II
The Christian Motive.—Rightly regarded Christ is not only the model of the new life, but its motive as well. All the great appeals of the Gospel—every persuasion and plea by which God seeks to awaken a responsive love in the hearts of men—are centred in, and find expression through, the Person and Passion of Christ.
1. The question of motive is a primary one in Ethics. {153} If, therefore, we ask, What is the deepest spring of action, what is the incentive and motive power for the Christian? The answer is: (1) the love of God, a love which finds its highest expression in Forgiveness. Of all motives the most powerful is the sense of being pardoned. Even when it is only one human being who forgives another, nothing strikes so deep into the human heart or evokes penitence so tender and unreserved, or brings a joy so pure and lasting. It not only restores the old relation which wrong had dissolved; it gives the offender a sense of loyalty unknown before. He is now bound not by law but by honour, and it would be a disloyalty worse than the original offence if he wounded such love again. Thus it is that God becomes the object of reverence and affection, not because He imposes laws upon us but because He pardons and redeems. The consciousness of forgiveness is far more potent in producing goodness than the consciousness of law. This psychological fact lay at the root of Christ's ministry, and was the secret of His hope for man. This, too, is the key to all that is paradoxical, and, at the same time, to all that is most characteristic in St Paul's Gospel. What the Law could not do, forgiveness achieves. It creates the new heart, and with it the new holiness. 'It is not anything statutory which makes saints out of sinful men; it is the forgiveness which comes through the passion of Jesus.'[12]
(2) Next to the motive of forgiveness, and indeed arising from it, is the new consciousness of the Fatherhood of God, and the corresponding idea of sonship. This was a motive to which Jesus habitually appealed. He invariably sought not only to create in men confidence in God by revealing His fatherly providence, but also to lift them out of their apathy and thraldom by kindling in their souls a sense of their worth and liberty as sons of God. The same thought is prominent also in the epistles both of St. Paul and St. John. As children of God we are no longer menials and hirelings who do their work merely for pay, and without {154} intelligent interest, but sons who share our Father's possessions and co-operate with Him in His purposes.[13]
(3) Closely connected with the idea of Sonship is that of life as a Divine Vocation. Life is a trust, and as the children of God we are called to serve Him with all we have and are. The sense of the vocation and stewardship of life acts as a motive: (a) in giving dignity and stability to character, saving us, on the one hand, from fatalism, and on the other from fanaticism, and affording definiteness of purpose to all our endeavours; and (b) in promoting sincerity and fidelity in our life-work. Thoroughness will permeate every department of our conduct, since whatsoever we do in word or deed we do as unto God. All duty is felt to be one, and as love to God becomes its motive the smallest as well as the greatest act is invested with infinite worth. 'All service ranks the same with God.'
(4) Another motive, prominent in the Pauline Epistles, but present also in the eschatological passages of the Synoptics, ought to be mentioned, though it does not now act upon Christians in the same form—the Shortness and Uncertainty of life. Our Lord enjoins men to work while it is day for the night cometh; and in view of the suddenness and unexpectedness of the coming of the Son of Man He exhorts to watchfulness and preparedness. A similar thought forms the background of the apostle's conception of life. His entire view of duty as well as his estimate of earthly things are tinged with the idea that 'the time is short,' and that 'the Lord is at hand.' Christians are exhorted, therefore, to sit lightly to all worldly considerations. Our true citizenship is in heaven. But neither the apostle nor his Master ever urges this fact as a reason for apathy or indifference. Life may be brief, but it is not worthless. The thought of life's brevity must not act as an opiate, but rather as a stimulant. If our existence here is short, then there is all the greater necessity that its days should be nobly filled, and its transient opportunities seized and turned into occasions of strenuous service.
