(2) While the Romantic movement, of which Goethe was the most illustrious representative, did much to enlarge life and ennoble the whole expanse of being, its extreme subjectivism and aristocratic exclusiveness found ultimate expression (a) in the pessimism of Schopenhauer, and the arrogance of Nietzsche. The alliance between art and morality was dissolved. The imagination scorned all fetters and, in its craving for novelty and contempt of convention, became the organ of individual caprice and licence. In Nietzsche—that strange erratic genius—at once artist, philosopher, and rhapsodist—this philosophy of life found brilliant if bizarre utterance. If Schopenhauer reduces existence to nothing, and finds in oblivion and extinction its solution, (b) Nietzsche seeks rather to magnify life by striking the note of a proud and defiant optimism. He claims for the individual limitless rights; and, repudiating all moral ties, asserts the complete sovereignty of the self-sufficing ego. With a deep-rooted hatred of the prevailing tendencies of civilisation, he combines a vehement desire for a richer and unrestrained development of human power. He would not only revalue all moral values, but reverse all ideas of right and wrong. He would soar 'beyond good and evil,' declaring that the prevailing judgments of mankind are pernicious prejudices which have too long tyrannised over the world. He acknowledges himself to be not a moralist, but an 'immoralist,' and he bids us break in pieces the ancient tables of the Decalogue. Christianity is the most debasing form of slave-morality. It has made a merit of weakness and servility, and given the name of virtue to such imbecilities as meekness and self-sacrifice. He calls upon the individual to exalt himself. The man of {110} the future is to be the man of self-mastery and virile force, 'the Superman,' who is to crush under his heel the cringing herd of weaklings who have hitherto possessed the world. The earth is for the strong, the capable, the few. A mighty race, self-assertive, full of vitality and will, is the goal of humanity. The vital significance of Nietzsche's radicalism lies less in its positive achievement than in its stimulating effect. Though his account of Christianity is a caricature, his strong invective has done much to correct the sentimental rose-water view of the Christian faith which has been current in some pietistic circles. The Superman, with all its vagueness, is a noble, inspiring ideal. The problem of the race is to produce a higher manhood, to realise which there is need for sacrifice and courage. Nietzsche is the spiritual father and forerunner of the Eugenics. The Superman is not born, he is bred. Our passions must be our servants. Obedience and fidelity, self-discipline and courage are the virtues upon which he insists. 'Be master of life. . . .' 'I call you to a new nobility. Ye shall become the procreators and sowers of the future.'
While there is much that is suggestive in Nietzsche's scathing criticisms, and many passages of striking beauty in his books, he is stronger in his denials than his affirmations, and it is the negative side that his followers have fastened upon and developed. Sudermann, the novelist, has carried his philosophy of egoism to its extreme. This writer, in a work entitledSodom's End, affirms that there is nothing holy and nothing evil. There is no such thing as duty or love. Only nerves exist. The 'Superman' becomes a monster. Such teaching can scarcely be taken seriously. It conveys no helpful message. It is the perversion of life's ideal.
As a passing phase of thought it is interesting, but it solves no problems; it advances no truths. It resembles a whirlwind which helps to clear the air and drive away superfluous leaves, but it does little to quicken or expand new seeds of life.
{111}
1. Modern Idealism was inaugurated by Kant. Kant's significance for thought lies in his twofold demand for a new basis of knowledge and morality. He conceived that both are possible, and that both are interdependent, and have but one solution. The solution, however, could only be achieved by a radical change of method, and by the introduction of new standards of value. Kant's theory of morals was an attempt to reconcile the two opposing ethical principles which were current in the eighteenth century. On the one side, the Realists treated man simply as a natural being, and accordingly demanded a pursuance of his natural impulses. On the other side, the Dogmatists conceived that conduct must be governed by divine sanctions. Both theories agreed in regarding happiness as the end of life; the one the happiness of sensuous enjoyment; the other, that of divine favour. Both set an end outside of man himself as the basis of their ethical doctrine. Kant was dissatisfied with this explanation of the moral life. The question, therefore, which arises is, Whence comes the idea of duty which is an undeniable fact of our experience? If it came merely from without, it could never speak to us with absolute authority, nor claim unquestioning obedience. That which comes from without depends for its justification upon some consequence external to our action, and must be based, indeed, upon some excitement of reward or pain. But that would destroy it as a moral good; since nothing can be morally good that is not pursued for its own sake. Kant, therefore, seeks to show that the law of the moral life must originate within us, must spring from an inherent principle of our own rational nature. Hence the distinctive feature of Kant's moral theory is the enunciation of the 'Categorical Imperative'—the supreme inner demand of reason. From this principle of autonomy there arise at once the notions of man's freedom and the law's {112} universality. Self-determination is the presupposition of all morality. But what is true for one is true for all. Each man is a member of a rational order, and possesses the inalienable independence and the moral dignity of being an end in himself. Hence the formula of all duty is, 'Act from a maxim at all times fit to be a universal law.'
It is the merit of Kant that he has given clear expression to the majesty of the moral law. No thinker has more strongly asserted man's spiritual nature or done more to free the ideal of duty from all individual narrowness and selfish interest. But Kant's principle of duty labours under the defect, that while it determines the form, it tells us nothing of the content of duty. We learn from him the grandeur of the moral law, but not its essence or motive-power. He does not clearly explain what it is in the inner nature of man that gives to obligation its universal validity or even its dominating force. As a recent writer truly says, 'In order that morality may be possible at all, its law must be realisedinme, but while the way in which it is realised is mine, the content is not mine; otherwise the whole conception of obligation is destroyed.'[13] If the soul's function is purely formal how can we attain to a self-contained life? Moreover, if the freedom which Kant assigns to man is really to achieve a higher ideal and bring forth a new world, must there not be some spiritual power or energy, some dynamic force, which, while it is within man, is also without, and independent of, him? 'Duty for duty's sake' lacks lifting power, and is the essence of legalism. Love, after all, is the fulfilling of the law.
2. To overcome the Kantian abstraction, and give content to the formal law of reason was the aim of the idealistic writers who succeeded him. Fichte conceived of morality as action—self-consciousness realising itself in a world of deeds. Hegel started with theIdeaas the source of all reality, and developed the conception of Personality attaining self-realisation through the growing consciousness of the world and of God. Personality involves capacity. The {113} law of life, therefore, is, 'Be a person and respect others as persons.'[14] Man only comes to himself as he becomes conscious that his life is rooted in a larger self. Morality is just the gradual unfolding of an eternal purpose whose whole is the perfection of humanity. It has been objected that the idea of life as an evolutionary process, which finds its most imposing embodiment in the system of Hegel, if consistently carried out, destroys all personal motive and self-determining activity, and reduces the history of the world to a soulless mechanism. Hegel himself was aware of this objection, and the whole aim of his philosophy was to show that personality has no meaning if it be not the growing consciousness of the infinite. The more recent exponents of his teaching have endeavoured to prove that the individual, so far from being suppressed, is reallyexpressedin the process, that, indeed, while the universal life underlies, unifies, and directs the particular phases of existence, the individual in realising himself is at the same time determining and evolving the larger spiritual world—a world already implicitly present in his earliest consciousness and first strivings. The absolute is indeed within us from the very beginning, but we have to work it out. Hence life is achieved through conflict. The universe is not a place for pleasure or apathy. It is a place for soul-making. No rest is to be found by an indolent withdrawal from the world of reality. 'In one way or another, in labour, in learning, and in religion, every man has his pilgrimage to make, his self to remould and to acquire, his world and surroundings to transform. . . . It is in this adventure, and not apart from it, that we find and maintain the personality which we suppose ourselves to possessab initio.'[15] The soul is a world in itself; but it is not, and must not be treated as, an isolated personality impervious to the mind of others. At each stage of its evolution it is the focus and expression of a larger world. A man does not value himself as a detached subject, but as the {114} inheritor of gifts which are focused in him. Man, in short, is a trustee for the world; and suffering and privation are among his opportunities. The question for each is, How much can he make of them? Something above us there must be to make us do and dare and hope, and the important thing is not one's separate destiny, but the completeness of experience and one's contribution to it.[16]
3. It was inevitable that there should arise a reaction against the extreme Intellectualism of Hegel and his school, and that a conception of existence which lays the emphasis upon the claims of practical life should grow in favour. The pursuit of knowledge tended to become merely a means of promoting human well-being.
