All true whole men succeed, for what is worthSuccess's name, unless it be the thought,The inward surety to have carried outA noble purpose to a noble end.
All true whole men succeed, for what is worthSuccess's name, unless it be the thought,The inward surety to have carried outA noble purpose to a noble end.
THE TEMPTATION.
Instead of regarding society as a whole, and self as a member of that whole, it is possible to regard self as distinct and separate from society,and to make the interests of this separated and detached self the end and aim of action.—This temptation is self-interest. It consists in placing the individual self, with its petty, private, personal interests, above the social self, with the large, public, generous interests of the social order.
From one point of view it is easy to cheat society, and deprive it of its due. We can shirk our social obligations; we can dodge subscriptions; we can stay at home when we ought to be at the committee meeting, or the public gathering; we can decline invitations and refuse elections to arduous offices, and at the same time escape many of the worst penalties which would naturally follow from our neglect. For others, more generous and noble than we, will step in and take upon themselves our share of the public burdens in addition to their own. We may flatter ourselves that we have done a very shrewd thing in contriving to reap the benefits without bearing the burdens of society. There is, as we shall see, a penalty for negligence of social duty, and that too most sure and terrible. Self-interest is the seed, of which meanness is the full-grown plant, and of which social constraint and slavishness are the final fruits.
THE VICE OF DEFECT.
Lack of public spirit is meanness.—The mean man is he who acknowledges no interest and recognizes no obligation outside the narrow range of his strictly private concerns. As long as he is comfortablehe will take no steps to relieve the distress of others. If his own premises are healthy, he will contribute nothing to improve the sanitary condition of his village or city. As long as his own property is secure he cares not how many criminals are growing up in the street, how many are sent to prison, or how they are treated after they come there. He favors the cheapest schools, the poorest roads, the plainest public buildings, because he would rather keep his money in his own pocket than contribute his share to maintain a thoroughly efficient and creditable public service. He will give nothing he can help giving, do nothing he can help doing, to make the town he lives in a healthier, happier, purer, wiser, nobler place. Meanness is the sacrifice of the great social whole to the individual. It is selfishness, stinginess, and ingratitude combined. It is the disposition to receive all that society contributes to the individual, and to give nothing in return. It is a willingness to appropriate the fruits of labors in which one refuses to bear a part.
THE VICE OF EXCESS.
The officious person is ready for any and every kind of public service, providing he can be at the head of it. There is no end to the work he will do if he can only have his own way.—He wants to be prime mover in every enterprise: to be chairman of the committee; to settle every question that comes up; to "run" things according to his own ideas. Such people are often very useful. It isgenerally wisest not to meddle much with them. The work may not be done in the best way by these officious people; but without them a great deal of public work would never be done at all. The vice, however, seriously impairs one's usefulness. The officious person is hard to work with. Men refuse to have anything to do with him. And so he is left to do his work for the most part alone. Officiousness is, in reality, social ambition; and that again as we saw resolves itself into sentimentality;—the regard for what we and others think of ourselves, rather than straightforward devotion to the ends which we pretend to be endeavoring to promote. Officiousness is self-seeking dressed up in the uniform of service. The officious person, instead of losing his private self in the larger life of society, tries to use the larger interests of society in such a way as to make them gratify his own personal vanity and sense of self-importance.
THE PENALTY.
All meanness and self-seeking are punished by lack of freedom or constraint; though frequently the constraint is inward and spiritual rather than outward and physical.—We have seen that to the man of generous public spirit society presents a career for the unfolding and expansion of his social powers. To such a man society, with its claims and obligations, is an enlargement of his range of sympathy, a widening of his spiritual horizon, and onthat account a means of larger liberty and fuller freedom.
To the mean and selfish man, on the contrary, society presents itself as an alien force, a hard task-master, making severe requirements upon his time, imposing cramping limitations on his self-indulgence, levying heavy taxes upon his substance; prescribing onerous rules and regulations for his conduct.
