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Title: Christianity and Morals
Author: Edward Westermarck
* A Project Gutenberg of Australia eBook *
eBook No.: 1900861h.html
Language: English
Date first posted: August 2019
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CHRISTIANITY

AND MORALS

Author of

CHRISTIANITY
AND MORALS

By

EDWARD WESTERMARCK

Ph.D., Hon. LL.D. (Glasgow and Aberdeen), Hon. Ph.D. (Upsal)
Late Martin White Professor of Sociology at the
University of London

LONDON

KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRUBNER & CO. LTD.

BROADWAY HOUSE: 68—74, CARTER LANE, E.C.

First published 1939

Printed in Great Britain by Butler & Tanner Ltd., Frome and London

CHRISTIANITY AND MORALS

CHRISTIANITY AND MORALS

CHAPTER I

RELIGION AND MORALITY

CHRISTIANITY is in the first place a religion but, as in the case of many other religions, it contains moral aspects closely connected with the purely religious ones.

The term religion has been used in many different senses, and it is therefore necessary that I should define what I mean by it. I take religion in the abstract, so to speak, as distinguished from any concrete religion, to be a belief in and a regardful attitude towards a supernatural being, on whom man feels himself dependent and to whom he makes an appeal in his worship. This definition seems to be in agreement with the most common usage of the word. It has been criticised on the ground that it would not apply to genuine Buddhism. But Buddhism was originally a metaphysical and ethical doctrine, which was transformed into a religion when the old gods of Brahmanism came back, when Buddha himself was deified, and Buddhism incorporated most of the local deities and demons of those nations it sought to convert.

The belief in supernatural beings is undoubtedly based on a feeling of uncanniness or mystery. Men distinguish between phenomena that they are familiar with and consequently ascribe to “natural” causes, and other phenomena that seem to them unfamiliar and mysterious and are looked upon as “supernatural,” or are supposed to spring from “supernatural” causes. We meet with this distinction among savages as well as civilised races. It may be that in the mind of a savage the natural and supernatural often overlap, that no definite line can be drawn between the phenomena which he refers to one class and those which he refers to the other; but he certainly sees a difference between events of everyday occurrence or ordinary objects of nature and other events or objects which fill him with a feeling of wonder or mysterious 2 awe. The feeling of mystery and the germ of a distinction between the natural and the supernatural are found even in the lower animal world. The horse fears the whip, but it does not make him shy; on the other hand, he may shy when he sees an umbrella opened before him or a paper moving on the ground. The whip is well known to the horse, whereas the moving paper or the umbrella is strange, uncanny, let us say “supernatural.” I had a mule that took no notice of a volley of guns discharged close to her, because she had been in war and was used to the sound, whereas she might take fright when she met a goat or saw an unusually large stone at the side of the road. Dogs and cats are alarmed by an unusual noise or appearance, and remain uneasy till they have by examination satisfied themselves of the nature of its cause.1 Even a lion is scared by an unexpected sound or the sight of an unfamiliar object;2 and we are told of a tiger who stood trembling and roaring in a paroxysm of fear when a mouse tied by a string to a stick had been inserted into its cage.3 Little children are apt to be terrified by the strange and irregular movements of a feather as it glides along the floor or lifts itself into the air.4

Supernatural qualities are not only attributed to beings who are able to work wonders at will: the supernatural, like the natural, may also be looked upon in the light of mechanical energy, which discharges itself without the aid of any volitional activity. Such energy is utilised in magic. In religion, man appeals to or worships supernatural beings by natural means, such as prayers, offerings, abstinences and so forth; in magic, he attempts to influence either natural or supernatural objects or persons by supernatural means which act mechanically and coercively. The religious attitude is in its nature respectful and humble, the magical attitude is domineering and self-assertive. At the root of the difference between religion and magic there is thus a difference in the mental state of the persons who practise them. So far as religion is concerned, this agrees well with the notion so forcibly expressed by Schleiermacher, that the religious feeling is in its essence a feeling of dependence; whereas the word magician invariably suggests the idea of a person who claims to possess power and to know how to wield 3 it in the magic art. In order to achieve his aim he may make use of spirits, but then he coerces them; if he tried to gain their assistance by propitiation, his attitude would be religious, not magical.

This view of magic finds support in mediæval conceptions of it. It is true that the theologians mostly attributed the success of magic to demons, who were enticed by men to work marvels; but the demons were able to do so largely through their superior knowledge of the forces of nature.5 And besides the marvels worked by spirits, there were others which were produced without their aid, simply by the wonderful virtues inherent in certain objects of nature. To marvels wrought in this manner William of Auvergne applied the term “natural magic.”6 Albertus Magnus likewise associated magic with natural forces and the stars, as well as with demons;7 and Thomas Aquinas, though upholding the opinion that magic is due to demons, gives us a glimpse of a different conception of it, according to which magicians were able by personal qualifications, by subtle use of occult natural properties, by rites and ceremonies, and by the art of astrology, either to work wonders directly and immediately or to coerce demons to work wonders for them.8

Another view concerning the difference between religion and magic has been expressed by certain writers, from Robertson Smith onwards, who maintain that religion is social in its aim and magic at any rate non-social,9 or that magic includes “all bad ways, and religion all good ways, of dealing with the supernormal, bad and good as the society concerned judges them.”10 This use of the terms, however, is not in agreement with the most authoritative traditional usage. Besides black magic there is also white magic. Even mediæval theologians distinguished between good and bad magic. William of Auvergne (†1249), whose works present an unexpectedly detailed picture of the magic and superstition of his time, sees no harm whatever in “natural magic,” unless it is employed for evil ends; he observes that the workers of it are called magi, because they do great things (magna agentes), whereas others, 4 who work magic by the aid of demons, are to be regarded as evil-doers.11 Albertus Magnus defends the Magi of the gospel story and tries to exculpate them from the practice of those particular evil, superstitious, and diabolical occult arts which Isidore and others had included in their definitions of magic. “They were not devoted to any of these arts,” he says, “but only to magic as it has been described; and this is praiseworthy.” He was himself a believer in occult forces and marvels in nature, showed a leaning to the occult sciences, and was called, even by his panegyrists, magnus in magia and in magicis expertus.12 In the Liber aggregationis, a very popular treatise on magic which has been ascribed to Albertus but is of dubious authenticity, it is said that magical science (scientia magicalis) is not evil, since by knowledge of it evil can be avoided and good attained.13

Nor does the definition according to which magic includes all bad ways and religion all good ways of dealing with the supernormal seem to me at all suitable for the purpose of scientific classification. It implies, for example, that a prayer to a god for the destruction of an enemy must be classified as religion if it is offered in a cause which is considered just by the community, but as magic if it is disapproved of. When a man makes a girl drink a love-potion in order to gain her favour, it is religion if their union is desirable from the society’s point of view, but if he gives the same drink to another man’s wife it is magic. The best part of what has been hitherto called imitative or homœopathic magic no longer remains magic at all; if water is poured out for the purpose of producing rain, it is homœopathic magic only in case rain is not wanted by the community, but if it is done during a drought it is religion. The acceptance of the view that the very same practices are religious or magical according as they have social or anti-social ends would overthrow well-established and useful terms and deprive us of the comprehensive, convenient, and in every respect appropriate attribute “magical” for all sorts of supposed impersonal occult or supernatural forces.

In spite of the essential difference between religion and magic they have, nevertheless, been connected with each other in various ways. Owing to the element of mystery which is found in both, magical forces may be personified as spirits or gods, or be transformed into divine attributes or lead to divine injunctions; and magical practices may become genuine acts of religious worship, or acts of worship may become magical 5 practices. Numerous instances of such transformations have been given in my book on the Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas. For example: the magical forces which give efficacy to curses have been personified as supernatural beings, like the Greek Erinyes of parents,14 beggars,15 and guests,16 and the Roman divi parentum,17 dii hospitales,18 and Terminus;19 or they may be transformed into attributes of the chief god, as in the case of Jupiter Terminalis or Ζεὺς ὅριος.20 The injurious energy attributed to work performed on the seventh day developed into a religious prohibition,21 and the uncanny feeling experienced in mentioning the name of a supernatural being readily leads to the belief that he feels offended if his name is pronounced.22 Curses and blessings become prayers;23 and on the other hand, prayers become spells which are believed to constrain the gods to whom they are addressed. This appears from the words of many formulas that are used as magical incantations. Assyrian incantations are often dressed in the robe of supplication and end with the formula, “Do so and so, and I shall gladden thine heart and worship thee in humility.”24 Vedic texts which were not originally meant as charms became so afterwards. Incantations are comparatively rare in the Rig-Veda, and seem even to be looked upon as objectionable, but towards the end of the Vedic period the reign of Brahma, the power of prayer, as the supreme god in the Indian pantheon began to dawn.25 The prayer is imbued with supernatural energy owing to the holiness of the being to whom it is addressed, and its constraining force may then be directed even against the god himself.

But the connection between religion and magic may be still more intimate. I have hitherto spoken of religion in the abstract, as distinguished from any concrete religion. In the popular sense of the word, which certainly must be respected, a religion may include many practices which are what I have called magical. In the ancient religions of the East religion 6 and magic are indissolubly mixed up together. According to Mohammedan orthodoxy the Arabic words of the Koran work miracles. The Christian sacraments of baptism and the Eucharist are rooted in magical ideas, and the efficacy ascribed to them has always retained a more or less magical character.26 Although the magical and the strictly religious attitudes differ from each other, they are not irreconcilable, and may therefore very well form parts of one and the same religion; there is no such thing as a magic being opposed to a religion. By a religion is generally understood a system of beliefs and rules of behaviour which have reference to, or are considered to be prescribed by, one or several supernatural beings whom the believers call their god or gods—that is, supernatural beings who are the objects of a regular cult and between whom and their worshippers there are established and permanent relationships. If it is admitted that the word “religion” may thus be legitimately used in two different senses, an abstract and a concrete, I think there is little ground left for further controversy as regards the relation between religion and magic.

While the origin of religion may be traced to the feeling of uncanniness and mystery, the moral consciousness has an entirely different foundation. For a discussion not only of the general relations between religion and morality, but also of my particular subject—the relations between Christianity and morals—I find it necessary to give a summary of my views concerning the nature of the moral consciousness, which I have expounded in detail in earlier works.27 The reader will notice what a fundamental position these views occupy in my arguments.

All moral concepts, which are used as predicates in moral judgments, are ultimately based on one or the other of the two emotions, moral approval and moral disapproval or indignation. Both of them belong to a wider class of emotions, which I have called retributive emotions. Moral disapproval is a kind of resentment, by which I understand a hostile attitude of mind towards a living being (or something taken for a living being) conceived as a cause of inflicted pain; moral approval is a retributive kindly emotion, that is, a friendly attitude of mind towards such a being conceived as a cause of pleasure. They are related to other kinds of resentment or retributive kindly emotion: moral disapproval to anger and the feeling of revenge, and moral approval to gratitude. But the moral emotions 7 differ from those non-moral retributive emotions by being disinterested and, at least within certain limits, impartial. If some one inflicts an injury upon me, or upon a friend of mine, and I feel indignant in consequence, my indignation can be called a moral emotion only if it is felt independently of the fact that it was I or my friend who was hurt; it must be possible to assume that I should have experienced the same emotion if another similar person in similar circumstances had been subjected to the same treatment. Otherwise my emotion of resentment would have been not moral disapproval, but personal anger. So also, the kindly emotion which I feel for a benefactor can be called moral approval only on condition that it is disinterested and impartial; otherwise it would be personal gratitude.

The origin of retributive emotions may be explained by their usefulness to the species. Resentment, like protective reflex action, from which it has gradually developed, is a means of protection for the animal owing to its tendency to remove a cause of danger. The disposition to experience it may consequently be regarded as an element in the animal’s mental constitution that has been acquired through the influence of natural selection in the struggle for existence. And as natural selection accounts for the origin of the disposition to feel resentment, so also it accounts for the origin of the disposition to feel retributive kindly emotion. Both of these emotions are useful to the species: by resentment evils are averted, by retributive kindliness benefits are secured. But retributive kindliness is of much less frequent occurrence in the animal kingdom than resentment. In a very large number of species not even the germ of it is found, and where it occurs it is generally restricted within narrow limits. Anybody may provoke an animal’s anger, but only towards certain individuals is it apt to feel retributive kindliness. The limits for this emotion are marked off by the conditions under which altruistic sentiments tend to arise. In its primitive form we find it among animals living in groups, including the small group consisting of mother, or parents, and offspring. The associated animals take pleasure in each other’s company, and with this pleasure is intimately connected kindliness towards its cause, the companion himself, who is conceived as a friend. The altruistic sentiment would never have come into existence without such reciprocity of feeling. That there is such an enormous difference between the prevalence of resentment and that of retributive kindly emotion is easily explained by the simple fact that the living in groups is an advantage only to certain species, and that even gregarious animals have many enemies but few friends.

8 This explanation of the origin of resentment and retributive kindly emotion also holds true of the moral emotions in so far as they are retributive emotions; it accounts for the hostile attitude of moral disapproval towards the cause of pain and for the friendly attitude of moral approval towards the cause of pleasure. But it still remains for us to consider the origin of those elements in the moral emotions by which they are distinguished from other, non-moral, retributive emotions. First, how shall we explain their disinterestedness?

We have to distinguish between different classes of conditions under which disinterested retributive emotions arise. In the first place, we may feel disinterested resentment, or disinterested retributive kindly emotion, on account of an injury inflicted, or a benefit conferred, upon another individual with whose pain, or pleasure, we sympathise and in whose welfare we take a kindly interest. Our retributive emotions are, of course, always reactions against pain or pleasure felt by ourselves; this holds good of the moral emotions as well as of anger, revenge, and gratitude. The question to be answered, then, is, Why should we, quite disinterestedly, feel pain calling forth disapproval because our neighbour is hurt, and pleasure calling forth approval because he is benefited?

That a certain act causes pleasure or pain to the bystander may be due to the close association that exists between these feelings and their outward expressions. The sight of a happy face tends to produce some degree of pleasure in him who sees it; the sight of bodily signs of suffering tends to produce a feeling of pain. Moreover, sympathetic pain or pleasure may be the result of an association between cause and effect, between the cognition of a certain act or situation and the feeling generally evoked by this act or situation: a blow may cause pain to the spectator before he has witnessed its effect on the victim.

But the sympathetic feeling that results from association alone is not what is popularly called sympathy: it lacks kindliness. Arising merely from the habitual connection of certain cognitions with certain feelings in the experience of the spectator, it is, strictly speaking, not at all concerned with what the other individual feels. On the other hand sympathy, in the popular sense of the word, requires the co-operation of the altruistic sentiment or affection, a disposition of mind that is particularly apt to display itself as kindly emotion towards other beings. This sentiment, only, induces us to take a kindly interest in the feelings of our neighbours. It involves a tendency, or willingness, and, when strongly developed, gives rise to an eager desire, to sympathise with their pains and pleasures. But the altruistic 9 sentiment is not merely willingness to sympathise, it is above all a conative disposition to promote the welfare of its object. It is true that sympathetic pain, unaided by kindliness, may induce a person to relieve the suffering of his neighbour, but then he does so, not out of regard to the feeling of the sufferer, but simply to get rid of a painful cognition. The sight of the wounded traveller may perhaps have caused scarcely less pain to the Pharisee than to the good Samaritan; yet it would have been impossible for the latter to dismiss his pain by going away, since he felt a desire to assist the wounded man, and this desire would have been ungratified if he had not stopped by the wayside.

The co-operation of the altruistic sentiment with sympathy also produces in us disinterested retributive emotions, when the individual towards whom we are kindly disposed is hurt or benefited. In the tendency to feel such emotions, however, there is a great difference between resentment and retributive kindliness. Resentment towards an enemy is itself, as a rule, a much stronger emotion than retributive kindly emotion towards a benefactor. And as for the sympathetic forms of these emotions, it is not surprising that the altruistic sentiment is more readily moved by the sight of pain than by the sight of pleasure, considering that it serves as a means of protection for the species. Moreover, sympathetic retributive kindliness has powerful rivals in the feelings of jealousy and envy, which tend to excite anger also towards him who bestows the benefit on the other individual. As an ancient writer observes, “many suffer with their friends when the friends are in distress, but are envious of them when they prosper.”28 Among the lower animals there seems to be no trace of retributive kindly emotion felt as a result of pleasure taken in kindness shown to another individual. On the other hand, there is sympathetic resentment in consequence of an inflicted injury. A mammalian mother is as hostile to the enemy of her young as to her own enemy. Social animals defend members of their own group, which evidently involves some degree of sympathetic anger. When a young monkey which had been seized by an eagle cried for assistance, “the other members of the troupe, with much uproar, rushed to the rescue, surrounded the eagle, and pulled out so many feathers, that he no longer thought of his prey, but only how to escape.”29 Speaking of a group of chimpanzees in confinement, Professor Köhler says that if one of them was 10 attacked before the eyes of the others, great excitement went through the whole group; and that even the lightest form of punishment, such as pulling the ear of the offender, often stirred single members of the group to much more decisive action.30 Among domesticated animals sympathetic resentment may be felt even when the individual who is hurt belongs to another species. We are told by a trustworthy authority of a dog at Liverpool who saved a cat from the hands of some young ruffians: he rushed in among the boys, barked furiously at them, terrified them into flight, and carried the cat off in his mouth to his kennel, where he nursed it.31 The dog who flies at any one who strikes, or even touches, his master is a very familiar instance of sympathetic resentment.

Among a gregarious species of animals the members of a herd are at ease in each other’s company, suffer when they are separated, rejoice when they are reunited, and very frequently display affection by defending each other, helping each other in distress and danger, and perform various other services for each other.32 Among men the members of the same social unit are tied to each other with various bonds of a distinctly human character—the same customs, laws, institutions, magic or religious ceremonies and beliefs, notions of a common descent, and so forth. As men generally are fond of that to which they are used or which is their own, they are also naturally apt to have likings for other individuals whose habits, ideas, and feelings are similar to theirs. Uncivilised peoples are as a rule described as kind towards members of their own community or tribe. Within these limits they are charitable and generous and their customs relating to mutual aid are often much more stringent than our own; and this applies even to the very lowest among them.

While disinterested resentment may thus be felt in consequence of an injury inflicted upon another individual as a reaction against sympathetic pain, it may also be directly produced by the cognition of the signs of resentment. In the former case it is really independent of the emotion of the injured individual; we may feel resentment on his behalf though he himself feels none. In the latter case it is an emotion reflected through the medium of its outward expression in another individual. We are told that among bees, ants, and termites 11 signs of anger felt by one individual may awaken, the whole community to a high pitch of excitement.33 A group of the captive chimpanzees studied by Köhler might be thrown into a state of blind fury by the angry cries of one of its members, “even when the majority of its members have seen nothing of what caused the first cry, and have no notion of what it is all about.”34 When the yells and shrieks of a street dog-fight are heard, dogs from all sides rush to the spot, each dog being apparently ready to bite any of the others. So, too, in an infuriated crowd of men one gets angry because the other is angry, and often the question Why? is hardly asked. This form of disinterested resentment is of great importance both as an originator and, especially, as a communicator of moral ideas; it is, in fact, the main foundation of moral tradition. Men are inclined to sympathise with the resentment of persons for whom they feel regard; hence an act which, though harmless by itself, is forbidden by God and man may be not only professed but actually felt to be wrong. The punishment inflicted by the society, which as a rule is an expression of its moral indignation, may also, by arousing such a feeling, lead to the idea that it deserves to be punished. Children, as everybody knows, grow up with their ideas of right and wrong graduated, to a great extent, according to the temper of the father or mother; and men are not seldom, as Hobbes said, “like little children, that have no other rule of good and evill manners, but the correction they receive from their Parents and Masters.”35 Any means of expressing resentment may serve as a communicator of the emotion. Besides punishment, language deserves special mention. Moral disapproval may be evoked by the very sounds of words like “murder,” “theft,” “cowardice,” and others, which not merely indicate a certain mode of behaviour but also express the opprobrium attached to it. By the use of some strong word the orator raises the indignation of a sympathetic audience to its pitch.

There is yet a third way in which disinterested resentment may arise. In many cases people feel hostile to a person who inflicts no injury on anybody. There are in the human mind what Bain called “disinterested antipathies,” or sentimental aversions, “of which our fellow-beings are the subjects, and on account of which we overlook our own interest as much as in 12 displaying our sympathies and affections.”36 Differences of taste, habit, and, opinion easily create similar dislikes; and these, too, have played a prominent part in the moulding of the moral consciousness. The antipathy which is so commonly felt against anything unusual, new, or foreign, may lead to the idea that it is wrong; and when a certain act which does no harm—apart from the painful impression it makes on the spectator—fills people with disgust or horror, they may feel no less inclined to inflict harm upon the agent than if he had committed an offence against person, property, or good name. Such resentment may also arise from the observation of the feelings of others. As Abraham Tucker said, “we grow to love things we perceive them fond of, and contract aversions from their dislikes.”37

We have already noticed that sympathy, in the popular sense of the word, may produce not only disinterested resentment but disinterested retributive kindliness as well: when taking a pleasure in the benefit bestowed upon our neighbour we are disposed to look with kindness on the benefactor. Moreover, as resentment may be produced by the cognition of outward signs of resentment in others, so kindly emotion may be produced by the signs of kindliness. Even a dog may be well-disposed towards a stranger when he sees a friend—whether a man or another dog—be friendly to him. Language communicates emotions by terms of praise as well as by terms of condemnation; and a reward, like a punishment, has some tendency to reproduce the emotion from which it sprang. Finally, men have disinterested likings as they have disinterested dislikes. As an instance of these may be mentioned the common admiration of courage when felt irrespectively of the object for which it is displayed—a feeling which has even elevated it to an independent virtue, and in any case tends to influence the moral verdict.

Having found the origin of disinterested retributive emotions, we have also partly explained the origin of the moral emotions. But, as we have seen, these emotions are not only disinterested, they are also impartial in a wider sense. The possibility of such impartiality, however, is explained by the answer to the more general question, how disinterestedness and a certain degree of impartiality have become characteristics of that particular kind of retributive emotions that we call moral emotions. The solution of this problem is not difficult to find. It lies in the fact that society is the birth-place of the moral 13 consciousness; that the first moral judgments expressed not the private emotions of isolated individuals, but emotions felt by the society at large; that tribal custom was the earliest rule of duty.

Customs are not merely public habits—the habits of a certain circle of men, a racial or national community, a rank or class of society—but they are at the same time rules of conduct. As Cicero observes, the customs of a people “are precepts in themselves.”38 We say that “custom commands” or “custom demands,” and even when custom simply allows the commission of a certain class of actions, it implicitly lays down the rule that such actions are not to be interfered with. And the rule of custom is conceived of as a moral rule which decides what is right and wrong. The Greek idea of the customary, τὸ νόμιμον, shows the close connection between morality and custom; and so do the words ἔθος, ἦθος, and ἠθικά, the Latin mos and moralis the German Sitte and Sittlichkeit. Moreover, in early society customs are not only moral rules but the only moral rules ever thought of. The savage strictly complies with the Hegelian command that no man must have a private conscience.

What does it mean that custom is a rule of conduct? It implies that every deviation from custom is apt to call forth public disapproval. In the lower stages of civilisation, especially, custom is a tyrant who binds man in iron fetters, and who threatens the transgressor not only with general disgrace, but often with bodily suffering or even death. In its ethical aspect custom is nothing but a generalisation of emotional tendencies, applied to certain modes of conduct and transmitted from generation to generation. Now if custom is a moral rule, the public disapproval aroused by its transgression may be properly called a moral emotion. Moreover, where all the duties of a man are expressed in the customs of the society to which he belongs, the characteristics of moral disapproval are naturally to be sought for in its connection with custom. Custom is fixed once for all, and admits of no purely individual preferences. It is equally binding for me and for you and for all the other members of the society. A breach of it is equally wrong whether I myself am immediately concerned in the act or not; this involves disinterestedness. So also the condemnation of it is independent of the relationship in which the parties concerned in it stand to me personally; this implies impartiality in a larger sense. And all this holds true whatever be the origin of any particular custom. It may have originated in selfishness 14 or partiality; the leading men of the society may at first have prohibited certain acts because they found them disadvantageous to themselves or to the class of people with whom they particularly sympathised. Where custom is an oppressor of women, this oppression may, in some measure at least, be traced back to the selfishness of the men. Where custom sanctions slavery, it is certainly not impartial to the slaves. Yet in one case as in the other custom is assumed to be in the right, irrespectively of one’s own station, and the women and the slaves themselves are expected to be of the same opinion. Such an expectation is by no means a chimera.39 Under stable social conditions, largely owing to men’s tendency to share the resentment of their superiors, the customs of a society are willingly submitted to and recognised as right by the great majority of its members, whatever be their station.