The first definite attempt to formulate a specific theory of knowledge with this practical aim in view takes the form of what is known as 'Pragmatism.' The modern use of this term is chiefly connected with the name of the late Professor James, to whose brilliant writings we are largely indebted for the elucidation of its meaning. 'Pragmatism,' says James, 'represents the empiricist attitude both in a more radical and less objectionable form than it has ever yet assumed.'[17] It agrees with utilitarianism in explaining practical aspects, and with positivism in disdaining useless abstractions. It claims to be a method rather than a system of philosophy. And its method consists in bringing the pursuit of knowledge into close relationship with life. Nothing is to be regarded as true which cannot be justified by its value for man. The hypothesis which on the whole works best, which most aptly fits the circumstances of a particular case, is true. The emphasis is laid not on absolute principles, but on consequences. We must not consider things as they are in themselves, but in their reference to the good of mankind. It is useless, for example, to speculate about the existence of God. If the hypothesis of a deity works satisfactorily, if the best results follow for the moral well-being of humanity by believing in a God, {115} then the hypothesis may be taken as true. It is true at least for us. Truth, according to Pragmatism, has no independent existence. It is wholly subjective, relative, instrumental. Its only test is its utility, its workableness.
This view of truth, though supported by much ingenuity and brilliance, would seem to contradict the very idea of truth, and to be subversive of all moral values. If truth has no independent validity, if it is not something to be sought for itself, irrespective of the inclinations and interests of man, then its pursuit can bring no real enrichment to our spiritual being. It remains something alien and external, a mere arbitrary appendix of the self. It is not the essence and standard of human life. If its sole test is what is advantageous or pleasant it sinks into a merely utilitarian opinion or selfish bias. 'Truth,' says Eucken, 'can only exist as an end in itself. Instrumental truth is no truth at all.'[18]
According to this theory, moreover, truth is apt to be broken up into a number of separate fragments without correlation or integrating unity. There will be as many hypotheses as there are individual interests. The truth that seems to work best for one man or one age may not be the truth that serves another. In the collision of opinions who is to arbitrate? If it be the institutions and customs of to-day, the present state of morals, that is to be the measure of what is good, then we seem to be committed to a condition of stagnancy, and involved in the quest of a doubtful gain.
As might be expected, Professor James's view of truth determines his view of the world. It is pluralistic, not monistic; melioristic, not optimistic. It is characteristic of him that when he discusses the question, Is life worth living? his answer practically is, 'Yes, if you believe it is.' Pragmatism is put forward as the mediator between two opposite tendencies, those of 'tender-mindedness' and 'tough-mindedness.' 'The tendency to rest in the Absolute is the characteristic mark of the tender-minded; the {116} radically tough-minded, on the other hand, needs no religion at all.'[19] There is something to be said for both of these views, James thinks, and a compromise will probably best meet the case. Hence, against these two ways of accepting the universe, he maintains the pragmatic faith which is at once theistic, pluralistic, and melioristic. He accepts a personal power as a workable theory of the universe. But God need not be infinite or all-inclusive, for 'all that the facts require is that the power should be both other and larger than our common selves.'[20] Such a conception of God, even on James's own admission, is akin to polytheism. And such polytheism implies a pluralistic view of the universe. The invisible order, in which we hope to realise our larger life, is a world which does not grow integrally in accordance with the preconceived plan of a single architect, 'but piecemeal by the contributions of its several parts.'[21] We make the world to our will, and 'add our fiat to the fiat of the creator.' With regard to the supreme question of human destiny Professor James's view is what he calls 'melioristic.' There is a striving for better things, but what the ultimate outcome will be, no one can say. For the world is still in the making. Life is a risk. It has many possibilities. Good and evil are intermingled, and will continue so to be. It is a pluralistic world just because the will of man is free, and predetermination is excluded. If good was assured as the final goal of ill, and there was no sense of venture, no possibility of loss or failure, then life would lack interest, and moral effort would be shorn of reality and incentive.
In Professor James's philosophy of life there is much that is original and stimulating, and it draws attention to facts of experience and modes of thought which we were in danger of overlooking. It has compelled us to consider the psychological bases of personality, and to lay more stress upon the power of the will and individual choice in the determining of character and destiny. It is pre-eminently {117} a philosophy of action, and it emphasises an aspect of life which intellectualism was prone to neglect—the function of personal endeavour and initiative in the making of the world. It postulates the reality of a living God who invites our co-operation, and it encourages our belief in a higher spiritual order which it is within our power to achieve.
Pragmatism has hitherto made headway chiefly in America and Britain, but on its activistic side it is akin to a new philosophical movement which has appeared in France and Germany. The name generally given to this tendency is 'Activism' or 'Vitalism'—a title chosen probably in order to emphasise the self-activity of the personal consciousness directed towards a world which it at once conquers and creates. The authors of this latest movement are the Frenchman, Henri Bergson, and the German, Rudolf Eucken. Differing widely in their methods and even in their conclusions, they agree in making a direct attack both upon the realism and the intellectualism of the past, and in their conviction that the world is not a 'strung along universe,' as the late Professor James puts it, but a world that is being made by the creative power and personal freedom of man. While Eucken has for many years occupied a position of commanding influence in the realm of thought, Bergson has only recently come into notice. The publication of his striking work,Creative Evolution, marks an epoch in speculation, and is awakening the interest of the philosophical world.[22]
4. With his passion for symmetry and completeness Bergson has evolved a whole theory of the universe, {118} resorting, strange to say, to a form of reasoning that implies the validity of logic, the instrument of the intellect which he never wearies of impugning. Without entering upon his merely metaphysical speculations, we fix upon his theory of consciousness—the relation of life to the material world—as involving certain ethical consequences bearing upon our subject. The idea of freedom is the corner-stone of Bergson's system, and his whole philosophy is a powerful vindication of the independence and self-determination of the human will. Life is free, spontaneous, creative and incalculable; determined neither by natural law nor logical sequence. It can break through all causation and assert its own right. It is not, indeed, unrelated to matter, since it has to find its exercise in a material world. Matter plays at once, as he himself says, the rôle of obstacle and stimulus.[23] But it is not the world of things which legislates for man; it is man who legislates for it. Bergson's object is to vindicate the autonomy of consciousness, and his entire philosophy is a protest against every claim of determinism to dominate life. By introducing the creative will before all development, he displaces mechanical force, and makes the whole evolution of life dependent upon the 'vital impulse' which pushes forward against all obstacles to ever higher and higher efficiency. Similarly, by drawing a distinction between intellect and intuition, he shows that the latter is the truly creative power in man which penetrates to the heart of reality and shapes its own world. Intellect and instinct have been developed along divergent lines. The intellect has merely a practical function. It is related to the needs of action.[24] It is the faculty of manufacturing artificial objects, especially tools to make tools.[25] It deals with solids and geometrical figures, and its instrument is logic. But according to Bergson it has an inherent incapacity to deal with life.[26] When we contrast the rigidity and superficiality of intellect with the fluidity, sympathy and intimacy of intuition, we see at once wherein {119} lies the true creative power of man. Development, when carried too exclusively along the lines of intellect, means loss of will-power; and we have seen how, not individuals alone, but entire nations, may be crushed and destroyed by a too rigid devotion to mechanical and stereotyped methods of thought. Only life is adequate to deal with life. Let us give free expression to the intuitive and sympathetic force within us, 'feel the wild pulsation of life,' if we would conquer the world and come to our own. 'The spectacle,' says Bergson, 'of life from the very beginning down to man suggests to us the image of a current of consciousness which flows down into matter as into a tunnel, most of whose endeavours to advance . . . are stopped by a rock that is too hard, but which, in one direction at least, prove successful, and break out into the light once more.'[27] But there life does not stop.
