It is sometimes objected that Christianity fails to inculcate patriotism and political morals. But herein lies one of the most commendable characteristics of the New Testament. The Old Testament embodies the most conspicuous, original and perfect code of civil laws in existence. The New Testament recognizes government as the ordinance of God, enjoins obedience, in all things lawful and right, to the powers that be; declares the responsibility of rulers and people to each other and to God, and commends and insists upon all the virtues that make good citizens. It contains no express political ordinance or precept, but it goes down to the foundations of moral and civil obligation; and there it rests the whole matter. The wisdom of this reserve is well set forth in the following illustration by a recent writer:

"Mahometanism is at this moment a striking example of the effect which is produced by the incorporation of a body of political legislation with a religion. This is what is done in the Koran. The result is that the religion of Mahomet is utterly incompatible with the various forms of Western civilization. This is one of the chief causes under the influence of which Mahometanism is perishing before our eyes. It renders it hopelessly incompatible with human progress. But Christianity, on the contrary, owing to its freedom from politcal legislation, is adapted to every form of human society."*

Again. The moral teachings of the Christian religion have changed the currents of thought and feeling in the civilized world by the elevation of the passive virtues over physical strength, animal courage and other ideals of pagan life in the greatest of the old civilizations. The Cross has become the emblem of glorified suffering and self-sacrifice; the martyr's crown glitters with all the virtues of religious heroism. The genius and force of Christianity are incarnated in Him who is "Chief among ten thousand and altogether lovely;" and the perfection of Christian character is the reflex of His teachings and example. Socrates and Cicero, Buddha and Confucius failed to make people good and better for lack of motive power. But the New Testament presents an array of powerful motives crowned by that supreme principle of saving grace-"The love of Christ constraineth us; because we thus judge that he died for all that they which live should no longer live unto themselves, but unto him who for their sakes died and rose again.”

The relation of the pulpit to public morals is thus decided by its relation to all morality. The grace of God never leads to graceless living. The Gospel of Christ is strictly reformatory. It will revolutionize the man, the woman, the family, the community, the business and the life of all upon whom it takes its sovereign hold. The Decalogue, the Sermon on the Mount, the teachings of Christ and His apostles all make for righteousness.

Every great religious reformation and revival in Europe and America has been attended by a revival of personal, domestic, social and public morality. In the apostolic age and during the first three Christian cen* Row's Reasons for Believing in Christianity, page 76.

turies, the voices that drove the gods out of the Pantheon proclaimed "righteousness and temperance and judgment to come," and heralded the reign of righteousness and of the Prince of Peace. The theology of the Reformation was simply a return to that of the New Testament, and its results were seen and felt in the moral resurrection of every nation and community that became Reformed, not only from the errors of Popery, but from the wickedness of the times. The later Reformation under the Wesleys and Whitefield and their co-laborers was a revolution against the ineffective moral teachings of the leading pulpits of the Church of England and the deplorable lives of the fox-hunting, card-playing and wine-bibbing clergy of the times. And the great revivals of the eighteenth century in our own country under Edwards, Whitefield, the Tennents and their co-laborers produced similar results. These results concur with the personal experiences of such men as Scott, the Commentator, Chalmers and others who found neither peace nor comfort, nor success in preaching morality, without Christ, and whose lives and ministries took on new beauty and power from the moments of their new birth.

On the contrary, the meager spiritual results of the Unitarian defection in New England, its moral inefficiency beyond the communities in which it obtained, and its utter lack of Missionary Spirit and habit, indicate its want of that motive power which has carried Evangelical Christianity around the world. Hence, too, the failure of "Societies for Ethical Culture" which have successively perished by their inherent spiritual and moral weakness.

