Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 8.djvu/611

Rh va.s of course binding on all mankind, the church was none the less a community of persons who regarded themselves as both specially pledged and specially enabled to obey it, a community, too, that could not be entered except by a solemn ceremony typifying a spiritual new birth. Thus the fundamental difference between morality and (human) legality only came out more clearly in conse quence of the jural form in which the former was con ceived. The ultimate sanctions of the moral code were the infinite rewards and punishments awaiting the immortal soul hereafter ; but the church early felt the necessity of withdrawing the privileges of membership from persons guilty of grave offences, and only allowing them to be gradually regained by a solemn ceremonial expressive of repentance, protracted through several years; while in the case of still graver sins this exclusion lasted till death, or was even made absolute. For minor offences, again, all Christians were called upon to express penitence cere monially, by fasting and abstinence from permitted pleasures, as well as verbally in public and private devo tions. &quot; Excommunication &quot; and &quot; penance &quot; thus came to be temporal ecclesiastical sanctions of the moral law ; as the graduation of these sanctions naturally became more careful and minute, a correspondingly detailed classification of offences was rendered necessary ; the regulations for observing the ordinary fasts and festivals of the church became similarly elaborate ; and thus a system of ecclesi astical jurisprudence, prohibitive and ceremonial, was gradually produced, somewhat analogous to that of the rejected Judaism. At the same time this tendency to develop and make prominent a scheme of external duties has always been balanced and counteracted in Chris tianity by the ineffaceable remembrance of its original antithesis to Jewish legalism. We find that this antithesis, Gnostic sects of the 2d and 3d centuries A.D., led, not merely to theoretical antinomianism, but even (if the charges of their orthodox opponents are not entirely to be Discredited) to gross immorality of conduct. A similar tendency has shown itself at other periods of church history And though such antinomianism has always been .sternly repudiated by the moral consciousness of Christen dom, it has never been forgotten that &quot; inwardness,&quot; rightness of heart or spirit, is the special and pre-eminent characteristic of Christian goodness. It must not, of course, be supposed that the need of something more than mere fulfilment of external duty was ignored even by the later Judaism. Rabbinic erudition could not forget the repression of vicious desires in the tenth commandment, the stress laid in Deuteronomy on the necessity of heartfelt and loving service to God, or the inculcations by later prophets of humility and faith. &quot; The real and only Pharisee,&quot; says the Talmud, &quot; is he who does the will of his Father because he loves Him.&quot; But it remains true that the contrast with the &quot; righteousness of tho scribes and pharisees &quot; has always served to mark the requirement of &quot;inwardness&quot; as a distinctive feature of the Christian code, an inwardness not merely negative, tending to the repression of vicious desires as well as vicious acts, but dso involving a positive rectitude of the inner state of the .soul. ian la this aspect Christianity invites comparison with StJU ism, and indeed with pagan ethical philosophy gener- ally, if we except the hedonistic schools. Rightness of purpose, preference of virtue for its own rake, suppression of vicious desires, were made essential points by the Aris totelians, who attached the most importance to outward circumstances in their view of virtue, no less than by the Stoics, to whom all outward things were indifferent. The fundamental differences botwoen pamn and Christian 581) ethics do not depend oil any difference iu the value set on tightness of heart or purpose, but on different views of the essential form or conditions of this inward rightness. Iu neither case is it presented purely and simply as moral rectitude. By the pagan philosophers it was always conceived under the form of Knowledge or Wisdom, it being inconceivable to all the schools sprung from Socrates that a man could truly know his own good and y;t deliberately choose anything else. This knowledge, as Aristotle held, might be permanently precluded by vicious habits, or temporarily obliterated by passion, but if present in the mind it must produce rightness of purpose. Or even if it were held with some of the Stoics that true wisdom was out of the reach of the best men actually living, it none the less remained the ideal condition of perfect human life ; though all actual men were astray in folly and misery, knowledge was none the less the goal towards which the philosopher progressed, the realization of his true nature. By Christian evangelists and teachers, on the other hand, the inner springs of good conduct were generally conceived as Faith and Love. Of these notions the former has a Faith, somewhat complex ethical import, it seems to blend several elements differently prominent in different minds. Its simplest and commonest meaning is that emphasized iu the contrast of &quot; faith&quot; with &quot;sight, &quot; where it signifies belief iu the invisible divine order represented by the church, in the actuality of the law, the threats, the promises of God, m spite of all the influences in man s natural life that tend to obscure this belief. Out of this contrast there ultimately grew an essentially different opposition between faith and knowledge or reason, according to which the theological basis of ethics was contrasted with the philo sophical; the theologians maintaining sometimes that the divine law is essentially arbitrary, the expression of will, not reason; more frequently that its reasonableness is inscrutable, and that actual human reason should con fine itself to examining the credentials of God s messen gers, and not the message itself. But in early Chris tianity this latter antithesis was as yet undeveloped ; faith means simply force in clinging to moral and religious con viction, whatever their precise rational grounds may be ; this force, in the Christian consciousness, being inseparably bound up with personal loyalty and trust towards Christ, the leader in the battle with evil that is being fought, the ruler of the kingdom to be realized. So far, however, there is no ethical difference between Christian faith and that of Judaism, or its later imitation, Mahometanisin ; except that the personal affection of loyal trust is peculiarly stirred by the blending of human and divine natures in Christ, and the rule ot duty impressively taught by the manifestation of His perfect life. A more distinctively Christian, and a more deeply moral, significance is given to the notion in the antithesis of &quot; faith&quot; and &quot; works.&quot; Here faith means more than loyal acceptance of the divine law and reverent trust in the lawgiver ; it implies a conscious ness, at once continually present and continually tran scended, of the radical imperfection of all human obedience to the law, and at the same time of the irremissible con demnation which this imperfection entails. The Stoic doctrine of the worthlessness of ordinary human virtue, and the stern paradox that all offenders are equally, iu so far as all are absolutely, guilty, find their counterparts in Christianity ; but the latter, while maintaining this ideal severity iu the moral standard, with an emotional con sciousness of what is involved. in it quite unlike that of the Stoic, at the same time overcomes its practical exclusiveness through faith. This faith, again, may be conceived in two modes, essentially distinct though usually combined. In one view it gives* the believer strength to attain, by God s I supernatural aid or &quot; grace,&quot; a goodness of which he is
 * s fantastically understood and exaggerated by some of the