As public disapproval is the prototype of moral disapproval, so is public approval, expressed in public praise, the prototype of moral approval: it is characterised by the same disinterestedness and impartiality. But of the two emotions public disapproval, being at the root of custom and leading to the infliction of punishment, is by far the more impressive. Hence it is not surprising that the term “moral” is etymologically connected with mos, which always implies the existence of a social rule the transgression of which evokes public disapproval. Only by analogy has it come to be applied to the emotion of approval as well.

Though moral disapproval and approval have taken their place in the system of human emotions as public emotions felt by the society at large, they have not always remained inseparably connected with the feelings of any special society. The unanimity of opinion that originally characterised the members of the same social unit was disturbed by its advancement in civilisation. Individuals arose who found fault with the moral ideas prevalent in the community to which they belonged, criticising them on the basis of their own individual feelings. To deny such individuals the right of speaking in the name of morality true and proper would be to attach to this term a meaning which, in its narrowness, would be utterly different from the established usage of it. All that is required is that their retributive emotions should possess that disinterestedness and impartiality which have become moral characteristics in connection with custom, but may differ from public approval and disapproval either in intensity or with regard to the facts by which they are evoked. Indeed, the dissent from 15 the orthodox views of morality often arises from the conviction that the apparent impartiality of public feelings is an illusion. In the course of progressive civilisation the moral consciousness has tended towards a greater equalisation of rights, towards an expansion of the circle within which the same moral rules are applicable. And this process has been largely due to the example of influential individuals and their efforts to raise public opinion to their own standard of right.

My earlier statement that the predicates of all moral judgments are ultimately based on moral emotions by no means implies that such a judgment affirms the existence of a moral emotion in the mind of the person who utters it: he may do so without feeling any emotion at all. No doubt, to say that a certain act is good or bad may be the mere expression of an emotion felt with regard to it, just as to say that the sun is hot and the weather cold may be the mere expression of a sensation of heat or cold produced by the sun or the weather. But such judgments express subjective facts in terms which strictly speaking have a different meaning. To attribute a quality to something is not the same as to state the existence of a particular emotion or sensation in the mind that perceives it. This, however, does not imply that the term used to denote the quality may not have a subjective origin. I maintain, on the contrary, that the qualities assigned to the subjects of moral judgments really are generalisations derived from approval or disapproval felt with regard to certain modes of conduct, that they are tendencies to feel one or the other of these emotions interpreted as qualities, as dynamic tendencies, in the phenomena which gave rise to the emotion. A similar translation of emotional states into terms of qualities assigned to external phenomena is found in many other cases: something is “fearful” because people fear it, “admirable” because people admire it. When we call an act good or bad, we do not state the existence of any emotional tendencies, any more than, when we call a landscape beautiful, we state any characteristics of beauty: we refer the subject of the judgment to a class of phenomena which we are used to call good or bad. But we are used to call them so because they have evoked moral approval in ourselves or in other persons from whom we have learnt the use of those words.

Most people follow a very simple method in judging of an act. Particular modes of conduct have their traditional labels, many of which are learnt with language itself; and the moral judgment commonly consists simply in labelling the act according to certain obvious characteristics which it presents in common with others belonging to the same group. We hear 16 that some one has appropriated another’s property, this is theft, it is wrong; some one tells an untruth, this is lying, it is wrong; some one gives money to a needy person, this is charity, it is good; and so forth. But when we examine the nature of these acts we find that they are apt to give rise to or, as we may also put it, to become the objects of, certain emotions, either of disapproval or approval, and it is the tendency to feel one or the other of these emotions that has led people to call them bad or good. Those who first established the use of these and all other moral concepts felt disapproval or approval and expressed in the concepts their tendency to feel such an emotion in the given circumstances. This is what may be called the intrinsic meaning of the terms. I do not say that those who use them are aware of this meaning. We are often unable to tell what is really implied in a concept that we predicate to a certain phenomenon. When any one is asked what he means by saying that something is or exists, or that something is the cause of something else, I suppose that everybody who is not a philosopher, and even many a philosopher, feels somewhat bewildered. If we want to find out the intrinsic meaning of a term we have to examine the circumstances in which it is used. And in analysing the predicates of moral judgments, we are guided by the fact that if we ourselves emphatically and truly mean what we say when we pronounce such a judgment, we recognise that we are apt, or at least think we are apt, to feel a moral emotion of either approval or disapproval with regard to that on which the judgment is pronounced.

In order to show that the concepts which are used as predicates in moral judgments are ultimately based upon emotions it is necessary to examine the relations between the concepts and the emotions. This is a task which has been much neglected by the moralists of the emotional school, from Adam Smith to McDougall, although it is evidently a matter of paramount importance. I have undertaken it in my earlier works, and shall now only give a brief summary of my views. The import of the moral concepts is not a topic that requires, for the right understanding of the main subject of my book, as detailed a treatment as the nature of the emotions underlying them.

Moral disapproval has led to the concepts of ought and duty, right and wrong, justice and injustice. Every “ought”-judgment contains implicitly a prohibition of that which ought not to be done. Nobody would ever have dreamt of laying down a moral rule if the idea of its transgression had not presented itself to his mind. We may reverse the words of the Apostle and say that where no transgression is, there is no law; 17 the law-breaker is, in a way, the law-maker. When Solon was asked why he had specified no punishment for one who had murdered his father, he replied that he supposed it could not occur to any man to commit such a crime.40 We may certainly applaud him who is faithful to his duty in circumstances where the average man would have felt a strong temptation to yield to a contrary impulse. There is no contradiction in the omission of an act being disapproved of and the performance of it being praised; but “ought” and “duty” only express the tendency of an act’s omission to call forth moral disapproval and say nothing about the consequences of its performance. The tendency in a phenomenon to arouse moral disapproval is directly expressed by the terms “bad” and “wrong.”

“Right” is what is in conformity to duty, unless this term is simply used to point out that something is “not wrong.” And like the adjective “right” is also the substantive denoting “a right” rooted in the emotion of moral disapproval. To have a right to do a thing is to be allowed to do it, either by positive law, in the case of a legal right, or by the moral law, in the case of a moral right; in other words, to have a moral right to do a thing implies that it is not wrong to do it. But generally the concept of “a right” means something more than this. From the fact that an act is allowable follows, as a rule, that it ought not to be prevented; and this character of inviolability is largely included in the very concepts of rights. That a man has a right to live does not merely mean that he commits no wrong by supporting his life, but it chiefly means that it would be wrong of other people to prevent him from living, that it is their duty to refrain from killing him, or even, as the case may be, that it is their duty to help him to live.

Closely connected with the notions of wrongness and rightness are the notions of injustice and justice. “Injustice” implies a violation of some one’s right; “justice,” in the strict sense of the term, involves the notion that a duty to somebody, a duty corresponding to a right in him, is fulfilled. But at the same time “injustice” and “justice” are not simply other names for violating or respecting rights. When we style an act “unjust” we emphasise that it is not impartial, when we style an act “just” we point out that an undue preference would have been shown some one by its omission. It is the emphasis laid on the duty of impartiality that gives justice a special prominence in connection with punishments and rewards. A man’s rights depend to a great extent upon his actions. Other things being equal, the criminal has not the same rights to 18 inviolability as regards reputation, freedom, property, or life as the innocent man; the miser and the egoist have not the same rights as the benefactor and the philanthropist. On these differences in rights, due to differences in conduct, the terms “just” and “unjust” lay stress; for in such cases an injustice would have been committed if the rights had been equal. When we say of a criminal that he has been “justly” imprisoned, we point out that he was no victim to undue partiality, as he had forfeited the general right to freedom on account of his crime. When we say of a benefactor that he has been “justly” rewarded, we point out that no favour was partially bestowed upon him in preference to others, as he had acquired the special right of being rewarded. But the “justice” of a punishment or a reward, strictly speaking, involves something more than this; as we have seen, what is strictly just is always the discharge of a duty corresponding to a right that would have been in a partial manner disregarded by a transgression of the duty. If it is just that a person should be rewarded he ought to be rewarded, and to fulfil this duty is to do him justice. Again, if it is just that a person should be punished he ought to be punished, and his not being punished is an injustice towards all those whose condemnation of the wrong act finds its recognised expression in the punishment, inasmuch as their rightful claim that the criminal should be punished, their right of resisting wrong, is thereby violated in favour of the wrongdoer. Moreover, his not being punished is an injustice towards other criminals, who have been, or who will be, punished for similar acts, in so far as they have a right to demand that no undue preference should be shown anybody whose guilt is equal to theirs. Retributive punishment may admit of a certain latitude as to the retribution. It may be a matter of small concern from the community’s point of view whether men are fined or imprisoned for the commission of a certain crime. But justice demands that in equal circumstances all of them should be punished with the same severity, since the crime has equally affected their rights. The emphasis which “injustice” lays on the partiality of a certain mode of conduct always involves a condemnation of that partiality, and is thus a concept that is obviously based on the emotion of moral disapproval. And so is the concept of “justice,” whether it involves the notion that an injustice would be committed if a certain duty is not fulfilled, or it is used, more loosely, to denote that a certain course of conduct is “not unjust.” But the word “just” may also emphasise the impartiality of an act in a tone of praise. Considering how difficult it may be to be perfectly impartial 19 and give every man his due, especially when one’s own interests are concerned, it is only natural that men may be applauded for being just, and, consequently, that to call a person “just” may be to praise him. So also, “justice” is used as the name for a virtue, “the mistress and queen of all virtues.”41 But all this does not imply that an emotion of moral approval enters into the concept of justice as such. It only means that one word is used to express a certain concept, which ultimately derives its import from moral disapproval, and in addition an emotion of approval. That the concept of justice by itself has no reference to the emotion of approval is shown by the fact that it is no praise to say of an act that it is “only just.”

From the concepts springing from moral disapproval we shall pass to those springing from moral approval. Foremost among these ranks the concept of goodness. The word “good” is applied to a great variety of objects. But whatever all other good things may have in common, “goodness,” in the emphatically moral sense of the word has a characteristic of its own, which makes it widely different from any other “good”: it is a concept rooted in the tendency to feel the emotion of moral approval, it is the general expression for moral praise. The word “virtue,” again, is usually applied to denote a disposition of mind characterised by some special kind of goodness. He who is habitually temperate possesses the virtue of temperance, he who is habitually brave the virtue of courage, he who is habitually generous the virtue of generosity. Even when a man is simply said to be “virtuous,” this epithet is given him, more or less distinctly, with reference to some kind or kinds of goodness: it may mean that he has many virtues, or that he has much of one. A Supreme Being who is regarded as all-good is not called virtuous.

Like the notions of goodness and virtue, the “meritorious” derives its origin from the emotion of moral approval; but while the former merely express a tendency to give rise to such an emotion, the “meritorious” implies that the object to which it refers “merits” praise, that it has a just claim to praise, in other words, that it ought to be recognised as good. This makes the term “meritorious” more emphatic than the term “good,” but at the same time it narrows its province in a peculiar way. Just as the expression that something ought to be done implies the idea that it possibly may not be done, so the statement that something is meritorious, in pointing out its goodness, implies 20 the idea that this goodness may fail to receive due recognition. It would be blasphemous to call the acts of a God who is conceived to be infinitely good “meritorious,” since it would suggest a thinkable limitation of his goodness.

CHAPTER II

RELIGION AND MORALITY (concluded)

THE gods of uncivilised peoples are to a large extent of a malevolent character, but they are not exclusively so; and though they as a rule take little interest in any kind of human conduct that does not affect their own welfare, some of them are also opposed to acts of ordinary wrongdoing. Among peoples of a higher culture, again, the gods are on the whole benevolent to mankind when duly propitiated. They resent by preference offences committed against themselves personally; but in many cases they at the same time avenge social wrongs of various kinds, act as superintendents of human justice, and are even looked upon as the originators and sustainers of the whole moral order of the world. The gods have thus experienced a gradual change for the better; until at last they are described as ideals of moral perfection, even though, when more closely scrutinised, their goodness and notions of justice are found to differ materially from what is deemed good and just in the case of men.42

The malevolence of savage gods is in accordance with the theory that religion is born of fear. The assumed originators of misfortunes were naturally regarded as enemies to be propitiated; while fortunate events, if attracting sufficient attention and appearing sufficiently marvellous to suggest a supernatural cause, were commonly ascribed to beings who were too good to require worship. But growing reflection has a tendency to attribute more amiable qualities to the gods. The religious consciousness of men becomes less exclusively occupied with the hurts they suffer, and comes more and more to reflect upon the benefits they enjoy. The activity of a god which displays itself in a certain phenomenon, or group of phenomena, appears to them on some occasions as a source of evil, but on other occasions as a source of good; hence the god is regarded as partly malevolent, partly benevolent, and in all circumstances as a being who must not be neglected. Moreover, a god who is by nature harmless or good may by proper worship be induced 22 to assist man in his struggle against evil spirits. The protective function of nature gods becomes particularly important when the god is humanised also with regard to his shape, and consequently more or less dissociated from the natural phenomenon in which he originally manifested himself. Nothing, indeed, seems to have contributed more to the improvement of nature gods than the expansion of their sphere of activity. When supernatural beings can exert their power in the various departments of life, men naturally choose for their gods those among them who with great power combine the greatest benevolence.

Men have selected their gods according to their usefulness. We have many direct instances of such “supernatural selection.” Among the Maori “a mere trifle, or natural casualty, will induce a native (or a whole tribe) to change his Atua.”43 The negro, when disappointed in some of his speculations, or overtaken by some sad calamity, throws away his fetish, and selects a new one.44 When hard-pressed the Samoyed, after having invoked his own deities in vain, addresses himself to the Russian god, promising to become his worshipper if he relieves him from his distress; and in most cases he is said to be faithful to his promise, though he may still try to keep on good terms with his former gods by occasionally offering them a sacrifice in secret.45 North American Indians attribute all their good or bad luck to their Manitou, and “if the Manitou has not been favourable to them, they quit him without any ceremony, and take another.”46 Among many of the Indians of Central America there was a regular and systematic selection of gods. Father Blas Valera says that their gods had annual rotations and were changed each year in accordance with the superstitions of the people. “The old gods were forsaken as infamous, or because they had been of no use, and other gods and demons were elected. . . . Sons when they inherited either accepted or repudiated the gods of their fathers, for they were not allowed to hold their pre-eminence against the will of their heir. Old men worshipped other greater deities, but they likewise dethroned them, and 23 set up others in their places when the year was over. . . . Such were the gods which all the nations of Mexico, Chiapa, and Guatemala worshipped, as well as those of Vera Paz, and many other Indians. They thought that the gods selected by themselves were the greatest and most powerful of all the gods.”47 These are crude instances of a process which in some form or other must have been an important motive force in religious evolution by making the gods better suited to meet the wants of their believers. We find traces of it even in the Old Testament. “Jacob vowed a vow, saying, If God will be with me, and will keep me in this way that I go, and will give me bread to eat, and raiment to put on, So that I come again to my father’s house in peace; then shall the Lord be my God: And this stone, which I have set for a pillar, shall be God’s house: and of all that thou shalt give me I will surely give the tenth unto thee.”48 The Hebrews thought of the national religion as constituted by a covenant rite in which the parties were Yahve and Abraham,49 as also by a formal covenant sacrifice at Mount Sinai, where half of the blood of the sacrificed oxen was sprinkled on the altar and the other half on the people;50 and the idea of sacrifice establishing a covenant between God and man is also apparent in the Psalms.51 Robertson Smith and his followers have represented the covenant practices as acts of communion,52 but similar methods of covenanting, which I have found in Morocco, have led me to believe that those employed by the ancient Hebrews in covenanting with the deity aimed at transferring conditional curses both to the men and to their god.53 Such covenanting naturally presupposed a kind of selection.

Men not only select as their gods such supernatural beings as may be most useful to them in the struggle for life, but also magnify their good qualities in worshipping them. Praise and exaggerating eulogy are common in the mouth of a devout worshipper. In ancient Egypt the god of each petty state was within it said to be the ruler of the gods, the creator of the world, the giver of all good things.54 So also in Chaldea the god of a 24 town was addressed by its inhabitants with the most exalted epithets, as the master or king of all the gods.55 The Vedic poets were engrossed in the praise of the particular deity they happened to be invoking, magnifying his attributes to the point of inconsistency.56 The Hindus say that by praise a person may obtain from the gods whatever he desires.57 There is a Chinese story that amusingly illustrates this little weakness of so many gods. At the hottest season of the year there was a heavy fall of snow at Soochow. The people, in their consternation, went to the temple of the Great Prince to pray. Then the spirit moved one of them to say: “You now address me as Your Honour. Make it Your Excellency, and, though I am but a lesser deity, it may be well worth your while to do so.” Thereupon the people began to use the latter term, and the snow stopped at once.58 “Every virtue, every excellence,” says Hume, “must be ascribed to the divinity, and no exaggeration will be deemed sufficient to reach those perfections with which he is endowed.”59 But though the tendency of the worshipper to extol his god beyond all measure is largely due to the idea that praise or flattery is as pleasant to superhuman as to human ears, it may also be rooted in a sincere will to believe or in genuine veneration. That nations of a higher culture, especially, have a strong faith in the power and benevolence of their gods, is easy to understand when we consider that such peoples have been most successful in their national endeavours. As the Greeks attributed their victory over the Persians to the assistance of Zeus, so the Romans maintained that the grandeur of their city was the work of the gods whom they had propitiated by sacrifices.60

The benevolence of a god, however, does not imply that he acts as a moral judge. A friendly god is not generally supposed to bestow his favours gratuitously; it is therefore not a matter of course that he should meddle with social morality out of sheer kindliness and of his own accord. But by an invocation he may be induced to reward virtue and punish vice. 25 The retributive activity of many gods is evidently very closely connected with the blessings and curses of men. In order to actualise their good or evil wishes men appeal to a supernatural being, or simply bring in his name to give their appeal that mystic efficacy which the plain word lacks; and if this is regularly done in connection with some particular kind of conduct, the idea may grow up that the supernatural being rewards or punishes it even independently of any human invocation. In Morocco the very patron saint of a village is expressly said not to care about the behaviour of its inhabitants outside the precincts of his sanctuary; yet I found that some particular saints not only resent theft committed at their own shrines, but also punish robbers who merely pass by, either preventing them from proceeding further until they are caught, or making it impossible for them to sell the stolen object, so that they are found out at last. In these cases their hostility to an offence which does not concern them personally is obviously due to the fact that those saints have been so often appealed to in oaths taken by persons suspected of theft that they have at last come to be looked upon as permanent enemies of thieves and guardians of property. At Fez there are certain saints who are said to be so much opposed to wrongdoers that they do not even suffer them to live in the neighbourhood of their shrines, and these saints are exactly those by whom it is considered most dangerous to swear; hence I assume that they have acquired their remarkable moral sensitiveness just by being such severe avengers of perjury.

Moreover, as I have pointed out before, the magical forces which give efficacy to curses may be personified as supernatural beings or may be transformed into attributes of the chief god. Various departments of social morality have thus come to be placed under the supervision of gods—such as charity, hospitality, the right of property, and the submissiveness of children. Gods are also frequently looked upon as guardians of truth and good faith, which I take to be mainly due to the common practice of confirming a statement or promise by an oath. A god is not only more powerful than ordinary mortals, but may also better know whether the sworn word be true or false; it is no doubt on account of their superior knowledge that sun or moon or light gods are by preference appealed to in oaths.61 Owing to its invocation of supernatural sanction, perjury is considered the most heinous of all acts of falsehood, but it has a tendency to make even the ordinary lie or breach of faith a 26 matter of religious concern. If a god is frequently appealed to in oaths, a general hatred of lying and faithlessness may become one of his attributes. There is every reason to believe that a god is not, in the first place, appealed to because he is looked upon as a guardian of veracity and good faith, but that he has come to be looked upon as a guardian of these duties because he has so often been appealed to in connection with them.

Where the oath is an essential element in the judicial proceedings, as it was in the archaic State, the consequence is that the guardianship of gods is extended to the whole sphere of justice. Truth and justice are repeatedly mentioned hand in hand as matters of divine concern, and the same gods as are appealed to in oaths or ordeals are also frequently described as judges of human conduct.62 Zeus presided over assemblies and trials;63 according to a law of Solon, the judges of Athens had to swear by him.64 And the Erinyes, the personifications of oaths and curses, are sometimes represented by poets and philosophers as guardians of right in general.65

We have still to consider another set of facts that have tended to make gods moral specialists. In the case of homicide the notion of a persecuting ghost may be replaced by an avenging god. Confusions are common in the world of mystery; doings or functions attributed to one being may be transferred to another. Among some North American Indians, though the revengeful ghost of the murdered man was not lost sight of, the deed was at the same time looked upon as offensive to Wakanda, “the Great Spirit”; no one wished to eat with the murderer; they said: “If we eat with the man whom Wakanda hates for his crime, Wakanda will hate us.”66 In the Chinese books there are numerous instances of persons haunted by the souls of their victims on their death-bed, and in most of these cases the ghosts state expressly that they are avenging themselves with the special authorisation of Heaven.67 The Greek belief in the Erinyes of a murdered man originated no doubt in the earlier notion of a persecuting ghost, whose anger or curses in later times were personified as an independent spirit.68 And 27 the transformation went further still: the Erinyes were represented as the ministers of Zeus, who by punishing the murderer carried out his divine will. Zeus was considered the originator of the rites of purification; at his altar Theseus underwent purification for the shedding of kindred blood.69 The ritual uncleanness ascribed to a manslayer was thus transformed into spiritual impurity.

It has been said that when men ascribe to their gods a mental constitution similar to their own they eo ipso consider them to approve of virtue and disapprove of vice.70 But this conclusion is certainly not true in general. Malevolent gods cannot be supposed to feel emotions that essentially presuppose altruistic sentiments, and, as already said, an invocation may be required to induce a benevolent god to interfere with the worldly affairs of men. Moreover, where the system of private retaliation prevails, not even the extension of human analogies to the world of supernatural beings would lead to the idea of a god who of his own accord punishes social wrongs. But it is quite probable that such analogies have in some cases made gods guardians of morality at large, especially ancestor gods. These may readily be supposed not only to preserve their old feelings with regard to virtue and vice, but also to take a more active interest in the morals of the living; and they are notoriously opposed to any deviation from ancient custom. I also admit that the conception of a great or supreme god may perhaps, independently of his origin, involve retributive justice as a natural consequence of his power and benevolence towards his people. Yet it is obvious that even a god like Zeus was more influenced by the invocation of a suppliant than by his sense of justice. Farnell points out that the epithets which designate him as the god to whom those stricken with guilt can appeal are far more in vogue in actual Greek cult than those which attribute to him the function of vengeance and retribution.71 Hermes was addressed by thieves as their patron.72 According to the 28 Talmud, “the thief invokes God while he breaks into the house.”73 In Morocco the sultan of all the saints, Mûlai ʿAbdlqâder, has the epithet “the patron of liars,” and is said to be compelled to assist thieves and liars who invoke him, although he may afterwards punish them for their behaviour. The Italian bandit begs the Virgin herself to bless his endeavours.

At the same time we must again remember that men ascribe to their gods not only ordinary human qualities but excellences of various kinds, and among these may also be a strong desire to punish wickedness and to reward virtue. The gods of monotheistic religions in particular have such a multitude of the most elevated attributes that it would be astonishing if they had remained unconcerned about the morals of mankind. If flattery or genuine veneration makes the deity all-wise, all-powerful, all-good, they also make him the supreme judge of human conduct. And there is yet another reason for investing him with the moral government of the world. The claims of justice are not fully satisfied on this earth, where it only too often happens that virtue is left unrewarded and vice escapes unpunished, that right succumbs and wrong triumphs; hence persons with deep moral feelings and a religious or philosophical bent of mind are apt to look for a future adjustment through the intervention of the deity, who alone can repair the evils and injustices of the present. This demand of final retribution is sometimes so strongly developed, that it even leads to the belief in a deity when no other proof of his existence is found convincing. Kant maintained that, since an accurate correspondence between happiness and moral worth is not to be expected in a mere course of nature, we postulate a moral and all-powerful Supreme Being who establishes such correspondence. Not even Voltaire could rid himself of the notion of a rewarding and avenging deity, whom, if he did not exist, “it would be necessary to invent.”

