1. Christian Ethics is not directly concerned with critical questions as to the genuineness and authenticity of the New Testament writings. It is sufficient for its purpose that these have been generally received by the Church, and that they present in the Person of Christ the highest embodiment of the law and spirit of the moral life. The writings of the New Testament thus become ethically normative in virtue of their direct reflection of the mind of Christ and their special receptivity of His spirit. Their {31} authority, therefore, is Christ's own authority, and has a value for us as His word is reproduced by them. It does not detract from the validity of the New Testament as the reflection of the spirit of Christ that there are discernible in it distinct signs of development of doctrine, a manifest growth in clearness and depth of insight and knowledge of the mind of Jesus. Such evidences of advancement are specially noticeable in the application of Christian principles to the practical problems of life, such as the questions of slavery, marriage, work and property. St. Paul does not disclaim the possibility of development, and he associates himself with those who know in part and wait for fuller light. In common with all Christians, Paul was doubtless conscious of a growing enrichment in spiritual knowledge; and his later epistles show that he had reached to clearer prospects of Christ and His redemption, and had obtained a fuller grasp of the world-wide significance of the Gospel than when he first began to preach.
One cannot forget that the battle of criticism is raging to-day around the inner citadel—the very person and words of Jesus. If it can be shown that the Gospels contain only very imperfect records of the historical Jesus, and that very few sayings of our Lord can be definitely pronounced genuine, then, indeed, we might have to give up some of the particular passages upon which we have based our conception of truth and duty, but nothing less than a wholesale denial of the historical existence of Jesus[7] would demand of us a repudiation of the Christian view of life. The ideals, motives, and sentiments—the entire outlook and spirit of life which we associate with Christ—are now a positive possession of the Christian consciousness. There is a Christian view of the world, a Christian Welt-Anschauung, so living and real in the heart of Christendom that even though we had no more reliable basis than the 'Nine Foundation Pillars' which Schmiedel condescends to leave us, we should not be wholly deprived of the fundamental principles upon which the Christian life might be reared. {32} If to these we add the list of 'doubly attested sayings' collected by Burkitt,[8] which even some of the most negative critics have been constrained to allow, we should at least have a starting-point for the study of the teaching of Jesus. The most reputable scholars, however, of Germany, America and Britain acknowledge that no reasonable doubt can be cast upon the general substance and tone of the Synoptic Gospels, compiled, as they were, from the ancient Gospel of Mark and the source commonly called 'Q' (i.e. the lost common origin of the non-Markian portions of Matthew and Luke). To these we should be disposed to add the Fourth Gospel, which, though a less primary source, undoubtedly records acts and sayings of our Lord attested by one, who (whosoever he was) was in close touch with his Master's life, and had drunk deeply of His spirit.
In the general tone and trend of these writings we find abundant materials for what may be called the Ethics of Jesus. It is true, no sharp line can be drawn between His religious and moral teaching. But, taking Ethics in its general sense, as the discussion of the ideals, virtues, duties of man, the relation of man to God and to his fellow-men, it will at once be seen that a very large portion of Christ's teaching is distinctly ethical. The facts of His own earthly existence, all His great miracles, His parables, and above all, the Sermon on the Mount, have an immediate bearing upon human conduct. They all deal with character, and are chiefly illustrations and enforcements of the divine ideal of life and of the value of man as a child of God which He came to reveal. In the example of Jesus Himself we have the best possible illustration of the translation of principles into life. And in so far as we find our highest good embodied in Him, He becomes for us, as J. S. Mill acknowledged, a kind of personified conscience. No abstract statement of ethical principles can possibly influence life so powerfully as the personal incarnation of these principles; and if the greatest means to the true life is personal association with the high and noble, then it need not seem strange {33} that love and admiration for the person of Christ have as a matter of fact proved the mightiest of historical motives to noble living.
However imperfectly we may know the person of Jesus, and however fragmentary may be the record of His teaching, one great truth looms out of the darkness—the peerlessness of His character and the incomparableness of His ideal of life. He comes to us with a message of Good, new to man, based on the great conviction of the Fatherhood of God. The all-dominating faith that a genuine seeking love is at the heart of the universe makes Jesus certain that the laws of the world are the laws of a loving God—laws of life which must be studied, welcomed, and heartily obeyed.
2. The Christian ideal, though given in Christ, has to be examined, analysed, and applied by the very same faculties as are employed in dealing with speculative problems. All science must be furnished with facts, and its task generally is to shape its materials to definite ends. The scientist does not invent. He does not create. He simply discovers what is already there: he only moulds into form what is given. In like manner, the Christian moralist deals with the revelation of life which has been granted to him partly in the human consciousness, and partly through the sacred scriptures. The scriptures, however, do not offer a systematic presentation of the life of Christ, or a formal directory of moral conduct. The data are supplied, but these data require to be interpreted and unified so as to form a system of Ethics. The authority to which Christian Ethics appeals is not an external oracle which imposes its dictates in a mechanical way. It is an authority embodied in intelligible forms, and appealing to the rational faculties of man. Christian Ethics, though deduced from scripture, is not a cut and dry code of rules prescribed by God which man must blindly obey. It has to be thought out, and intelligently applied to all the circumstances of life. According to the Protestant view, at least, Ethics is not a stereotyped compendium of precepts which {34} the Church supplies to its members to save them from thinking. Slavish imitation is wholly foreign to the genius of the Gospel. Christ Himself appeals everywhere to the rational nature of man, and His words are life and spirit only as they are intelligibly apprehended and become by inner conviction the principles of action.
Authoritative, then, as the scriptures are, and containing as they do the revelation of an unique historical fact, they do not present a closed or final system of truth. Christ has yet many things to say unto us, and the Holy Spirit is continually adding new facts to human experience, and disclosing richer and fuller manifestations of God through history and providence and the personal consciousness of man. No progress in thought or life can indeed be made which is inconsistent with, or foreign to, the fundamental facts which centre in Christ: and we may be justly suspicious of all advancement in doctrine or morals which does not flow from the initial truths of the Master's life and teaching. But, just as progress has been made, both in the increase of materials of knowledge and in regard to the clearer insight and appreciation of the meaning of Christian truth, since the apostles' age, so we may hope that, as the ages go on, we shall acquire a still fuller conception of the kingdom of God and a richer apprehension of the divine will. The task and method of Christian Ethics will be, consequently, the intelligent interpretation and the gradual application to human life and society, in all their relationships, of the mind of Christ under the constant illumination and guidance of the Divine Spirit.
[1] Cf. Dorner, System der Christl. Ethik, p. 48. See also Newman Smyth, Christian Ethics, p. 44.
[2] Cf. Mackintosh, Christian Ethics, p. 11.
[3] Cf. Lidgett, The Christian Religion, pp. 106, 485 ff., where the idea of God's nature is admirably developed.
[4] Rashdall, The Theory of Good and Evil, vol. ii. p. 212.