'All tended to mankind,But in completed man begins anewA tendency to God.'[28]
This creative consciousness still pushes on, giving to matter its own life, and drawing from matter its nutriment and strength. The effort is painful, but in making it we feel that it is precious, more precious perhaps than the particular work it results in, because through it we have been making ourselves, 'raising ourselves above ourselves.' And in this there is the true joy of life—the joy which every creator feels—the joy of achievement and triumph. Thus not only is the self being created, but the world is being made—original and incalculable—not according to a preconceived plan or logical sequence, but by the free spontaneous will of man.
The soul is the creative force—the real productive agent of novelty in the world. The strange thing is that the soul creates not the world only, but itself. Whence comes this mystic power? What is the origin of the soul? Bergson does not say. But in one passage he suggests that {120} possibly the world of matter and consciousness have the same origin—the principle of life which is the great prius of all that is and is to be. But Bergson's 'élan vital,' though more satisfactory than the first cause of the naturalist, or the 'great unknown' of the evolutionist, or even than some forms of the absolute, is itself admittedly outside the pale of reason—inexplicable, indefinable, and incalculable.
The new 'vitalism' unfolds a living self-evolving universe, a restless, unfinished and never-to-be-finished development—the scope and goal of which cannot be foreseen or explained. An infinite number of possibilities open out; which the soul will follow no one can tell; why it follows this direction rather than that, no one can see. There seems to be no room here for teleology or purposiveness; and though Bergson has not yet worked out the theological and ethical implications of his theory, as far as we can at present say the personality and imminence of a Divine Being are excluded. Though Bergson never refers to Hegel by name, he seems to be specially concerned in refuting the philosophy of the Absolute, according to which the world is conceived as the evolution of the infinite mind. If 'tout est donné,' says Bergson, if all is given beforehand, 'why do over again what has already been completed, thus reducing life and endeavour to a mere sham.' But even allowing the force of that objection, the idea of a 'world in the making,' though it appeals to the popular mind, is not quite free from ambiguity. In one sense it states a platitude—a truth, indeed, which is not excluded from an absolute or teleological conception of life. But if it is implied that the world, because it is in process of production, may violate reason and take some capricious form, the idea is absurdly false, so long as we are what we are, and the human mind is what it is. The real must always be the rational. All enterprise and effort are based on the faith that we belong to a rational world. Though we cannot predict what form the world will ultimately take, we can at least be sure that it can assume no character which will {121} contradict the nature of intelligence. Even in the making of a world, if life has any moral worth and meaning at all, there must be rational purpose. There are creation and initiative in man assuredly, but they must not be interpreted as activities which deviate into paths of grotesque and arbitrary fancy. Our actions and ideas must issue from our world. Even a poem or work of art must make its appeal to the universal mind; any other kind of originality would wholly lack human interest and sever all creation and life from their root in human nature. But at least we must acknowledge that Bergson has done to the world of thought the great service of liberating us from the bonds of matter and the thraldom of a fatalistic necessity. It is his merit that he has lifted from man the burden of a hard determinism, and vindicated the freedom, choice, and initiative of the human spirit. If he has no distinctly Christian message, he has at least disclosed for the soul the possibility of new beginnings, and has shown that there is room in the spiritual life, as the basis of all upward striving, for change of heart and conversion of life.
5. In the philosophy of Eucken there is much that is in harmony with that of Bergson; but there are also important differences. Common to both is a reaction against formalism and intellectualism. Neither claims that we can gain more than 'the knowledge of a direction' in which the solution of the problem may be sought. It is not a 'given' or finished world with which we have to do. 'The triumph of life is expressed by creation,' says Eucken, 'I mean the creation of self by self.' 'We live in the conviction,' he says again, 'that the possibilities of the universe have not yet been played out,[29] but that our spiritual life still finds itself battling in mid-flood with much of the world's work still before us.' While Bergson confines himself rigidly to the metaphysical side of thought, Eucken is chiefly interested in the ethical and religious aspects of life's problem. Moreover, while there is an absence of a distinctly teleological aim in Bergson, the purpose and ideal {122} of life are prominent elements in Eucken. Notwithstanding his antagonism to intellectualism, the influence of Hegel is evident in the absolutist tendency of his teaching. Life for Eucken is fundamentally spiritual. Self-consciousness is the unifying principle. Personality is the keynote of his philosophy. But we are not personalities to begin with: we have the potentiality to become such by our own effort. He bids us therefore forget ourselves, and strive for our highest ideal—the realisation of spiritual personality. The more man 'loses his life' in the pursuit of the ideals of truth, goodness, and beauty the more surely will he 'save it.' He realises himself as a personality, who becomes conscious of his unity with the universal spiritual life.
Hence there are two fundamental principles underlying Eucken's philosophy which give to it its distinguishing character. The first is the metaphysical conception ofa realm of Spirit—an independent spiritual Reality, not the product of the natural man, but communicating itself to him as he strives for, and responds to, it. This spiritual reality underlies and transcends the outward world. It may be regarded as an absolute or universal life—the deeper reality of which all visible things are the expression. The second cardinal principle is thedoctrine of Activism. Life is action. Human duty lies in a world of strife. We have to contend for a spiritual life-content. Here Eucken has much in common with Fichte.[30] But while Fichte starts with self-analysis, and loses sight of error, care, and sin, Eucken starts with actual conflict, and ever retains a keen sense of these hampering elements. The evil of the world is not to be solved simply by looking down upon the world from some superior optimistic standpoint, and pronouncing it very good. The only way to solve it is the practical one, to leave the negative standing, and press on to the deeper affirmative—the positive truth, that beneath the world of nature there exists a deeper reality of spirit, of which we become participators by the freedom and activity of our lives. We are here to acquire a new spiritual world, but {123} it is a world in which the past is taken up and transfigured. Against naturalism, which acquiesces in the present order of the universe, and against mere intellectualism, which simply investigates it, Eucken never wearies of protesting. He demands, first, a fundamental cleavage in the inmost being of man, and a deliverance from the natural view of things; and he contends, secondly, for a spiritual awakening and an energetic endeavour to realise our spiritual resources. Not by thought but by action is the problem of life to be solved. Hence his philosophy is not a mere theory about life, but is itself a factor in the great work of spiritual redemption which gives to life its meaning and aim.