The belief in a god who acts as a guardian of worldly morality undoubtedly gives emphasis to its rules. To the social and legal sanctions a new one is added, which derives particular strength from the supernatural power and knowledge of the deity. The divine avenger can punish those who are beyond the reach of human justice and those whose secret wrongs even escape the censure of their fellow-men. But on the other hand, there are also certain circumstances which detract considerably from the influence of the religious sanction when compared with other sanctions of morality. The supposed punishments and rewards of the future life have the 29 disadvantage of being conceived as very remote; and fear and hope decrease in inverse ratio to the distance of their objects. Men commonly live in the happy illusion that death is far off, even though it is in reality very near, and, therefore, the retribution after death also appears distant and unreal and is comparatively little thought of by the majority of people who believe in it. Moreover, there seems to be time left for penance and repentance. Manzoni himself admitted, in his defence of Roman Catholicism, that many men think it an easy matter to procure that feeling of contrition by which, according to the doctrine of the Church, sins may be cancelled, and therefore encourage themselves in the commission of crime through the facility of pardon. The frequent assumption that the moral law would scarcely command obedience without the belief in retribution beyond the grave is contradicted by an overwhelming array of facts. We hear from trustworthy witnesses that unadulterated savages follow their own rules of morality no less strictly, or perhaps more strictly, than civilised people follow theirs. Nay, it is a common experience that contact with a higher civilisation exercises a deteriorating moral influence upon the conduct of uncultured races, although we may be sure that Christian missionaries do not fail to impart the doctrine of hell to their savage converts.

It has also been noticed that a high degree of religious devotion is frequently accompanied with great laxity of morals. The orientalist Wallin, who had an intimate and extensive knowledge of Mohammedan peoples, often found that those Moslems who attended to their prayers most regularly were the greatest scoundrels.74 “One of the most remarkable traits in the character of the Copts,” says Lane, “is their bigotry”; and at the same time they are represented as “deceitful, faithless, and abandoned to the pursuit of worldly gain, and to indulgence in sensual pleasure.”75 Among two hundred Italian murderers Ferri did not find one who was irreligious; and Naples, which has (or had?) the worst record of any European city for crimes against the person, is also the most religious city in Europe.76 On the other hand, according to Havelock Ellis, “it seems extremely rare to find intelligently irreligious men in prison.”77 Most religions contain an element which 30 constitutes a real peril to the morality of their votaries. They have introduced a new kind of duties—duties towards gods; and even where religion has entered into close union with worldly morality, much greater importance has been attached to ceremonies or worship or the niceties of belief than to good behaviour towards fellow-men. People think that they may make up for lack of the latter by orthodoxy or pious performances. A Christian bishop of the seventh century, who was canonised by the Church of Rome, described a good Christian as a man “who comes frequently to church; who presents the oblation which is offered to God upon the altar; who doth not taste fruits of his own industry until he has consecrated a part of them to God; who, when the holy festivals approach, lives chastely even with his own wife during several days, that with a safe conscience he may draw near the altar of God; and who, in the last place, can repeat the Creed and the Lord’s Prayer.”78 A scrupulous observance of external ceremonies—that is all which in this description is required of a good Christian. Smollett observes in his Travels into Italy that it is held more infamous to transgress the slightest ceremonial institution of the Church of Rome than to transgress any moral duty; that a murderer or adulterer will be easily absolved by the Church, and even maintain his character in society; but that a man who eats a pigeon on a Saturday is abhorred as a monster of reprobation.79 Simonde de Sismondi wrote: “The more regular a vicious man has been in observing the commandments of the Church, the more he feels in his heart that he can dispense with the observance of that celestial morality to which he ought to sacrifice his depraved propensities.”80 And how many a Protestant does not imagine that by going to church on Sundays he may sin more freely on the six days between? In reply to Starbuck’s question, “What does religion mean to you?” a sixty-seven years old business man wrote: “I find that the most religious and pious people are as a rule those most lacking in uprightness and morality. The men who do not go to church or have any religious convictions are the best. Praying, singing of hymns, and sermonising are pernicious—they teach us to rely on some supernatural power, when 31 we ought to rely on ourselves.” William James recognises in this man a sufficiently familiar type.81

We come at last to a point in which religion, or rather the Christian revelation, is supposed to have exercised a profound influence on moral ideas: it is said to have invested them with objective validity.

All exponents of normative ethics assume that they possess such validity: that the moral values belong to a reality which exists whether there be a mind that perceives it or not, that what is said to be good or bad, right or wrong, cannot be reduced merely to what people think to be good or bad, right or wrong. It makes morality a matter of truth and falsity, and to say that a judgment is true obviously means something different from the statement that it is thought to be true. If a certain course of conduct is objectively right it must be thought to be right by all rational beings who judge truly of the matter and cannot, without error, be judged to be wrong.

Certain philosophers, like Mill and Kant, have adduced rational arguments to prove the objectivity of their first principles and thereby the existence of ethical truths. These have been rejected for good reasons, and the advocates of moral objectivity have generally resorted to a more convenient method of establishing it: they assume that there are self-evident moral principles perceived by intuition. But how can I know if a proposition is really self-evident or only supposed to be so? In the case of theoretical truths no truth is admitted to have a claim to self-evidence which is not generally accepted as self-evident or axiomatic by all those whose intellect is sufficiently developed to have an opinion on the matter worthy of any consideration at all; to speak with Sidgwick, the absence of disagreement between experts must be an indispensable negative condition of the certainty of our beliefs.82 As a matter of fact, however, in the case of moral principles enunciated as self-evident truths disagreement is radical. Some “moral specialists” say it is an axiom that I ought not to prefer my own lesser good to the greater good of another; whilst others not only deny the self-evidence, but thoroughly disagree with the contents, of this proposition. According to Sidgwick the assertion that pleasure is the only rational ultimate end of action is an object of intuition;83 according to Moore, also a professor of moral philosophy, 32 the untruth of this proposition is self-evident.84 The latter finds it self-evident that good cannot be defined;85 but others, who have no smaller claim to the epithet “moral specialists,” are of the very contrary opinion. What should we say if two professors of mathematics quarrelled about the axiom that “if equals be added to equals the wholes are equal,” to which Sidgwick compares one of his moral axioms?86

But besides rational arguments and intuitive insight that have been alleged to prove the objectivity of moral judgments there are also theological arguments. In spite of all his efforts to base his own theory on a non-theological basis, Rashdall feels compelled to admit that, in his opinion, the belief in God is the logical presupposition of an “objective” or absolute morality. “A moral ideal,” he says, “can exist nowhere and nohow but in a mind; an absolute moral ideal can exist only in a Mind from which all Reality is derived. Our moral ideal can only claim objective validity in so far as it can rationally be regarded as the revelation of a moral ideal externally existing in the mind of God.”87 He invalidates, however, in another place this argument by saying that “the belief in the objectivity of our moral judgments is a necessary premise for any valid argument for the belief either in God, if by that be understood a morally good or perfect Being, or in Immortality.”88 The two statements that objective morality presupposes the belief in God, and that the belief in God presupposes objective morality, lead combined to the logical conclusion that there is no valid evidence either for the existence of God or for the objectivity of moral judgments. According to Dean Inge, “Christianity lifts psychology out of mere subjectivism, and morality out of mere relativism. . . . The Christian point of view gives to conduct an absolute value.”89 Bishop Bohlin, after a penetrating review of the claim to objective validity made by normative moralists, arrives at the conclusion that only a divine revelation can give morality such validity.90

The theological argument in favour of the objective validity of moral judgments, which is based on belief in an all-good God who has revealed his will to mankind, contains of course 33 an assumption that cannot be proved scientifically. But even if it could be proved, would that justify the conclusion drawn from it? Those who maintain that they possess in such a revelation an absolute moral standard and that, consequently, any mode of conduct which is in accordance with it must be objectively right, may be asked what they mean by an all-good God. If God were not supposed to be all-good, we might certainly be induced by prudence to obey his decrees, but they could not lay claim to moral validity; suppose the devil were to take over the government of the world, what influence would that have on the moral values—would it make right wrong and wrong right? It is only the all-goodness of God that might give his commandments absolute moral validity. But to say that something is good because it is in accordance with the will of an all-good God is to reason in a circle; if goodness means anything, it must have a meaning which is independent of his will. God is called good or righteous because he is supposed to possess certain qualities that we are used to call so: he is benevolent, he requites virtue and vice, and so forth. For such reasons do we add the attributes goodness and righteousness to his other attributes, which express qualities of an objective character, and by calling him all-good we attribute to him perfect goodness.91 As a matter of fact, there are also many theologians who consider moral distinctions to be antecedent to the divine commandments. Thomas Aquinas and his school maintain that the right is not right because God wills it, but that God wills it because it is right.

1 have thus arrived at the conclusion that the attempts of philosophers and theologians to prove the objective validity of moral judgments give us no right to accept such validity as a fact. I am now prepared to take a step further and assert that it cannot exist. The reason for this is that in my opinion the predicates of all moral judgments, all moral concepts, are ultimately based on emotions, and that, as is very commonly admitted,92 no objectivity can come from an emotion. It is of course true or not that we in a given moment have a certain emotion; but in no other sense can the antithesis 34 of true and false be applied to it. The cognition which gives rise to an emotion is of course either true or false; in the latter case the emotion may be said to be felt “by mistake”—as when a person is frightened by some object in the dark which he takes for a ghost, or is indignant with a person to whom he imputes a wrong that has been committed by somebody else; but this does not alter the nature of the emotion itself. We may call the emotion of another person “unjustified,” if we feel that we ourselves should not have experienced the same emotion had we been in his place, or, as in the case of moral approval or disapproval, if we cannot share his emotion. But to speak, as Brentano does, of “right” and “wrong” emotions, springing from self-evident intuitions and having the same validity as truth and error,93 is only another futile attempt to objectivise our moral judgments. The same may be said of Nicolai Hartmann’s assertions that “the sense of value is not less objective than mathematical insight,”94 and that the criterion of the genuine and the spurious sense of value “is nothing else than the primary consciousness of value itself,” which is also an intuition.95 But I find in his book no clear criterion of this “primary consciousness of value” as distinguished from any other feeling of value. Very generally the so-called intuitions are nothing but objectivised emotions, or emotional tendencies formulated as judgments, calculated to give moral values an objectivity they do not in reality possess.

Although all moral judgments are ultimately based on emotions, the influence that intellectual factors exercise on such judgments is very great indeed. Emotions are determined by cognitions and differ in nature or strength according as the cognitions differ. This has been a very important cause of the variations of moral judgments: the same course of conduct is differently judged of because different notions are held as to its nature or implications. If a person tells an untruth we are apt to feel indignant; but if, on due consideration of facts, we find that his motive was benevolent, for instance to save the life of the person to whom it was told, our indignation ceases and may be followed by approval. And, to take another instance, at the lower stages of civilisation there is a considerable lack of discrimination between intentional injuries and accidental ones, and even among ourselves the outward event exercises a 35 great influence upon moral estimates.96 But if it is clearly realised that a certain event is the result of merely external circumstances, that it was neither intended by the agent nor could have been foreseen by him, then there could be no moral disapproval at all. Such an event could not even call forth a feeling of revenge. Sudden anger itself cools, down when it appears that the cause of the inflicted pain was a mere accident. Even a dog distinguishes between being stumbled over and being kicked.

The variability of moral valuation also depends in a large measure upon different cognitions arising from different situations and external conditions of life. We find, for example, among many peoples the custom of killing or abandoning parents worn out with age or disease. It prevails among a large number of savage tribes and occurred formerly among several Asiatic and European nations, including the Vedic people and peoples of Teutonic extraction. It is particularly common among nomadic hunting tribes, owing to the hardships of life and the inability of decrepit persons to keep up in the march. In times when the food-supply is insufficient to support all the members of a community it also seems more reasonable that the old and useless should have to perish than the young and vigorous. And among peoples which have reached a certain degree of wealth and comfort the practice of killing the old folks, though no longer justified by necessity, may still go 36 on, partly through survival of a custom inherited from harder times, and partly from the humane intent of putting an end to lingering misery. What appears to most of us as an atrocious practice may really be an act of kindness, and is commonly approved of, or even insisted upon, by the old people themselves. Or take the widespread custom of infanticide. Among the lower races custom often decides how many children are to be reared in each family, and not infrequently the majority of infants are destroyed. This wholesale infanticide is also mainly due to the hardships of savage life. Urgent want is frequently represented by our authorities as the main cause of it; and their statements are corroborated by the conspicuous prevalence of this custom among poor tribes and in islands whose inhabitants are confined to a narrow territory with limited resources. For a similar reason infanticide is or has been a custom among many peoples of a higher civilisation.

The variability of moral judgments further originates in different measures of forethought or knowledge based on experience of the consequences of conduct, and in different beliefs. In almost every branch of conduct we notice the influence which the belief in supernatural forces or beings or in a future state has exercised upon the moral ideas of mankind, and the great diversity of this influence. Religion or superstition has, on the one hand, stigmatised murder and suicide, on the other hand it has commended human sacrifice and certain cases of voluntary self-destruction. It has inculcated humanity and charity, but has also led to cruel persecutions of persons embracing another creed. It has emphasised the duty of truth-speaking, and has itself been a cause of pious fraud. It has promoted cleanly habits and filthiness. It has enjoined labour and abstinence from labour, sobriety and drunkenness, marriage and celibacy, chastity and temple prostitution. It has introduced a great variety of new duties and virtues, quite different from those which are recognised by the moral consciousness when left to itself, but nevertheless in many cases considered more important than any other duties or virtues.

From this motley crowd of influences I shall single out one the result of which has been particularly revolting to the moral feelings of Christians, namely human sacrifice. It is found not only among many savages, but occurred in early times among all Indo-European peoples, the Semites, and the Japanese, and in the New World among the Mayas and the Aztecs, who practised it on an enormous scale. The gods were supposed to be gratified by such offerings—because they had an appetite 37 for human flesh and blood, or because they required attendants, or because they were angry and could only be appeased by the death of him or those who aroused their anger or some representative of the offending community, or—who could exactly tell why? The principal thing is that people know or believe that on some certain occasion they are in danger of losing their lives; they attribute this to the designs of a supernatural being; and by sacrificing a man they hope to avert the danger from themselves by gratifying that being’s craving for human life. That this principle mainly underlies the practice of human sacrifice appears from the particular circumstances in which it generally occurs. In such cases it is mostly a matter of public concern, a method of ensuring the lives of many by the death of one or a few—absurd, no doubt, according to our ideas, but not an act of wanton cruelty. When practised for the benefit of the community or in a case of national distress, it is hardly more cruel than to compel thousands of men to suffer death on the battlefield on behalf of their country.

In so far as differences of moral opinions depend on different degrees of reflection, on knowledge or ignorance of specific religious or superstitious beliefs, or on different conditions of life and other external circumstances, they do not clash with that universality which is implied in the notion of the objective validity of moral judgment, as in every kind of truth. But the case is different with some other dissimilarities of moral opinion, which are due to other causes.

When we study the moral rules laid down by the customs of savage peoples we find that they in a very large measure resemble the rules of civilised nations. In every savage community homicide is prohibited by custom, and so is theft. Savages also regard charity as a duty and praise generosity as a virtue, indeed their customs relating to mutual aid are often more exacting than our own; and many of them are conspicuous for their avoidance of telling lies. But in spite of the great similarity of moral commandments, there is at the same time a difference between the regard for life, property, truth, and the general well-being of a neighbour which displays itself in savage rules of morality and that which is found among ourselves: it has, broadly speaking, only reference to members of the same community or tribe. Among peoples more advanced in civilisation the social unit has grown larger, the nation has taken the place of the tribe, and the circle within which the infliction of injuries is prohibited has extended accordingly. A distinction is still very frequently made between injuries committed against compatriots and harm done to foreigners, but both law and 38 public opinion may show a very great advance in humanity with regard to the treatment of the latter. And when we come to rules laid down by moralists and professedly accepted by a large portion of civilised mankind, we find such as have reference to the whole human race. It seems to me obvious that the dominant cause of this expansion of moral rules has been the widening of the altruistic sentiment. But this sentiment varies in different individuals both in strength and with reference to its objects. And this variability will always prevent the moral rules from being anything like uniform.

The variations of the altruistic sentiment in range and strength are also responsible for other differences of moral opinion. Even among ourselves there is no unanimity as to the dictates of duty in cases where a person’s own interests collide with those of his fellow-men. Sidgwick admitted that his axiom of “rational benevolence,” according to which, other things being equal, no one must prefer his own lesser good to the greater good of another, is more rigid than the view of common sense,97 and I fail to see that any process of reasoning or “intuition” could ever harmonise the different views. As Höffding said, no reasoning can change an egoist into a utilitarian; his position is so far unassailable.98 While everybody will agree that some amount of self-sacrifice is a duty in certain circumstances, the amount and the circumstances can hardly be fixed in general rules, and on the whole, in cases of conflicting interests the judgment must to a large extent remain a matter of private opinion. Kant, that high priest of ethical rationalism, wrote that it is impossible to assign definite limits how far I am bound to sacrifice to others a part of my own welfare without hope of recompense. “This duty, therefore, is only indeterminate; it has a certain latitude within which one may do more or less without being able to assign its limits definitely.”99

That moral judgments could not possibly possess that universality which is characteristic of truth becomes particularly obvious when we consider that their predicates vary not only in quality but also in quantity. There are no degrees of truth and falsehood; but there are degrees of goodness and badness, virtues and merits may be greater or smaller, a duty may be more or less stringent, and if there are no degrees of rightness, the reason for it is that right means simply conformity to the rule of duty. These quantitative differences of 39 moral estimates are due to the emotional origin of all moral concepts. Emotions vary indefinitely in strength, and the moral emotions form no exception to this rule. It should be noticed, however, that the quantity of the estimate expressed in a moral predicate is not identical with the intensity of the moral emotion which a certain course of conduct arouses on a particular occasion. We are liable to feel more indignant if an injury is committed before our eyes than if we read about it in a newspaper, and yet we admit that the degree of badness is the same in either case. The comparative quantity of moral estimates is determined by the intensity of the emotions which their objects tend to evoke in exactly similar circumstances.

But in spite of all differences of moral ideas there are most substantial similarities, which are due to the facts that they are all based on moral emotions, and that moral emotions are retributive emotions characterised by disinterestedness and impartiality. I have discussed these facts at a length which may have seemed exorbitant, but which I have found necessary for expressing and justifying my views on Christian morals.

CHAPTER III

THE ETHICS OF JESUS: THEIR RETRIBUTIVE CHARACTER

THE thesis that moral judgments are based on retributive emotions may seem to have been a strange introduction to the discussion of the ethics of the New Testament with their doctrine of love and forgiveness. But I maintain that this thesis is nowhere confirmed more strongly than in the teaching of Jesus as recorded in the three synoptic gospels.

While the Gospel of John is of great value for the history of the teaching of the early Catholic Church and the edifice of Catholic doctrines based on it, it is now very generally admitted to be a comparatively late document which does not give us an authoritative account of the work and teaching of Jesus, but represents a tendentious interpretation of the tradition. The synoptic gospels are founded on a tradition about Jesus which had been preached and taught in the Church either orally or else in small collections capable of expansion.100 Almost all scholars are now agreed that the short Gospel of Mark, which is earlier than its two companions, has been one of their sources; but that they in addition used also another source, now lost, which has been designated Q. As regards the amount of reliable information which the three gospels contain, it has been pointed out that wherever we can observe the methods of the synoptists we see how little they valued strict accuracy in the reproduction of their authorities, and how fully they felt themselves justified in treating the details with literary freedom.101 There is no doubt that Jesus never uttered the discourses attributed to him, but that they are artificial compositions of which the most which we can hope is that they employ authentic logia. On closer examination these discourses break up into a number of disjointed sayings or, at best, into small groups of sayings, which appear to be for the most part the work of the primitive community or of the gospel redactors.102

41 It is a question whether the tradition, which had only recollection to sustain it, was sufficiently complete and precise to enable us to comprehend what Jesus said and meant. Harnack avers that the synoptics give us a clear idea of Jesus’ teaching in regard both to its main features and to its individual application.103 According to Dibelius, “the message of Jesus has been preserved for us in the first three gospels self-consistently and unspoiled.”104 Professor R. H. Lightfoot, again, concludes that the gospels yield us little more than a whisper of the voice of Jesus.105 Wrede says it should be borne in mind that only the earliest stratum of the material of the three gospels existed before the elaboration of the Pauline theology, and that a considerable part of it came into being alongside or after that theology, nay even—here and there—under its influence.106 In any case the ethics of Jesus are quite distinct: the principle of divine reward and punishment is the keystone of his moral teaching, which is thus an expression of retributive emotions—the basis of all moral judgments.

It should be remembered that moral emotions are disinterested retributive emotions. Personal anger and vindictiveness are strongly condemned by Jesus:

“Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil:107 but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. . . . Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you” (Matthew v. 38, 39, 43 sq.).

“If ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you: But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses” (ibid. vi. 14 sq.). See also ibid. xviii. 34 sq.

42 “Then came Peter to him, and said, Lord, how oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? till seven times? Jesus saith unto him, I say not unto thee, Until seven times: but, Until seventy times seven” (ibid. xviii. 21 sq.).

“When ye stand praying, forgive, if ye have ought against any: that your Father also which is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses. But if ye do not forgive, neither will your Father which is in heaven forgive your trespasses” (Mark xi. 25 sq.).

“Love your enemies, do good to them which hate you. Bless them that curse you, and pray for them which despitefully use you. And unto him that smiteth thee on the one cheek offer also the other; and him that taketh away thy cloke forbid not to take thy coat also. Give to every man that asketh of thee; and of him that taketh away thy goods ask them not again. . . . Love ye your enemies, and do good, and lend, hoping for nothing again; and your reward shall be great, and ye shall be the children of the Highest. . . . Forgive, and ye shall be forgiven” (Luke vi. 27—30, 35, 37).

The injunction of forgiveness, however, is not always unqualified. According to Luke, Jesus said: “If thy brother trespass against thee, rebuke him; and if he repent, forgive him. And if he trespass against thee seven times in a day, and seven times in a day turn again to thee, saying, I repent; thou shalt forgive him.”108 He also gave the following injunction: “If thy brother shall trespass against thee, go and tell him his fault between thee and him alone: if he shall hear thee, thou hast gained thy brother. But if he will not hear thee, then take with thee one or two more, that in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established. And if he shall neglect to hear them, tell it unto the church: but if he neglect to hear the church, let him be unto thee as an heathen man and a publican.”109 Moreover, according to some manuscripts and the Authorised Version of the English Bible, Jesus said: “Whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment”;110 whereas the qualifying clause “without a cause” is lacking in other manuscripts—both the 43 Codex Sinaiticus and the Vaticanus—and in the Vulgate,111 and has been omitted in the Revised Version of the English Bible. It would of course be absurd to blame a person for expressing moral indignation at an act simply because he himself happens to be the offended party.