By excluding society from the sphere of interests with which heidentifieshimself, the mean man, by his own meanness, makes society antagonistic to him, and himself its reluctant and unwilling slave. Serve it to some extent he must; but the selfishness and meanness of his own attitude toward it, makes social service, not the willing and joyous offering of a free and devoted heart, but the slavish submission of a reluctant will, forced to do the little that it cannot help doing by legal or social compulsion.
To him society is not a sphere of freedom, in which his own nature is enlarged, intensified, liberated; and so made richer, happier, nobler, and freer. To him society is an external power, compelling him to make sacrifices he does not want to make; to do things he does not want to do; to contribute money which he grudges, and to conform to requirements which he hates. By trying to save the life of self-interest and meanness, he loses the life of generous aims, noble ideals, and heroic self devotion.
By refusing the career of noble freedom whichsocial service offers to each member of the social body, he is constrained to obey a social law which he has not helped to create, and to serve the interests of a society of which he has refused to be in spirit and truth a part.
This living in a world which we do not heartily acknowledge as our own; this subjection to an authority which we do not in principle recognize and welcome as the voice of our own better, larger, wiser, social self,—this is constraint and slavery in its basest and most degrading form.
Hitherto we have considered things, relations, persons, and institutions outside ourselves as the objects which together constitute our environment.
The self is not a new object, but rather the bond which binds together into unity all the experiences of life. It is their relation to this conscious self which gives to all objects their moral worth. Every act upon an object reacts upon ourselves. The virtues and vices, the rewards and penalties that we have been studying are the various reactions of conduct upon ourselves. This chapter then will be a comprehensive review and summary of all that has gone before. Instead of taking one by one the particular reactions which follow particular acts with reference to particular objects, we shall now look at conduct as a whole; regard our environment in its totality; and consider duty, virtue, and self in their unity.
THE DUTY.
The duty we owe to ourselves is the realization of our capacities and powers in harmony with each other, and in proportion to their worth as elements in a complete individual and social life.—We have within us the capacity for an everincreasing fullness and richness and intensity of life. The materials out of which this life is to be developed are ready to our hands in those objects which we have been considering. One way of conduct toward these objects, which we have called duty; one attitude of mind and will toward them which we have called virtue, leads to those completions and fulfillments of ourselves which we have called rewards. Duty then to self; duty in its most comprehensive aspect, is the obligation which the existence of capacity within and material without imposes on us to bring the two together in harmonious relations, so as to realize the capacities and powers of ourselves and of others, and promote society's well being. In simpler terms our fundamental duty is to make the most of ourselves; and to become as large and genuine a part of the social world in which we live as it is possible for us to be.
THE VIRTUE.
The habit of seeking to realize the highest capacities and widest relationships of our nature in every act is conscientiousness. Conscience is our consciousness of the ideal in conduct and character. Conscience is the knowledge of our duty, coupled as that knowledge always is with the feeling that we ought to do it.—Knowledge of any kind calls up some feeling appropriate to the fact known. Knowledge that a given act would realize my ideal calls up the feeling of dissatisfaction with myself until that act isperformed; because that is the feeling appropriate to the recognition of an unrealized yet attainable ideal. Conscience is not a mysterious faculty of our nature. It is simply thought and feeling, recognizing and responding to the fact of duty, and reaching out toward virtue and excellence.
The objective worth of the deliverances and dictates of the conscience of the individual, depends on the degree of moral enlightenment and sensitiveness he has attained. The conscience of an educated Christian has a worth and authority which the conscience of the benighted savage has not. Since conscience is the recognition of the ideal of conduct and character, every new appreciation of duty and virtue gives to conscience added strength and clearness.