That which makes Eucken's positive idealism specially valuable is his application of it to religion. Religion has been in all ages the mighty uplifting power in human life. It stands for a negation of the finite and fleeting, and an affirmation of the spiritual and the eternal. This is specially true of the Christian religion. Christianity is the supreme type of religion because it best answers the question, 'What can religion do for life?' But the old forms of its manifestation do not satisfy us to-day. Christianity of the present fails to win conviction principally for three reasons: (1) because it does not distinguish the eternal substance of religion from its temporary forms; (2) because it professes to be the final expression of all truth, thus closing the door against progress of thought and life; and (3) while emphasising man's redemption from evil, it forgets the elevation of his nature towards good. There is a tendency to depreciate human nature, and to overlook the joyousness of life. What is needed, therefore, is the expression of Christianity in a new form—a reconstruction which shall emphasise the positiveness, activity, and joy of Christian morality.[31]
While every one must feel the sublimity and inspiration in this conception of a spiritual world, which it is the task of life to realise, most people will be also conscious of a {124} certain vagueness and elusiveness in its presentation. We are constrained to ask what is this independent spiritual life? Is it a personal God, or is it only an impersonal spirit, which pervades and interpenetrates the universe? The elusive obscurity of the position and function which Eucken assigns to his central conception of theGeistes-Lebenmust strike every reader. Even more than Hegel, Eucken seems to deal with an abstraction. The spiritual life, we are told, 'grows,' 'divides,' 'advances'—but it appears to be as much a 'bloodless category' as the Hegelian 'idea,' having no connection with any living subject. God, the Spirit, may exist, indeed Eucken says He does, but there is nowhere any indication of how the spiritual life follows from, or is the creation of, the Divine Spirit. Our author speaks with so great appreciation of Christianity that it seems an ungracious thing to find fault with his interpretation of it. Yet with so much that is positive and suggestive, there are also some grave omissions. In a work that professes to deal with the Christian faith—The Truth of Religion—and which indeed presents a powerful vindication of historical Christianity, we miss any philosophical interpretation of the nature and power of prayer, adoration, or worship, or any account, indeed, of the intimacies of the soul which belong to the very essence of the Christian faith. While he insists upon the possibility, nay, the necessity, of a new beginning, he fails to reveal the power by which the great decision is made. While he affirms with much enthusiasm and frankness the need of personal decision and surrender, he has nothing to say of the divine authority and power which creates our choice and wins our obedience. Nowhere does he show that the creative redemptive force comes not from man's side, but ultimately from the side of God. And finally, his teaching with regard to the person and work of Jesus Christ, notwithstanding its tender sympathy and fine discrimination, does less than justice to the uniqueness and historical significance of the Son of Man. With profound appreciation and rare beauty of language he depicts the life of Jesus. 'Seldom,' {125} says a recent writer, 'has the perfect Man been limned with so persuasive a combination of strenuous thought and gracious word.'[32] 'He who makes merely a normal man of Jesus,' he says, 'can never do justice to His greatness.'[33] Yet while he protests rightly against emptying our Lord's life of all real growth and temptation, and the claim of practical omniscience for His humanity (conceptions of Christ's Person surely nowhere entertained by first-class theologians), he leaves us in no manner of doubt that he does not attach a divine worth to Jesus, nor regard Him in the scriptural sense as the Supreme revelation and incarnation of God. And hence, while the peerless position of Jesus as teacher and religious genius is frankly acknowledged, and His purity, power, and permanence are extolled—the mediatorial and redemptive implicates of His personality are overlooked.
But when all is said, no one can study the spiritual philosophy of Eucken without realising that he is in contact with a mind which has a sublime and inspiring message for our age. Probably more than any modern thinker, Eucken reveals in his works deep affinities with the central spirit of Christianity. And perhaps his influence may be all the greater because he maintains an attitude of independence towards dogmatic and organised Christianity. Professor Eucken does not attempt to satisfy us with a facile optimism. Life is a conflict, a task, an adventure. And he who would engage in it must make the break between the higher and the lower nature. For Eucken, as for Dante, there must be 'the penitence, the tears, and the plunge into the river of Lethe before the new transcendent love begins.' There is no evasion of the complexities of life. He has a profound perception of the contradictions of experience and the seeming paradoxes of religion. For him true liberty is only possible through the 'given,' through God's provenience and grace: genuine self-realisation is only achievable through a continuous self-dedication to, and {126} incorporation within, the great realm of spirits; and the Immanence within our lives of the Transcendent.[34]
In styling the tendencies which we have thus briefly reviewed non-Christian, we have had no intention of disparagement. No earnest effort to discover truth, though it may be inadequate and partial, is ever wholly false. In the light of these theories we are able to see more clearly the relation between the good and the useful, and to acknowledge that, just as in nature the laws of economy and beauty have many intimate correspondences, so in the spiritual realm the good, the beautiful, and the true may be harmonised in a higher category of the spirit. We shall see that the Christian ideal is not so much antagonistic to, as inclusive of, all that is best in the teaching of science and philosophy. The task therefore now before us is to interpret these general conceptions of the highest good in the light of Christian Revelation—to define the chief end of life according to Christianity.
[1] Kasper Schmidt,Der Einzige und sein Eigentum.
[2] Haeckel,op. cit., chap. xix.
[3] Haeckel,op. cit., chap. xix. p. 140.
[4] Hobbes'Leviathan, chap. vi.
[5] Cf. Pringle-Pattison,Philos. Radicals, and J. Seth'sEng. Philosophers, p. 240.
[6]Utilitarianism, chap. ii.
[7]Idem, chap. iii.
[8] Cf. Spencer,Data of Ethics, p. 275; alsoSocial Statics. In the former work an attempt is made to exhibit the biological significance of pleasure and the relation between egoism and altruism.
[9] SeeFirst Principles, p. 166 ff.
[10] See Kirkup,An Inquiry into Socialism, p. 19.
[11] See Lütgert,Natur und Geist Gottes, for striking chapter on Goethe'sEthik, p. 121 f.
[12] Cf. Eucken,Main Currents of Modern Thought, p. 401 f.
[13] Macmillan,The Crowning Phase of the Critical Philosophy, p. 28.
[14] Hegel,Phil. of Right, p. 45.
[15] Bosanquet,The Principles of Individuality and Value.
[16] Bosanquet,The Principles of Individuality and Value.
[17]Pragmatism, p. 51.
[18]Main Currents of Thought, p. 78.
[19]Pragmatism, p. 278 f.; alsoVarieties of Relig. Experience, p. 525 f.
[20]Idem, p. 299.
[21]Idem, p. 290.