{155}
(5) To the considerations just mentioned must be added a cognate truth which has coloured the whole Christian view of life, and has been a most powerful factor in shaping Christian conduct—the idea of Immortality. It is not quite correct to say that we owe this doctrine to Christianity alone. Long before the Christian era it was recognised in Egypt, Greece, and the Orient generally. But it was entertained more as a surmise than a conviction. And among the Greeks it was little more than the shadowy speculation of philosophers. Plato, in his Phaedo, puts into the mouth of Socrates utterances of great beauty and far-reaching import; yet, notwithstanding their sublimity, they scarcely attain to more than a 'perhaps.' Even in Hebrew literature, as we have seen, while isolated instances of a larger hope are not wanting, there is no confident or general belief in an after-life. But what was only guessed at by the ancients was declared as a fact by Christ, and preached as a sublime and comforting truth by the apostles; and it is not too much to say that survival after death is at once the most distinctive doctrine of Christianity and the most precious hope of Christendom. The whole moral temperature of the world, says Jean Paul Richter, has been raised immeasurably by the fact that Christ by His Gospel has brought life and immortality to light. This idea, which has found expression, not only in all the creeds of Christendom, but also in the higher literature and poetry of modern times, has given a new motive to action, has founded a new type of heroism, and nerved common men and women to the discharge of tasks from which nature recoils. The assurance that death does not end existence, but that 'man has forever,' has not only exalted and transfigured the common virtues of humanity; but, held in conjunction with the belief in the divine Fatherhood and human brotherhood, given to life itself a new solemnity and pathos.[14]
2. But if these are the things which actuate men in their service of God and man, can it be legitimately said that the Christian motive is pure and disinterested? It is {166} somewhat remarkable that two opposite charges have been brought against Christian Ethics.[15] In one quarter the reproach has been made that Christianity suppresses every natural desire for happiness, and inculcates a life of severe renunciation. And with equally strong insistence there are others who find fault with it because of its hedonism, because it rests morality upon an appeal to selfish interests alone.
(1) The first charge is sufficiently met, we think, by our view of the Christian ideal. We have seen that it is a full rich life which Christ reveals and commends. The kingdom of God finds its realisation, not in a withdrawal from human interests, but in a larger and fuller participation in all that makes for the highest good of humanity. It is a caricature of Christ's whole outlook upon existence to represent Him as teaching that this life is an outlying waste, forsaken of God and unblessed, and that the world is so hopelessly bad that it must be wholly renounced. On the contrary, it is for Him one of the provinces of the divine kingdom, and the most trivial of our occupations and the most transient of our joys and sorrows find their place in the divine order. It is not necessary to endorse Renan's idyllic picture of the Galilean ministry to believe that for Jesus all life, its ordinary engagements and activities, had a worth for the discipline and perfecting of character, and were capable of being consecrated to the highest ends. There are, indeed, not a few passages in which the call to self-denial is emphasised. But neither Christ nor His apostles represent pain and want as in themselves efficacious or meritorious. Renunciation is inculcated not for its own sake, but always as a means to fuller realisation. Jesus, indeed, transcends the common antithesis of life. For Him it is not a question as to whether asceticism or non-asceticism is best. Life is for use. It is at once a trust and a privilege. It may seem to some that He chose 'the primrose path,' but if he did so it was not due to an easy-going good-nature. We dare not forget the terrible issues {157} He faced without flinching. As Professor Sanday has finely said, 'If we are to draw a lesson in this respect from our Lord's life, it certainly would not be that
"He who lets his feelings run
In soft luxurious flow,
Shrinks when hard service must be done,
And faints at every woe."
It would be rather that the brightest and tenderest human life must have a stern background, must carry with it the possibility of infinite sacrifice, of bearing the cross and the crown of thorns.'[16]
(2) The second charge, the charge of hedonism, though seemingly opposed to the first, comes into line with it in so far as it is alleged that Christianity, while inculcating renunciation in this world, does so for the sake of happiness in the next. It is contended that in regard to purity of motive the Ethics of Christianity falls below the Ethics of philosophy.[17] This statement, so often repeated, requires some examination.
3. While it may be acknowledged that unselfishness and disinterestedness are the criterion of moral sublimity, it must be noted at the outset that considerable confusion of thought exists as to the meaning of motive. Even in those moral systems in which virtue is represented as wholly disinterested, the motive may be said to reside in the object itself. The maxim, 'Virtue for virtue's sake,' really implies what may be called the 'interest of achievement.' If virtue has any meaning it must be regarded as a 'good' which is desirable. Perseverance in the pursuit of any good implies the hope of success; in other words, of the reward which lies in the attainment of the object desired. The reward sought may not be foreign to the nature of virtue itself, but none the less, the idea of reward is present, and, in a sense, is the incentive to all virtuous endeavour. This is, indeed, implied by a no less rigorous {168} moralist than Kant. For as he himself teaches, the question, 'What should I do?' leads inevitably to the further question, 'What may I hope?'[18] The end striven after cannot be a matter of indifference, if virtue is to have moral value at all. It must be a real and desirable end—an end which fulfils the purpose of a man as a moral being.