The absolute authority of conscience.—Relatively to the individual himself, at the time of acting, his own individual conscience is the final and absolute authority. The man who does what his conscience tells him, does the best that he can do. For he realizes the highest ideal that is present to his mind. A wiser man than he might do better than this man, acting according to his conscience, is able to do. But this man, with the limited knowledge and imperfect ideal which he actually has, can do no more than obey his conscience which bids him realize the highest ideal that he knows. The act of the conscientious man may be right or wrong, judged by objective, social standards. Judged by subjective standards, seen from within, everyconscientious act is, relatively to the individual himself, a right act. We should spare no pains to enlighten our conscience, and make it the reflection of the most exalted ideals which society has reached. Having done this, conscience becomes to us the authoritative judge for us of what we shall, and what we shall not do. The light of conscience will be clear and pure, or dim and clouded, according to the completeness of our moral environment, training, and insight. But clear or dim, high or low, sensitive or dull, the light of conscience is the only light we have to guide us in the path of virtue. In hours of leisure and study it is our privilege to inform and clarify this consciousness of the ideal. That has been the purpose of the preceding pages. When the time for action comes, then, without a murmur, without an instant's hesitation, the voice of conscience should be implicitly obeyed. Conscientiousness is the form which all the virtues take, when viewed as determinations of the self. It is the assertion of the ideal of the self in its every act.
THE REWARD.
Character the form in which the result of virtuous conduct is preserved.—It is neither possible nor desirable to solve each question of conduct as it arises by conscious and explicit reference to rules and principles. Were we to attempt to do so it would make us prigs and prudes.
What then is the use of studying at such length the temptations and duties, the virtues and vices,with their rewards and penalties, if all these things are to be forgotten and ignored when the occasions for practical action arrive?
The study of ethics has the same use as the study of writing, grammar, or piano-playing. In learning to write we have to think precisely how each letter is formed, how one letter is connected with another, where to use capitals, where to punctuate and the like. But after we have become proficient in writing, we do all this without once thinking explicitly of any of these things. In learning to play the piano we have to count out loud in order to keep time correctly, and we are obliged to stop and think just where to put the finger in order to strike each separate note. But the expert player does all these things without the slightest conscious effort.
Still, though the particular rules and principles are not consciously present in each act of the finished writer or musician, they are not entirely absent. When the master of these arts makes a mistake, he recognizes it instantly, and corrects it, or endeavors to avoid its repetition. This shows that the rule is not lost. It has ceased to be before the mind as a distinct object of consciousness. It is no longer needed in that form for ordinary purposes. Instead, it has come to be a part of the mind itself—a way in which the mind works instinctively. As long as the mind works in conformity with the principle, it is not distinctly recognized, because there is no need for such recognition. The principlecomes to consciousness only as a power to check or restrain acts that are at variance with it.
It is in this way that the practical man carries with him his ethical principles. He does not stop to reason out the relation of duty and virtue to reward, or of temptation and vice to penalty, before he decides to help the unfortunate, or to be faithful to a friend, or to vote on election day. This trained, habitual will, causing acts to be performed in conformity to duty and virtue, yet without conscious reference to the explicit principles that underlie them, is character.
It is chiefly in the formation of character that the explicit recognition of ethical principles has its value. Character is a storage battery in which the power acquired by our past acts is accumulated and preserved for future use.
It is through this power of character, this tendency of acts of a given nature to repeat and perpetuate themselves, that we give unity and consistency to our lives. This also is the secret of our power of growth. As soon as one virtue has become habitual and enters into our character, we can leave it, trusting it in the hands of this unconscious power of self-perpetuation; and then we can turn the energy thus freed toward the acquisition of new virtues.
Day by day we are turning over more and more of our lives to this domain of character. Hence it is of the utmost importance to allow nothing to enter this almost irrevocable state of unconscious, habitual character that has not first received theapproval of conscience, the sanction of duty, and the stamp of virtue. Character, once formed in a wrong direction, may be corrected. But it can be done only with the greatest difficulty, and by a process as hard to resolve upon as the amputation of a limb or the plucking out of an eye.