The injunctions of forgiveness and kindness to enemies are by no means exclusively Christian tenets. We find them in the Old Testament. “Thou shalt not hate thy brother in thine heart. . . . Thou shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people.”112 “Say not thou, I will recompense evil; but wait on the Lord, and he shall save thee.”113 “If thine enemy be hungry, give him bread to eat; and if he be thirsty, give him water to drink: for thou shalt heap coals of fire upon his head, and the Lord shall reward thee.”114 “If thou meet thine enemy’s ox or his ass going astray, thou shalt surely bring it back to him again. If thou see the ass of him that hateth thee lying under his burden, and wouldest forbear to help him, thou shalt surely help with him.”115 Sirach says: “Forgive thy neighbour the injury (done to thee), and then, when thou prayest, thy sins will be forgiven.”116 In the apocryphal book ‘The Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs,’ which is supposed to have been written more than a century before the life and teaching of Jesus, we read: “If a man sin against thee, speak peaceably to him, and in thy soul hold not guile; and if he repent and confess, forgive him. . . . But if he be shameless and persisteth in his wrongdoing, even so forgive him from the heart, and leave to God the avenging.”117 In the Talmud it is said that “whosoever does not persecute them that persecute him, whosoever takes an offence in silence, he who does good because of love, he who is cheerful under his sufferings—they are the friends of God.”118

The Koran, while repeating the old rule “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,”119 at the same time teaches that paradise is “for those who repress their rage, and those who pardon men; God loves the kind.”120 Mohammedan tradition puts the 44 following words in the mouth of the Prophet: “Say not, if people do good to us, we will do good to them, and if people oppress us, we will oppress them: but resolve that if people do good to you, you will do good to them, and if they oppress you, oppress them not again.”121 Goldziher emphasises Mohammed’s opposition to the traditional rule of the Arabs that an enemy is a proper object of hatred;122 and Syed Ameer Ali has collected various passages from the writings of Mohammedan scholars which prove that, in spite of what has often been said to the contrary, forgiveness of injuries is by no means foreign to the spirit of Islam.123 That “the sandal-tree perfumes the axe that fells it,” is a saying in everyday use among the Mohammedans of India.124 And Lane often heard Egyptians forgivingly say, on receiving a blow from an equal: “God bless thee,” “God requite thee good,” “Beat me again.”125

Kindness to enemies was inculcated by Chinese moralists. “Recompense injury with kindness,” says Lao-Tsze.126 According to Mencius, “a benevolent man does not lay up anger, nor cherish resentment against his brother, but only regards him with affection and love.”127 In the ‘Laws of Manu,’ the mythical Hindu legislator, the following rule is laid down for the twice-born man: “Against an angry man let him not in return show anger, let him bless when he is cursed.”128 It is said in the Buddhist ‘Dhammapada’: “Hatred does not cease by hatred at any time; hatred ceases by love, this is an old rule. . . . Among men who hate us we dwell free from hatred. . . . Let a man overcome anger by love, let him overcome evil by good; let him overcome the greedy by liberality, the liar by truth.”129

The principle of forgiveness had also advocates in Greece 45 and Rome. In one of the Platonic dialogues, Socrates says: “We ought not to retaliate or render evil for evil to any one, whatever evil we may have suffered from him”; though he adds that “this opinion has never been held, and never will be held, by any considerable number of persons.”130 In Stoicism the condemnation of anger and resentment is abundant. “Mankind is born for mutual assistance, anger for mutual ruin.”131 “Anger is a crime of the mind; . . . it often is even more criminal than the faults with which it is angry.”132 “The truly great mind, which takes a true estimate of its own value, does not revenge an insult because it does not feel it.”133 “We all are bad. . . . There is only one thing which can afford us peace, and that is to agree to forgive one another.”134 “If any one is angry with you, meet his anger by returning benefits for it.”135 “To suppose that we shall become contemptible in the eyes of others unless in some way we inflict an injury on those who first shewed hostility to us, is the character of most ignoble and thoughtless men.”136 “The Cynic loves those who beat him.”137 He is the best and purest “who pardons others as if he sinned himself daily, but avoids sinning as if he never pardoned.”138 “The best way of revenge is not to imitate the injury.”139 “Though we are not just of the same flesh and blood, yet our minds are nearly related, being both extracted from the Deity. . . . Nor can I find it in my heart to hate or to be angry with one of my own nature or family. For we are all made for mutual assistance.”140 “Remember always, when you are angry, that rage is the mark of an unmanly disposition. Mildness and temper are not only more human, but more masculine too.”141 “This is the way to disarm the most insolent, if you continue kind and unmoved under ill usage.”142 Some of these statements breathe rather dignity or pride than kindness; and Seneca makes the acute remark that “the most contemptuous form of revenge is not to deem one’s adversary worth taking vengeance upon.”143 Paul says, as it was said in the Proverbs, that if you feed your enemy when he hungers and give him drink when he thirsts, you will “heap coals of fire on his head.”144

46 A person who feels resentment may be a proper object of moral disapproval, not on account of the resentful impulse as such, but because it has been allowed to develop either into an intention or into a deliberate wish to make the other person suffer or, at any rate, into a wish that he shall have to suffer; and the word resentment may be vaguely used in all these cases. Jesus’ commandment, “Love your enemies,” may imply something more than the next one, “Do good to them that hate you”: it may enjoin you to try to check your anger; but it cannot reasonably make it an obligation for you to have a tender feeling towards your enemy. As Kant said,145 “love, as an affection, cannot be commanded,” and the reason for this is that it cannot be produced by any effort of will. But it is easy to see why thoughtful and sympathetic minds disapprove of resentment and retaliation springing from personal motives. Such resentment is apt to be partial. It is too often directed against persons whom impartial reflection finds to be no proper objects of indignation, and still more frequently it is unduly excessive. As Butler said, “We are in such a peculiar situation with respect to injuries done to ourselves, that we can scarce any more see them as they really are, than our eye can see itself.”146 “As bodies seem greater in a midst, so do little matters in a rage”; hence the old rule that we ought not to punish whilst angry.147 The restraining rule of like for like, which is frequently found among peoples whose customs permit or enjoin private revenge, has largely a social origin.148 As resentment involves no accurate balancing of suffering against suffering, there may be a crying disproportion between the act of revenge and the injury evoking it; a revengeful mind, said Sir Thomas Browne, “holds no rule in retaliations, requiring too often a head for a tooth, and the supreme revenge for trespasses, which a night’s rest should obliterate.”149 But if the offender is a person with whose feelings men are ready to sympathise, their sympathy will keep the desire to see him suffer within certain limits; and if, in ordinary circumstances, they tend to sympathise equally with both parties, the injurer 47 and the person injured, and, in consequence, confer upon these equal rights, they will demand a retaliation which is only equal in degree to the offence. The more the moral consciousness is influenced by sympathy, the more severely it condemns any retributive infliction of pain which it regards as undeserved; and it seems to be in the first place with a view to preventing such injustice that teachers of morality have enjoined upon men to love or be kind to their enemies.

Quite different from the resentment and retaliation springing from personal motives are moral resentment and the punishment in which it finds its expression. The moral indignation of Jesus was often intense. His attacks on the Pharisees, scribes, and lawyers were vehement in the extreme:

“Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men: for ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in. Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye devour widows’ houses, and for a pretence make long prayer: therefore ye shall receive the greater damnation. Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves. . . . Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith: these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone. Ye blind guides, which strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel. Woe unto you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye make clean the outside of the cup and of the platter, but within they are full of extortion and excess. . . . Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men’s bones, and of all uncleanness. Even so ye also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity. . . . Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell?” (Matthew xxiii. 13—15, 23—25, 27, 28, 33).

“Beware of the scribes, which love to go in long clothing, and love salutations in the marketplaces, And the chief seats in the synagogues, and the uppermost rooms at feasts: Which devour widows’ houses, and for a pretence make long prayers: these shall receive greater damnation” (Mark xii. 38—40).

In the Gospel of Luke there are similar attacks on the Pharisees and scribes, and on the lawyers as well (xi. 39 sqq., xx. 46 sq.).

48 The moral indignation of Jesus even led him to violent activity. He “went into the temple of God, and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the moneychangers, and the seats of them that sold doves, And said unto them, It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves.”150

Resentment, moral and non-moral, varies indefinitely in intensity, and the same is the case with the act of retaliation to which it may lead. According to the teaching of Jesus, the future punishment of sinners is often enormous. As this is a fact which Christian apologists have ignored or smoothed over, I shall add other quotations from the gospels to those referring to the Pharisees, scribes, and lawyers:

“Whosoever shall say (to his brother), Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire” (Matthew v. 22).

“If thy right eye (or, ‘thy right hand’) offend thee pluck it out (or, ‘cut it off’), and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell” (ibid. v. 29 sq.). See also ibid. xviii. 8 sq.; Mark ix. 43—48.

“The children of the kingdom shall be cast out into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Matthew viii. 12).

“Whosoever shall not receive you (the disciples), nor hear your words, when ye depart out of that house or city, shake off the dust of your feet. Verily I say unto you, It shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrha in the day of judgment, than for that city” (ibid. x. 14 sq.).

“Fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell” (Matthew x. 28).

“Woe unto thee, Chorazin! woe unto thee, Bethsaida! for if the mighty works, which were done in you, had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. But I say unto you, It shall be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon at the day of judgment, than for you. And thou, Capernaum, which art exalted unto heaven, shalt be brought down to hell. . . . It shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom in the day of judgment, than for thee” (ibid. xi. 21—24). See also Luke x. 12—15.

“The Son of man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity; And shall cast them into a furnace of fire, there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth. . . . So shall it 49 be at the end of the world; the angels shall come forth, and sever the wicked from among the just, And shall cast them into the furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth” (Matthew, xiii. 41, 42, 49 sq.).

“Whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea” (ibid. xviii. 6). See also Mark ix. 42.

When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and before him shall be gathered all nations, “he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats: And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left. . . . Then shall he say unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels. . . . And these shall go away into everlasting punishment” (Matthew xxv. 31—33, 41, 46).

“He that shall blaspheme against the Holy Ghost hath never forgiveness, but is in danger of eternal damnation” (Mark iii. 29). Cf. Matthew xii. 31 sq.; Luke xii. 10.

“Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish” (Luke xiii. 3, 5).

“Depart from me, all ye workers of iniquity. There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth, when ye shall see Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, and all the prophets, in the kingdom of God, and you yourselves thrust out” (ibid. xiii. 27 sq.).

The rich man of the parable died and was buried, “and in hell he lift up his eyes, being in torments, and seeth Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom. And he cried and said, . . . I am tormented in this flame” (ibid. xvi. 22—24).

When Jesus was asked, “Lord, are there few that be saved?” he said: “Strive to enter in at the strait gate: for many, I say unto you, will seek to enter in, and shall not be able.”151 On another occasion, in his Sermon on the Mount, he said: “Wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth into life, and few there be that find it.”152 He also said: “There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. For many are called, but few are chosen.”153 Modern theology pretends to be better informed. In Hastings’ Encyclopædia of Religion and Ethics we read that New Testament teaching, taken as a whole, suggests the salvation of the great bulk of mankind and 50 reprobation as the rare exception.154 In support of this statement the author quotes some inconclusive passages from John and Timothy and only one from the synoptic gospels, namely the saying that “the Son of man is come to save that which was lost.”155 He is also very optimistic as to the condition of the lost. He says that the general principle of the judgment will be the loss of faculties which have been abused, and continues: “It is not necessary to regard the condition of the lost as absolutely intolerable, though, in contrast with the bliss of the redeemed, it will appear most sad. Its sadness will consist mainly in regret for the loss of the Beatific Vision, and remorse for the criminal folly which has led to their degradation from the rank of responsible beings. On the other hand, their condition may admit of important alleviations. Thus they can sin no more, and will perform the will of God unerringly, which will surely be for their good. Moreover, their enjoyment of natural goods, though impaired, will not be destroyed. In fact, it even seems possible to regard their condition as one of relative happiness of a purely natural kind.”156 I should have thought that there could not be much enjoyment of natural goods or happiness in the furnace of hell.

It is, however, nowadays a widespread opinion that Jesus did not believe in fiery torment in hell. The statements referring to it in the gospels are said to be either non-authentic—later glosses added in oral tradition or by the evangelists157—or to be interpreted in a figurative sense. It is argued that they are chiefly found in the first gospel, “the Jewish gospel,” and are absent from the parallel passages in the other gospels; but the fire of hell is nevertheless mentioned also by Mark and Luke. Another argument is that they are inconsistent with Jesus’ true and original gospel of the love of God, which compels us to regard them as metaphorical. But, as Dr. Cadoux remarks, “to have recourse to figurative interpretation whenever Jesus’ words clash with modern knowledge or belief, in order to maintain the complete conformity of our beliefs with his words, is an unnatural and forced proceeding, which does violence to the instinct of truth.”158 The explanation of the gospel passages concerning hell seems simple enough. It is generally admitted that Jesus shared with his Jewish contemporaries other beliefs 51 which are now held untenable. The later pre-Christian Jewish writings contain a variety of detailed descriptions of future punishment in which torment and destruction by fire are constant features.159 Of particular importance is the passage in which Isaiah speaks of the damnation of the wicked, when “the Lord will come with fire . . . to render his anger with fury, and his rebuke with flames,” and of the carcasses of the men that have transgressed against him; “for their worm shall not die, neither shall their fire be quenched.”160 This passage is evidently the source of Mark’s reference to hell “where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.”161

The immense bulk of Christians have naturally regarded hell and its agonies as material facts. Origen, who was a Platonist and a heretic in many respects, was severely censured for assuming that the souls of the unpurified ones pass into a cleansing fire which is only temporary and figurative, simply consisting in the torments of conscience;162 and in the ninth century Scotus Erigena showed unusual audacity in questioning the locality of hell and the material tortures of the condemned.163 Some great Protestant divines, like Jeremy Taylor and Jonathan Edwards, were anxious to point out that the fire of hell is infinitely more painful than any fire on earth, being “fierce enough to melt the very rocks and elements.”164 This awful punishment also exceeds in dreadfulness anything which even the most vivid imagination can conceive, because it will last not for a passing moment, nor for a year or a hundred, thousand, million, or milliard years, but for ever and ever. In case any doubt should arise as regards the physical capacity of the damned to withstand the heat, we are assured by some reputed theologians that their bodies will be annealed like glass or asbestos-like or of the nature of salamanders,165 which was already suggested by Augustine.166 It would seem that even the felicity of the few who were saved must be seriously impaired by their contemplation of this endless and undescribable misery, but we are told that the case is just the reverse. They become 52 as merciless as their god. Thomas Aquinas says that a perfect sight of the punishment of the damned is granted them that they “may enjoy their beatitude and the grace of God more richly.”167 And the Puritans, especially, have revelled in the idea that “the sight of hell torments will exalt the happiness of the saints for ever,” as a sense of the opposite misery always increases the relish of any pleasure.168

It was only in the nineteenth century that, at last, a more considerable number of Christians began to feel shocked by the ancient doctrine of eternal punishment. Nowadays, according to Dr. Major, the general belief in the English Church is “that the soul at death passes into the spirit world, and never again has anything to do with its fleshly integument, which has been deposited in the grave”; and a conviction has grown up that heaven and hell are thought of not as localities but as personal states, and that there is every degree of purgatory between them.169 Thus Mr. R. H. Charles has tried to show that the fire spoken of by Jesus is not to be conceived sensuously, but as a symbol of the divine wrath, and that the place of punishment for the wicked is apparently a place of spiritual punishment only.170 Modern theology constantly falls back upon symbolism as an interpretation of unpalatable statements found in the gospels. This, it is said, safeguards the Saviour’s infallibility. But what about his honesty? In the recent Report of the Commission on Christian Doctrine appointed by the Archbishops of Canterbury and York it is argued that eschatological beliefs are inevitably expressed in symbolical language, being matters in respect of which “eye hath not seen, nor ear heard,” and the essence of hell is described as “exclusion from the fellowship of God.”171 This implies that Jesus said what he did not mean, but terrified the simple and ignorant people to whom he spoke, and countless succeeding generations, by words which it has taken nearly two thousand years for learned theologians to decipher.

As to the conception of the divine retribution for unrighteousness there are important differences between the teaching of the gospels and that of the Old Testament. According to the latter, 53 the judgment of God is carried out in this life, according to the former predominantly after death. Among the Jews the belief in a future state began only in prophetic times, when it was clearly spoken of for the first time in the following passage in the book of Daniel: “Many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt. And they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament.”172 But belief in the resurrection of individuals and a final judgment had become elements of Jewish religion when Jesus was born.173 The other difference between the ideas of retribution in the Old Testament and in the gospels was due to the Hebrew belief that sin affects the nation through the individual and entails guilt on succeeding generations. The anger of the Lord is kindled against the children of Israel on account of Achan’s sin.174 The sin of the sons of Eli is visited on his whole house from generation to generation.175 Because Saul has slain the Gibeonites, the Lord sends in the days of David a three years’ famine, which ceases only when seven of Saul’s sons are hanged.176 The notion of a jealous God who visits the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate him,177 is also frequently met with in the Old Testament Apocrypha.178

The infliction of penal suffering on guiltless persons in consequence of the sins of others is contrary to the nature of moral indignation, which, as a retributive emotion, is a hostile attitude of mind towards a living being conceived as a cause of pain. The retribution of a god is in many cases nothing but an outburst of sudden anger, or an act of private revenge, and is as such particularly liable to lack sufficient discrimination. It may also be extended beyond the limits of individual guilt, because sin is looked upon as a kind of material substance which may be transmitted from parents to offspring. To this day the Jews in Morocco sometimes go on their New Year’s Day to the seashore or to a spring and remove their sins by throwing stones into the water. The words of the Psalmist, “Wash me thoroughly from mine iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin,”179 54 were not altogether a figure of speech. That sin is contagious was expressly stated by Novatian, who said that “the one is defiled by the sin of the other, and the idolatry of the transgressor passes over to him who does not transgress.”180 In this materialistic conception of sin there is an obvious confusion between cause and effect, between the sin and its punishment. This carries with it the idea that the injurious energy inherent in sin will sooner or later discharge itself to the discomfort or destruction of anybody who is affected with it. The sick Chinese says of his sickness, “It is my sin,” instead of saying, “It is the punishment of my sin”;181 and both in Hebrew and in the Vedic language the word for sin is used in a similar way.182 “In the consciousness of the pious Israelite,” says Schultz, “sin, guilt, and punishment, are ideas so directly connected that the words for them are interchangeable”; the prophets frequently and emphatically declare that there is in sin itself a power which must destroy the sinner.183 Finally it should be noticed that while the resentment of a man is a matter of experience, that of a god is a matter of inference. That some particular case of suffering is a divine punishment may therefore be assumed on the ground of the conviction that a certain heinous sin cannot be left unpunished. When the sinner himself escapes all punishment, leading a happy life till his death, the conclusion is thus near at hand that any grave misfortune which befalls his descendants is the delayed retribution of the offended god.184 Such a conclusion may especially force itself upon a mind which has no idea of a hell with post mortem punishments for the wicked.

But a moral consciousness which is sufficiently guided by discrimination and sympathy cannot acquiesce in penal suffering being inflicted upon the guiltless. Protests against it are heard from different quarters both with reference to human justice and with reference to the retribution of gods. Plato lays down the rule that “the disgrace and punishment of the father is not to be visited on the children.”185 According to Roman law, “crimen vel poena paterna nullam maculam filio infligere 55 potest.”186 The Deuteronomist enjoins: “The fathers shall not be put to death for the children, neither shall the children be put to death for the fathers: every man shall be put to death for his own sin.”187 And Jeremiah and Ezekiel broke with the old notion of divine vengeance by extending the law of individual responsibility to the sphere of religion. “Every one shall die for his own iniquity: every man that eateth the sour grape, his teeth shall be set on edge.”188 “The soul that sinneth, it shall die. The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son: the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him.”189

While the belief in divine retribution after death favours the acceptance of the principle of individual responsibility, it lays itself open to criticism on the plea of being at variance with the moral justification of punishment. The punishment which society inflicts on a criminal is intrinsically an expression of its moral indignation. For ages it was looked upon as a matter of course that a person who has committed a crime should have to suffer for it because he deserves to be punished. This is still the notion of the multitude, as also of a host of theorisers, who by calling punishment an expiation, or a reparation, or a restoration of the disturbed equilibrium of justice, or some similar term, only endeavour to give philosophical sanction to a social institution which is rooted in an emotion. But the infliction of pain is not an act which the moral consciousness regards with indifference even in the case of a criminal; and to many enlightened minds with keen sympathy for human suffering it has appeared both unreasonable and cruel that the State should wilfully torment him to no purpose. It may certainly be thought that men have no right to give vent to their moral resentment in a way which hurts their neighbours, unless some benefit may be expected from it. In the case of many other emotions we hold that the conative element in the emotion ought not to be allowed to develop into a distinct volition or act; and it would seem that a similar view might be taken with reference to the aggressiveness of moral disapproval. It is a notion of this kind that is at the bottom of the condemnation of retributive punishment. But at the same time punishment itself is defended. It is only looked upon in 56 a different light, not as an end in itself but as the means of attaining an end. It is to be inflicted not because wrong has been done, but in order that wrong be not done. Its object is held to be either to deter from crime, or to reform the criminal, or by means of elimination or seclusion to make it physically impossible for him to commit fresh crimes.

A punishment inflicted after the death of the culprit cannot serve the aim of eliminating a dangerous individual, because he can no longer do any harm. Nor can it be of any use as a means of deterring him from committing fresh crimes, because he is incapable of doing it. Nor can it be supposed to have any reformatory effect of value to him or to anybody else, if the punishment is eternal. The only thing that may be gained by it is that the threat of it may intimidate the living. In an earlier chapter I have drawn attention to certain facts which seem to detract considerably from its usefulness in this respect; but to inspire fear of damnation has certainly been a prominent object of Christian moralists from the very beginning till our own times, and not without some degree of success.190

On the other hand, as I have endeavoured to show in detail elsewhere,191 those theorists who think it possible to make punishment independent of moral resentment are victims of an illusion. Whether they are advocates of the theory of determent or the theory of reformation, it has escaped them that they themselves are under the influence of the very principle they reject, because they have failed to grasp its true import. Rightly understood, resentment is preventive in its nature; it is not only aroused by pain, but is a hostile attitude towards its cause, and its tendency is to remove this cause. And it may aim at its removal by bringing about repentance in the offender, which is the reformationists’ object of punishment. Thus resentment not only gives rise to punishment, but readily suggests as its proper end either determent or amendment or both. But first of all moral resentment raises a protest against wrong. And whatever theorists may say on the matter, the immediate aim of punishment has always been to give expression to the righteous indignation of the society which inflicts it.

The dependence of punishment upon moral resentment also shows itself in the fact that its degree is influenced by the degree of the resentment. Though a severe punishment may be the most effective deterrent, our feelings object to its application if the crime is slight; and in any case they put a limit to the 57 intensity of suffering to be inflicted upon a criminal, whatever his crime may be. In former times burning was a penalty for certain offences which were considered particularly atrocious, but it is utterly revolting to the moral consciousness of modern men. Yet its agonies lasted only for a few minutes. What, then, shall we say of the everlasting torments in the furnace of hell as a punishment even for persons who “desire to walk in long robes, and love greetings in the markets, and the highest seats in the synagogues, and the chief rooms at feasts; which devour widows’ houses, and for a shew make long prayers”?192 The only thing which can be said in excuse of them is that their horror is never clearly perceived by any one who predicts them.

Side by side with the doctrine of retribution there is in the gospels the message of forgiveness. John the Baptist preached the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins, “and there went out unto him all the land of Judaea, and they of Jerusalem, and were all baptised of him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.” And he preached, saying: “There cometh one mightier than I after me, the latchet of whose shoes I am not worthy to stoop down and unloose. I indeed have baptised you with water: but he shall baptise you with the Holy Ghost.”193 “After that John was put in prison, Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God, And saying, The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe the gospel.”194 “I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.”195 “Pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven, . . . forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. . . . For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you; But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.”196 Yet there is a limit to forgiveness: “All manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men: but the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven unto men.”197

That repentance is followed by forgiveness is found in other religions besides Christianity. According to Zoroastrianism, one element of atonement consists in repentance, as manifested by avowal of the guilt and by the recital of a formula, the Patet.198 58 It is said in the Laws of Manu: “In proportion as a man who has done wrong, himself confesses it, even so far he is freed from guilt, as a snake from its slough. . . . He who has committed a sin and has repented, is freed from that sin, but he is purified only by the resolution of ceasing to sin and thinking ‘I will do so no more.’”199 According to the Rig-Veda, the god Varuna inflicts terrible punishments on the hardened criminal, but is merciful to him who repents; to Varuna, the cry of anguish from remorse ascends, and before him the sinner comes to discharge himself of the burden of his guilt by confession.200 So, also, Zeus pardons the repentant.201 The main doctrine of Judaism on the subject of atonement is comprised in the single word Repentance. No teachers, says Montefiore, “exalted the place and power of repentance more than the Rabbis. There was no sin for which in their eyes a true repentance could not obtain forgiveness from God.”202 According to the Talmud, a space of only two fingers’ breadth lies between hell and heaven: the sinner has only to repent sincerely, and the gates to everlasting bliss will spring open.203

But repentance not only blunts the edge of moral indignation and recommends the offender to the mercy of men and gods: it is the sole ground on which pardon can be given by a scrupulous judge. When sufficiently guided by deliberation and left to itself, without being unduly checked by other emotions, the feeling of moral resentment is apt to last as long as its cause remains unaltered, that is, until the will of the offender has ceased to be offensive; and it ceases to be offensive only when he acknowledges his guilt and repents. It is true that the mere performance of certain ceremonies is frequently supposed to relieve the performer of his sin,204 and the same end is thought to be attained by pleasing God in some way or other, by sacrifice, or almsgiving, or the like. But such ideas are objectionable to the moral consciousness of a higher type. They are based on the crude notion that sin is a material 59 substance which may be removed by material means; or on the belief that an offender may compound with the deity for sinning against him, in the same way as he pacifies his injured neighbour, by bribery or flattery. Hence the Reformation proscribed offerings for the redemption of sins, together with the trade in indulgences; and we meet with an analogous movement in other comparatively advanced forms of religion. In reformed Brahmanism repentance is declared to be the only means of redeeming trespasses.205 The idea expressed in the Psalms, that God delights not in burnt offerings, but that the sacrifices of God are a broken and a contrite heart,206 became the prevailing opinion among the Rabbis, most of whom regarded repentance as the conditio sine quâ non of expiation and the forgiveness of sins.207

That moral indignation is appeased by repentance, and that repentance is the only proper ground for forgiveness, is due, not to the specifically moral character of such indignation, but to its being a form of resentment. This is confirmed by the fact that an angry and revengeful man is apt to be in a similar way influenced by the sincere apology of the offender. As Aristotle said, men are placable in regard to those who acknowledge and repent their guilt: “there is proof of this in the case of chastising servants; for we chastise more violently those who contradict us, and deny their guilt; but towards such as acknowledge themselves to be justly punished we cease from our wrath.”208 In the case of revenge external satisfaction or material compensation is often allowed to take the place of genuine repentance, and the humiliation of the adversary may be sufficient to quiet the angry passion. But the revenge felt by a reflecting mind is not so readily satisfied. It wants to remove the cause which aroused it. The object which resentment is chiefly intent upon, Adam Smith observes, “is not so much to make our enemy feel pain in his turn, as to make him conscious that he feels it upon account of his past conduct, to make him repent of that conduct, and to make him sensible, that the person whom he injured did not deserve to be treated in that manner.”209 The delight of revenge, says Bacon, “seemeth to be not so much in doing the hurt, as in making the party repent.”210

60 While Jesus was capable of feeling intense moral indignation, his emotion of moral approval, of which moral praise or reward is the outward manifestation, plays an even more prominent part in his teaching, as is shown by the innumerable cases in which eternal reward is promised for righteousness. Modern theologians have been disconcerted by this fact and tried to minimise it. They have said that the hope of reward and consequently a eudemonistic motive “sometimes” is found in the teaching of Jesus;211 that “it cannot be denied that the idea of reward and punishment now and then peeps out from the context of Christian ethics”;212 that “no doubt Jesus did on occasion make an appeal to self-interest.”213 To disclose the inaccuracy of these statements, for which ignorance should be no excuse, the following quotations from the gospels may suffice:

“Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled. Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God. Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God. Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness’ sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake. Rejoice, and be exceeding glad; for great is your reward in heaven” (Matthew v. 5—12).

