Page:Philosophical Review Volume 20.djvu/117

103 welfare which seeks the sanction of the ideals of Christianity's founder for its own ideal. The question as to the correctness of the interpretation is one of fact. Which has the support of the records? In the first place it is to be noted that nowhere in the writings of Christ's followers do we find presented the conception of Christianity as a moral code. If this conception be nevertheless the true one, the inference is that those who were taught uniformly missed this point of the teaching. In studying the problem, two questions must be considered. 1. Is Christ's own teaching merely a system of moral precepts? His entire ethical instruction is confined to a few short passages, the beatitudes, the golden rule, and a few other epigrammatic statements. It is on the great religious concept of the spirituality of life that Christ concentrates his attention. His habit of mind, as displayed in the parables, is to understand events and objects in this world as mere types of the truths of the spiritual world. The standard of righteousness, he asserts, is set for us by God in Heaven, and is not a construction of human minds. Faith, prayer, and repentance, essentially religious conceptions, are his theme, again and again. 2. What is the teaching in the Acts and Epistles regarding the nature of Christiantity? A careful examination of these writings reveals an emphasis on metaphysical truth rather than on moral conduct. Paul glories in the facts of salvation and redemption; his mind is set on another world, one different in kind from ours. John and Peter have practically the same point of view. It was not until the time of the early church that men began to ignore the spirituality, the otherworldliness, of Christianity, and to lay stress on conformity to ethical standards. This distorted view has been more or less common in the church ever since, though held from different motives at different periods. It is important to realize that, however ideal the ethical code, it will be barren unless the spring of action is found in religion.

In some sense at least the supernatural is passing. Yet in the death of the supernatural do we not have a liberation of the spirit? When we think of the spirit as set free by the death of the body, or of an ideal meaning as set free by the passing of a civilization, we mean in either case that whatever dies or passes is particular, relative, or partial, and that whatever is liberated is universal and whole. In the relation of whole and part which here appears, can the whole be said to tyrannize over or to annihilate the part? A negative answer to this question may be based, first, on the relation between the spirit and the letter, second, upon that between the soul and the body, and finally upon that between the ever-living God and the dying God, that is, between the supernatural in toto and the supernatural in parte. That the letter or form passes, is a common observation in moral ideas, art, science, philosophy, etc. The means are discarded, but the end remains and this end is the spirit. Anarchy has destroyed governments, but never government; license morals,