(1) But though Kant insists with rigorous logic that reverence for the majesty of the moral law must be the only motive of duty, and that all motives springing from personal desire or hope of happiness must be severely excluded, it is curious to find that in the second part of his Critique of Practical Reason he proceeds, with a strange inconsistency, to make room for the other idea, viz., that virtue is not without its reward, and is indeed united in the end with happiness. Felicity and holiness shall be ultimately one, he says; and, at the last, virtue shall be seen 'to be worthy of happiness,' and happiness shall be the crown of goodness.[19] Thus those philosophers, of whom Kant is typical, who contend for the purity of the moral motive and the disinterested loyalty to the good, bring in, at the end, the notion of happiness, which, as a concomitant or consequence of virtue, cannot fail to be also an active incentive.
(2) When we turn to Christian Ethics we find that here, not less than in philosophical Ethics, the motive lies in the object itself. The end and the motive are really one, and the highest good is to be sought for itself and not for the sake of some ulterior gain. It is true, indeed, that Christianity has not always been presented in its purest form; too often have prudence, fear, other-worldliness been set forth as inducements to goodness, as if the Gospel cared nothing for the disposition of a man, and was concerned only with his ultimate happiness. Even a moralist so acute as Paley bases morality upon no higher ground than enlightened self-interest. But the most superficial reader of the Gospels must see at a glance the wide variance between such a view and that of Christ. Nothing could be further from the spirit of Jesus than to estimate the {169} excellence of an action by the magnitude or the utility of its effects rather than the intrinsic good of its motive. Otherwise He would not have ranked the widow's mite above the gifts of vanity, nor esteemed the tribute of the penitent, not so much for the costliness of her offering, as for the sincerity of affection it revealed. Christ looked upon the heart alone, and the worth of an action lay essentially for Him in its inner quality. Sin resided not merely in the overt act, but even more in the secret desire. A man may be outwardly blameless, and yet not really good. He who remains sober or honest simply because of the worldly advantages attaching to such conduct may obtain a certificate of respectability from society; but, judged by the standard of Christ, he is not truly a moral man. In an age which is too prone to make outward propriety the gauge of goodness, it cannot be sufficiently insisted upon that the Ethic of Christianity is an Ethic of the inner motive and intention, and that, in this respect, it does not fall a whit behind the demand of the most rigid system of disinterested morality.
(a) It must, however, be freely admitted that our Lord frequently employs the sanctions both of rewards and penalties. In the time of Christ the idea of reward, so prominent in the Old Testament, still held an important place in Jewish religion, being specially connected with the Messianic Hope and the coming of the kingdom. It was not unnatural, therefore, that Jesus, trained in Hebrew religious modes of thought and expression, should frequently employ the existing conceptions as vehicles of His own teaching; but, at the same time, purifying them of their more materialistic associations and giving to them a richer spiritual content. While the kingdom of God is spoken of as a gift, and promised, indeed, as a reward, the word 'reward' in this connection is not used in the ordinary sense, but 'is rather conceived as belonging to the same order of spiritual experience as the state of heart and mind which ensures its bestowal.'[20] Though Jesus does not {160} hesitate to point His disciples to the blessings of heaven which they will receive in the future, these are represented for the most part not as material benefits, but as the intensification and enrichment of life itself.[21]
It was usually the difficulties rather than the advantages of discipleship upon which Jesus first laid stress. He would not that any one should come to Him on false pretences, or without fully counting the cost.[22] Even when He Himself called His original disciples, it was of service and not of recompense He spoke. 'Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men.'[23] The privilege consisted not in outward éclat, but in the participation of the Master's own purpose and work. Still, all service carries with it its own reward, and no one can share the mission of Christ without also partaking of that satisfaction and joy which are inseparable from the highest forms of spiritual ministry.[24]