“When thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth: That thine alms may be in secret: and thy Father which seeth in secret himself shall reward you openly. . . . When thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly” (ibid. vi. 3, 4, 6).

“If ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you” (ibid. vi. 14). See supra, p. 57.

“When thou fasteth, anoint thine head, and wash thy face; That thou appear not unto men to fast, but unto thy Father which is in secret: and thy Father, which seeth in secret, shall reward thee openly” (ibid. vi. 17 sq.).

“Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter 61 into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven” (ibid. vii. 21).

“Whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock” (ibid. vii. 24). See also Luke vi. 47 sq.

“Ye shall be hated of all men for my name’s sake: but he that endureth to the end shall be saved” (Matthew x. 22).

“He that receiveth a prophet in the name of a prophet shall receive a prophet’s reward; and he that receiveth a righteous man in the name of a righteous man shall receive a righteous man’s reward. And whosoever shall give to drink unto one of these little ones a cup of cold water only in the name of a disciple, verily I say unto you, he shall in no wise lose his reward” (Matthew x. 41 sq.). See also Mark ix. 41.

“Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Who has ears to hear, let him hear” (Matthew xiii. 43).

“Whosoever will save his life shall lose it; and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it. For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” (ibid. xvi. 25 sq.). See also ibid. x. 39; Mark, viii. 35 sq.; Luke, ix. 24 sq.

“Every one that hath forsaken houses, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my name’s sake, shall receive an hundredfold, and shall inherit everlasting life” (Matthew xix. 29). See also Mark x. 29 sq.; Luke xviii. 29 sq.

“And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats: And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left. Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat; I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me. . . . Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me. . . . The righteous [shall go] into life eternal” (Matthew xxv. 32—36, 40, 46).

“Blessed are ye, when men shall hate you, and when they shall separate you from their company, and shall reproach you, and cast out your name as evil, for the Son of man’s sake. Rejoice ye in that day, and leap for joy: for, behold, your reward is great in heaven” (Luke vi. 22 sq.).

62 “Love ye your enemies, and do good, and lend, hoping for nothing again; and your reward shall be great, and ye shall be the children of the Highest: for he is kind unto the unthankful and to the evil. Be ye therefore merciful, as your Father also is merciful. Judge not, and ye shall not be judged; condemn not, and ye shall not be condemned: forgive, and ye shall be forgiven: Give, and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over, shall men give into your bosom. For with the same measure that ye mete withal it shall be measured to you again” (ibid. vi. 35—38).

“Seek ye the kingdom of God; and all these things (food and drink and clothing) shall be added unto you” (ibid. xii. 31).

“When thou makest a dinner or a supper, call not thy friends, nor thy brethren, neither thy kinsmen, nor thy rich neighbours; lest they also bid thee again, and a recompense be made thee. But when thou makest a feast, call the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind: And thou shalt be blessed; for they cannot recompense thee: for thou shalt be recompensed at the resurrection of the just” (ibid. xiv. 12—14).

“Every one that exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted” (ibid. xviii. 14).

When Jesus was asked by a certain ruler what he should do to inherit eternal life, and heard that he had kept all the commandments, “he said unto him, Yet lackest thou one thing; sell all that thou hast, and distribute unto the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come, follow me” (ibid. xviii. 18, 20—22). See also Matthew, xix. 16, 18—21; Mark x. 17, 19—21.

As it, after all, cannot be denied that the gospels contain promises of reward, attempts have been made to extenuate their presence. It is said that they serve a “pedagogical” purpose being intended to influence people with a moral consciousness of an inferior type;214 that Jesus for this reason made use of an idea which was prevalent in Jewish thought, but in such a way as to abolish it “by transforming the reward into a gift of love, which transcends the claims that can be raised by the worker”;215 that the gospels speak of reward not to make people desirous of it, but to teach people that righteousness is pleasing to God, and must be followed by reward. When the world shows itself hostile to the good man, this belief serves 63 to cheer and comfort him and make him persevere and progress in goodness.216 This seems to be the general doctrine in Lutheran theology. But Luther admits that such an unselfish belief is hardly ever found in actual Christendom.217

It is easy to see why Christian theologians are perplexed by the promises of rewards in the gospels. Moral judgments are influenced by the motives of conduct. They are passed on intentions and deliberate wishes and the motive of an act may itself be an intention or deliberate wish but one referring to another act. When Brutus helped to kill Cæsar in order to save his country, his intention or deliberate wish, or hope, to save it was the reason, and therefore the motive, for his intention to kill Cæsar. But if we more carefully analyse our moral judgments, we find that they are not really passed on intentions or deliberate wishes in the abstract, but on the persons who have them: they are held blamable or worthy of praise on account of their intentions or wishes, because the moral emotions are reactionary attitudes towards living beings. Now we do not feel the emotion of moral approval or retributive kindliness towards a person if we recognise that he does a thing only in the selfish hope of being benefited by it, for example, if he saves another person from drowning merely because he expects a reward for it. The reason for this is not the specifically moral character of moral approval, but the fact of its being a retributive emotion. We do not feel grateful either to a person who bestows a benefit upon us, if we find that he does it only in his own interest.

As a matter of fact, however, moral judgments are commonly passed on acts without much regard being paid to their motives. Moral indignation and moral approval are in the first place aroused by conspicuous facts, and whilst intentions are expressed in the acts themselves, their motives are not. Men desire that certain acts shall be performed, and other acts refrained from. The motives, or conative causes of acts and forbearances are not equally interesting, and they are often mixed, uncertain, and hidden. As a mediæval writer puts it, “the devil himself knoweth not the thought of man.”218 Though we would not praise a person for some deed which we clearly recognise to reflect no merit on his will, the benefit which results from a good act easily induces us to exaggerate the goodness, of the 64 agent. On the other hand, it is success alone that confers upon a man the full reward which he deserves; good intentions without corresponding deeds meet with little applause even when the failure is due to mere misfortune. But it is only from ignorance or want of due reflection that moral judgments are influenced by outward deeds. Owing to its very nature the moral consciousness, when sufficiently thoughtful, regards the will as the only proper object of moral disapproval or moral praise.

The teaching of Jesus certainly laid stress on the motives of conduct. It has been described as an ethic of inwardness: “he rebukes acquisitiveness rather than wealth, lust rather than adultery, hatred rather than war or violence.”219 He condemned the Pharisees, whose leaven was hypocrisy,220 who for a pretence made long prayer, who made clean the outside of the cup and the platter, but whose inward part was full of wickedness.221 He said: “That which cometh out of the man, that defileth the man. For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, Thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness: All these evil things come from within, and defile the man.”222 But in breaking with Pharisaism on the point of its mechanical conception of duty Jesus reverted, in fact, to the position taken up by the Prophets of Israel, whose teachings he must often have listened to in the synagogue at Nazareth.223 “The Lord said, Forasmuch as this people draw near me with their mouth, and with their lips do honour me, but have removed their heart far from me, and their fear towards me is taught by the precept of men: Therefore, behold, I will proceed to do a marvellous work among this people, even a marvellous work and a wonder: for the wisdom of their wise men shall perish, and the understanding of their prudent men shall be hid.”224 “Thus saith the Lord to the men of Judah and Jerusalem, Break up your fallow ground, and sow not among thorns. Circumcise yourselves to the Lord, and take away the foreskins of your heart, ye men of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem: lest my fury come forth like fire, and burn that none can quench it, because of the evil of your doings. . . . O Jerusalem, wash thine heart from wickedness, that thou 65 mayest be saved.”225 “Cast away from you all your transgressions, whereby ye have transgressed; and make you a new heart and a new spirit.”226 In the rabbinical literature few sayings are quoted more frequently than the adage which closes those tractates of the Mishna which deal with the sacrificial law: “He that brings few offerings is as he that brings many; let his heart be directed heavenward.”227 In the Talmud it is said: “Before a man prays let him purify his heart”;228 “Sin committed with a good motive is better than a precept fulfilled from a bad motive”;229 “No charity is rewarded but according to the degree of benevolence in it.”230

That moral qualities are internal has indeed been recognised by all great moralists. Confucius required an inward sincerity in all outward practice, and poured scorn on the Pharisaism which contented itself with cleaning the outside of the cup and platter.231 He said that “in the rites of mourning exceeding grief with deficient rites is better than little demonstration of grief with superabounding rites; and that in those of sacrifice exceeding reverence with deficient rites is better than an excess of rites with but little reverence.”232 “Sacrifice is not a thing coming to a man from without; it issues from within him, and has its birth in his heart. When the heart is deeply moved, expression is given to it by ceremonies.”233 The virtuous man offers his sacrifices “without seeking for anything to be gained by them.”234 “The Master said: ‘See what a man does, mark his motives.’”235 The popular Taoist work called ‘The Book of Secret Blessings’ inculcates the necessity of purifying the heart as a preparation for all right-doing; and in another Taoist work it is written: “If you form in your heart a good intention, although you may not have done any good, the good spirits follow you. If you form in your heart a bad intention, although you may not have done any harm, the evil spirits follow you.”236 One of the Pahlavi texts puts the following 66 words into the mouth of the Spirit of Wisdom: “To be grateful in the world, and to wish happiness for every one; this is greater and better than every good work.”237 The religious legislator of Brahmanism, whilst assuming in accordance with the popular view that the fulfilment of religious duty will always be rewarded to some extent, whatever may be the motive, maintains that the man who fulfils his duties without regard to the rewards which follow the fulfilment, will enjoy the highest happiness in this life and eternal happiness hereafter.238 “He who is pure in heart is the truest priest,” said Buddha.239 According to ‘Dhammapada,’ “if a man speaks or acts with an evil thought, pain follows him, as the wheel follows the foot of the ox that draws the carriage. . . . If a man speaks or acts with a pure thought, happiness follows him, like a shadow that never leaves him.”240 In his description of the Buddhists of Mongolia the Rev. James Gilmour observes: “Mongol priests recognise the power of motive in estimating actions. . . . The attitude of the mind decides the nature of the act. He that offers a cup of cold water only, in a proper spirit, has presented a gift quite as acceptable as the most magnificent of donations.”241

Although Jesus insisted on inwardness and purity of heart, there is no indication that he regarded the hope of reward as an obstacle to gaining it. How could anybody make a promise and at the same time require that it should not influence the conduct of the promisee? There is no inconsistency between benevolence being the immediate spring of action and the hope of reward being the ultimate motive for it: a person may aim at his own happiness as his ultimate end and at the same time aim sincerely at the happiness of his neighbour as a means to that end. Kant said that “morality is not properly the doctrine how we should make ourselves happy, but how we should become worthy of happiness.”242 But then he placed the virtuous man in a most precarious position. Even though he know that he is worthy of happiness, and even may hope to participate in it,243 he must not allow any such hope to slip in 67 as a motive for his conduct; for if he does so, he ceases to be virtuous and will not get the happiness he hopes for.

This was not the teaching of Jesus. To desire to gain divine favour, with everything implied in it, must certainly have been regarded by him as a right motive for our conduct. But then it cannot be said that there is in his message “no support for a hedonistic ethic.”244 He represents heaven as a place where his followers will receive ample compensation for all their present suffering.245 They will enjoy the company of the great and good of former ages. Jesus will be there himself, in glory, to welcome them into everlasting habitations, and they will see God, the Father who is in heaven, face to face. They will have their old bodies,246 and Jesus does not even scruple to throw into the picture a dash of material felicity, speaking of the drinking of wine in his Father’s kingdom.247 There is, however, this difference, mentioned in all the synoptic gospels,248 that the children of resurrection will neither marry nor be given in marriage, but be as the angels of God in heaven. Neither can they die any more.249

The ethics of Jesus are not only hedonism, but egoistic hedonism, as defined by Sidgwick, that is, “a system which prescribes actions as means to the end of the individual’s happiness or pleasure.”250 It cannot be said that the section of eighteenth-century hedonists who supported their theory by theological considerations251 contradicted the teaching of Jesus, when they looked upon self-love as the ground for accepting the will of God as our rule; nor that Waterland did so in his ‘Sermon on Self-Love,’ in which he said: “The wisest course for any man to take is to secure an interest in the life to come. . . . There can be no excess of fondness, or self-indulgence, in respect of eternal happiness. This is loving himself in the best manner, and to the best purposes. All virtue and piety are thus resolvable into a principle of self-love. . . . It is with reference to ourselves, and for our own sakes, that we love even God himself.”252 Paley defined virtue bluntly as “the doing good to mankind, in obedience to the will of God, and for the 68 sake of everlasting happiness.”253 This motive is in agreement with Augustine’s saying that in the heavenly city “there is only the piety that serves the true God and expects a reward.”254

The most authoritative description of the ethics of Jesus as egoistic hedonism comes from a theologian of the highest repute, Nathan Söderblom, the late Archbishop of Sweden. He wrote in his book on the Sermon on the Mount: “If it is asked why everything which is commanded in the Sermon on the Mount is to be done, why we ought to love our enemies, not to put away our wife, and so forth, the ultimate answer, according to Jesus, is not, for the common good or progress of mankind, but the only uniform and satisfactory explanation of his whole ethics and injunction of piety runs: in order to save our soul. The infinite value of the individual human soul is the leading idea in the Sermon on the Mount and the whole message of Jesus. To this fact many of the moderns are perfectly blind.” Jesus does not advocate “a careful weighing of one’s own good against the good of others, but a ruthless egoism: build thou thy house upon a rock, so that it shall stand when the floods come and the winds blow.”255

Another well-known Swedish theologian, professor Nygren, says on the contrary that “the evangelical ethics are the most anti-eudemonistic of all ethical theories,”256 and even goes so far as to allege that according to the teaching of Jesus (as well as that of Paul) God’s relations to the human beings are in no way influenced by their behaviour, but depend exclusively upon the nature of his love, which is “spontaneous” or “prompted by no motive.”257 In support of this allegation he quotes repeatedly the saying, “I came not to call the righteous, but sinners”;258 Luke adds: “to repentance.”259 This has been said to be clearly a gloss, since there is no notion at all that Jesus had brought with him into the world any new way of procuring forgiveness of sins but that of repentance.260 It has been pointed out that the prodigal son in the parable is 69 nearer his father than the elder brother, and that there is more joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth than over ninety-nine just men. But the prodigal son showed his repentance in thought and in word and in act; and while we do not generally feel any positive pleasure because a person acts rightly, it is different when a sinner repents. Even Luther, whose authority is appealed to for the doctrine that God’s love is prompted by no motive, demanded in the first of his ninety-nine theses that a Christian’s whole life should be a continuous penitential act.

I am at a loss to understand how Professor Nygren can ignore sayings like these: “With what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again”;261 “Every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment; for by thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned”;262 “The Son of man shall come in the glory of his Father with his angels; and then he shall reward every man according to his works”;263—and the number of others quoted above. The principle of reward and punishment permeates all the moral teaching of Jesus.

CHAPTER IV

THE ETHICS OF JESUS: THEIR DISINTERESTEDNESS AND ALTRUISM

WHILE Jesus’ doctrine of punishment and reward is an outcome of the retributive character of the moral emotions, his teaching also emphasises that disinterestedness which distinguishes them from other, non-moral, retributive emotions. This he does in his enunciation of the “Golden Rule”: “All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them”;264 or “As ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise.”265 The disinterestedness of the moral emotions also finds an echo in the rebuke: “Why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? . . . Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye.”266

The Golden Rule is much older than Christianity and, especially in its negative form, widespread. In the Sanskrit work ‘Mahabharata’ it is said: “Let no man do to another that which would be repugnant to himself; this is the sum of righteousness; the rest is according to inclination. In refusing, in bestowing, in regard to pleasure and to pain, to what is agreeable and disagreeable, a man obtains the proper rule by regarding the case as like his own.”267 Similar words are ascribed to Confucius. When Tsze-kung asked if there is any one word which may serve as a rule of practice for all one’s life, the Master answered: “Is not Reciprocity such a word? What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others.” And in another utterance Confucius showed that the rule had for him not only a negative, but also a positive form. He said that, in the way of the superior man, there are four things to none of which he himself had as yet attained: to serve his 71 father as he would require his son to serve him, to serve his prince as he would require his minister to serve him, to serve his elder brother as he would require his younger brother to serve him, and to set the example in behaving to a friend as he would require the friend to behave to him.268 In Greece Isocrates enunciated the maxim: “Do not do to others that which angers you when they do it to you.”269 Aristotle, when questioned how we should behave to our friends, is quoted by Diogenes Laertius as saying: “Exactly as we would they should behave to us.”270 Seneca wrote: “Let us put ourselves in the place of him with whom we are angry. . . . We are quite willing to do to others what we cannot endure should be done to ourselves”;271 and Epictetus: “That which thou wouldst not suffer thyself, seek not to lay upon others.”272 In its negative form the Golden Rule is also found in the earlier Judaism. Tobit said to his son: “Take heed to thyself, my child, in all thy works, and be discreet in thy behaviour; what thou thyself hatest, do to no man.”273 When a heathen came to the famous rabbi Hillel and said to him that he would embrace Judaism on condition that he were taught the whole doctrine during the time that he stood on one leg, the rabbi replied: “What thou doest not like, do not do to thy neighbour; that is the whole doctrine, all the rest is only explanation.”274 According to Augustine the precept that we must not do to others what we do not wish them to do to us, is a rule of behaviour which is by nature inherent in the human mind;275 and Hobbes speaks of the “laws of nature” expressed in “this one sentence, approved by all the world, Do not that to another, which thou thinkest unreasonable to be done by another to thy selfe.”276 They were perfectly right for the simple reason that disinterestedness is an essential characteristic of the moral emotions, without which there could be no moral precepts at all.

The Golden Rule also occurs in its prohibitive shape—“that which ye will that other men do not unto you, do not that to other men”—in the earliest quotations of it which are 72 found in Christian literature outside the gospels. In this negative form it is already attached to the Apostolic Decree as early as the Western text to the Acts xv. 29, dating from the opening years of the second century if not from a still earlier period, and, in spite of its absence from the received text, it continued to hold a place in this passage of the Acts down to a comparatively late date.277 The negative form is also observable in post-Biblical Christian writings.278

It is not difficult to explain why the negative Golden Rule is more widely spread than the positive one. Negative commandments spring from the disapproval of acts, whereas positive commandments spring from the disapproval of forbearances or omissions, and the indignation of men is much more easily aroused by action than by absence of action. A person who commits a harmful deed is a more obvious cause of pain than a person who causes harm by doing nothing, and this naturally affects the question of guilt in the eyes of most people. Moreover, the Golden Rule implies that it cannot be right for A to treat B in a manner in which it would be wrong for B to treat A, unless there is some difference between the natures or circumstances of the two individuals which can be regarded as a reasonable ground for difference of treatment; and such differences are generally more restricted in the case of acts that are forbidden than in the case of acts that are positively enjoined. The negative commandments are also more distinct: they condemn certain definite modes of behaviour, while the rules of benevolence often are more comprehensive. It seems that almost from the outset the rule of the gospels was in need of explanation and some limitation. In certain Latin versions the words “good things” were inserted after the word “whatsoever.” Those who made the insertion recognised evidently that it is not everything which we may wish for ourselves that we are bound to do for others. We might wish for ourselves, for instance, some form of illicit or undesirable pleasure, and yet cannot be bound to provide for others such pleasure or assist them in obtaining it for themselves.279

The disinterestedness of the moral emotions partly underlies the rule, “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself,” which 73 occurs both in the Old Testament280 and in the three synoptic gospels.281 But this maxim contains much more than the disinterestedness of the conception of duty. When a person pronounces an act right or wrong, it implies that it is so ceteris paribus, whether he does it to another or another does it to him, but this has nothing to do with the particular nature of the act. When my own interests clash with those of my neighbour, I may have the right to prefer my own lesser good to the greater good of another, but only on condition that the other person also, in similar circumstances, is admitted to have the right to prefer his own lesser good to my greater good. No such right to prefer one’s own lesser good to the greater good of another is recognised in the precept, “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself”; but this precept owes its origin to the strength of the altruistic sentiment in him who laid down the rule, and not merely to the disinterestedness of his moral emotions.

The precept inculcating love of one’s neighbour is rooted in the altruistic sentiment, which, as I have pointed out above, has produced moral emotions, as distinguished from other retributive emotions not only by their disinterestedness, but also by their impartiality in other respects. Now the altruistic sentiment varies greatly both in strength and expanse, and so does consequently the love of neighbour which is prescribed as a duty by different moral codes. The groups of neighbours to which these rules refer may vary indefinitely, without interfering with the impartiality required by the moral emotions from which they sprang. If it is considered wrong of a person to cheat another belonging to his own group but not wrong to cheat a foreigner, the impartiality of the moral emotion of disapproval, which underlies the concept of wrongness, merely leads to a general rule that applies to all similar cases independently of the nationality of him who holds the view. If I maintain that a foreigner, or a member of another class in my own society, has a duty towards me but that I have not the same duty towards him, my opinion can be morally justified only on condition that there is some difference in the circumstances affecting the morality of the case. The impartiality of my moral emotions does not prevent me from promoting the welfare of my own family or country in preference to that of other families or countries. But they tell me that I must allow anybody else to show a similar preference for his family or country.

74 The question is, then, who is my neighbour whom I ought to love as myself? This question was put to Jesus by a lawyer who asked him what he should do to inherit eternal life. Jesus answered him by telling the parable of the traveller who fell among thieves and was left half dead, of the priest and the Levite who passed by on the other side, and of the good Samaritan who took care of the wounded man; and he then asked the lawyer which of those three he thought was “neighbour unto him that fell among the thieves? And he said, He that shewed mercy on him. Then said Jesus unto him, Go, and do thou likewise.”282 This has been alleged to prove that in the thought of Jesus the idea of neighbour had lost all such limitations as in the earlier Jewish interpretation were imposed by national animosity, and embraced all men irrespective of race. Much significance has also been attached to the word “men” in the passage, “All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them” (Matthew vii. 12),283 and to the word “whosoever” in the passage, “Whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is my brother, and sister, and mother” (ibid. xii. 50; Mark iii. 35).284 As to the alleged implications of these two passages, it must be said to be a poor case that is considered to need the support of such strained interpretations; indeed, the latter of them directly contains an important limitation. And the parable of a Samaritan who takes pity on a wounded stranger is scarcely a clear answer to the question: Who is my neighbour whom I should love as myself?