The conclusion from this review is, briefly, this: What is needed now in the pulpits of our land is not less of Biblical doctrine nor less of Biblical morals, but more of both in due proportion, and logical sequences, and practical bearings upon the instructed consciences of living men and women. The times require bold, discriminating, unyielding, full, and faithful proclamation of "the whole counsel of God" relating to the conduct of life. Preachers should take the widest range of Gospel truth, and apply it after the manner of Christ and the Apostles to people of all classes, from the throne and the court down to the publicans and sinners, and with special fidelity to modern Pharisees and Sadducees and hypocrites in the churches, as well as to the outside evil-doers. Public questions which involve public morals, such as intemperance, bribery, and official corruption, the Mormon leprosy, marriage and divorce, pauperism and social evils, the morals and immoralities of trade, the labor question, the sins and sorrows of city life, should have proper time and place in pulpit discussion, but always on Biblical principles. The unrest of the age now gives the pulpit its great opportunity for "preaching Christ crucified not only for us but in us and for the world that lieth in wickedness." That form of Christianity which goes down deepest into human sin and misery is certain to

go up highest into life and glory, like the Son of God, who first "descended into the lowest parts of the earth," and then "ascended on high, leading captivity captive, and bringing gifts for men."

So only shall the pulpit and the church of the present age be able to cope with the sins and the woes of private life and with the daring and power of organized public wickedness in these "last times."

IV. A SCHEME OF CHRISTIAN ETHICS.

BY J. B. HEARD, D.D., OF ENGLAND, AUTHOR OF "OLD AND NEW THEOLOGY," "TRIPARTITE NATURE OF MAN," ETC.

PART II.

We have now to turn to the other side of the subject, and to trace the relations of Christian Ethics to a Christian Psychology. We have seen its dependence on Theology, in this that Christ's death and resurrection become mystically, nay, actually ours. Are there then any corresponding facts in human nature which corroborate and throw light on this truth? In the old school Ethics there are none, for moral philosophy (so-called) knows nothing of the profound contrast between flesh and spirit, between the psychical and the pneumatical man, between the first and the second Adam, the living soul and the quickening spirit; but we know that until this contrast is understood, the life of selfrenouncing love is part of that preaching of the cross which is "foolishness" to those who look at it from without.

Law and Gospel, nature and grace, flesh and spirit, these according to Luther are the three pairs of contrasts which, to understand is to understand the Epistle to the Romans, and without which we are like a man before a puzzle to which he has not the key. This is profoundly true, but Luther should have gone on to add that these three pairs are so related that we do not understand the contrast of Law and Gospel, unless we go on to understand that of nature and grace, and lastly of flesh and spirit. In the Apostle Paul's view, law and flesh are married, and it is a tie which is only sundered by death. The law dies to the flesh, and the flesh dies to the law, and this dissolution of a lifelong partnership leads to the formation of a new partnership, which is that of grace and the spirit. It is because we are not under the law but under grace, that we are called to a new life of holiness, a righteousness which exceeds the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees, not in quantity only but in quality as well.

Now, what is this contrast of flesh and spirit? The flesh is a generalized term for all that we mean by the appetitive and acquisitive principles in human nature. What it craves, it craves for itself, and what it has it holds against all others. Our affections enter in, it is true, to draw us out of self in the direction of the good of others, but their range is limited. Parental love is bounded by the family, and even our

friendships and love of country are limited and local. So it is that the flesh with its selfish desires is apparently too strong to be mastered by the opposite or unselfish principle of love. Still, where love begins, there enters, in its lowliest form, it is true, the principle of selfsurrender, which implies, and in the end effects, the death of the flesh and the quickening of the spirit. Thus, as with the first lichen, there is the dawn of plant life, the promise and potency of all organisms, up to and including man. So with the storge, or instinctive love of a mother to her child, for which she readily sacrifices herself, we see the dawn of that contrast between flesh and spirit which reached its climax at Gethsemane, when man was first able to throw himself on the bosom of his Father and trust in his unchanging love.

ness.