[22] The writer regrets that the work of the Italian, Benedetto Croce,Philosophy of the Practical, Economic and Ethic(Part II. ofPhilosophy of the Spirit), came to his knowledge too late to permit a consideration of its ethical teaching in this volume. Croce is a thinker of great originality, of whom we are likely to hear much in the future, and whose philosophy will have to be reckoned with. Though independent of others, his view of life has affinities with that of Hegel. He maintains the doctrine of development of opposites, but avoids Hegel's insistence upon the concept of nature as a mode of reality opposed to the spirit. Spirit is reality, the whole reality, and therefore the universal. It has two activities, theoretic and practical. With the theoretic man understands the universe; with the practical he changes it. The Will is the man, and freedom is finding himself in the Whole.
[23]Hibbert Journal, April 1912.
[24]Evol. Creat., p. 161.
[25]Idem, p. 146.
[26]Idem, p. 165.
[27]Hibbert Journal.
[28] Browning.
[29]Die Geistigen Strömunyen der Gegenwart, p. 10.
[30] Cf.Problem of Life.
[31] Cf.Life's Basis and Life's Ideal.
[32] Hermann,Bergson und Eucken, p. 103.
[33]The Problem of Life, p. 152.
[34] Cf. von Hügel,Hibbert Journal, April 1912.
{127}
The highest good is not uniformly described in the New Testament, and modern ethical teachers have not always been in agreement as to the chief end of life. While some have found in the teaching of Jesus the idea of social redemption alone, and have seen in Christ nothing more than a political reformer, others have contended that the Gospel is solely a message of personal salvation. An impartial study shows that both views are one-sided. On the one hand, no conception of the life of Jesus can be more misleading than that which represents Him as a political revolutionist. But, on the other hand, it would be a distinct narrowing of His teaching to assume that it was confined to the aspirations of the individual soul. His care was indeed primarily for the person. His emphasis was put upon the worth of the individual. And it is not too much to say that the uniqueness of Jesus' teaching lay in the discovery of the value of the soul. There was in His ministry a new appreciation of the possibilities of neglected lives, and a hitherto unknown yearning to share their confidence. It would be a mistake, however, to represent Christ's regard for the individual as excluding all consideration of social relations. The kingdom of God, as we shall see, had a social and corporate meaning for our Lord. And if the qualifications for its entrance were personal, its duties were social. The universalism of Jesus' teaching implied that the soul had a value not for itself alone, but also for others. The assertion, therefore, that the individual has a value cannot mean that he has a value in isolation. {128} Rather his value can only be realised in the life of the community to which he truly belongs. The effort to help others is the truest way to reveal the hidden worth of one's own life; and he who withholds his sympathy from the needy has proved himself unworthy of the kingdom.
While the writers of the New Testament vary in their mode of presenting the ultimate goal of man, they are at one in regarding it as an exalted form oflife. What they all seek to commend is a condition of being involving a gradual assimilation to, and communion with, God. The distinctive gift of the Gospel is the gift of life. 'I am the Life,' says Christ. And the apostle's confession is in harmony with his Master's claim—'For me to live is Christ.' Salvation is nothing else than the restoration, preservation, and exaltation of life.
Corresponding, therefore, to the three great conceptions of Life in the New Testament, and especially in the teaching of Jesus—'Eternal Life,' 'the kingdom of God,' and the perfection of the divine Fatherhood, 'Perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect'—there are three aspects, individual, social, and divine, in which we may view the Christian ideal.
Self-realisation is not, indeed, a scriptural word. But rightly understood it is a true element in the conception of life, and may, we think, be legitimately drawn from the ethical teaching of the New Testament.[1] Though the free full development of the individual personality as we conceive it in modern times does not receive explicit statement,[2] still one cannot doubt, that before every man our Lord does present the vision of a possible and perfect self. Christianity does not destroy 'the will to live,' but only the will to live at all costs. Even mediaeval piety only inculcated self-mortification as a stage towards a higher {129} self-affirmation. Christ nowhere condemns the inherent desire for a complete life. The end, indeed, which each man should place before himself is self-mastery and freedom from the world;[3] but it is a mastery and freedom which are to be gained not by asceticism but by conquest. Christ would awaken in every man the consciousness of the priceless worth of his soul, and would have him realise in his own person God's idea of manhood.
The ideal of self-realisation includes three distinct elements:
1.Life as intensity of being.—'I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.'[4] 'More life and fuller' is the passion of every soul that has caught the vision and heard the call of Jesus. The supreme good consists not in suppressed vitality, but in power and freedom. Life in Christ is a full, rich existence. The doctrine of quietism and indifference to joy has no place in the ethic of Jesus. Life is manifested in inwardness of character, and not in pomp of circumstance. It consists not in what a man has, but in what he is.[5] The beatitudes, as the primary qualifications for the kingdom of God, emphasise the fundamental principle of the subordination of the material to the spiritual, and the contrast between inward and outward good.[6] Self-mastery is to extend to the inner life of man—to dominate the thoughts and words, and the very heart from which they issue. A divided life is impossible. The severest discipline, even renunciation, may be needful to secure that singleness of heart and strenuousness of aim which are for Jesus the very essence of life. 'Ye cannot serve God and mammon.'[7] In harmony with this saying is the opposition in the Johannine teaching between 'the world' and 'eternal life.'[8] The quality of life indeed depends not upon anything contingent or accidental, but upon an intense inward realisation of blessedness in Christ in comparison with which even {130} the privations and sufferings of this world are but as a shadow.[9] At the same time life is not a mere negation, not simply an escape from evil. It is a positive good, the enrichment and intensifying of the whole being by the indwelling of a new spiritual power. 'For me to live is Christ,' says St. Paul. 'This is life eternal,' says St. John, 'that they may know Thee the only true God, and Him whom Thou didst send, even Jesus Christ.'[10]
2.Life as Expansion of Personality.—By its inherent power it grows outwards as well as inwards. The New Testament conception of life is existence in its fullest expression and fruitfulness. The ideal as presented by Christ is no anaemic state of reverie or ascetic withdrawal from human interest. It is by the elevation and consecration of the natural life, and not by its suppression, that the 'good' is to be realised. The natural life is to be transformed, and the very body presented unto God as a living sacrifice.[11] So far from Christianity being opposed to the aim of the individual to find himself in a world of larger interests, it is only in the active and progressive realisation of such a life that blessedness consists. Herein is disclosed, however, the defect of the modern ideal of culture which has been associated with the name of Goethe. In Christ's ideal self-sufficiency has no place. While rightly interpreted the 'good' of life includes everything that enriches existence and contributes to the efficiency and completeness of manhood, mere self-culture and artistic expression are apt to become perverted forms of egoism, if not subordinated to the spirit of service which alone can give to the human faculties their true function and exercise. Hence life finds its real utterance not in the isolated development of the self, but in the fullness of personal relationships. Only in response to the needs of others can a man realise his own life. In answer to the young ruler who asked a question 'concerning that which is good,' Christ replied, 'If thou wilt enter into life keep the {131} commandments'; and the particular duties He mentioned were those of the second table of the Decalogue.[11] The abundance of life which Christ offers consists in the mutual offices of love and the interchange of service. Thus self-realisation is attained only through self-surrender.[13] The self-centred life is a barren life. Not by withholding our seed but by flinging it forth freely upon the broad waters of humanity do we attain to that rich fruition which is 'life indeed.'