On the other hand, there is good evidence in the gospels that Jesus had not entirely discarded Jewish exclusiveness in these matters. He seems to have felt himself as one who had come with a message to the people of Israel. When he sent out his disciples as travelling apostles, he “commanded them, saying, Go not into the way of the Gentiles, and into any city of the Samaritans enter ye not: But go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. And as ye go, preach, saying, The kingdom of heaven is at hand.”285 Again, a Syrophœnician woman came from the environs of Tyre, “and cried unto him, saying, Have mercy on me, O Lord, thou Son of David; my daughter is grievously vexed with a devil. But he answered her not a word. And his disciples came and besought him, 75 saying, Send her away; for she crieth after us. But he answered and said, I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel. Then came she and worshipped him, saying, Lord, help me. But he answered and said, It is not meet to take the children’s bread, and to cast it to dogs.” When the woman, admitting the truth of this, made the remark that the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their masters’ table, Jesus “answered and said unto her, O woman, great is thy faith: be it unto thee even as thou wilt.” And her daughter was made whole from that very hour.286 By the children whose bread should not be cast to the dogs, Jesus obviously meant the Jews.287 It was to Jewish sinners that Jesus addressed himself; his life was spent in wandering over the narrow strip of ground between Capernaum and Jerusalem. He is sometimes represented as speaking of the gospel being preached “among all nations,” or “throughout the whole world,” or “to every creature”;288 but these utterances are scarcely congruous with his belief in the imminence of the end of the world.289 As Dean Rashdall observes, “there is no critically unassailable evidence that he ever spoke of actually converting the world to his gospel or making gentiles into members of a worldwide Church.”290

It has been argued that the belief in a common divine fatherhood compels us to regard every man as a neighbour whom we ought to love as ourselves. Among the Jews their common descent from Abraham was always felt to bind them together in mutual obligations. The novelty introduced by Jesus, we are told, lies in the fact that he grounded such obligations on a common descent from God: “by substituting the Father in Heaven for father Abraham, Christ made morality universal. This phrase, which places not a certain number of men, but all men, in the relation of brotherhood to each other, destroys at once the partition-wall between Jew and Gentile, Greek and barbarian.”291 Mr. Hirst writes: “Since the love of God is a Father’s love, man, being God’s child, must love 76 him with filial devotion and other men as brothers.”292 And Bishop Bohlin maintains not only that the principle of a human brotherhood is derived from that of the fatherhood of God, but even that without their belief in God as a Father the Christians could never have formed the idea of a common human brotherhood.293 As a matter of fact, however, we find in the gospels neither the belief in a common divine fatherhood nor the idea of a common human brotherhood.

By careful study of the passages in the New Testament in which God is spoken of as a Father, Professor Mead has found that he is called so with reference either to Christ in particular or to Christ’s believers. When Jesus is especially addressing the Pharisees or others who are not in sympathy with him, he never calls God their Father. He nowhere distinctly declares that the fatherhood of God is universal, but he is recorded distinctly to assert that it is not universal. When certain of the Jews, in their dispute with Jesus, said to him: “We be not born of fornication; we have one Father, even God,” he replied: “If God were your Father, ye would love me. . . . Ye are of your father the devil.”294 Again, when we examine the New Testament passages which speak of men as the sons or children of God, we find that the gospels, and particularly the words of Jesus as recorded there, present not a single declaration to the effect that all men are children of God. Wherever the conception is found, it clearly and unmistakably is limited to a portion of mankind. On one occasion Jesus said that those who love their enemies become the children of the heavenly Father.295 Paul said: “As many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God.”296

Nor do we find in the gospels the notion of a universal brotherhood. In a passage quoted above Jesus says that his brother is he who does the will of God.297 John puts into his mouth a saying in which he enjoins on his disciples brotherly love of a very narrow compass: “A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, 77 that ye also love one another. By this all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye love one to another.”298 It has been pointed out that the prevalent sense of ἀδελφός in the New Testament is that of “fellow-Christian”—a restricted meaning which is sometimes markedly imposed by the immediate context299—and that the love required frequently refers to the brotherhood of believers only.300 Even Paul, in spite of his cosmopolitan outlook, wrote to the Romans: “Be kindly affectioned one to another with brotherly love; in honour preferring one another”;301 and to the Thessalonians: “As touching brotherly love ye need not that I write unto you: for ye yourselves are taught of God to love one another. And indeed ye do it toward all the brethren which are in all Macedonia.”302 In another epistle he wrote: “As we have . . . opportunity, let us do good unto all men, especially unto them who are of the household of faith.”303 Hospitality towards strangers is represented as a duty in the New Testament,304 as it was by the Jews, but sometimes its exercise is expressly confined to the case of fellow-Christians.305 Otherwise there is nothing specifically Christian about it. Hospitality seems to be a universal custom among the lower races whilst in their native state, as also among the early peoples of culture. But there is no doubt that it is in the main based on egoistic considerations, particularly connected with superstitious ideas about the unknown mysterious stranger, who is looked upon as a potential cause of evil if he is treated badly, and as a potential benefactor if he is received as a guest.306 The latter idea is expressly mentioned as the reason for the injunction in the Epistle to the Hebrews: “Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.”307

As to the contention that without their belief in God as a father the Christians could never have formed the idea of a common human brotherhood, it should be noticed that tenets of universal love have been laid down both by the Stoics and by Eastern moralists, who had no notion of a divine fatherhood. The Chinese teachers of morality inculcated benevolence to all 78 men, without making any reference to national distinctions.308 Mih-tsze, who lived in the interval between Confucius and Mencius, even thought that we ought to love all men equally; but this called forth protests as abnegating the peculiar devotion due to relatives.309 In ‘Thâi-Shang’ it is said that a good man will feel kindly towards every creature, and should not hurt even the insect tribes, grass, and trees.310 Buddhism enjoins the duty of universal love: “As a mother, even at the risk of her own life, protects her son, her only son, so let a man cultivate goodwill without measure toward all beings, . . . unhindered love and friendliness toward the whole world, above, below, around.”311 According to the Hindu work ‘Panchatantra’ it is the thought of little-minded persons to consider whether a man is one of ourselves or an alien, the whole earth being of kin to him who is generously disposed.312

Much importance has been attached to the fact that in the teaching of Jesus the two commandments enjoining the love of God and the love of neighbour, which in the Old Testament occur in different books,313 have been put together in the saying: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.”314 This combination has led to the conclusion that the love of neighbour follows from the love of God, and cannot exist without it.315 I find no evidence for such a conclusion in the saying that the second commandment is “like unto”316 the first. They are like each other in so far that both are commandments of love. But the word “love” cannot mean the same in both cases. The love of God implies reverence, gratitude,317 devotion, and trust or faith; the love of neighbour means practically benevolence. Love as a 79 pure emotion cannot, of course, be commanded, but it readily develops into a volition, and becomes then a proper object of moral judgment. It is absurd, however, to suppose that benevolence towards a fellow-man could be merely derivative from the love of God. If it were, I am afraid that there would not be much of it even in the Christian world; as Dean Inge says, “‘love of God’ is talked about more often than felt,”318 and while “god-fearing” is a common epithet for a devout Christian, “god-loving” is not found even in dictionaries. Paul speaks extremely rarely of the love of God. Instead of saying that the love of neighbour follows from the love of God, we may rather say, with John, that a man cannot love God, whom he has not seen, if he does not love his brother, whom he has seen.319

The altruistic sentiment, of which benevolence is a manifestation, is found in all mammalian species, at least as displayed in the mother’s love of her young, and the duty of benevolence in every human society. There is no doubt that it was such a sentiment that led Jesus to enjoin men to love their neighbours as themselves, and to regard this duty as a command of God. His infinite kindness towards the sick, the needy, and the distressed is abundantly proved throughout the gospels, and finds its most touching expression in the words: “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”320

Among the positive duties resulting from benevolence almsgiving holds a prominent position in the teaching of Jesus. He said: “Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away.”321 When a young ruler who asked him what he should do that he might inherit eternal life, and told him that he had kept all the commandments from his youth, Jesus answered: “Yet lackest thou one thing: sell all that thou hast, and distribute unto the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven.”322 Eternal life is promised to those who feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, take in the stranger, clothe the naked, visit the sick.323

80 This insistence on the duty of charity, which for ages was destined to exercise a paramount influence on Christian morals, belonged to the Jewish heritage. “Thou shalt open thine hand wide unto thy brother, to thy poor, and to thy needy, in thy land”; “for this thing the Lord thy God shall bless thee in all thy works, and in all that thou puttest thine hand unto.”324 Even “if thine enemy be hungry, give him bread to eat; and if he be thirsty, give him water to drink: . . . the Lord shall reward thee.”325 Especially in the Old Testament apocrypha and in rabbinical literature almsgiving assumed an excessive importance—so much so that the word which in the older writings means “righteousness” in general came to be used for almsgiving in particular.326 “Shut up alms in thy storehouses; and it shall deliver thee from all affliction.”327 “As water will quench a flaming fire, so alms maketh an atonement for sins.”328 “For alms doth deliver from death, and shall purge away all sin. Those that exercise alms and righteousness shall be filled with life.”329 The charitable man is rewarded with the birth of male issue.330 Almsgiving outweighs all other duties.331 He who averts his eye from charity commits a sin equal to idolatry.332 It must be extended equally to Jew and Gentile.333 To such an extreme was almsgiving carried by the Jews that, while the giver must devote to charity at least a tenth of his income, some rabbis at length decreed that no man should give more than a fifth, lest he should come to seek charity himself.334 But charity is not sufficient in itself: kind thoughts and words must go with it. To give liberally to the poor, but with sullen look, is to rob the deed of all virtue.335 “Sow [a reward] for yourselves in giving alms as charity, you will reap according to the benevolence.”336 Like Jesus, the rabbis insisted that charity should be done in secret.337 He that gives alms publicly is a sinner; indeed, “better give no alms at all, than give them in public.”338

81 While the duty of almsgiving is in the first place based on the altruistic sentiment and, therefore, is apt to assume a religious character where the deity is looked upon as a being who is kindly disposed towards mankind and a guardian of morality, there are also some special reasons why it has been so strenuously enjoined by religions of a higher type, including others besides Hebrewism and Christianity.339 There is an idea that niggardliness exposes a person to supernatural danger, whereas charity and liberality may entail supernatural reward, on account of the curses or blessings of the poor. The ancient Greeks believed that the beggar had his Erinys,340 his avenging demon, who was evidently a personification of his curse.341 It is said in the Proverbs: “He that giveth unto the poor shall not lack: but he that hideth his eyes shall have many a curse”;342 and in Deuteronomy: “Thou shalt not oppress an hired servant that is poor and needy, . . . lest he cry against thee unto the Lord, and it be sin unto thee.”343 The same idea is expressed in Ecclesiasticus: “Turn not away thine eye from the needy, and give him none occasion to curse thee: for if he curse thee in the bitterness of his soul, his prayer shall be heard of him that made him. . . . A prayer out of a poor man’s mouth reacheth to the ears of God, and his judgment cometh speedily.”344 In a very early Christian work, the ‘Shepherd’ of Hermas, it is said: “Beware, ye that glory in your riches, lest perhaps they groan who are in want, and their sighing come up to God, and ye be shut out with your goods without the gate of the tower.”345 And a poor man is able not only to punish the uncharitable by means of his curse, but also to reward the generous giver by means of his blessing; as it is said in Ecclesiasticus: “Stretch thine hand unto the poor, that thy blessing may be perfected. A gift hath grace in the sight of every man living.”346 While he who withholdeth corn shall be cursed by the people, “blessing shall be upon the head of him that selleth it.”347 Hermas writes that as the vine is supported by the elm, so is the rich man helped by the prayers of the poor. “The poor 82 praying unto the Lord for the rich are heard by him; and their riches are increased, because they minister to the poor of their wealth.”348

The curses and blessings, no doubt, partly account for the fact that almsgiving has come to be regarded as a religious duty. They have not necessarily the character of an appeal to a god, but may be believed to possess a purely magical power, independently of any superhuman will. This belief is rooted in the close association between the wish, more particularly the spoken wish, and the idea of its fulfilment. The wish is looked upon in the light of energy which may be transferred—by material contact, or by the eye, or by means of speech—to the person concerned, and then becomes a fact. This process, however, is not taken quite as a matter of course. There is always some mystery about it, and one—though not the only—method of giving the curse or the blessing that supernatural quality which alone can bring about the result desired is to invoke in it a god. His own feelings need not be considered at all: his holy name may simply be brought in to impart to it that mystic efficacy which the plain word lacks. In the Talmud there are traces of the idea that the name of the Lord might be used with advantage in any curse however undeserved.349 But with the deepening of the religious sentiment this idea has to be given up. A righteous and mighty god can scarcely agree to be a mere tool in the hand of a wicked curser. Hence the curse comes to be looked upon as a prayer, which is not fulfilled if undeserved; as it is said in the Proverbs, “the curse causeless shall not come.”350 And the same is the case with a blessing. In ancient days Jacob could take away his brother’s blessing by deceit;351 the blessing acted in the same way as a medicine, which cures the patient just as well if it is stolen as if it is bought. But later on its efficacy was limited by moral considerations. The Psalmist declares that only the offspring of the righteous can be blessed,352 and according to the Apostolic Constitutions, “although a widow who eateth and is filled from the wicked, pray for them, she shall not be heard.”353 On the other hand, curses and blessings, when well deserved, continued to draw down calamity or prosperity upon their objects, by inducing God to put them into effect. This notion prevails both in 83 Judaism and Mohammedanism,354 and underlies the Christian oath and benediction. As an uncharitable man deserves to be punished and a charitable man merits reward, the curses and blessings of the poor will be heard by a righteous God. “The Lord will plead their cause.”355

Besides the belief in the efficacy of curses and blessings there is another, and more important, reason for the extraordinary stress which the higher religions lay on the duty of charity, namely the connection between almsgiving and sacrifice. When food is offered as a tribute to a god, he is supposed to enjoy its spiritual part only, while the substance of it is left behind and is in many cases eaten by the poor. And when the offering is continued in ceremonial survival in spite of the growing conviction that, after all, the deity does not need and cannot profit by it, the poor become the heirs of the god. The chief virtue of the act then lies in the self-abnegation of the donor, and its efficacy is measured by the “sacrifice” which it costs him.

Many instances may be quoted of sacrificed food being left for the poor or being distributed among them,356 whilst in other cases almsgiving is itself regarded as a form of sacrifice, or takes the place of it.357 When the destruction of the temple with its altar filled the Jews with alarm as they thought of their unatoned sins, Johanan ben Zakkai comforted them saying: “You have another means of atonement as powerful as the altar, and that is the work of charity, for it is said, ‘I desired mercy, and not sacrifice.’”358 Several other passages show how closely the Jews associated almsgiving with sacrifice. “He that giveth alms sacrificeth praise.”359 “As sin-offering makes atonement for Israel, so alms for the Gentiles.”360 “Almsdeeds are more meritorious than all sacrifices.”361 An orphan is called an “altar to God.”362 Alms were systematically collected in the synagogues, and officers were appointed to make the collection.363 So also among the early Christians the collection of 84 alms for the relief of the poor was an act of the Church life itself. Almsgiving took place in public worship, nay formed itself a part of worship. Gifts of natural produce, the so-called oblations, were connected with the celebration of the Lord’s Supper. They were offered to God as the first-fruits of the creatures (primitiæ creaturarum), and a prayer was said: “O Lord, accept also the offerings of those who to-day bring an offering, as Thou didst accept the offerings of righteous Abel, the offering of our father Abraham, the incense of Zachariah, the alms of Cornelius, and the two mites of the widow.” These oblations were not only used for the Lord’s Supper, but also formed the chief means for the relief of the poor. They were regarded as sacrifice in the most special sense; and as no unclean gift might be laid upon the Lord’s altar, profit made from sinful occupations was not accepted as an oblation, neither were the oblations of impenitent sinners.364

The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews speaks of almsgiving as a sacrifice of thanksgiving which continues after the Jewish altar has been done away with.365 Like sacrifice, almsgiving was connected with prayer, as a means of making the prayer efficacious and furnishing it with wings; the angel said to Cornelius: “Thy prayers and thine alms are come up for a memorial before God.”366 When the Christians were reproached for having no sacrifice, Justin wrote: “We have been taught that the only honour that is worthy of Him is not to consume by fire what He has brought into being for our sustenance, but to use it for ourselves and those who need.”367 So also Irenæus observes that sacrifices are not abolished in the New Testament, though their form is indeed altered, because they are no longer offered by slaves, but by freemen, of which just the oblations are the proof.368 And God has enjoined on Christians this sacrifice of oblations, not because He needs them, but “in order that themselves might be neither unfruitful nor ungrateful.”369 Augustine says: “The sacrifice of the Christians is the alms bestowed upon the poor.”370

By pointing out the magical and ritualistic elements in the formation of the religious duty of almsgiving I have, of course, 85 by no means wanted to undermine its altruistic foundation, but only to explain why it has attained the same supreme importance as is otherwise attached only to devotional exercises. And this is certainly a problem by itself, for which the belief in a benevolent God interested in the worldly morality of his believers affords no adequate solution.

The altruism of the ethics of Jesus is also apparent in his insistence on those of the ten commandments which forbid men to do harm to their neighbours. Somewhat different was his attitude towards the commandment, “Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.” It is unlike the others through its appeal to the worldly interests of those who follow it. Among the Hebrews, as among many other peoples,371 the connection between filial submissiveness and religious beliefs was in a large measure due to the extreme significance attributed to parental blessings and curses. They thought that parents, and especially a father, could thereby determine the fate of their children;372 and we have every reason to assume that the reward which in the fifth commandment is held out to respectful children was originally the result of parental blessings. We meet with this idea in Ecclesiasticus, where it is said: “Honour thy father and mother in word and deed, that a blessing may come upon thee from them. For the blessing of the father establisheth the houses of children; but the curse of the mother rooteth out foundations.”373 But a long life on earth was a poor reward compared with the eternal life in heaven. Jesus taught that every one that had forsaken father or mother for his name’s sake would inherit everlasting life.374 His church was a militant church. He had come not to send peace, but a sword, “to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother.”375 Being chiefly addressed to the young, the new teaching naturally caused much disorder in families. Fathers disinherited their converted sons,376 and children thought that they owed no duty to their parents when such a duty was opposed to the interests of their souls. According to Gregory the Great, we ought to ignore our parents, hating them, and flying from them when they are an obstacle to us in 86 the way of the Lord;377 and this became the accepted theory of the Church.378 But it was not only in similar cases of conflict that Jesus spoke disparagingly of family ties that previously had been regarded with religious veneration. In all circumstances the relationship between child and parent was put in the shade by the relationship between man and God: “Call no man your father upon the earth: for one is your Father which is in heaven.”379 And what would an orthodox Jew have thought if he heard the words: “If any man come to me and hate not his father and mother, . . . he cannot be my disciple.”380 In his own conduct he did not always follow the law. When he, at the age of twelve, went to Jerusalem with his parents at the feast of the Passover, he tarried behind without their knowledge, and was found by them in the temple only after three days. The mother reproved him saying: “Son, why hast thou thus dealt with us? behold, thy father and I have sought thee sorrowing”; but afterwards he “was subject unto them.”381 Yet on one occasion his brusque treatment of his mother and brothers surprised the people around him: “There came then his brethren and his mother, and, standing without, sent unto him, calling him. And the multitude sat about him, and they said unto him, Behold, thy mother and thy brethren without seek for thee. And he answered them, saying, Who is my mother, or my brethren? And he looked round about them which sat about him, and said, Behold my mother and my brethren! For whosoever shall do the will of God, the same is my brother, and my sister, and mother.”382 According to John, the mother of Jesus was at a marriage in Cana, to which also he and his disciples were called. “When they wanted wine, the mother of Jesus saith unto him, They have no wine. Jesus saith unto her, Woman, what have I to do with thee? mine hour is not yet come.” Afterwards, however, he turned water into wine.383 Yet in spite of utterances which must have jarred upon Jewish ears, the fifth commandment was left formally intact. It was mentioned by Jesus together with the other commandments which he enumerated in his answer to the man who asked him what he should do that he might inherit eternal life.384

87 In an important point Jesus opposed the Jewish marriage law. In his teaching concerning divorce he stood up for the interests of the wife. The right of the husband to divorce his wife at his pleasure was the central thought in the system of Jewish divorce law, although the rabbis gradually tempered its severity by certain restrictive measures. Two restrictions are already found in the Deuteronomic code: the husband shall not put his wife away all his days if he has falsely accused her of ante-nuptial incontinence,385 or if he has ravished her before marriage;386 but his loss of the right to divorce her in these cases was really a penalty inflicted upon him on account of his own offensive behaviour. To these restrictions the Mishna added a few others;387 but in the same period the very theory of the law was challenged by the school of Shammai, who held that according to Deuteronomy the husband cannot divorce his wife unless he has found her guilty of sexual immorality. The ancient doctrine was strongly supported by the school of Hillel, who went so far as to say that a man can divorce his wife even for the most trivial reason, for instance, for spoiling his food or if he sees another woman who pleases him better. Both schools based their opinions on the same passage in the Deuteronomic text: “When a man hath taken a wife, and married her, and it come to pass that she find no favour in his eyes, because he hath found some uncleanness in her: then let him write her a bill of divorcement, and give it in her hand, and send her out of his house.”388 But the school of Shammai maintained that the expression “some uncleanness” (lit. “the nakedness of a thing”) signified sexual immorality; whereas the school of Hillel interpreted it to mean anything offensive to the husband and, besides, pressed the clause “if she find no favour in his eyes.”389 In legal respects the opinion of Hillel prevailed, although divorce without good cause is said to have been morally disapproved of by the rabbis in general.390

In the sayings of Jesus there are various passages bearing upon the question. A man who puts away his wife and marries 88 another commits adultery,391 he who marries a divorced wife is guilty of the same crime,392 and so is a woman who puts away her husband and is married to another man.393 A man shall cleave to his wife, “they twain shall be one flesh”; and “what God hath joined together, let no man put asunder.”394 According to Matthew, however, Jesus, like Shammai and his school, taught that a man might put away his wife for fornication, but for no other reason. This exception is considered to be an interpolation.395 But Dean Inge asks whether it was not Christ’s method to make statements in an unguarded form, leaving it to the common sense of his hearers to make the necessary qualifications; and he thinks it is a tenable view that the case of adultery was not in the speaker’s mind at the time, and even that to a Jew the right of divorce for adultery might have been too obvious to need reaffirmation.396 In any case, though the rule laid down by Jesus was, from the wife’s point of view, a great improvement on the orthodox Jewish law, its stringency has certainly been a lasting cause of much matrimonial unhappiness in the Christian world.

CHAPTER V

THE ETHICS OF JESUS (concluded)

THE ethical teaching of Jesus discussed in the two last chapters was found to be an expression of intense moral emotions in which both the retributive and the altruistic elements come out very prominently. Specific religious and eschatological beliefs were blended with the ideas springing from those emotions. Our duties to neighbours were founded upon our submission to the will of God,397 and their sanctions were rewards or penalties for obedience or disobedience to his commandments. But those beliefs have not essentially altered the contents of the commandments, as is testified by the innumerable parallels between the teaching of Jesus and that of other moralists. We even find that certain doctrines which had crept into the moral system of the Jews from their religion, but were alien to the emotional origin of morals, were opposed by him. This is particularly apparent in his attitude towards the sabbath.

