1.]

RELIGION AND ETHICS.

43

of the school of Rousseau, which, faithful to the precepts and example of that moralist, has ever sought to glorify what his English biographer calls "marriage according to the truth of nature," and to maintain that a Theist of the natural order is as free to choose his own rites as more sacramental performers." * Opportune is the warning

of the historian of Rome: "If a man denies Christianity, he will straightway deny the spiritual claims of woman. So threaten all modern unbelief and scepticism. To the woman, the denial of the Gospel would be at once a fall from the consideration she now holds among us. She would descend again to be the mere plaything of man, the transient companion of his leisure hour, to be held loosely as the chance gift of a capricious fortune."†

No doubt a country which for a thousand years had been Christian, would for a time, by mere force of custom, or tenacity of interest, preserve its moral habits, if it should lose its religious belief. But for a time only. Morality is, in itself, independent of religion. It is natural to man: its primordial principles are impressed upon the conscience and reason is able to deduce from them just rules for the conduct of life. But, as a matter of fact, religion and nothing else can graft it into the character and institutions of a people, and without religion perish and die it must

*Rousseau, by John Morley, vol. i., p. 130.

† Merivale, Conversion of the Northern Nations, p. 153.

in the long run. Mr. Spencer, indeed, is of opinion that "a rationalized version of the ethical principles of Christianity will eventually be acted on." "A rationalized version!" A version in which utility is substituted for charity, selfishness for self-sacrifice! A version in which the essential springs, the constraining motives, the effectual sanctions are left out. Abstractions have never supplied principles of action. The notions of duty, responsibility, justice, which the understanding can frame to itself, however just, are frigid: they are merely intellectual; they are diagrams. In order to vivify them we need emotion, we need enthusiasm, we need celestial fire. It is only when truths have, so to speak, become incarnate, have "been made flesh and dwelt among us," that they have touched the hearts, and guided the wills, and ruled the lives of men. The vast majority of men are utterly unable to understand an argument. All can appreciate a character. Ethical laws and precepts leave us cold. Virtue embodied in a life kindles us into victorious enthusiasm. And so the Divine Founder of Christianity testified of Himself: "I am the light of the world." This is the light in which the generations of Christian Europe have walked, with falls innumerable indeed, but "with an ascent and progress in the main." This is the light which shining into the mysterious recesses of man's nature, the hidden depths and powers of his soul, has revealed him to himself: "Tu homo tantum nomen

1.]

THE CRY OF THE DEMONIACS.

45

one.*

si te scias!" And in the brightness of that revelation men have come to respect personality and its rights, and the fetters upon the free exercise of the human faculties have fallen one by Nor can I imagine a sadder sight than that which is presented by multitudes of men who in the name of Progress are endeavouring to quench this light of our moral being. The pity of it when one sceslet me say--Professor Huxley, with his zeal for knowledge, his ardour of philanthropy, devoting the last years of his honoured life to the task of

* Lotze excellently observes, "The relation of Christianity towards the external condition of mankind was not that of a disturbing and subversive force; but it deprived evil of all justification for its permanent continuance. It did not forthwith abolish the slavery which it found existing but in summoning all men to partake in the kingdom of God, it condemned it, nevertheless: at first it let polygamy continue, where it existed: but this must necessarily disappear spontaneously when the spirit of Christian faith made itself felt in the relations of life. And this conflict is still carried on in many directions: for the perversity of human nature, which is ever much the same, opposes to the better way all the resistance of which it is capable; but there is one permanent advantage by which the new life is distinguished from antiquity. That which was better and juster did, indeed, make for itself a way in ancient life, but almost exclusively, in those cases in which the oppressed struggled manfully with the oppressor. The provident humanity which, without seeking its own happi ness, takes the part of the suffering section of mankind and requires and exercises deeds of mercy and justice, was something very foreign to the ancient world: and in the new world it has no more powerful source than Christianity."—Microcosmus, Book VII., c. 5.

с

-

way,

But

dechristianizing his country, dwelling among the tombs "the charnel house of physical science," in Goethe's phrase-like one of his pet demoniacs, exceeding fierce, so that no man might pass that and echoing their cry, "Quid nobis et tecum Jesu?" What have we to do with Him? Why in Him are rooted and grounded the best thoughts, the noblest deeds, the highest aspirations of mankind. Well does M. Renan, as he pictures to himself the dimi nution of virtue which would threaten modern society, if the hold upon it of Christianity were relaxed, exclaim " Que serions-nous sans lui? Comment n'être pas effrayé de la sécheresse de cœur et de la petitesse qui envahissent le monde." surely we may reasonably believe that this religion "is a height to which the human species were fated and enabled to attain; and from which, having once attained it, they can never retrograde." Adopt any theory you like of the date, origin, or composition of the New Testament, and yet the incomparable figure of the Great Master remains, undimmed by "the mists of fabling time," or by the dust of contemporary criticism. Across the ages His message falls upon our cars, amid the din and turmoil of modern cities, as clearly, as His scholars heard it at the first, on the green hills or by the clear streams of Galilee. As true now as then is the saying traditionally attributed to Him, "He who comes near me comes near fire." "Never

Les Apôtres, pref. p. lxiii.

1.]

THE PERIL OF CHRISTIANITY.

47

man spake like this man." His words are spirit and they are life," the spirit and the life of "the loftiest feelings hitherto vouchsafed to humanity." Who can believe that they shall pass away?

But there is Christianity and Christianity. As I have written elsewhere:

"It is the commonest mistake, in the present day, to identify Christian teaching with some vulgar caricature of it, and then to condemn it off-hand, without in the least understanding what it really is. It fills one with pity to see earnest and able men thus wasting time and energy in arguing, as the old Greeks would have said, about the shadow of an ass. Moreover, Christian teaching professes to be symbolic, and an economy of divine things. Every article of faith must be construed according to the sense of Goethe's line: Alles vergängliche ist nur ein' Gleichniss.' Surely there is some middle term between knowing exactly how things are, in themselves, and knowing nothing at all about them. Are not painting, poetry, and music economical in their representation of reality? Is not speech itself a most mysterious, yet a true, analogon of thought?"

To this I would add that here, too, the doctrine of Progress properly applies. The religion of these modern times must grow with our growing culture, must widen with our wider knowledge. It cannot stand still. Far less can it regress to Alexandrian, or Renaissance, or Puri. tan conceptions. Here, as elsewhere, Mr. Spencer's dictum holds good: "Perpetual self-adaptation to environment is the very law of life." In the *Ancient Religion and Modern Thought, p. 335.