The greater part of the principles of ethics we knew before we undertook this formal study. We learned them from our parents; we picked them up in contact with one another in the daily intercourse of life. The value of our study will not consist so much in new truths learned, as in the clearer and sharper outlines which it will have given to some of the features of the moral ideal. The definite results of such a study we cannot mark or measure. Just as sunshine and rain come to the plants and trees, and then seem to vanish, leaving no visible or tangible trace behind; yet the plants and trees are different from what they were before, and have the heat and moisture stored up within their structure to burst forth into fresher and larger life; in like manner, though we should forget every formal statement that we have read, yet we could not fail to be affected by the incorporation within ourselves in the form of character of some of these principles of duty and virtue which we have been considering. It has been said: "Sow an act, and you reap a habit; sow a habit and you reap a character; sow a character and you reap a destiny."
THE TEMPTATION.
Pleasure not a reliable guide to conduct.—The realization of capacity brings with it pleasure. The harmonious realization of all our powers would bring harmonious and permanent pleasure or happiness. Pleasure is always to be welcomed as a sign of health and activity. Other things being equal, the more pleasure we have the better. It is possible however to abstract the pleasure from the activity which gives rise to it, and make pleasure the end for which we act. This pursuit of pleasure for pleasure's sake is delusive and destructive. It is delusive, because the direct aim at pleasure turns us aside from the direct aim at objects. And when we cease to aim directly at objects, we begin to lose the pleasure and zest which only a direct pursuit of objects can produce. For instance, we all know that if we go to a picnic or a party thinking all the while about having a good time, and asking ourselves every now and then whether we are having a good time or not, we find the picnic or party a dreadful bore, and ourselves perfectly miserable. We know that the whole secret of having a good time on such occasions is to get interested in something else; a game, a boat-ride, anything that makes us forget ourselves and our pleasures, and helps us to lose ourselves in the eager, arduous, absorbing pursuit of something outside ourselves. Then we have a glorious time.
The direct pursuit of pleasure is destructive of character, because it judges things by the way theyaffect our personal feelings; which is a very shallow and selfish standard of judgment; and because it centers interest in the merely emotional side of our nature, which is peculiar to ourselves; instead of in the rational part of our nature which is common to all men, and unites us to our fellows.
Duty demands not the hap-hazard realization of this or that side of our nature. Yet this is what the pursuit of pleasure would lead to. Duty demands the realization of all our faculties, in harmony with each other, and in proportion to their worth. And to this proportioned and harmonious realization, pleasure, pure and simple, is no guide at all. Hence, as Aristotle remarks, "In all cases we must be specially on our guard against pleasant things and against pleasure: for we can scarce judge her impartially." "Again, as the exercises of our faculties differ in goodness and badness, and some are to be desired and some to be shunned, so do the several pleasures differ; for each exercise has its proper pleasure. The pleasure which is proper to a good activity, then, is good, and that which is proper to one that is not good is bad." "As the exercises of the faculties vary, so do their respective pleasures."
To the same effect John Stuart Mill says that the pleasures which result from the exercise of the higher faculties are to be preferred. "It is better to be a human being dissatisfied, than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied." Whether it is possible to stretch, and qualify, and attenuate the conception of pleasure so as tomake it cover the ideal of human life, without having it, like a soap-bubble, burst in the process, is a question foreign to the practical purpose of this book. That pleasure, as ordinarily understood by plain people, is a treacherous, dangerous, and ruinous guide to conduct, moralists of every school declare. Pleasure is the most subtle and universal form of temptation. Pleasure is the accompaniment of all exercise of power. When it comes rightly it is to be accepted with thankfulness. We must remember however that the quality of the act determines the worth of the pleasure; and that the amount of pleasure does not determine the quality of the act. A pleasant act may be right, and it may be wrong. Whether we ought to do it or not must in every case be decided on higher grounds.