There is, however, one passage recorded by all the Synoptists which seems at first sight to point more definitely to a reward of a distinctly material character, and to one that was to be enjoyed not merely in the future, but even in this present life. When Peter somewhat boastfully spoke of the sacrifice which he and his brethren had made for the Gospel's sake, and asked, 'What shall we have therefor?' Jesus replied, 'Verily, I say unto you, that no man that hath left home, or brethren, or sisters, or mother, or father, or children, or lands, for My sake and the Gospel's sake, but shall receive an hundredfold now in this time, houses and brethren, sisters and mothers, and children and lands, with persecutions; and in the world to come eternal life.'[25] Now, while this is a promise of wide sweep and large generosity, it is neither so arbitrary nor material as it seems. First, the words, 'with persecutions,' indicate that suffering is not only the very condition of the promise, but indeed an essential part of the reward—an element which would of itself be a true test of the sincerity of the sacrifice. {161} But, second, even the promise, 'An hundredfold now in this time,' is obviously not intended to be taken in a literal sense, but rather as suggesting that the gain, while apparently of the same nature as the sacrifice, will have a larger spiritual import. For, just as Jesus Himself looked upon all who shared His own devotion as His mother and brethren; so, in the deepest sense, when a man leaves father and mother, renouncing home and family ties for the sake of bringing his fellow-men to God, he seems to be emptying his life of all affectionate relationships, but in reality he is entering into a wider brotherhood; and, in virtue of his ministry of love, is being knit in bonds stronger than those of earthly kinship, with a great and increasing community of souls which owe to him their lives.[26] The promise is no arbitrary gift or bribe capriciously bestowed; it is the natural fruition of moral endeavour. For there is nothing so productive as sacrifice. What the man who yields himself to the service of Christ actually gives is life; and what he gets back, increased an hundredfold, is just life again, his own life, repeated and reflected in the men and women whom he has won to Christ.
In some of His parables Christ employs the analogy of the work-engagement, in which labour and payment seem to correspond. But the legal element has a very subordinate place in the simile. Jesus lifts the whole relationship into a higher region of thought, and transforms the idea of wages into that of a gift of love far transcending the legal claim which can be made by the worker. He who has the bondsman's mind, and works only for the hireling's pay, will only get what he works for. But he who serves from love finds in the service itself that which must always be its truest recompense—the increased power of service, the capacity of larger devotion[27]—'The wages of going on.'[28] In his latest volume Deissmann has pointed out that we can only do justice to the utterances of the New Testament regarding work and wages by examining them in situ, {162} amidst their natural surroundings. Jesus and St. Paul spoke with distinct reference to the life and habits of the common people of their day. 'If you elevate such utterances to the level of the Kantian moral philosophy, and reproach primitive Christianity with teaching for the sake of reward, you not only misunderstand the words, but tear them up by the roots.' . . . 'The sordid ignoble suggestions so liable to arise in the lower classes are altogether absent from the sayings of Jesus and His apostles, as shown by the parable of the Labourers in the Vineyard, and the analogous reliance of St. Paul solely upon grace.'[29]
The same inner relation subsists between Sin and Penalty. But here, again, the award of punishment is not arbitrary, but the natural consequence of disobedience to the law of the spiritual life. He who seeks to save his life shall lose it. He who makes this world his all shall receive as his reward only what this world can give. He who buries his talent shall, by the natural law of disuse, forfeit it. Not to believe in Christ is to miss eternal life. To refuse Him who is the Light of the world is to remain in darkness.
