Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 8.djvu/612

Rh 590 ETHICS Love. Purity. Distinc tive par ticulars of Chris tian mor ality. naturally incapable; in another view it gives him an assurance that, though he knows himself a sinner deserving of utter condemnation, a perfectly just God stiil regards him with favour on account of the perfect services and suffering of Christ. Of these views the former is the more catholic, more universally present in the Christian con sciousness ; the latter more deeply penetrates the mystery of the atonement, as learnt by the chief Protestant churches from the Pauline epistles. But faith, however understood, is rather an indispensable pre-requisite than the essential motive principle of Christian good conduct. This is supplied by the other central notion, love. On love depends the &quot; fulfilling of the law,&quot; and the sole moral value of Christian duty that is, on love to God, in the first place, which in its fullest develop ment must spring from Christian faith; and, secondly, love to all mankind, as the objects of divine love and sharers in the humanity ennobled by the incarnation. This derivative philanthropy, whether conceived as mingling with and intensifying natural human affection, or as absorb ing and transforming it, characterizes the spirit in which all Christian performance of social duty is to be done ; loving devotion to God being the fundamental attitude of mind that is to be maintained- throughout the whole of the Christian s life. But further, as regards abstinence from unlawful acts and desires prompting to them, we have to notice another form in which the inwardness of Christian morality manifests itself, which, though less distinctive, should yet receive attention in any comparison of Christian ethics with the view of Gneco-Roman philo sophy. The profound horror with which the Christian s conception of a suffering as well as an avenging divinity tended to make him regard all condemnable acts was tinged with a sentiment which we may perhaps describe as a ceremonial aversion moralized, the aversion, that is, to foulness or impurity. In all religions to some extent, but especially in Oriental religions, the natural dislike of material defilement has been elevated into a religious senti ment. In Judaism, in particular, wo find it used to sup port a complicated system of quasi-sanitary abstinences and ceremonial purifications; at the same time, as the ethical element predominated in the Jewish religion, a moral symbolism was felt to reside in the ceremonial code, and thus aversion to impurity came to be a common form of the ethico-religious sentiment. Then, when Christianity threw off the Mosaic ritual, this religious sense of purity was left with no other sphere besides morality; while, from its highly idealized character, it was peculiarly well adapted for that repression of vicious desires which Christianity claimei as its special function. When we examine the details of Christian morality, we find that most of its distinctive features are naturally con nected with the more general characteristics just stated; though many of them may also be referred directly to the example and precepts of Christ, and in several cases they are clearly due to both ca-ises, inseparably combined. We may notice, in the first place, that the conception of morality as a code which, if not in itself arbitrary, is yet to be accepted by men with unquestioning submission, tends naturally to bring into prominence the virtue of obedience to authority; just as the philosophic view of goodness as the realization of reason gives a special value to self-determina tion and independence (as we see more clearly in the po&t- Aristotelian schools where ethics is distinctly separated from politics). Again, the opposition between the natural world and the spiritual order into which the Christian has been born anew led not merely to a contempt equal to that of the Stoic for wealth, fame, power, and other objects of worldly pursuit, but also, for some time at least, to a com- practive depreciation of the domestic and civic relations of the natural man ; while a keen sense of man s impotence to make this disengagement of the spirit complete induced the same hostility to the body as a clog and hindrance, that we find to some extent in Plato, but more fully developed in Neo-Platonism, Neo-Pythagoreanism, and other products of the mingling of Greek with Oriental thought. This latter feeling is exhibited in the value set on fasting in the Christian church from the earliest times, and in an extreme form in the self-torments of later monasticism ; while both tendencies, anti-worldliness and anti-sensualism, seem to have combined in causing the preference of celibacy over marriage which is common to most early Christian writers. 1 Patriotism, again, and the sense of civic duty, the most elevated and splendid of all social sentiments in the general view of Grseco-Roman civilization, tended, under the influ ence of Christianity, either to expand itself into universal philanthropy, or to concentrate itself on the ecclesiastical community. &quot; We recognize one commonwealth, the world,&quot; says Tertullian ; &quot;we know, &quot; says Origen, &quot;that we have a fatherland founded by the word of God.&quot; We might further derive from the general spirit of Christian unworldiness that repudiation of the secular modes of conflict, even in a righteous cause, w.hich substituted a passive patience and endurance for the old pagnn virtue of courage, in which the active element was prominent. Here, however, we clearly trace the influence of Christ s express prohibition of violent resistance to violence, and his inculcation, by example and precept, of a love that was to conquer even natural resentment. An extreme result of this influence is shown in Tertullian s view, that no Christian could properly hold the office of a secular magistrate in which he would have to doom to death, chains, imprisonment; but even more sober writers, such as Ambrose, extend Christian passivity so far as to preclude self-defence even against a murderous assault. The com mon sense of Christendom gradually shook off these extra vagances ; but the reluctance to shed blood lingered long, and was Inrdly extinguished even by the growing horror of heresy. We have a curious relic of this in the later times of ecclesiastical persecution, when the heretic was doomed to the stake that he might be punished in sonis manner &quot;short of bloodshed.&quot; 2 It is, however, in the impulse given to practical benefi cence in all its forms, by the exaltation of love as the rent of all virtues, that the most important influence of Chris tianity on the particulars of civilized morality is to be found ; although the exact amount of this influence is here somewhat difficult to ascertain, since it merely carries further a development distinctly traceable in the history of pagan morality considered by itself. This development clearly appears when we compare the different post-Socratic systems of ethics. In Plato s exposition of the different virtues there is no mention whatever of benevolence, although his writings show a keen sense of the importance of friendship as an element of philosophic life, especially of the intense personal affection naturally arising between master and disciple. Aristotle goes somewhat further in re cognizing the moral value of friendship (^xAt a); and though he considers that in its highest form it can only be realized by the fellowship of the wise and good, he yet extends the notion so as to include the domestic affections, and takes notice of the importance of mutual kindness in binding together all human societies. Still in his formal statement of the different virtues, positive beneficence is only discernible under the notion of &quot; liberality ;&quot; in which form its excellence is hardly distinguished from that of graceful profusion in self-regarding expenditure, Cicero, 1 E.g., Justin Martyr, Origen, Tertullian, Cyprian. 3 Citra sanguinis-effusionem.