To the boy who says, "I should like to be something that would make me a great man, and very happy besides—something that would not hinder me from having a great deal of pleasure"—George Eliot represents "Romola" as replying, "That is not easy, my Lillo. It is only a poor sort of happiness that could ever come by caring very much about our own narrow pleasures. We can only have the highest happiness, such as goes along with being a great man, by having wide thoughts, and much feeling for the rest of the world as well as for ourselves; and this sort of happiness often brings so much pain with it that we can only tell it from pain by its being what we would choose before everything else, because our souls see it is good. And so, my Lillo,if you mean to act nobly and seek to know the best things God has put within reach of men, you must learn to fix your mind on that end, and not on what will happen to you because of it. And remember, if you were to choose something lower, and make it the rule of your life to seek your own pleasure and escape from what is disagreeable, calamity might come just the same; and it would be calamity falling on a base mind, which is the one form of sorrow that has no balm in it, and that may well make a man say—It would have been better for me if I had never been born."
THE VICE OF DEFECT.
The unscrupulous man acts as he happens to feel like acting.—Whatever course of conduct presents itself as pleasant, or profitable, or easy, he adopts. Anything is good enough for him. He seeks to embody no ideal, aims consistently at no worthy end, acknowledges no duty, but simply yields himself a passive instrument for lust, or avarice, or cowardice, or falsehood to play upon. Refusing to be the servant of virtue he becomes the slave of vice. Disowning the authority of duty and the ideal, he becomes the tool of appetite, the football of circumstance. Unscrupulousness is the form of all the vices of defect, when viewed in relation to that absence of regard for realization of self, which is their common characteristic.
THE VICE OF EXCESS.
The exclusive regard for self, in abstraction from those objects and social relationships through which alone the self can be truly realized, leads to formalism.—Formalism keeps the law simply for the sake of keeping it. Conscientiousness, if it is wise and well-balanced, reverences the duties and requirements of the moral life, because these duties are the essential conditions of individual and social well-being. The law is a means to well-being, which is the end. Formalism makes the law an end in itself; and will even sacrifice well-being to law, when the two squarely conflict.
Extreme cases in which moral laws may be suspended.—The particular duties, virtues, and laws which society has established and recognized are the expressions of reason and experience declaring the conditions of human well-being. As such they deserve our profoundest respect; our unswerving obedience. Still it is impossible for rules to cover every case. There are legitimate, though very rare, exceptions, even to moral laws and duties. For instance it is a duty to respect the property of others. Yet to save the life of a person who is starving, we are justified in taking the property of another without asking his consent. To save a person from drowning, we may seize a boat belonging to another. To spread the news of a fire, we may take the first horse we find, without inquiring who is the owner. To save a sick person from a fatalshock, we maywithholdfacts in violation of the strict duty of truthfulness. To promote an important public measure, we may deliberately break down our health, spend our private fortune, and reduce ourselves to helpless beggary. Such acts violate particular duties. They break moral laws. And yet they all are justified in these extreme cases by the higher law of love; by the greater duty of devotion to the highest good of our fellow-men. The doctrine that "the end justifies the means" is a mischievous and dangerous doctrine. Stated in that unqualified form, it is easily made the excuse for all sorts of immorality. The true solution of the seeming conflict of duties lies in the recognition that the larger social good justifies the sacrifice of the lesser social good when the two conflict. One must remember, however, that the universal recognition of established duties and laws is itself the greatest social good; and only the most extreme cases can justify a departure from the path of generally recognized and established moral law.
These extreme cases when they occur, however, must be dealt with bravely. The form of law and rule must be sacrificed to the substance of righteousness and love when the two conflict. As Professor Marshall remarks in the chapter of his "History of Greek Philosophy" which deals with Socrates, "The highest activity does not always take the form of conformity to rule. There are critical moments when rules fail, when, in fact, obedience to rule would mean disobedience to that higher law, ofwhich rules and formulæ are at best only an adumbration."
There is nothing more contemptible than that timid, self-seeking virtue which will sacrifice the obvious well-being of others to save itself the pain of breaking a rule. There is nothing more pitiful than that self-righteous virtue which does right, not because it loves the right, still less because it loves the person who is affected by its action, but simply because it wants to keep its own sweet sense of self-righteousness unimpaired. Mrs. Browning gives us a clear example of this "harmless life, she called a virtuous life," in the case of the frigid aunt of "Aurora Leigh":
From that day, she didHer duty to me (I appreciate itIn her own word as spoken to herself),Her duty, in large measure, well-pressed out,But measured always. She was generous, bland,More courteous than was tender, gave me stillThe first place,—as if fearful that God's saintsWould look down suddenly and say, 'HereinYou missed a point, I think, through lack of love.'
