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Christian Ideal

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CHAPTER VIII THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL 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. 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 of _life_. 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 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 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 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 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]

II 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 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 preaching; there is only an Ethic of renunciation and watchfulness[22]--an Interimsethik. 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 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 a _Gift_ immediately bestowed by Jesus, as a _Task_ to be worked out by man in the history of the world, and as a _Hope_ to be consummated by God in the future.

(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 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 a _gradual 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 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.'

(3) But though the reign of God has begun, it has _yet 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 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.

III The chief good may be regarded finally in its _divine_ aspect--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 imitation _Holiness_ stands 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 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 Testament _Righteousness_ is 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, its _externalism_. If a man fulfilled the outward requirements of the law he was 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) _Vanity_ or 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 its _positive_ content by bringing into prominence the virtues of the godly character as opposed to the pharisaic vices. _Modesty_ and _humility_ are set over against ostentation and self-righteousness.[49] _Single-minded sincerity_ is commended in opposition to hypocrisy.[50] The vice of censoriousness is met by the duty of _self-judgment_ rather than the judgment of others.[51] The two positive features of the new law of righteousness as expounded by Jesus are--_inwardness_ and _spontaneity_. The righteousness of the Gospel, so far from being laxer or easier of fulfilment, was actually to exceed that of the Pharisees:[52] (a) in _depth 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) In _freedom 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 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 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 an Interims-ethik advocated 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]

[1] Cf. Troeltsch, _Die Sociallehren d. Christl. Kirchen_, vol. i. p. 37, where the idea of self-worth and self-consecration is worked out.

[2] Wernle, _Beginnings of Christianity_, vol. i. p. 76.

[3] Wernle, _Beginnings of Christianity_, pp. 76 f.

[4] John 10:10.

[5] Luke 12:15; Luke 12:16.

[6] Matthew 5:1-48.

[7] Matthew 6:24.

[8] 1 John 2:15.

[9] Luke 10:21; Matthew 11:28-30; Mark 8:35; John 3:15; John 10:28, John 17:2.

[10] John 17:3.

[11] Romans 12:1.

[12] Matthew 19:17.

[13] Luke 17:33; John 12:25.

[14] Bailey, _Festus_.

[15] Browning.

[16] Jones, _Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher_, p. 354.

[17] Abt Vogler.

[18] Cf. Balch, _Introd. to the Study of Christian Ethics_, p. 150.

[19] Newman Smyth, _Christian Ethics_, p. 97.

[20] Balch, _Introd. to the Study of Christian Ethics_, p. 150.

[21] See Apocalypses of Baruch, Esdras, Enoch, and Pss. of Solomon, and also Daniel and Ezekiel. Cf. E. F. Scott, _The Kingdom and the Messiah_, for Apoc. literature.

[22] J. Weiss, _Die Predigt Jesu vom Reiche Gottes_. Cf. also Wernle, _Die Anfänge unsurer Religion_, who is not so pronounced. Bousset rejects this view, and Titius, in his _N. T. Doctrine of Blessedness_, regards the kingdom of God as a present good. See also Moffatt, _The Theology of the Gospels_.

[23] Cf. Dobschütz, _The Eschatology of the Gospels_, also Schweitzer, _op. cit._, and Sanday, _The Life of Christ in Recent Research_, E. Scott, _The Kingdom of God and the Messiah_, and Moffatt, _op. cit._ [24] Cf. Barbour, _A Philos. Study of Chr. Ethics_, p. 184.

[25] 'Jesu predigt in ihrem Gegensatz zum Judenthum.'

[26] Cairns, _Christianity in the Mod. World_, p. 173. See Schweitzer, _The Quest of the Historical Jesus_, for advocates and opponents of this view, pp. 222 ff. Cf. also Troeltsch, _op. cit._, vol. i. p. 35.

[27] Cf. Moffatt, _op. cit._ [28] Luke 4:21; Luke 17:21; Matthew 12:28; Matthew 11:2-8; Matthew 11:20; Luke 16:16. Cf. also Matthew 13:16-17.

[29] Our Lord never uses the word 'final' or 'last' of anything concerning the kingdom. Only in the fourth Gospel do we find the phrase 'the last day.' See art., _Contemporary Review_, Sept. 1912.

[30] The view of Weiss.

[31] Luke 12:19; Matthew 24:13; Mark 13:13; 2 Timothy 2:12.

[32] King, _The Ethics of Jesus_, p. 143.

[33] Mark 13:7-31 has been called the 'little Apocalypse' and the hypothesis has been thrown out that a number of verses (fifteen in all) form a document by themselves, 'a fly leaf put into circulation before the fall of Jerusalem, and really incorporated by the Evangelist himself. See Sanday, art., _Hibbert Journal_, Oct. 1911, and _Life of Christ in Recent Research_.

[34] Matthew 24:42.

[35] Matthew 24:23.

[36] Matthew 24:27.

[37] Matthew 24:30.

[38] Matthew 24:31.

[39] Matt. xxv.

[40] E. F. Scott, _The Kingdom and the Messiah_, p. 256.

[41] Matthew 5:48.

[42] Leviticus 4:11, Leviticus 19:2.

[43] Mark 10:18.

[44] Cf. Orr, _Sin as a Problem of To-day_, chap. iii.

[45] Cf. Jacoby, Neu-testamentliche Ethik, p. 1.