It has been alleged that the abundant regulations of the rabbis had “tended to obscure in the general mind the original character and intention of the sabbath law.”398 These are evidently supposed to be explained by the words in the decalogue: “Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work: But the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work. . . . For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.”399 It is evident, however, that the institution of the sabbath was not due to any idea of giving a weekly day of rest to men and animals, but to the belief that it was inauspicious or dangerous to work on the seventh day; and there seems to be no doubt that the reason for this belief was the mystic connection which in the opinion of the ancient Hebrews existed between human activity and the changes of the moon. I have pointed out in another work that such a superstition is found among 90 many peoples in different parts of the world.400 It has been sufficiently demonstrated that the sabbath originally depended upon the new moon, and this carries with it the assumption that the Hebrews must at one time have observed a sabbath at intervals of seven days corresponding to the moon’s phases.401 In the Old Testament the new moon and the sabbath are repeatedly mentioned side by side;402 thus the oppressors of the poor are represented as saying: “When will the new moon be gone, that we may sell corn? and the sabbath, that we may set forth wheat?”403 Among modern Jews, at the feast of the new moon, which is held every month on the first or on the first and second days of the month, the women are obliged to suspend all servile work, though the men are not required to interrupt their secular employment.404

Wellhausen suggested that the rest on the sabbath was originally the consequence of that day being the festal and sacrificial day of the week, and only gradually became its essential attribute on account of the regularity with which it every eighth day interrupted the round of everyday work. He argues that the sabbath as a day of rest cannot be very primitive, because such a day “presupposes agriculture and a tolerably hard-pressed working day-life.”405 But this argument appears quite untenable when we consider how frequently changes of the moon are believed to exercise an unfavourable influence upon work of any kind. That the superstitious fear of doing work on the seventh day developed into a religious prohibition, is only another instance of the tendency of magic forces to be transformed into divine volitions. Like the ancient Hebrews, the Assyrians and Babylonians looked upon the seventh day as an “evil day”; and though they do not seem generally to have abstained from work on that day, there were royal taboos connected with it. The king was not to show himself in his chariot, not to hold court, not to bring sacrifices, not to change his clothes, not to eat a good dinner, nor even to curse his enemies.406

91 Jesus exasperated the Pharisees by his treatment of the sabbath. He healed sick people on that day,407 and defended it himself by saying that “it is lawful to do well on the sabbath days.”408 When the Pharisees blamed him for allowing his disciples to pluck the ears of corn as they went through cornfields on the sabbath, he replied: “The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath. Therefore the Son of man is Lord also of the sabbath.”409 In defence of the Pharisees it has been pointed out that they authorised breaches of the sabbatic law in certain contingencies; that they “permitted, nay required, the performance of all necessary works of mercy, but refused to extend the licence too indiscriminately, and never reconciled themselves to the theory that in general the performance of a duty justified the infringement of a prohibition.”410 On such grounds even the accuracy of the reports concerning the indignant Pharisees has been called in question. Drews argues that since healing by merely stretching out one’s hand over the patient, as Jesus is said to have done on the sabbath, was not forbidden by the rabbis, the Pharisees could not have been “filled with madness” on such an occasion.411 But all Pharisees can scarcely be supposed to have been unanimous as to the emergencies in which the sabbath law might be disregarded; and Jesus certainly traversed the Pharisaic position when he treated on the sabbath long-standing diseases, lingering maladies, and, generally, cases where the treatment could be postponed without fear of dangerous consequences.412 We know that the early Christians considered the sabbath to have been abolished by Christ. Jewish converts no doubt continued to observe it, but this met with disapproval. In one of the epistles of Ignatius we find the exhortation not to “sabbatise,” which was expanded by the subsequent paraphraser of these compositions into a warning against keeping the sabbath, after the manner of the Jews, “as if delighting in idleness.”413 And in the fourth century a Council of the Church enacted that “the 92 Christians ought not to judaise and rest on the sabbath, but ought to work on that day.”414

Nor was the Christian Sunday originally in any way a substitute for the Jewish sabbath. It was from early times a recognised custom among the Christians to celebrate the first day of the week in memory of Christ’s resurrection by holding a form of religious service; but there was no sabbatic regard for it, and it was chiefly looked upon as a day of rejoicing.415 Tertullian is the first writer who speaks of abstinence from secular care and labour on Sunday as a duty incumbent upon Christians, lest they should “give place to the devil.”416 But it is extremely doubtful whether the earliest Sunday law really had a Christian origin. In 321 the Emperor Constantine issued an edict to the effect that all judges and all city people and tradesmen should rest on “the venerable Day of the Sun,” whereas those living in the country should have full liberty to attend to the culture of their fields, “since it frequently happens that no other day is so fit for the sowing of grain or the planting of vines.”417 In this rescript nothing is said of any relation to Christianity, nor do we know that it in any way was due to Christian influence.418 It seems that Constantine, in his capacity of Pontifex Maximus, only added the day of the sun—whose worship was the characteristic of the new paganism—to those inauspicious days, religiosi dies, which the Romans of old regarded as unsuitable for worldly business and especially for judicious proceedings.419

But although the obligatory Sunday rest in no case was a continuance of the Jewish sabbath, it was gradually confounded with it, owing to the recognition of the decalogue, with its 93 injunction of a weekly day of rest, as the code of divine morality. From the sixth century upwards vexatious restrictions were made by civil rulers, councils, and ecclesiastical writers,420 until in Puritanism the Christian Sunday became a perfect image of the Pharisaic sabbath, or even excelled it in the rigour with which abstinence from every kind of worldly activity was insisted upon. The theory that the keeping holy of one day out of seven is the essence of the fourth commandment reconciled people to the fact that the Jewish sabbath was the seventh day and Sunday the first. In England, in the seventeenth century, persons were punished for carrying coal on Sunday, for hanging out clothes to dry, for travelling on horseback, for rural strolls and walking about.421 And there were Scotch clergymen who taught their congregations that on that day it was sinful even to save a vessel in distress.422 Until quite recently the Scottish Sunday was observed with amazing rigour. Not only were ordinary recreations disallowed, but a ban was put even upon books and music, except such as were recognised as religious in the narrow sense. Indeed, no recreation remained but whisky-drinking; and a writer in Hastings’ Encyclopædia of Religion attributes a great part of the drunkenness which is still common in Scotland to this strange Sabbatarianism.

Jesus inaugurated his ministry by a fast of forty days;423 the Jews associated fasting with divine revelations.424 It also held a prominent position in Jewish ritual and in the Christian Church as well; but it is seldom mentioned by Jesus, though allusions to it have been interpolated in several places in later manuscripts of the New Testament.425 To some extent he took it for granted. He said to his disciples: “When ye fast, be not, as the hypocrites, of a sad countenance: for they disfigure their faces, that they may appear unto men to fast. . . . But thou, when thou fastest, anoint thine head, and wash thy face; That thou appear not unto men to fast, but unto thy Father which is in secret.”426 He speaks with scorn of the 94 Pharisee who “stood and prayed thus with himself, God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers. . . . I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of all that I possess.”427 It was objected to Jesus that while the disciples of John and the Pharisees used to fast, his disciples did not fast. Jesus replied: “Can the children of the bridechamber fast, while the bridegroom is with them? as long as they have the bridegroom with them, they cannot fast. But the days will come, when the bridegroom shall be taken away from them, and then shall they fast in those days.”428 Fasting after a death is a widespread practice,429 and is also mentioned in the Old Testament. David and his people fasted for Saul and Jonathan until even on the day when the news of their death arrived.430

Jesus was not an ascetic like John the Baptist, who lived in the wilderness clothed with camel’s hair and neither ate bread nor drank wine, but subsisted on locusts and wild honey.431 He “came eating and drinking” and was even accused of being “a gluttonous man and a winebibber” who ate and drank with publicans and sinners.432 He accepted invitations of Pharisees to dine in their houses, and according to John he was present at a wedding where he turned water into wine.433 But he led a very simple wandering life, indifferent to all comfort. When a certain man came and said that he wished to follow him wherever he went, Jesus replied: “The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head.”434 And when he sent his disciples to preach the kingdom of God and to heal the sick, he said to them: “Provide neither gold, nor silver, nor brass in your purses, Nor scrip for your journey, neither two coats, neither shoes, nor yet staves”; but admonished them to rely upon private hospitality.435 On another occasion he said to his disciples: “Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. . . . For your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things.”436

95 In the opinion of Jesus wealth is of no value to a man but a peril: “Whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple.”437 “Blessed be ye poor: for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are ye that hunger now: for ye shall be filled. . . . But woe unto you that are rich! for ye have received your consolation. Woe unto you that are full! for ye shall hunger.”438 “How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of God! . . . It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.”439 The beggar Lazarus died, “and was carried by the angels into Abraham’s bosom: the rich man also died, and was buried. And in hell he lift up his eyes, being in torments, and seeth Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom. And he cried and said, Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water, and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame. But Abraham said, Son, remember that thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things: but now he is comforted, and thou art tormented.”440

Jesus speaks of the folly of hoarding in the parable of the rich man who built greater barns: “God said unto him, Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee: then whose shall those things be, which thou hast provided?”441 Moreover, the end of the world was at hand: “Ye know neither the day nor the hour wherein the Son of man cometh.”442 The attitude of Jesus towards wealth was also connected with the idea that we ought to give in charity any superfluity of what we possess.443 But the principal reason why Jesus was so severe upon the rich was the nothingness of all earthly possessions and their imperilling the soul. “He that layeth up treasure for himself . . . is not rich toward God.”444 “Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal: But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven. . . . For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. . . . No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the 96 other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.”445 “What shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?”446

This disdain for temporal anxieties and worldly goods has taken us to a new department in the ethics of Jesus, where the determining factor is no longer the natural constitution of the moral consciousness, but the influence of specific religious ideas. Such influence is also apparent in the importance which he attached to certain ritual practices, contrary to his disregard of certain others, such as the keeping of the sabbath, fasting, and sacrifice: “I will have mercy, and not sacrifice.”447 Prayer holds a very prominent position in his teaching: “Men ought always to pray, and not to faint.”448 “All things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive.”449 “Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you: For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.”450 “But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking. Be not ye therefore like unto them: for your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask him. After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name”; and so forth.451 Isaiah also condemned those who did honour to the Lord with their lips, but had removed their heart far from him.452

Prayer is an act of humility, and the spirit of humility pervades the teaching of Jesus throughout: “Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven. . . For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever.”453 “Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.”454 “Whosoever shall exalt himself shall be abased; and he that shall humble himself shall be exalted.”455 It has been said that there is no more distinguishing mark of Christian ethics than humility.456 But it was also insisted upon by the Prophets. Micah said: “What 97 doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God.”457

Prayer and humility presuppose faith, which was stressed by the Prophets,458 and assumed pre-eminence in the teaching of Jesus. “The apostles said unto the Lord, Increase our faith”; and he answered: “If ye had faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye might say unto this sycamine tree, Be thou plucked up by the root, and be thou planted in the sea; and it should obey you.”459 When Jesus caused a fig-tree which had leaves but no fruit suddenly to wither away, the disciples who saw it marvelled and said: “How soon is the fig-tree withered away.” Jesus answered and said to them: “Verily I say unto you, If ye have faith, and doubt not, ye shall not only do this which is done to the fig-tree, but also if ye shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; it shall be done. . . . And nothing shall be impossible unto you.”460

Jesus particularly often speaks of faith in connection with his miracles. When he had entered into Capernaum, a centurion came and said to him: “Lord, my servant lieth at home sick of the palsy, grievously tormented.” Jesus answered that he would come and heal him. The centurion said: “I am not worthy that thou shouldest come under my roof: but speak the word only, and my servant shall be healed. For I am a man under authority, having soldiers under me: and I say to this man, Go, and he goeth; and to another, Come, and he cometh; and to my servant, Do this, and he doeth it.” When Jesus heard this, he marvelled and said to the people who followed him: “Verily I say unto you, I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel.” And he said to the centurion: “Go thy way; and as thou has believed, so be it done unto thee.” And the servant was healed at once.461

A woman who was diseased with an issue of blood twelve years came behind Jesus and touched the hem of his garment, saying within herself: “If I may but touch his garment, I shall be whole.” Jesus turned round, and when he saw her he said: “Daughter, be of good comfort; thy faith hath made 98 thee whole.” And the woman was made whole from that hour.462

Two blind men asked Jesus to have mercy on them. He asked them: “Believe ye that I am able to do this?” They answered: “Yea, Lord.” Then he touched their eyes, saying: “According to your faith be it unto you.” And their eyes were opened.463

The woman of Canaan, mentioned above, whose daughter was vexed with a devil and who implored Jesus to heal her, but was rebuffed by him with the words, “It is not meet to take the children’s bread and to cast it to dogs,” replied: “Truth, Lord: yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their masters’ table.” Then Jesus said to her: “O woman, great is thy faith: be it unto thee even as thou wilt.” And her daughter was made whole from that very hour.464

Once when Jesus was in a house preaching and there were many people gathered, four men came carrying a man sick of the palsy, but could not make their way through the crowd. They then uncovered the roof where he was, and when they had broken it up they let down the bed in which the sick man lay. “When Jesus saw their faith, he said unto the sick of the palsy, Son, thy sins be forgiven thee.” Some of the scribes sitting there reasoned in their hearts: “Why doth this man thus speak blasphemies? who can forgive sins but God only?” Then Jesus, who read their thoughts, said: “That ye may know that the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins, (he saith to the sick of the palsy), I say unto thee, Arise, and take up thy bed, and go thy way into thine house.” And immediately he arose, took up the bed, and went forth before them all.465

A man brought to Jesus his son who had been vexed with a dumb spirit since he was a child. He had spoken to the disciples that they should cast him out, but they could not, and now he implored Jesus, saying: “If thou canst do any thing, have compassion on us, and help us.” Jesus answered: “If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth.” Straightway the father of the child cried out, and said with tears: “Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief.” And Jesus cast the devil out. When the disciples asked him why they could not do it, Jesus answered, according to Mark: 99 “This kind can come forth by nothing, but by prayer and fasting”; and according to Matthew: “Because of your unbelief. . . . Howbeit this kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting.”466 But in these cases the word “fasting” is an interpolation.467

A blind man came to Jesus, who asked him: “What wilt thou that I should do unto thee?” The blind man answered: “Lord, that I might receive my sight.” Jesus said to him: “Go thy way; thy faith hath made you whole.” And immediately he received his sight.468

A man who was a ruler of the synagogue fell down at Jesus’ feet, and besought him that he would come into his house, because he had a young daughter who was dying; but the people thronged him. Then there came some one from his house and said to him: “Thy daughter is dead; trouble not the Master.” But when Jesus heard it he said: “Fear not: believe only, and she shall be made whole.” When he came into the house he “took her by the hand, and called, saying, Maid, arise. And her spirit came again, and she arose straightway.”469

When Jesus entered into a certain village ten lepers met him, and, standing afar off, cried out: “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.” When he saw them he said to them: “Go shew yourselves unto the priests.” As they went they were cleansed. But one of them, who was a Samaritan, when he saw that he was healed, turned back and glorified God with a loud voice and fell down on his face at Jesus’ feet, giving him thanks. Jesus said to him: “Were there not ten cleansed? but where are the nine? . . . Arise, go thy way: thy faith hath made thee whole.”470

When Jesus was dining in a Pharisee’s house, a woman who was a sinner brought an alabaster box of ointment, and, standing behind him weeping, began to wash his feet with tears, wiped them with the hair of her head, kissed his feet, and anointed them with the ointment. Now the Pharisee spoke within himself: “This man, if he were a prophet, would have known who and what manner of woman this is that toucheth him: for she is a sinner.” Jesus turned to the woman, and said to the Pharisee: “Seest thou this woman? I entered into thine house, thou gavest me no water for my feet: but she hath washed my feet with tears, and wiped them with the hairs of 100 her head. Thou gavest me no kiss: but this woman since the time I came in hath not ceased to kiss my feet. My head with oil thou didst not anoint: but this woman hath anointed my feet with ointment. Wherefore I say unto thee, Her sins, which are many, are forgiven; for she loved much: but to whom little is forgiven, the same loveth little.” And he said to her: “Thy sins are forgiven. . . . Thy faith hath saved thee; go in peace.”471

Faith, then, is said to enable a person to work miracles, and to be a ground for the remission of sins and a cure for sickness. Faith in whom or in what? It has been alleged that Jesus nearly always uses the word with the meaning of trust in the power and goodness of God.472 In proof of this reference is made to the stories of the centurion whose servant was ill, of the four men who carried to Jesus the paralytic, and of the woman whose faith was shown by her answer that the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their masters’ table. In these, and in the other cases of faith recorded in connection with his miracles, I can find nothing more than the belief that Jesus could cure sickness or forgive sins. This is particularly obvious from the question he put to the two blind men, “Believe ye that I am able to do this?” and from their eyes being opened immediately after their answer, “Yea, Lord.” On several occasions the faith was not even displayed by the person who was cured, but by the supplicant.

In any case faith, whether in God or in Jesus, is no moral quality, since the proper object of moral judgment is always the will; and the reward for it is therefore no moral reward, but only a favour. At the same time there can be no objection to such a favour from the moral point of view; whereas the case is quite different with the condemnation or punishment of the absence of faith. Of this little is heard in the sayings of Jesus reported in the synoptic gospels, but we nevertheless find there the germ of a doctrine which subsequently assumed enormous importance in Christian theology. He said: “Whosoever . . . shall confess me before men, him will I confess also before my Father which is in heaven. But whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I also deny before my Father which is in heaven.”473 Dean Rashdall suggests that here the representation of the evangelists may have been more or less coloured by the later belief of Christ’s followers and by the teaching of Paul and the 101 whole early Church as to the importance of faith in Christ.474 Jesus is also reported to have said: “He that believeth and is baptised shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned.”475 Such reflection on the necessity of baptism betrays the relatively late origin of the passage; and it is known not to have been an original part of Mark’s gospel.476 If Jesus had regarded salvation as conditional on belief in his Messiahship we might expect him to have emphasised it. This is what he did according to John.477 But, as said above, the fourth gospel cannot be recognised as a reliable source of information about the teaching of Jesus.

CHAPTER VI

THE ETHICS OF PAUL

THERE was once a great persecution against the church at Jerusalem. A young man, whose name was Saul, then entered into every house, and haling men and women committed them to prison. After that he went to the high priest and desired of him letters to Damascus to the synagogues, that if he found there any disciples of the Lord, whether they were men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem. As he journeyed he came near Damascus; and suddenly there shone round about him a light from heaven. He fell to the ground, and heard a voice saying to him: “Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?” He said: “Who art thou, Lord?” He heard the answer: “I am Jesus whom thou persecutest; it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks.” He said, astonished and trembling: “Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?” The answer was: “Arise, and go into the city, and it shall be told thee what thou must do.” The men who journeyed with him stood speechless, hearing a voice but seeing no man. When Saul rose from the ground he was blind, and was led by them and brought into Damascus. There was in the city a certain disciple, named Ananias, who also had a vision in which Jesus commanded him to go and inquire for a man called Saul, of Tarsus. “He is a chosen vessel unto me, to bear my name before the Gentiles, and kings, and the children of Israel.” Ananias went to the house where Saul was staying, put his hands on him, and told him that Jesus had sent him, that Saul might receive his sight, and be filled with the Holy Ghost. Immediately there fell from his eyes as it had been scales. He arose and was baptised, and preached straightway in the synagogues that Christ was the Son of God.478

There are in the Acts two other accounts of the vision and conversion of Paul, represented as speeches delivered by himself.479 In one of them, that addressed to King Agrippa, Ananias is not mentioned at all, but Jesus is alleged to have said to Paul: “I have appeared unto thee for this purpose, to make thee a minister and a witness both of these things which thou 103 hast seen, and of those things in the which I will appear unto thee; Delivering thee from the people, and from the Gentiles, unto whom now I send thee, To open their eyes, and to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins, and inheritance among them which are sanctified by faith that is in me.” In his epistles Paul does not describe his vision, but insists that he has received the gospel by the revelation of Jesus Christ, “when it pleased God, who separated me from my mother’s womb, and called me by his grace, To reveal his Son in me, that I might preach him among the heathen.”480 He also writes: “Am I not an apostle? am I not free? have I not seen Jesus Christ our Lord?”481 And after pointing out that Jesus was seen by all the apostles he adds: “And last of all he was seen of me also, as of one born out of due time.”482

From all these accounts it is obvious that Paul’s conversion was due to a vision in which he believed himself to have seen Christ risen in celestial glory; he was evidently predisposed to visions and trances.483 His vision of the risen Christ belonged to a type which is familiar to students of modern conversions, in which a complete division is established in the twinkling of an eye between the old life and the new. Those who have had such an experience carry away a feeling of its being a miracle. Voices are often heard, lights are seen, or visions are witnessed, and it always seems, after the surrender of the personal will, as if an extraneous higher power had flooded in and taken possession of the person, as if he were partaking directly of Christ’s substance, as if the deity were present in him. Of this he has a joyous conviction, which has been called faith par excellence.484 According to James, the most striking conversions of that kind have been permanent.485 So also Starbuck has found that “the effect of conversion is to bring with it a changed attitude towards life, which is fairly constant and permanent, although the feelings fluctuate. . . . The persons who have passed through conversions, having once taken a stand for the religious life, tend to feel themselves identified with it, no matter how much their religious enthusiasm declines.”486

104 Of all these characteristics of conversion there is evidence in Paul’s own sayings: “If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature.”487 “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.”488 “In him we live, and move, and have our being.”489 “If any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his. And if Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin; but the Spirit is life because of righteousness.”490 “We have the mind of Christ.”491 “Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you.”492 “To me to live is Christ.”493 According to Deissmann, the formula “in Christ” or “in the Lord” is found 164 times in the Pauline epistles.494 The most conspicuous characteristic of all the elements of the conversion crisis is the ecstasy of happiness produced.495 And Paul speaks again and again of the joy of faith, and exhorts his disciples to rejoice.496 He says that “the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith.”497 He speaks of “long-suffering with joyfulness”;498 and after recording his own torments and perils he writes: “I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses for Christ’s sake: for when I am weak, then am I strong.”499

Faith in Jesus Christ is the keystone of Paul’s whole teaching. But this faith was not a belief in his miracles, nor even a belief in his Messiahship. In his estimation Christ was a divine being in whom “dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily,”500 “the image” of God,501 and “the firstborn of every creature,”502 “the Son” of God503 who “sitteth on the right hand of God.”504 And the Christ who had revealed himself 105 to Paul in his glory was the crucified and risen Christ, whom he now knew as a saviour, and whose message he felt called to preach to the world. As Christ had risen from the grave, so also those who through their belief in it were possessed by him would rise and be justified. Jesus our Lord “was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification. Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord, Jesus Christ. . . . Being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him . . . by whom we have now received the atonement.”505 “Since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.”506 “He which raised up the Lord Jesus shall raise up us also by Jesus.”507 “When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory.”508 “Some man will say, How are the dead raised up? and with what body do they come? Thou fool, that which thou sowest is not quickened, except it die: And that which thou sowest, thou sowest not that body that shall be, but bare grain, it may chance of wheat, or of some other grain: But God giveth it a body as it hath pleased him, and to every seed his own body. . . . So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown in corruption; it is raised in incorruption: It is sown in dishonour; it is raised in glory: it is sown in weakness; it is raised in power; It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. . . . The trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality.”509

By faith every one will be saved. The gospel of Christ “is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek. . . . For the same Lord over all is rich unto all that call upon him. For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.”510 God “hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth. . . . That they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him.”511 “There is no respect of persons with God.”512 “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus”;513 “Christ 106 is all, and in all.”514 And Paul had been commanded to “be the minister of Jesus Christ to the Gentiles, ministering the gospel of God.”515

For this task he was pre-eminently suited. True, he was a Jew of the tribe of Benjamin,516 “a Pharisee, the son of a Pharisee.”517 As Deissmann remarks, he “never departed from the national and religious communion of his people; he retained with pride the name Hebrew, and the even more significant names Israelite and Seed of Abraham, just as he also reckoned himself one of the Israel of God.”518 He calls even the unconverted Jews “my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh”;519 he could write that unto the Jews be became as a Jew that he might gain the Jews, “to them that are under the law, as under the law”;520 he constantly makes quotations from the Old Testament. But he was a native of Tarsus in Cilicia,521 a Græco-Roman town, and spent most of his life before his conversion there; and he was a Roman citizen.522

At the beginning of our era Tarsus was a city of considerable importance, which had reached a position of high standing on account of its intellectual life and the general love of knowledge displayed by his inhabitants. It had a university which was a centre of Hellenistic philosophy, and even surpassed those of Athens and Alexandria in respect of the eagerness of its students and in filling its classroom with its own people, though it did not surpass them in equipment or in standing and fame as a seat of learning.523 In Tarsus Paul came from his early boyhood in close contact with the Græco-Roman world. He was a man of education, who had received a Greek training. Greek was the only language which he used in his epistles, and he read his Old Testament first and chiefly in Greek translation. Even though it cannot be proved that he possessed such accurate knowledge of Greek literature and philosophy as some of the Church Fathers have attributed to him,524 he did not hesitate to enter into discussion with persons trained in Greek philosophy.525 It is of particular interest to note that a famous philosopher, Athenodorus (74 B.C.-A.D. 7), who had influenced 107 considerably the thought of Seneca, had lived in Tarsus very near the time of which we are speaking, and whose teaching was undoubtedly influential in the university of Tarsus after his death.526 There is reason to believe that Paul was brought up in a society which was permeated by Stoicism.527 It is not improbable that his conversion, as has been found to be the case with other religious conversions,528 was connected with a previous preparation for it in his own mind in the form of a subconscious incubation which, when ripe, burst into flower. If so, it is no wonder that he freed Christianity from its nationalistic fetters, and transformed it into a world-religion of salvation.