3.Life as Eternal Good.—Whatever may be the accurate signification of the word 'eternal,' the words 'eternal life,' regarded as the ideal of man, can mean nothing else than life at its highest, the fulfilment of all that personality has within it the potency of becoming. In one sense there is no finality in life. 'It seethes with the morrow for us more and more.' But in another sense, to say that the moral life is never attained is only a half truth. It is always being attained because it is always present as an active reality evolving its own content. In Christ we have 'eternal life' now. It is not a thing of quantity but of quality, and is therefore timeless.
'We live in deeds not years, in thoughts not breaths,In feelings, not in figures on a dial.'[14]
He who has entered into fellowship with God has within him now the essence of 'life eternal.'
But the conception of life derived from, and sustained by, God involves the idea of immortality. 'No work begun shall ever pause for death.'[15] To live in God is to live as long as God. The spiritual man pursues his way through conflict and achievement towards a higher and yet a higher goal, ever manifesting, yet ever seeking, the infinite that dwells in him. All knowledge and quest and endeavour, nay existence itself, would be a mockery if man had 'no forever.' Scripture corroborates the yearnings of the heart and represents life as a growing good which is to attain to ever higher reaches and fuller realisations in the world to {132} come. It is the unextinguishable faith of man that the future must crown the present. No human effort goes to waste, no gift is delusive; but every gift and every effort has its proper place as a stage in the endless process.[16]
'There shall never be lost one good! What was shall live as before.'[17]
The foregoing discussion leads naturally to the second aspect of the highest Good, the Ideal in its social or corporate form—the kingdom of God. Properly speaking, there is no such thing as an individual. As biologically man is only a member of a larger organism, so ethically he can only realise himself in a life of brotherhood and service. It is only within the kingdom of God and by recognition of its social relations that the individual can attain to his own blessedness. Viewed in the light of the mutual relation of its members the kingdom is a brotherhood in which none is ignored and all have common privileges and responsibilities; viewed in the light of its highest good it is the entire perfection of the whole—a hierarchy of interests subordinated to, and unified by, the sovereignty of the good in the person of God.[18]
1. By reason of its comprehensiveness the doctrine of the kingdom has been regarded by many as the most general conception of the ideal of Jesus. 'In its unique and unapproachable grandeur it dwarfs all the lesser heights to which the prophetic hopes had risen, and remains to this day the transcendent and commanding ideal of the possible exaltation of our humanity.'[19] The principles implicitly contained in the teaching of Jesus concerning the kingdom have become the common possessions of mankind, and are moulding the thoughts and institutions of the civilised world. Kant's theory of a kingdom of ends, Comte's idea of Humanity, and the modern conceptions of scientific and {133} historical evolution are corroborative of the teaching of the New Testament. Within its conception men have found room for the modern ideas of social and economic order, and under its inspiration are striving for a fuller realisation of the aspirations and hopes of humanity.[20]
Though frequently upon His lips the phrase did not originate with Jesus. Already the Baptist had employed it as the note of his preaching, and even before the Baptist it had a long history in the annals of the Jewish people. Indeed the entire story of the Hebrews is coloured by this conception, and in the days of their decline it is the idea of the restoration of their nation as the true kingdom of God that dominates their hopes. When earthly institutions did not fulfil their promise, and nothing could be expected by natural means, hope became concentrated upon supernatural power. Thus before Jesus appeared there had grown up a mass of apocalyptic literature, the object of which was to encourage the national expectation of a sudden and supernatural coming of the kingdom of heaven. Men of themselves could do nothing to hasten its advent. They could only wait patiently till the set time was accomplished, and God stretched forth His mighty hand.[21]
A new school of German interpretation has recently arisen, the aim of which is to prove that Jesus was largely, if not wholly, influenced by the current apocalyptic notions of His time. Jesus believed, it is said, in common with the popular sentiment of the day, that the end of the world was at hand, and that at the close of the present dispensation there would come suddenly and miraculously a new order into which would be gathered the elect of God. Johannes Weiss, the most pronounced advocate of this view, maintains that Jesus' teaching is entirely eschatological. The kingdom is supramundane and still to come. Jesus did not inaugurate it; He only predicted its advent. Consequently there is no Ethics, strictly so called, in His {134} preaching; there is only an Ethic of renunciation and watchfulness[22]—anInterimsethik.
The whole problem resolves itself into two crucial questions: (1) Did Jesus expect a gradual coming of the kingdom, or did He conceive of it as breaking in suddenly by the immediate act of God? and (2) Did Jesus regard the kingdom as purely future, or as already begun?
In answer to the first question, while there are undoubtedly numerous and explicit sayings, too much neglected in the past and not to be wholly explained by mere orientalism, suggesting a sudden and miraculous coming, these must be taken in connection with the many other passages implying a gradual process—passages of deep ethical import which seem to colour our Lord's entire view of life and its purposes. And in answer to the second question, while there are not a few utterances which certainly point to a future consummation, these are not inconsistent with the immediate inauguration and gradual development of the kingdom.
A full discussion of this subject is beyond the scope of this volume.[23] There are, however, two objections which may be taken to the apocalyptic interpretation of Christ's teaching as a whole. (1) As presented by its most pronounced champions, this view seems to empty the person and teaching of Jesus of their originality and universality. It tends to reduce the Son of Man to the level of a Jewish rhapsodist, whose whole function was to encourage His countrymen to look away from the present scene of duty to some future state of felicity, which had no connection with the world of reality, and no bearing upon their present character. It would be surely a caricature to interpret the religion of the New Testament from this standpoint alone to the exclusion of those directly ethical and spiritual {135} principles in which its originality chiefly appeared, and on which its permanence depends.[24] As Bousset[25] points out, not renunciation but joy in life is the characteristic thing in Jesus' outlook. He does not preach a gloomy asceticism, but proclaims a new righteousness and a new type of duty. He recognises the worth of the present life, and teaches that the world's goods are not in themselves bad. He came as a living man into a dead world, and by inculcating a living idea of God and proclaiming the divine Fatherhood gave a new direction and inner elevation to the expectations of His age, showing the true design of God's revelation and the real meaning of the prophetic utterances of the past. To interpret the kingdom wholly from an eschatological point of view would involve a failure to apprehend the spiritual greatness of the personality with which we are dealing.[26] (2) This view virtually makes Christ a false prophet. For, as a matter of fact, the sudden and catastrophic coming of the kingdom as predicted by the Hebrew apocalyptics did not take place. On the contrary the kingdom of God came not as the Jews expected in a sudden descent from the clouds, but in the slow and progressive domination of God over the souls and social relationships of mankind. In view of the whole spirit of Jesus, His conception of God, and His relation to human life, as well as the attitude of St. Paul to the Parousia, it is critically unsound to deny that Jesus believed in the presence of the kingdom in a real sense during His lifetime.[27]
2. If this conception of the kingdom of God be correct we may now proceed to regard it under three aspects, Present, Progressive, and Future—as aGiftimmediately bestowed by Jesus, as aTaskto be worked out by man in the history of the world, and as aHopeto be consummated by God in the future.