From that day, she didHer duty to me (I appreciate itIn her own word as spoken to herself),Her duty, in large measure, well-pressed out,But measured always. She was generous, bland,More courteous than was tender, gave me stillThe first place,—as if fearful that God's saintsWould look down suddenly and say, 'HereinYou missed a point, I think, through lack of love.'
THE PENALTY.
Just as continuity in virtue strengthens and unifies character and makes life a consistent and harmonious whole; so self-indulgence in vicious pleasures disorganizes a man's life and eats the heart out of him.—Corrupt means literally broken. The corrupt man has no soundness, no solidity, no unity in his life. He cannot respect himself.Others cannot put confidence in him. There is no principle binding each part of his life to every other, and holding the whole together. The other words by which we describe such a life all spring from the same conception. We call such a person dissolute; and dissolute means literally separated, loosed, broken apart. We call him dissipated; and dissipated means literally scattered, torn apart, thrown away.
These forms of statement all point to the same fact, that the unscrupulous pleasure-seeker, the selfish, vicious man has no consistent, continuous, coherent life whatever. "The unity of his being," as Janet says, "is lost in the multiplicity of his sensations." His life is a mere series of disconnected fragments. There is no growth, no development. There is nothing on which he can look with approval; no consistent career of devotion to worthy objective ends, the fruits of which can be witnessed in the improvement of the world in which he has lived, and stored up in the character which he has formed.
In the last chapter we saw that the particular objects and duties which make up our environment and moral life are not so many separate affairs; but all have a common relation to the self, and its realization. We saw that this common relation to the self gives unity to the world of objects, the life of duty, the nature of virtue, and the character which crowns right living.
There is, however, a deeper, more comprehensive unity in the moral world than that which each man constructs for his individual self. The world of objects is included in a universal order. The several duties are parts of a comprehensive righteousness, which includes the acts of all men within its rightful sway. The several virtues are so many aspects of one all-embracing moral ideal. The rewards and penalties which follow virtue and vice are the expression of a constitution of things which makes for righteousness. The Being whose thought includes all objects in one comprehensive universe of reason; whose will is uttered in the voice of duty; whose holiness is revealed in the highest ideal of virtue we can form; and whose authority is declared in those eternal and indissoluble bonds which bindvirtue and reward, vice and penalty, together, is God.
THE DUTY.
Communion with God is the safeguard of virtue, the secret of resistance to temptation, the source of moral and spiritual power.—Our minds are too small to carry consciously and in detail; our wills are too frail to hold in readiness at every moment the principles and motives of moral conduct. God alone is great enough for this.
We can make him the keeper of our moral precepts and the guardian of our lives. And then when we are in need of guidance, help, and strength, we can go to him, and by devoutly seeking to know and do his will, we can recover the principles and reinforce the motives of right conduct that we have intrusted to his keeping; and ofttimes we get, in addition, larger views of duty and nobler impulses to virtue than we have ever consciously possessed before. Just as the love of father or mother clarifies a child's perception of what is right, and intensifies his will to do it, so the love of God has power to make us strong to resist temptation, resolute to do our duty, and strenuous in the endeavor to advance the kingdom of righteousness and love.
Into the particular doctrines and institutions of religion it is not the purpose of this book to enter. These are matters which each individual learns best from his own father and mother, and from the church in which he has been brought up. Ouraccount of ethics, however, would be seriously incomplete, were we to omit to point out the immense and indispensable strength and help we may gain for the moral life, by approaching it in the religious spirit.