In Greece, philosophers had long before opposed national narrowness and prejudice. Democritus of Abdera said that every country is accessible to a wise man, and that a good soul’s fatherland is the whole earth.529 The same view was expressed by Theodorus, one of the later Cyrenaics, who denounced devotion to country as ridiculous.530 The Cynics in particular, attached slight value to the citizenship of any special state, declaring themselves to be citizens of the world.531 But, as Zeller observes, in the mouth of the Cynic this doctrine was meant to express not so much the essential oneness of all mankind, as the philosopher’s independence of country and home.532 It was the Stoic philosophy that first gave to the idea of a world-citizenship a definite positive meaning, and raised it to historical importance. The citizen of Alexander’s huge empire had in a way become a citizen of the world; and national dislikes were so much more readily overcome since the various nationalities comprised in it were united not only under a common government but also in a common culture.533 Indeed, the founder of Stoicism was himself only half a Greek. But there is also an intrinsic connection between the cosmopolitan idea and the Stoic system in general. According to the Stoics, human society has for its basis the identity of reason in individuals; hence we have no ground for limiting this society to a single nation. We are all, says Seneca, members of one great body, 108 the universe; “we are all akin by Nature, who has formed us of the same elements, and placed us here together for the same end.”534 As Marcus Aurelius puts it, “the world is in a manner a state,” including all rational beings, to which the individual states are related as the houses of a city are to the city collectively.535 And the wise man will esteem it far above any particular community in which the accident of birth has placed him.536

Besides Stoic influence there may have been another cause that made for the universalising of Christianity, namely the Logos-doctrine, of which elements are clearly discernible in the Pauline epistles; it is difficult to doubt that this doctrine influenced his conception of Christ. It could look back to a long history, but assumed definite shape as a metaphysical theory particularly in the religious philosophy of Philo Judæus of Alexandria, who was a contemporary of Jesus. According to this theory nobody can approach God—the immaterial, unknowable, ineffable, self-existent Being. Nor was it possible that God should intervene directly in the process of creation; only indirectly could his function as cause of the universe be accomplished. God proceeded therefore according to a plan. He made use of an image of his own essence, an ideal image that remains intimately united with himself. The universe comes into existence through the instrumentality of this divine mediator. All that it possesses of spirit, soul, of forms and values, of patterns and ideas, issues from, or is rooted in, the supreme Reason, the Logos. The term Logos stood for many things, but in the teaching of Philo it was the equivalent of the world’s wisdom or the world’s image.537 And in this sense it appears in Pauline literature. Jesus is spoken of as “the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature: For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible.”538

Paul looked upon the process of redemption as a mystery. He declares that the wisdom he speaks of is “not the wisdom of this world,” but “the wisdom of God in a mystery, even the hidden wisdom, which God ordained before the world unto our glory. . . . Let no man deceive himself. If any man among you seemeth to be wise in this world, let him become 109 a fool, that he may be wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. For it is written, He taketh the wise in their own craftiness. And again, The Lord knoweth the thoughts of the wise, that they are vain.”539 But the redemption is not only a mystery: there is also magic in it. This appears from the importance which Paul attaches to baptism and the Eucharist.

There is no evidence that Jesus instituted baptism, but every reason to believe that he did not do so. It never appears among the conditions of discipleship. The passage in Mark’s gospel about him who believes and is baptised is not an original part of it.540 John’s report of Jesus’ answer to Nicodemus, that “except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God,”541 cannot be relied upon. And the same is the case with the commandment attributed to Jesus by Matthew, “Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost,”542 which has been regarded as the central piece of evidence for the traditional view of the institution of baptism by Jesus.543 Harnack points out that for two reasons Jesus could not have uttered it. First, it is only a later stage of the tradition that represents the risen Christ as delivering speeches and giving commandments—Paul knows nothing of it; secondly, the Trinitarian formula is foreign to the mouth of Jesus and has not the authority in the Apostolic age which it must have had, if it descended from Jesus himself.544 Further, if Paul had known of such a commission to baptise he could hardly have said, as he does: “Christ sent me not to baptise, but to preach the gospel.”545 At the same time he knows of no other way of receiving the Gentiles into the Christian community than by baptism. He writes: “By one Spirit are we all baptised into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free.”546 We may perhaps assume that the practice of baptism was continued in consequence of Jesus’ recognition of John the Baptist and his baptism, even after John himself was removed; in the fourth gospel it is said that Jesus did not baptise, but that his disciples did.547 John had preached “the baptism of repentance for the remission of 110 sins”;548 and Paul also regarded baptism as a cleansing from sin,549 but predominantly as a reincarnation of Christ’s death and rising to immortality; “Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptised into Jesus Christ were baptised into his death? Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection: Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin.”550

Lietzmann observes that Paul’s mystic sacramentalism in regard to baptism was in closest contact with the belief of the church of the “Hellenists” and must surely have appeared to many a Corinthian as an infallible means of purging away sin and as a guarantee of future salvation.551 In the Mysteries which at that time were spread throughout Asia Minor and Greece we find rites of ablution from which a new birth was expected; mention was made of “dying” in the figurative sense, as the high priest of Isis says in Apuleius;552 use was made of the magic power of a name or some other formula; and the result was considered to be salvation due to the union of the initiate with the god.553 Tertullian noticed the resemblance, and argued that demons, whose chief employment was to prevent mankind from embracing the worship of the true God, endeavoured to preoccupy the minds of men by imitating rites having some similarity to those which were to be observed under the gospel, and that baptism was thus by their suggestion introduced into the Eleusinian mysteries as a mode of initiation, being an imitation of Christian baptism.554 The Eleusinian purificatory bath, from which the candidate emerged a new man with a new name, was also referred to by Greek Fathers, especially Clement of Alexandria, as a parallel to the Christian rite of baptism both in its nature and in its intended effects.555 In any case we must 111 assume that the pagan sacrament influenced the latter and increased the importance attached to baptism in the Christian world.

Various writers regard Paul’s sacramental conception of baptism as an alien body in his system as a whole, incongruous with his general doctrine of justification by faith;556 and, though he no doubt considered faith a necessary preliminary to it, it is fairly obvious that he attributed to baptism magical efficacy. Some statements to this effect have already been quoted, and others may be added, such as: “By one Spirit are we all baptised into one body”;557 “As many of you as have been baptised into Christ have put on Christ.”558 Paul’s reference to the Corinthian custom of baptism for the dead—“What shall they do which are baptised for the dead, if the dead rise not at all? why are they then baptised for the dead?”559—also supports this view. It has been argued that he leaves us in the dark as to his own opinion about it.560 But it seems more to the point that he does not reprove the Corinthians for practising it.561

Like baptism the Last Supper is mentioned in the synoptic gospels. They contain three passages dealing with it. When eating with his disciples Jesus “took bread, and blessed, and brake it, and gave to them, and said, Take, eat: this is my body. And he took the cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them: and they all drank of it. And he said unto them, This is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many. Verily I say unto you, I will drink no more of the fruit of the vine, until that day that I drink it new in the kingdom of God.”562 There is a similar account in Matthew, which is dependent on Mark.563 The third account, found in Luke, contains the addition, “This do in remembrance of me.”564 This does not occur in some early Western authorities, and is therefore regarded by almost all critics as a later insertion influenced by the passage in Corinthians on the subject.565 It 112 has also been contended by many scholars that the account of Mark (on which Matthew depends) shows traces of Pauline influence, especially in the language which describes the cup as “my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many.”566 Conybeare argues that the agreement is so close that either Mark must have copied Paul or Paul Mark, and that the latter hypothesis is ruled out by the fact that the Pauline epistle is older than the Gospel of Mark.567 Montefiore observes how difficult it is to believe that a Palestinian or Galilæan Jew could have suggested that, in drinking wine, his disciples were, even symbolically, drinking blood, considering the horror with which the drinking of blood was regarded by the Jews.568

In any case it is a widespread opinion that the only trace of a mystic meaning given to the Eucharist in the gospels is a later incorporation that could have no meaning save in the mystery-salvation through Christ as conceived by Paul. For him it was a sacrament and a mystical re-enactment of the death and resurrection of Christ through which the believer participates in his immortality, the bread and wine being an incarnation of his body and blood: “The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ? For we being many are one bread, and one body: for we are all partakers of that one bread. Behold Israel after the flesh: are not they which eat the sacrifices partakers of the altar?”569 In reproving the Corinthians for profaning the Lord’s Supper Paul wrote to them: “As often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do show the Lord’s death till he come. Wherefore whosoever shall eat this bread, and drink this cup of the Lord, unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord. But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of that bread, and drink of that cup. For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh damnation to himself, not discerning the Lord’s body.”570 As Loisy observes, “in the ardent imagination of the Apostle, the bread broken for the Lord’s Supper assimilates itself to Christ crucified for the elimination of sin, the wine of the cup identifies itself with the blood spilt for the salvation of mankind.”571 The 113 “worthy” participation in the Supper may have presupposed faith, but the essence of the rite was undoubtedly the magical effect ascribed to the bodily communion with Christ by partaking of his body and blood.

It is obvious that the sacramental form of the Eucharist exhibited by Paul cannot have been a creation of Jesus, nor can it have come from strict Judaism; but there were striking parallels to it in the pagan world. There was a series of cults in the Roman Empire which offered a happy immortality to their initiates, and the method of obtaining it was by means of sacraments. In several of those mysteries blood played a very important part. It was an extremely common belief in the ancient world that by drinking the blood it was possible to absorb the qualities of the god whose blood was used.572 All the mystery gods were intercessors and saviours, and the object of the initiates was to attain, through identification with the god, a share in his blessed immortality.573 Paul was plainly aware of those pagan parallels. After speaking of the bread and the cup of communion, he refers to the things which the Gentiles “sacrifice to devils, and not to God,” and warns the Corinthians that they “cannot be partakers of the Lord’s table, and of the table of devils.”574 The Corinthians evidently regarded the Eucharist as food and drink by consuming which they enjoyed participation in the life of Jesus; just as the participants in the Eleusinian mysteries believed that they became ἔνθεοι by means of a meal in which they partook, in some mysterious manner, of the body of Dionysus.575 The words of dislike and contempt with which Paul speaks of the pagan mysteries do not prove that he was uninfluenced by them. His own terminology rather suggests the reverse. He may have been, half-unconsciously, allured by them. Where ideas are in the air men may catch them by a sort of infection, and often without any notion whence they came.576

The centre of Paul’s Christianity is the doctrine of redemption through the crucified and risen Christ. He never speaks of Jesus as a teacher or of his teaching, he extremely seldom appeals to any words of Jesus as a moral norm, he never refers to his example of life in any concrete situation.577 His 114 preoccupation with the death and resurrection of Jesus was no doubt immediately due to his vision, but to this vision he may have been predisposed by pagan cults known to him from his boyhood at Tarsus, which were much occupied with divine beings who had died and had risen again, who were, in fact, for ever dying and for ever rising again, to the joy of their worshippers. We have evidence that his native city was thronged with such mysteries, the myths and rites of Isis and Osiris, of Dionysus, Cybele, and Attis. The leading deities were Sandon-Herakles and Baal-Tarz. The former was popularly associated with the same ideas of death and resurrection as pervaded the worship of Adonis, Tammur, and Osiris. Baal-Tarz, again, pre-eminently “Lord of Tarsus,” was the giver of vegetation and every good gift, and his picture, as seen on the coins of the fourth century before Christ, looks as noble as the Greek Zeus, whom he greatly resembled in character. Hans Böhlig has made it perfectly clear that Paul adopted his terminology, and perhaps his method of unfolding the redemptive scheme of a deified Christ, to the preconceptions of his Gentile fellow-citizens, who from childhood had been taught the mystic religion of Sandon.578 But the resemblance between Paul’s teaching and the mystery religions is not merely a formal one, apart from its sacramentalism, of which I have already spoken. In those religions, also, there was a divine saviour through which the believers hoped to reach a state of salvation not only in this life but in the world beyond the grave. While the synoptists emphasise a speedy coming of the Son of man to judge the nations and to found a reign of saints upon earth, Paul turned the eyes of Christians towards a spiritual heaven where he who dies with Christ will live for ever. This is a doctrine of the same class as the doctrines taught by pagan mystery religions.579 From the moral point of view there is of course an enormous difference between Christ and the pagan gods. But those writers who maintain that Paul was in no way influenced by the mysteries—not even indirectly by the atmosphere which they diffused—fail to account for those points in which his teaching so closely resembles them.

At the same time Paul says himself that “Christ died for our 115 sins according to the scriptures.”580 Among the early Christians there was a belief that the Old Testament had prophesied the Passion of Christ.581 There was, in particular, the famous prophecy in which Isaiah deals with the voluntary suffering and death of the servant of Yahveh, who “bore the sin of many.”582 This has obviously been the source of the words which Mark puts into the mouth of Jesus: “The Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many”; and, “This is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many.”583 Johannes Weiss quotes with approval Jülicher’s assertion that “Jesus himself never referred to his obligation to bear the form of a servant or to the mediatorial work of his death and sacrifice.”584

It has been alleged that Paul’s doctrine of justification by faith also is due to Hellenic influence,585 while he himself refers to the Old Testament as his authority.586 But it seems that the immense importance which he attaches to faith was in the first place the outcome of his ecstatic vision. This is suggested by knowledge which we have of other sudden conversions. “Beliefs,” says William James, “are strengthened wherever automatisms corroborate them. Incursions from beyond the transmarginal region have a peculiar power to increase conviction.”587 There has been much discussion about the meaning of faith (pistis) in Paul’s vocabulary.588 He says himself that the word of faith which he teaches is “that if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.”589 Whatever else Paul’s conception of faith may imply, such as trust, “enthusiastic adhesion,”590 and obedience,591 it 116 presupposes in the first place the acceptance of some fact as true; and such a belief cannot be a proper object of moral judgment. But even if the sin of unbelief, as Thomas Aquinas argues, has its cause in the will because it consists in “contrary opposition to the faith, whereby one stands out against the hearing of the faith,”592 it could not be imputed to anybody who never heard of the faith. Paul considers this question in connection with his tenet that whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved: “How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? and how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher? . . . I say, Have they not heard? Yes verily, their sound went into all the earth, and their words unto the ends of the world.”593 Even now, after the lapse of nearly two thousand years this reassuring statement has not become true. In another passage, however, there is an indication that God might have mercy even upon unbelievers.594

In the most important cycle of Paul’s teaching salvation is not, as it is generally depicted in the synoptic gospels, a reward for righteous conduct. “A man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law.”595 “Before faith came, we were kept under the law, shut up unto the faith which should afterwards be revealed. Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith. But after that faith is come, we are no longer under a schoolmaster. For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus.”596 “To him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness.”597 And the faith itself is a gift of God: “God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith.”598 Salvation depends upon an “election of grace.”599 “Whom he did foreknow he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren. Moreover, whom he did predestinate, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified.”600 “Is there unrighteousness with God? God forbid. For he saith to Moses, I will have mercy on whom 117 I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. So then it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy. . . . Therefore hath he mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth.”601

Those who believe are justified by the grace of God “through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus: Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God.”602 Christ “died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto him which died for them, and rose again. . . . God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself not imputing their trespasses unto them; and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation.”603 It is thus by the vicarious suffering of Jesus that the wrath of God, aroused by the sin of men, is appeased. How is that possible? Paul writes: “As by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned. . . . If by one man’s offence death reigned by one; much more they which receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness shall reign in life by one, Jesus Christ. Therefore as by the offence of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation; even so by the righteousness of one the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life. . . . As sin hath reigned unto death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord.”604

The idea that all mankind are doomed to death on account of Adam’s sin, which Paul no doubt had imbibed from his Jewish upbringing, is explicable by the conception of sin as a kind of material substance or infection which is transmitted by propagation.605 As we have seen above, the Prophets already broke with the old notions of divine vengeance by declaring that “every one shall die for his own iniquity,” that “the soul that sinneth, it shall die.”606 And Ezekiel added that as the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him, so also “the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him.”607 This is in agreement with the fact that the moral emotions of disapproval or approval, in their capacity of retributive emotions, are hostile 118 or friendly attitudes of mind towards living beings conceived as causes of pain or pleasure. They cannot admit that a person is punished or rewarded on account of another person’s behaviour. There cannot be a merit by transfer.

But apart from this, Paul’s doctrine of redemption raises the question how Christ’s suffering and death could be a means of justification at all. Paul says that “Christ our passover is sacrificed for us.”608 The idea of Christ’s death being a sacrifice is also found in the Epistle to the Ephesians,609 the authorship of which is disputed, and is set forth in detail in the Epistle to the Hebrews,610 which is related to Paulinism. The bloody sacrifices of the law have been succeeded by the redemption which Christ obtained for us “by the sacrifice of himself” being offered “to bear the sins of many.”611 “We are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. . . . By one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified. . . . There is no more offering for sin.”612 This theory was subsequently elaborated by Cyprian. Christ’s suffering and death constituted a sacrifice calculated to propitiate an angry God; and this thought was never afterwards lost sight of in the West. I shall return to this subject in a following chapter.

Are we to conclude then that the teaching of Paul is devoid of all ethical significance. By no means. He asks: “What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound? God forbid. . . . Shall we sin, because we are not under the law, but under grace? God forbid.”613 His epistles are full of moral injunctions. On the one hand he wrote that “Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law”;614 that he found “the commandment, which was ordained to life, . . . to be unto death”;615 that “the law worketh wrath”;616 that “the strength of sin is the law.”617 But on the other hand he also wrote that “the law is holy, and the commandment holy, and just, and good.”618 Different explanations have been given of these contradictory statements;619 but the most satisfactory one seems to be that when Paul speaks of the law he does not always mean the same thing.620 He does not definitely distinguish 119 between ritual and the strictly ethical parts of the Israelitish legislation. But he says that no man should be judged “in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holy day, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath days: which are a shadow of things to come.”621 He contrasts “the circumcision, which is outward in the flesh,” with the circumcision “of the heart.”622 And above all, he makes the parallel statements that all the law is fulfilled in one word, namely this: “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself”;623 and that “he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law. For this, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness, Thou shalt not covet; and if there be any other commandment, it is briefly comprehended in this saying, namely, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. . . . Therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.”624 He also writes: “Bless them which persecute you: bless, and curse not. Rejoice with them that do rejoice, and weep with them that weep. . . . Recompense to no man evil for evil. Provide things honest in the sight of all men. If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men. . . . Avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord. Therefore if thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink: for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head. Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good.”625 “Put on therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, bowels of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, long-suffering; Forbearing one another, and forgiving one another, if any man have a quarrel against any. . . . And above all these things put on charity, which is the bond of perfectness.”626 “Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing. Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; Rejoiceth not in iniquity, 120 but rejoiceth in the truth; Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. Charity never faileth. . . . And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.”627

How can these sayings be reconciled with the doctrine of justification by faith only? An obvious answer would be that faith produces, or manifests itself in, obedience to the law and charity; that good works are not the condition of righteousness, but righteousness, received as a divine gift by faith, is the condition of good works. There are passages in the epistles which directly express this idea: “Do we then make void the law through faith? God forbid: yea, we establish the law.”628 “How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein?”629 Faith “worketh by love”;630 in another passage love is said to belong to “the fruit of the Spirit.”631 If Christ lives in the believer it must influence his whole conduct. The Christlikeness of the faithful is in some passages expressed in imperatives: “As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in him”;632 “Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others. Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus”;633 “Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.”634

The great emphasis which Paul lays on charity is quite in agreement with what we find in modern narratives of conversion. “I had more tender feeling towards my family and friends”;—“I spoke at once to a person with whom I had been angry”;—“I felt for every one, and loved my friends better”;—“I felt everybody to be my friend”;—“I began to work for others”;—these are so many expressions from the records collected by Starbuck.635 Sainte-Beuve observes that in Christians of different epochs there is a fundamental and identical spirit of piety and charity, common to those who have received grace; an inner state which before all things is one of love and humility, of infinite confidence in God, and of severity for one’s self, accompanied with tenderness for others. The fruits peculiar to this condition of the soul have the same savour in all, under distant suns and in different surroundings, in Saint Teresa of Avila just as in any Moravian brother of 121 Herrnhut.636 Justin Martyr wrote about the wonderful change in manners of other converts: “We, who loved nothing like our possessions, now produce all we have in common and spread our whole stock before our indigent brethren; we, who were pointed with mutual hatred and destruction, and would not so much as warm ourselves at the same fire with those of a different tribe on account of different institutions, now since the coming of Christ cohabit and diet together, and pray for our enemies; and all our returns for evil are but the gentlest persuasives to convert those who unjustly hate us, that by living up to the same virtuous precepts of Christ they might be filled with the same comfortable hopes of obtaining the like happiness with ourselves, from that God who is Lord of all things. . . . I could give you a proof of the influence of such bright examples from many converts among us, who from men of violence and oppression were transformed into quite another nature.”637 Pagans bore witness to the correctness of the picture drawn by the apologetics.638 Pliny wrote in a letter to Trajan that Christians said they had bound themselves by an oath not to commit any wicked deed, but to abstain from theft and robbery and adultery, and not withhold a deposit when reclaimed.639 In recent times the Welsh revival of 1904—5 was accompanied by a real decrease in crime. Family life was restored by the abandonment of drinking habits, long-standing quarrels were made up, enemies were reconciled, ancient wrongs repaired, bad debts paid, stolen property restored.640 Nowadays we also hear of moral reformation among converts to the Oxford Movement. A manifestation of the altruism of converted men and women is their missionary zeal—their burning desire to tell others of their experience that they may share their blessings. Throughout the history of Christianity those who have experienced the more sudden kind of conversion have generally been the most zealous missionaries.641 Foremost among these was Paul.642

From the moral point of view, however, there is positive danger in a doctrine that relies upon love of fellow-men and good deeds as the fruits of faith. To an ecstatic convert like 122 Paul faith may seem a sufficient source of such love and anything it carries with it, but in an established religion the faith of the ordinary believer may fail entirely to produce similar effects. Already in the Apostolic age his formula about righteousness and salvation by faith alone was taken advantage of as a cloak of laxity; it was said that one might have the true faith though in this case that faith remained dead or was united with immorality.643 James evidently saw this danger when he wrote in his Epistle: “What doth it profit, my brethren, though a man say he hath faith, and have not works? can faith save him? . . . Faith without works is dead.”644 Ordinary men are not mystics; and ecstatic converts are dangerous founders of religious creeds. The emphasis laid on orthodox belief has not only, more than anything else, brought the Christian religion into conflict with the nature of moral emotions and ideas, but also, through the persecutions to which it has led, been one of the most potent causes of misery in the Christian world.

But we notice also another line of thought in the Pauline epistles, which is more in harmony with the teaching of Jesus as recorded in the synoptic gospels. He writes to the Romans not only that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law, but also that God will show himself as a righteous judge “who will render to every man according to his deeds: To them who by patient continuance in well doing seek for glory and honour and immortality, eternal life: But unto them that are contentious, and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, indignation and wrath. . . . We shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ. . . . Every one of us shall give account of himself to God.”645 In other epistles he writes: “We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ; that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad.”646 “Every man shall receive his own reward according to his own labour. . . . Every man’s work shall be made manifest: for the day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire; and the fire shall try every man’s work of what sort it is. If any man’s work abide which he hath built thereupon, he shall receive a reward. If any man’s work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss.”647 “Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also 123 reap. For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting. And let us not be weary in well doing; for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not.”648—“Whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men; Knowing that of the Lord ye shall receive the reward of the inheritance: for ye serve the Lord Christ. But he that doeth wrong shall receive for the wrong which he hath done: and there is no respect of persons.”649 When Paul mentions the deeds of men he does not overlook their cast of mind. He speaks of “the day when God shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ,”650 when the Lord will come and “bring to light the hidden things of darkness, and will make manifest the counsels of the hearts.”651

It may be argued that if a person is justified by his faith, which is a gift of God, and good deeds are manifestations of it, his “reward” for them is really due to the faith which God has given him, and that the damnation of a person who has done evil is due to the fact that he has not received the gift of faith from God; whereas if he receives such a gift, and is justified thereby, he will do no evil again. Such a conclusion might be drawn from the following passage: “Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind. Nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God.”652 But Paul was not a consistent thinker. On the one hand he teaches that justification depends upon faith alone, that faith is a gift of God, that man’s work really is God’s work,653 nay that it even was God who gave Israel “the spirit of slumber, eyes that they should not see, and ears that they should not hear”;654 but on the other hand he also looks upon the activity of the human will as a factor of importance.655 His inconsistency is nowhere more glaring than in the passage in which he tells the Philippians to work out their own salvation 124 “with fear and trembling,” and then adds immediately: “For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure.”656 When he speaks of the retribution for good and evil deeds, he is obviously moved by his moral consciousness, which repeatedly finds expression without any reference to justification by faith. In his epistles to the Romans and to the Corinthians he frequently refers to “conscience,” or syneídēsis, a term which he evidently had adopted from his Hellenistic surroundings,657 and speaks of the “witness” it bears.658 And he finds a conscience not only among the Christians, but in every man;659 and makes the following remarkable statement: “Not the hearers of the law are just before God, but the doers of the law shall be justified. For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves: Which shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean while accusing or else excusing one another.”660