That the spirit is only quickened by and through the death of the flesh is part of that hidden wisdom which to the natural man is foolishHence the Ethics of the schools know nothing of this deep contrast between flesh and spirit, and that he who keeps his life loses it, and he who loses his life gains it. Psychical nature ends, as it begins, with self. This is its being's end and aim. Self-culture and selfadvantage is the whole duty of man according to all other ethical schools but that of Christ, and this contrast between the two is ineradicable, and never can be got over. This is why that patchwork system of old duties pieced on to new Gospel motives is like putting a piece of new cloth to an old garment, by which the rent is made worse.

The distinction between all school ethics and that of Christ lies deeper than this, that the one points out to us our duty, and the other enables us to do it. The central thought of Christian teaching is the doctrine of the new birth, to which there is nothing corresponding in school ethics. There is a sense in which Greek philosophy was a preparation for Christ, but not in this direction. On the contrary, both Socrates and the stoics held a doctrine of virtue as a form of knowledge which does not even lead us to the threshold of the Gospel. Self-assertion is the key-note of all philosophy, self-renunciation is the key-note of faith. Which of the two is the true note each one must decide for himself; but we are at least bound to affirm that they are irreconcilable. Beati pauperes corde,the first of the seven beatitudes is the true starting point of Christian ethics. Humility based on a felt want and a known defect, which is sin; this precedes all other graces and lies at the foundation. What rich man can be saved is the one prominent truth which meets us before any other, and most startles us in Christ's unique ministry. He came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. Till this want was felt He had nothing to hold out to those who would follow Him. This want, this sense of sin or ill desert, is the one which cuts to the quick all our self-esteem. Hence it is that self-love drives us from the Saviour, and the beginning of His attraction is felt in the sense of a mortification of our old self-love. For this reason it is that humility holds a place in

Christian ethics out of all proportion to its importance elsewhere. But when we say that he that humbleth himself is exalted, we must see that this humility is wholly unlike that pusillanimity and meanness of spirit with which it is often confounded. It is he that is lowly in his own eyes, and is cured of the conceit of his self-righteousness who is truly humble. The counterfeit humility often seems more genuine than the real. The monk who fasts and scourges himself, wears weeds for clothes, and sandals for shoes, strikes the vulgar as more Christ-like than the man who anoints his face and does not appear unto men to fast. Humility, then, grounded in a deep sense of sin, and the need, not only of general pardon of the past, but of entire and daily renewal; this is the mark of the regenerate nature. "If I wash thee not, thou hast no part with me." In Christian ethics the distinction between grace and graces is important, and goes to the root of the question. There are some graces which are gifts, such as the gift of prophecy, of knowledge, of tongues and their interpretation. Some, if not all of these, were transitory in the Church, and have passed away. But there are three "abiding" graces, which in their essence are not three, but one. They are not even graces in the exact sense of charities or charms, personal charms, which the bride puts on because they are pleasing to the bridegroom, as well as because they are His bridal gifts. The fruits of the spirit, love, joy, peace, etc., against which there is no law, may be ornaments of the Christian character, but the character itself is laid in deeper foundations than these. It is grace in general, grace which germinates as faith, blossoms in hope, and bears fruit in charity; this is the true, real root of character, if Christ is to be our pattern, and if our ethics is to be distinctively Christian. The three theological graces, as they have been called, have been sometimes made a supplement to the four cardinal virtues, much as in the Middle Ages there was a Trivium, or three year course of study, added on to the Quadrivium, and so the circle of a complete character, like a thorough course of study, could only be run round at the end of a Septennate. This is the usual connection between Christian and non-Christian schemes of ethics, which, it is needless to say, is the piece of new cloth to the old garment. The foundations of a whole character, or, which is the same thing, of that wholeness of character which results in holiness, must be laid deep in some internal relation of the soul to God. It is faith that worketh, and love which supplies such a foundation. Belief brings the soul at once to its true center, which is God, and the character thus is framed on the only basis of true moral formation, which is the sense of dependence. Here Schliermacher was right in making dependence the root idea of all religion, and instead of making too much of this principle, as the critics assert, to our thinking he did not go far enough. It is dependence which is the root of true manliness. In this sense the child is father of the man, and we are called by the apostle to add to our faith virtue, or a