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(1)The Kingdom as a Present Reality.—After what has been already said it will not be necessary to dwell upon this aspect. It might be supported by direct sayings of our Lord.[28] But the whole tenor and atmosphere of the Gospels, the uniqueness of Christ's personality, His claim to heal disease and forgive sin, as well as the conditions of entrance, imply clearly that in Jesus' own view the kingdom was an actual fact inaugurated by Him and obtaining its meaning and power from His own person and influence. Obviously He regarded Himself as the bearer of a new message of life, and the originator of a new reign of righteousness and love which was to have immediate application. Christ came to make God real to men upon the earth, and to win their allegiance to Him at once. No one can fail to recognise the lofty idealism of the Son of Man. He carries with Him everywhere a vision of the perfect life as it exists in the mind of God, and as it will be realised when these earthly scenes have passed away; yet it would be truer to say that His interests were in 'first things' rather than in 'last things,' and would be more justly designated Protology than Eschatology.[29] His mission, so far from having an iconoclastic aim, was really to 'make all things new.' He was concerned with the initiation of a new religion, therefore with a movement towards a regeneration of society which would be virtually a reign of God in the hearts of men. 'The kingdom of God is within you.' Not in some spot remote from the world, some beautiful land beyond the skies, but in the hearts and homes, in the daily pursuits and common relationships of life must God rule. The beatitudes, while they undoubtedly refer to a future when a fuller realisation of them will be enjoyed, have a present reference as well. They make the promise of the kingdom a present reality dependent upon the inner state of the recipients. Not in change of environment but in change {137} of heart does the kingdom consist. The lowly and the pure in heart, the merciful and the meek, the seekers after righteousness and the lovers of peace are, in virtue of their disposition and aspiration, already members.
(2) The kingdom as agradual development.—The inward gift prescribes the outward task. It is a power commanding the hearts of men and requiring for its realisation their response. It might be argued that this call to moral effort presented to the first Christians was not a summons to transform the present world, but to prepare themselves for the destiny that awaited them in the coming age.[30] It is true that watchfulness, patience, and readiness are among the great commands of the New Testament.[31] But admitting the importance of these requirements, they do not militate against the view that Christians were to work for the betterment of the world. Christ did not look upon the world as hopeless and beyond all power of reclaiming; nor did He regard His own or His disciples' ministry within it as without real and positive effects. While His contemporaries were expecting some mighty intervention that would suddenly bring the kingdom ready-made from heaven, He saw it growing up silently and secretly among men. He took his illustrations from organic life. Its progress was to be like the seed hidden in the earth, and growing day and night by its own inherent germinating force. The object of the parables of the sower, the tares, the mustard seed, the leaven, was to show that the crude catastrophic conception of the coming of the kingdom must give place to the deeper and worthier idea of growth—an idea in harmony with the entire economy of God's working in the world of nature. In the parable of the fruit-bearing earth Jesus shows His faith in the growth of the good, and hence in the adaptation of the truth to the human soul. In the parables of the leaven, the light, and salt Jesus illustrates the gradual power of truth to pervade, illumine, and purify the life of humanity. His method of bringing about this {138} good is the contagion of the good life. His motive is the sense of the need of men. And His goal is the establishment of the kingdom of love—a kingdom in which all the problems of ambition, wealth, and the relationships of the family, of the industrial sphere, and of the state, are to be transfigured and spiritualised.[32]
It is surely no illegitimate application of the mind of Christ if we see in His teaching concerning the kingdom a great social ideal to be realised by the personal activities and mutual services of its citizens. It finds its field and opportunity in the realm of human society, and is a good to be secured in the larger life of humanity. This ideal, though only dimly perceived by the early Church, has become gradually operative in the world, and has been creative of all the great liberating movements in history. It lay behind Dante's vision of a spiritual monarchy, and has been the inspiring motive of those who, in obedience to Christ, have wrought for the uplifting of the hapless and the down-trodden. It has been the soul of all mighty reformations, and is the source of that conception of a new social order which has begun to mean so much for our generation.
Loyalty to the highest and love for the lowest—love to God and man—these are the marks of the men of all ages who have sought to interpret the mind of Christ. Mutual service is the law of the kingdom. Every man has a worth for Christ, therefore reverence for the personality of man, and the endeavour to procure for each full opportunity of making the most of his life, are at once the aim and goal of the new spiritual society of which Christ laid the foundations in His own life and ministry. Everything that a man is and has, talents and possessions of every kind, are to be used as instruments for the promotion of the kingdom of God.
'For life, with all it yields of joy and woe,And hope and fear . . .Is just our chance o' the prize of learning love.'
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(3) But though the reign of God has begun, it hasyet to be consummated.—There is not wanting in the New Testament an element of futurity and expectancy not inconsistent with, but rather complementary to, the notion of gradual development. The eschatological teaching of Jesus has its place along with the ethical, and may be regarded not as annulling, but rather reinforcing the moral ideals which He proclaimed.[33] There is nothing pessimistic in Christ's outlook. His teaching concerning the last things, while inculcating solemnity and earnestness of life as become those to whom has been entrusted a high destiny, and who know not at what hour they may be called to give an account of their stewardship,[34] bids men look forward with certainty and hope to a glorious consummation of the kingdom. Though many of our Lord's sayings with regard to His second coming are couched in figurative language, we cannot believe that He intended to teach that the kingdom itself was to be brought about in a spectacular or material way. He bids His disciples take heed lest they be deceived by a visible Christ, or led away by merely outward signs.[35] His coming is to be as 'the lightning which cometh out of the east and shineth even unto the west'[36]—an emblem not so much of suddenness as of illuminating and convincing, and especially, of progressive force. Not in a visible reign or personal return of the Son of Man does the consummation of the kingdom consist, but in the complete spiritual sovereignty of Christ over the hearts and minds of men. When the same love which He Himself manifested in His life becomes the feature of His disciples; when His spirit of service and sacrifice pervades the world, and the brotherhood of man and the federation of nations everywhere prevail; then, indeed, shall the sign of the Son of Man appear in the heavens, and then shall the tribes of {140} the earth see Him coming in the clouds with power and glory.[37]
Jesus does not hesitate to say that there will be a final judgment and an ingathering of the elect from all quarters of the earth.[38] There will be, as the parable of the Ten Virgins suggests, a division and a shut door.[39] But punishment will be automatic. Sin will bring its own consequences. Those only will be excluded at the last who even now are excluding themselves. For Christ is already here, and is judging the world every day. By the common actions of their present life men are being tried; and that which will determine their final relation to Christ will not be their mere perception of His bodily presence, but their moral and spiritual likeness to Him.
Amidst the imperfections of the present men have ever looked forward to some glorious consummation, and have lived and worked in the faith of it. 'To the prophets of Israel it was the new age of righteousness; to the Greek thinkers the world of pure intelligible forms; to Augustine and Dante the holy theocratic state; to the practical thought of our own time the renovated social order. Each successive age will frame its own vision of the great fulfilment; but all the different ideals can find their place in the message of the kingdom which was proclaimed by Jesus.'[40]
There is thus opened to our vision a splendid conception of the future of humanity. It stands for all that is highest in our expectations because it is already expressive of all that is best in our present achievements and endeavours. The final hope of mankind requires for its fulfilment a progressive moral discipline. Only as Christ's twofold command—love to God and love to man—is made the all-pervasive rule of men's lives will the goal of a universally perfected humanity be attained.
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The chief good may be regarded finally in itsdivineaspect—as the endeavour after God-likeness. In this third form of the ideal the two others—the personal and the social—are harmonised and completed. To realise the perfect life as it is revealed in the character and will of God is the supreme aim of man, and it embraces all that is conceivably highest for the individual and for humanity as a whole. This aspiration finds its most explicit expression in the sublime word of Christ—'Be ye perfect even as your Father in heaven is perfect.'[41] This commandment, unlike so many generalisations of duty, is no cold abstraction. It is pervaded with the warmth of personality and the inspiration of love. In the idea of Fatherhood both a standard and motive are implied. Because God is our Father it is at once natural and possible for us to be like Him. He who would imitate another must have already within him something of that other. As there is a community of nature which makes it possible for the child to grow into the likeness of its parent, so there is a kinship in man with God to which our Lord here appeals.
