient answer to advocates of Socialist principles. They are entitled to reply: ‘What do we care for the future of the country?—our sole concern is for our own present personal interest.’ Against this quite rational yet ruinous movement the only barrier is the altruistic spirit which ultra-rational religion engenders. What graver indictment could be brought against any movement than this, which represents Socialism as destructive of public well-being sooner or later, indifferent to the ruin it will ultimately entail, and bound in self-defence against anti-socialistic altruism to assume an attitude of uncompromising antagonism towards religion?

Mr. Kidd is a biassed witness, as he is chiefly concerned to make out a case for the necessity of a religion mysterious in its doctrines and armed with supra-rational sanctions as the sole guarantee of social progress. I should be sorry to think so ill of any movement which has for its professed aim to improve the economic condition of the industrial part of the community. I have no right and no intention to pronounce any opinion on the question at issue. My general attitude is one of mingled sympathy and apprehension. I care greatly more for the million than for the millionaire. But I dread leaps in the dark. It will be wise to move slowly, lest too great haste in well-meant but ill-instructed endeavour should have a disastrous issue. Evolution, not revolution, should be the motto. Of one thing I am sure, viz., that no ultimate good will come of movements which set economic above moral interests. It is true that in the case of many the pressure of poverty is so heavy as to make the higher life all but impossible, and that there is need for ameliorative measures that will bring goodness within easier reach. But it must never be forgotten that the chief end to be striven after is moral manhood—character. The ethical must take precedence of the economical in our thoughts and aspirations. First righteousness, second food and raiment. If this order be not observed, national character will deteriorate, and with deteriorated character prosperity will wane. The wise of all ages, we have seen, have believed in a moral order as real and certain as the planetary system. If they are not all mistaken, there is such an order as a matter of fact, whatever theological phrase we employ to describe it. Call it a moral government of God, or a tendency in the universe: it is all one; there it is. And we have to reckon with it. It cannot be disregarded with impunity any more than the ship of Carlyle's parable could get round Cape Horn, with whatever unanimity of the crew, if they disregarded the conditions ‘fixed with adamantine rigour by the ancient elemental powers, who are entirely careless how you vote.’26 I trust that in the time to come an increasing number of men will be thorough believers in the moral order. Let all in their various spheres do their utmost to propagate this faith. The pulpit of the future will have to devote more attention to it, and strive to impress on men's minds that God is, and that He is the Rewarder of them that diligently seek Him. To do this with effect is not, I am aware, every preacher's gift. Special spiritual discipline is needed for the task. But it will be well for the community when, in every considerable centre of population, one man at least has the prophetic vocation and impulse to propagate the passion for righteousness, and the faith that this sacred passion burns in the heart of the Great Being who guides the destinies of the universe. The promoters of the Ethical Movement contemplate the ultimate disappearance of the Church, and the advent of a time when it will become a practical question, What use can be made of ecclesiastical edifices no longer needed for their original purpose? If that ever happen, it will be the Church's own fault. If she forget the adage, ‘By their fruits ye shall know them,’ if she lose sight of the truth that morality is the ultimate test of the worth of religion, if she get out of sympathetic touch with the ethical spirit of Jesus, then she will be perilously near the awful doom of savourless salt. But there will be no risk of such a doom overtaking her so long as the ethical ideal of the Gospels has a sovereign place in her heart, and it is manifest to all the world that she cares more for righteousness than for anything else, and that her deepest desire is, that God's will may be done upon this earth as it is in heaven.

• 1.

  Bernard Bosanquet, The Civilisation of Christendom, p. 98.

• 2.

  Social Rights and Duties, vol. i. p. 43.

• 3.

  W. L. Sheldon, An Ethical Movement, p. 13.

• 4.

  W. L. Sheldon, An Ethical Movement, p. 63.

• 5.

  The Civilisation of Christendom, p. 79.

• 6.

  The Civilisation of Christendom, p. 35.

• 7.

  Sheldon, An Ethical Movement, p. 57.

• 8.

  Social Rights and Duties, vol. ii. p. 218.

• 9.

  Sheldon, An Ethical Movement, pp. 94, 95.

• 10.

  Sheldon, An Ethical Movement, p. 96.

• 11.

  Bosanquet, The Civilisation of Christendom, p. 115.

• 12.

  Bosanquet, The Civilisation of Christendom, p. 115.

• 13.

  Bosanquet, The Civilisation of Christendom, p. 114.

• 14.

  Bosanquet, The Civilisation of Christendom, p. 121.

• 15.

  Bosanquet, The Civilisation of Christendom, p. 121.

• 16.

  In harmony with this statement, Professor Tiele closes his second course of Gifford Lectures with the declaration ‘that without preaching, or special pleading, or apologetic argument,’ the science of religion ‘will help to bring home to the restless spirits of our time the truth that there is no rest for them unless they arise and go to their Father.’

• 17.

  M. Guyau, The Non-Religion of the Future, p. 401.

• 18.

  Matthew vii. II.

• 19.

  Leslie Stephen, Social Rights and Duties, vol. ii. p. 219.

• 20.

  Guyau, The Non-Religion of the Future, p. 406.

• 21.

  Civilisation of Christendom, pp. 315 ff.

• 22.

  Social Rights and Duties, vol. i. pp. 133-173.

• 23.

  The Non-Religion of the Future, p. 369.

• 24.

  An Ethical Movement, p. 288.

• 25.

  An Ethical Movement, p. 298.

• 26.

  Latter-Day Pamphlets, p. 40