Ethics and religion each needs the other.—They are in reality, one the detailed and particular, the other the comprehensive and universal aspect of the same world of duty and virtue. Morality without religion is a cold, dry, dreary, mass of disconnected rules and requirements. Religion without morality, is an empty, formal, unsubstantial shadow. Only when the two are united, only when we bring to the particular duties of ethics the infinite aspiration and inspiration of religion, and give to the universal forms of religion the concrete contents of human and temporal relationships, do we gain a spiritual life which is at the same time clear and strong, elevated and practical, ideal and real.
THE VIRTUE.
Just as God includes all objects in his thought, all duties in his will, all virtues in his ideal; so the man who communes with him, and surrenders his will to him in obedience and trust and love, partakes of this same wholeness and holiness.—Loving God, he is led to love all that God loves, to love all good. And holiness is the love of all that is good and the hatred of all that is evil.
Complete holiness is not wrought out in its concrete relations all at once, nor ever in this earthlylife, by the religious, any more than by the moral man. Temptations are frequent all along the way, and the falls many andgrievousto the last. But from all deliberately cherished identification of his inmost heart and will with evil, the truly religious man is forevermore set free. From the moment one's will is entirely surrendered to God, and the divine ideal of life and conduct is accepted, a new and holy life begins.
Old temptations may surprise him into unrighteous deeds; old habits may still assert themselves, old lusts may drift back on the returning tides of past associations; old vices may continue to crop out.
In reality, however, they are already dead. They are like the leaves that continue to look green upon the branches of a tree that has been cut down; or the momentum of a train after the steam is shut off and the brakes are on.
God, who is all-wise, sees that in such a man sin is in principle dead; and he judges him accordingly. If penitence for past sins and present falls be genuine; if the desire to do his will be earnest; He takes the will for the deed, penitence for performance, aspiration for attainment. Such judgment is not merely merciful. It is just. Or rather, it is the blending of mercy and justice in love. It is judgment according to the deeper, internal aspect of a man, instead of judgment according to the superficial, outward aspect. For the will is the center and core of personality. What a man desires andstrives for with all his heart, that he is. What he repents of and repudiates with the whole strength of his frail and imperfect nature, that he has ceased to be.
Thus religion, or whole-souled devotion to God, gives a sense of completeness, and attainment, and security, and peace, which mere ethics, or adjustment to the separate fragmentary objects which constitute our environment, can never give. The moral life is from its very nature partial, fragmentary, and finite. The religious life by penitence and faith and hope and love, rises above the finite with its limitations, and the temporal with its sins and failings, and lays hold on the infinite ideal and the eternal goodness, with its boundless horizon and its perfect peace. The religious life, like the moral, is progressive. But, as Principal Caird remarks, "It is progress, not towards, but within, the infinite." Union with God in sincere devotion to his holy will, is the "promise and potency" of harmonious relations with that whole ethical and spiritual universe which his thought and will includes.
THE REWARD.
The reward of communion with God and comprehensive righteousness of conduct is spiritual life.—The righteous man, the man who walks with God, is in principle and purposeidentifiedwith every just cause, with every step of human progress, with every sphere of man's well-being. To him property is a sacred trust, time a goldenopportunity, truth a divine revelation, Nature the visible garment of God, humanity a holy brotherhood, the family, society, and the state are God-ordained institutions, with God-given laws. Through the one fundamental devotion of his heart and will to God, the religious man is made a partaker in all these spheres of life in which the creative will of God is progressively revealed. All that is God's belong to the religious man. For he is God's child. And all these things are his inheritance.
To the religious man, therefore, there is open a boundless career for service, sacrifice, devotion and appropriation. Every power, every affection, every aspiration within him has its counterpart in the outward universe. The universe is his Father's house; and therefore his own home. All that it contains are so many opportunities for the development and realization of his God-given nature.
To dwell in active, friendly, loving relation to all that is without; to be
wedded to this goodly universeIn love and holy passion,
wedded to this goodly universeIn love and holy passion,
to be heirs with God of the spiritual riches it contains: this is life indeed. "The gift of God is eternal life."