(6) An examination of the Pauline epistles yields a similar conclusion. St. Paul does not disdain to employ the sanctions of hope and fear. 'Knowing the terrors of the Lord' he persuades men, and 'because of the promises' he urges the Corinthians 'to cleanse themselves and perfect holiness.' But in Paul's case, as in that of our Lord, the charge of hedonism is meaningless. For not only does the conception hold a most subordinate place in his teaching, but the idea loses the sense of merit, and is transmuted into that of a free gift. And in general, in all the passages where the hope of the future is introduced, the idea of reward is merged in the yearning for a fuller life, which the Christian, who has once tasted of its joy here, may well expect in richer measure hereafter.[30]
Enough has been said to clear Christianity of the charge of hedonism. So far from Christian Ethics falling {163} below Philosophical Ethics in regard to purity of motive, it really surpasses it in the sublimity of its sanctions. The Kantian idea of virtue tends to empty the obligation of all moral content. Goodness, as the philosopher himself came to see, cannot be represented as a mere impersonal abstraction. Virtue has no meaning except in relation to its ultimate end. And life in union with a personal God, in whose image we have been made, is the end and purpose of man's being. Noble as it may be to live morally without the thought of God, the man who so strives to live does not attain to such a high conception of life as he who lives with God for his object. Motives advance with aims, and the higher the ideal the nobler the incentive. Fear of future punishment and the desire for future happiness may prove effective aids to the will at certain stages of moral development, but ultimately the love of God and the beauty of holiness make every other motive superfluous. Indeed, the reward of the Christian life is such as can only appeal to one who has come to identify himself with the divine will. The Christian man is always entering upon his reward. His joy is his Master's joy. He has no other interest. His reward, both here and hereafter, is not some external payment, something separable from himself; it is wholly conditioned by what he is, and is simply his own growth of character, his increasing power of being good and doing good. And if it be still asked, What is the great inducement? What is it that makes the life of the Christian worth living? The answer can only be—The hope of becoming what Christ has set before man as desirable, of growing up to the stature of perfect manhood, of attaining to the likeness of Jesus Christ Himself. But so far from this being a selfish aim, not to seek one's life in God—to be indifferent to all the inherent blessings and joys involved—would be not the mark of pure disinterestedness, but the evidence, rather, of a lack of appreciation of what life really means. The soul that has caught the vision of God and been thrilled with the grace of the Son of Man cannot but yield itself to the best it knows.
[1] Cf. Fairbairn, The Phil. of the Ch. Religion, pp. 358 ff.
[2] Peabody, Christ and the Christian Character, p. 44.
[3] Peabody, op. cit., pp. 53 f.
[4] Peabody, op. cit., p. 68.
[5] See Paulsen, System der Ethik, pp. 56 ff.; also Troeltsch, op. cit., vol. ii. p. 847.
[6] Cf. Ehrhardt, Der Grundcharacter d. Ethik. Jesu, p. 110. 'The ascetic element in the ethics of Jesus is its transient, the service of God its permanent element.' Cf. also Strauss, Leben Jesu, who speaks of 'the Hellenic quality' in Jesus; also Keim, Jesus of Nazareth, and Troeltsch, op. cit., vol. i. pp. 34 ff.
[7] John xiii. 15.
[8] Conduct of Life.
[9] Metaphysics of Ethics, sect. ii.
[10] Schultz, Grundriss d. evang. Ethik, p. 5.
[11] Cf. Ecce Homo, chap. x.
[12] This thought has been beautifully worked out by Prof. Denney in British Weekly, Jan. 13, 1912.
[13] Luke xv.
[14] Cf. Knight, The Christian Ethic, p. 36.
[15] See Haering, Ethics of the Christian Life, p. 190.
[16] 'Apocalyptic Element in the Gospels,' Hibbert Journal, Oct. 1911.
[17] The question of rewards has been fully discussed by Jacoby, Neutestamentliche Ethik, pp. 41 ff.; also Barbour, op. cit., pp. 226 ff.
[18] Cf. Kritik d. prakt. Vernunft, p. 143.
[19] Kant, Idem.
[20] Barbour, op. cit., p. 231.
[21] Matt. v. 12, xix. 21, xxv. 34; Luke vi. 23, xviii. 22; Mark x. 21.
[22] Mark viii. 19; Luke ix. 57.
[23] Mark i. 17, ii. 14.
[24] Luke xxii. 29 f.
[25] Mark x. 28-31; cf. Matt. xix. 27-30.
[26] This thought is finely elaborated by Barbour.
[27] Matt. xxv. 21; Luke xix. 17.
[28] Tennyson, Wages.
[29] Deissmann, Light from the Ancient East, pp. 316 ff.
[30] See also Eph. vi. 5-8; 1 Cor. iii. 14; Rom. v. 2-5, vi. 23, viii. 16.
{164}