1. Among the ethical qualities of divine perfection set forth in scripture for man's imitationHolinessstands preeminent. God, the perfect being, is the type of holiness, and men are holy in proportion as their lives are Godlike. This conception of holiness is fundamental in the Old Testament. It is summed up in a command almost identical with that of our Lord: 'Be ye holy, for I am holy.'[42] Holiness, as Christianity understands it, is the name for the undimmed lustre of God's ethical perfection. God is 'the Holy one'—the alone 'good' in the absolute sense.[43]
If God's character consists in 'Holiness,' then that quality determines the moral end of man. But holiness, as the most comprehensive name for the divine moral perfection—the pure white light of God's Being—breaks up into the {142} separate rays which we designate the special moral attributes. These have been grouped under 'Righteousness' (truth, faithfulness, justice, zeal, etc.), and 'Love' (goodness, pity, mercy, etc.), though they are really but expressions of one individual life.[44]
2. In the New TestamentRighteousnessis almost equivalent to holiness. It is the attribute of God which determines the nature of His kingdom and the condition of man's entrance into it. As comprising obedience to the will of God and the fulfilment of the moral law, it is the basal and central conception of the Christian ideal.[45] It is the keynote of the Pauline Epistles. Life has a supreme sacredness for Paul because the righteousness of God is its end. While righteousness is the distinctive note of the Pauline conception, it is also fundamental in the Ethics of Jesus. It is the ruling thought in the Sermon on the Mount. To be righteous for Jesus simply means to be right and true—to be as one ought to be. But human standards are insufficient. A man must order his life by the divine standard. Jesus is as emphatic as any Old Testament prophet in insisting upon the need of absolute righteousness. That, for all who would share in the kingdom of the good, is to be their ideal—the object of their hunger and thirst. It is a 'good' which is essential to the very satisfaction and blessedness of the soul.[46] It is the supreme desire of the man who would be at peace with God. It involves poverty of spirit, for only those who are emptied of self are conscious of their need. They who, in humility and meekness, acknowledge their sins, are in the way of holiness and are already partakers of the divine nature.
Christ's teaching in regard to righteousness has both a negative and a positive aspect. It was inevitable that He should begin with a criticism of the morality inculcated by the leaders of His day. The characteristic feature of Pharisaism was, as Christ shows, itsexternalism. If a man fulfilled the outward requirements of the law he was {143} regarded as holy, by himself and others, whatever might be the state of his heart towards God. This outwardness tended to create certain vices of character. Foremost amongst these were (1)Vanityor Ostentation. To appear well in the opinion of others was the aim of pharisaic conduct. Along with ostentation appears (2)Self-complacency. Flattery leads to self-esteem. He who loves the praise of man naturally begins to praise himself. As a result of self-esteem arises (3)Censoriousness, since he who thinks well of himself is apt to think ill of others. As a system Pharisaism was wanton hypocrisy—a character of seeming righteousness, but too often of real viciousness.
But Christ came not to destroy but to fulfil the law.[47] His aim was to proclaim the true principles of righteousness in contrast to the current notions of it. This He proceeds to do by issuing the law in its ideal and perfected form.[48] Hence Jesus unfolds itspositivecontent by bringing into prominence the virtues of the godly character as opposed to the pharisaic vices.Modestyandhumilityare set over against ostentation and self-righteousness.[49]Single-minded sincerityis commended in opposition to hypocrisy.[50] The vice of censoriousness is met by the duty ofself-judgmentrather than the judgment of others.[51]
The two positive features of the new law of righteousness as expounded by Jesus are—inwardnessandspontaneity. The righteousness of the Gospel, so far from being laxer or easier of fulfilment, was actually to exceed that of the Pharisees:[52] (a) indepth and inwardness. It is not enough not to kill or steal or commit adultery. These commandments may be outwardly kept yet inwardly broken. Something more radical is expected of the man who has set before him the doing of God's will, a righteousness not of appearance but of reality. (b) Infreedom and spontaneity. It is to have its spring in the heart. It is to be a righteousness not of servile obedience, but of willing devotion. The aim of life is no longer the painful effort of the bondsman who {144} strives to perform a distasteful task, but the gladsome endeavour of the son who knows and does, because he loves, his father's will. In the Ethics of the Christian life there is no such thing as mere duty; for a man never fulfils his duty till he has done more than is legally required of him. 'Whosoever shall compel you to go with him one mile, go with him twain.'[53] The 'nicely calculated less or more' is alien to the spirit of him who would do God's will. Love is the fulfilling of the law, and love knows nothing of limits.
3. Thus the holiness of God is manifested not in righteousness only, but in the attribute of Love. The human mind can attain to no higher conception of the divine character than that which the word 'love' suggests. The thought is the creation of Christianity. It was the special contribution of one of the innermost circle of Jesus' disciples to give utterance to the new vision of the divine nature which Christ had disclosed—'God is love.'[54] In our Lord's teaching the centre of gravity is entirely changed. The Jewish idea of God is enriched with a fuller content. He is still the Holy One, but the sublimity of His righteousness, though fully recognised, is softened by the gentler radiance of love.[55] Jehovah the Sovereign is revealed as God the Father. Divine righteousness is not simply justice, but goodness manifested in far-reaching activities of mercy and pity and benevolence. A new note is struck in the Ethics of Jesus. A new relationship is established between God and man—a personal filial relationship which entirely alters man's conception of life. To be perfect as our Father in heaven is perfect, to be, and embody in life all that love means, that is the sublime aim which Jesus in His own person and teaching sets before the world. As God's love is universal, and His care and compassion world-wide, so, says Christ, not by retaliation or even by the performance of strict justice, but in loving your enemies, in returning good for evil and extending your acts of helpfulness and charity to those 'who know not, care not, think {145} not, what they do,' shall ye become the children of your Father, and realise something of that divine pattern of every man which has been shown him on the holy mount.
If the view presented in this chapter of the ethical ideal of Christianity be correct, then the doctrine of anInterims-ethikadvocated by modern eschatologists must be pronounced unsatisfactory as a complete account of the teaching of Jesus.[56] The three features which stand out most clearly in the Ethics of Christ are, Absoluteness, Inwardness, and Universality. It is an ideal for man as man, for all time, and for all men. The personality of God represents the highest form of existence we know; and the love of God is the sublimest attribute we can conceive. But because God is our Father there is a kinship between the divine and the human; and no higher or grander vision of life is thinkable than to be like God—to share that which is most distinctive of the divine Fatherhood—His love of all mankind. Hence Godlikeness involves Brotherhood.[57] In the ideal of love—high as God, broad as the world—the other aspects of the chief good, the individual and the social, are harmonised. In Christian Ethics, the problem of philosophy how to unite the one and the many, egoism and altruism, has been practically solved. The individual realises his life only as he finds himself in others; and this he can only do as he finds himself in God. The first and last word of all morality and religion is summed up in Christ's twofold law of love: 'Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind; and thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.'[58]