Religion is the crown and consummation of ethics.—Religion gathers up into their unity the scattered fragments of duty and virtue which it has been the aim of our ethical studies todiscern apart. Religion presents as the will of the all-wise, all-loving Father, those duties and virtues which ethics presents as the conditions of our own self-realization. Religion is the perfect circle of which the moral virtues are the constituent arcs. Fullness of life is the reward of righteousness, the gift of God, the one comprehensive good, of which the several rewards which follow the practice of particular duties and virtues are the constituent elements.
THE TEMPTATION.
The universal will of God, working in conformity with impartial law, and seeking the equal good of all, often seems to be in sharp conflict with the interests of the individual self.—If his working is irresistible we are tempted to repine and rebel. If his will is simply declared, and left for us to carry out by the free obedience of our wills, then we are tempted to sacrifice the universal good to which the divine will points, and to assert instead some selfish interest of our own. Self-will is, from the religious point of view, the form of all temptation. The ends at which God aims when he bids us sacrifice our immediate private interests are so remote that they seem to us unreal; and often they are so vast that we fail to comprehend them at all. In such crises faith alone can save us—faith to believe that God is wiser than we are, faith to believe that his universal laws are better than any private exceptions we can make in our own interest,faith to believe that the universal good is of more consequence than our individual gain. Such faith is hard to grasp and difficult to maintain; and consequently the temptation of self-will is exceedingly seductive, and is never far from any one of us.
THE VICE OF DEFECT.
Sin is short-coming, missing the mark of our true being, which is to be found only in union with God.—Sin is the attempt to live apart from God, or as if there were no God. It is transgression of his laws. It is the attempt to make a world of our own, from which in whole or in part we try to exclude God, and escape the jurisdiction of his laws. All wrong-doing, all vice, all neglect of duty, is in reality a violation of the divine will. But not until the individual comes to recognize the divine will, and in spite of this recognition that all duty is divine, deliberately turns aside from God and duty together, does vice become sin.
THE VICE OF EXCESS.
Devotion to God as distinct from or in opposition to devotion to those concrete duties and human relationship wherein the divine will is expressed, is hypocrisy.—"If a man say I love God and hateth his brother he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, cannot love God whom he hath not seen."
Pure religion begins in faith and ends in works. It draws from God the inspiration to serve inrighteousness and love our fellow-men. If faith stop short of God, and rest in church, or creed, or priest; if work stop short of actual service of our fellow-men, and rest in splendor of ritual or glow of pious feeling, or orthodoxy of belief; then our religion becomes a vain and hollow thing, and we become Pharisees and hypocrites.
THE PENALTY.
The wages of sin is death.—The penalty of each particular vice we have seen to be the dwarfing, stunting, decay, and deadening of that particular side of our nature that is effected by it. Intemperance brings disease; wastefulness brings want; cruelty brings brutality; ugliness brings coarseness; exclusiveness brings isolation; treason brings anarchy. Just in so far as one cuts himself off from the moral order which is the expression of God's will; just in so far as there is sin, there is privation, deadening, and decay. As long as we live in this world it is impossible to live an utterly vicious life; to cut ourselves off completely from God and his order and his laws. To do that would be instant death. The man who should embody all the vices and none of the virtues, would be intolerable to others, unendurable even to himself. The penalty of an all-round life of vice and sin would be greater than man could endure and live. This fearful end is seldom reached in this life. Some redeeming virtues save even the worst of men from this full and final penalty of sin. The man, however, who deliberatelyrejects God as his friend and guide to righteous living; the man who deliberately makes self-will and sin the ruling principle of his life, is started on a road, which, if followed to the end, leads inevitably to death. He is excluding himself from that sphere of good, that career of service and devotion, wherein alone true life is to be found. He is banishing himself to that outer darkness which is our figurative expression for the absence of all those rewards of virtue and the presence of all those penalties of vice which our previous studies have brought to our attention. "Sin, when it is full-grown, bringeth forth death." "The wages of sin is death."
THE END.