Page:The Spirit of the Chinese People.djvu/105

Rh lights up the rules of moral conduct of religion and supplies the emotion or motive power needful for carrying the mass of mankind, along the straight and narrow way of moral conduct. But now the value of religion is not only that it has an inspiration or living emotion in its rules of moral conduct which lights up these rules and makes it easy for men to obey them. The value of religion, of all the great religions in the world, is that they have an organisation for awakening, exciting, and kindling the inspiration or living emotion in men necessary to make them obey the rules of moral conduct. This organisation in all the great religions of the world is called the Church.

The Church, many people believe, is founded to teach men the belief in God. But that is a great mistake. It is this great mistake of the Christian Churches in modern times which has made honest men like the late Mr. J. A Froude feel disgusted with the modern Christian Churches. Mr. Froude says: "Many a hundred sermons have I heard in England on the mysteries of the faith, on the divine mission of the clergy, on apostolic succession, etc., but never one that I can recollect on common honesty, on those primitive commandments, 'Thou shalt not lie' and 'Thou saltshalt [sic] not steal.'" But then, with all deference to Mr. Froude, I think he is also wrong when he says here that the Church, the Christian Church, ought to teach morality. The aim of the establishment of the Church no doubt is to make men moral, to make men obey the rules of moral conduct such as "Thou