1. Duty and Vocation.—'While duty stands for a universal element there is a personal element in moral requirement which may be called vocation.'[2] As soon as the youth enters upon the larger world he has to make choice of a profession or life-work. Different principles may guide him in his selection. First of all, the circumstances {200} of life will help to decide the individual's career. Our calling and duties arise immediately out of our station. Already by parental influence and the action of home-environment character is being shaped, and tastes and purposes are created which will largely determine the future. Next to condition and station, individual capacity and disposition ought to be taken into account. No good work can be accomplished in uncongenial employment. A man must have not only fitness for his task, but also a love for it. Proper ambition may also be a determining factor. We have a right to make the most of ourselves, and to strive for that position in which our gifts shall have fullest scope. But the ultimate decision must be made in the light of conscience. Self-interest should not be our sole motive in the choice of a vocation. It is not enough to ask what is most attractive, what line of life will ensure the greatest material gain or worldly honour? Rather should we ask, Where shall I be safest from moral danger, and, above all, in what position of life, open to me, can I do the most good? It is not enough to know that a certain mode of livelihood is permitted by law; I must decide whether it is permitted to me as a Christian. For, after all, underlying, and giving purpose and direction to, our earthly vocation is the deeper calling of God into His kingdom. These cannot, indeed, be separated. We cannot divide our life into two sections, a sacred and a secular. Nor must we restrict the idea of vocation to definite spheres of work. Even those who are precluded by affliction from the activities of the world are still God's servants, and may find in suffering itself their divinely appointed mission. There is a divinity which shapes our ends, and in every life-calling there is something sacred. 'Saints,' says George Eliot, 'choose not their tasks, they choose but to do them well.'
But the decisions of life do not cease with the choice of a calling. At every moment of our career fresh difficulties arise, and new opportunities open up which demand careful thought. Our first obligation is to meet faithfully the claims of our station. But in the complexity of life we are {201} being constantly brought into wider relations with our fellow-men, which either modify the old, or create entirely new situations. While the rule is to do the duty that lies nearest us, to obey the call of God at each moment, it needs no little wisdom to discern one's immediate duty, and to know what the will of God actually is.
2. Conflict of Duties.—In the sphere of duty itself a three-fold distinction, having the imprimatur of the Romish Church, has been made by some moralists: (1) the problem of colliding interests; (2) 'counsels of perfection'; and (3) indifferent acts or 'Adiaphora,' actions which, being neither commanded nor forbidden, fall outwith the domain of Christian obligation. It will not be necessary to discuss at length these questions. The Gospel lends no support to such distinctions, and as Schleiermacher points out they ought to have no place in Protestant Ethics.[3]
(1) With regard to the 'conflict of duties,' when the collision is really, as it often is, a struggle between inclination and duty, the question answers itself. There are, of course, cases in which perplexity must occur to an honest man. But the difficulty cannot be decided by drawing up a list of axiomatic precepts to fit all conceivable cases. In the dilemma, for example, between self-preservation and self-sacrifice which may present itself in some tragic experience of life, a host of considerations relative to the individual's history and relationships enter in to modify the situation, and the course to be taken can be finally determined by a man's own conscience alone. Ultimately there can be no collision of duties as such. Once a man recognises a certain mode of conduct to be right for him there is really no choice. In judgment he may err; passion or desire may obscure the issue; but once he has determined what he ought to do there is no alternative, 'er kann nicht anders.'
(2) Again, it is a complete misapprehension of the nature of duty to distinguish between the irreducible minimum and acts of supererogatory goodness which outrun duty. {202} Goodness is one, and admits of no degrees. All duty is absolute. An overplus is unthinkable, since no man can do more than his duty. A Christian can only do what he recognises as his obligation, and this he ought to fulfil at every moment and with all his might. Love, which is the Christian's only law, knows no limit. Even when we have done our utmost we are still unprofitable servants.
(3) Finally, the question as to whether there are any acts which are indifferent, permissible, but neither enjoined nor forbidden, must also be answered in the negative. If the Christian can do no more than his duty, because in every single action he seeks to fulfil the whole will of God, it is clear that there can be no moment of life that can be thought of not determined by the divine will. There is no part of life that is colourless. There must be no dropped stitches in the texture of the Christian character.
It is most frequently in the domain of amusement that the notion of the 'Permissible' is applied. It has been contended that as recreation really lies outwith the Christian sphere, it may be allowed to Christian people as a concession to human weakness.[4] But can this position be vindicated? Relaxation is as much a need of man as work, and must, equally with it, be brought within the scope of Christian conduct. We have no business to engage in any activity, whether involving pleasure or pain, that we cannot justify to our conscience. Are not the joys of life, and even its amusements, among God's gifts designed for the enriching of character? And may not they, too, be consecrated to the glory of God? We are to use the world while not abusing it, for all things are ours if we are Christ's. Over every department of life the law of Christ is sovereign, and the ultimate principle applicable to all problems of duty is, 'Whatsoever ye do in word or deed do all to the glory of God.'
3. Rights and Duties.—The foregoing question as to the scope of duty leads naturally to the consideration of the relation of duties and rights. It is usual to distinguish {203} between legal and moral rights; but at bottom they are one. The rights which I legally claim for myself I am morally bound to grant to others. A right is expressed in the form of a permission; a duty, of an imperative. I may or may not demand my legal rights; morally, I must perform my duties. But, on the other hand, a right may be secured by legal compulsion; a duty, as a moral obligation, can never be enforced by external power: it needs our own assent.[5]
Strictly speaking rights and duties are correlative. Every right carries with it an obligation; not merely in the objective sense that when one man has a right other men are under the obligation to respect it, but also in the subjective sense that when a man has a right he is bound to use it for the general good. It is sometimes said, 'A man may do what he likes with his own.' Legally that may be true, but morally he is under obligation to employ it for the general good just as strictly as if it were another's. A man's rights are not merely decorations or ends in themselves. They are opportunities, instruments, trusts. And when any man has them, it means that he is placed on a vantage-ground from which, secure of oppression or interference, he may begin to do his duty.[6] But this moral aspect of right is often lost sight of. People are so enamoured of what they call their rights that they forget that the real value of every right depends upon the use to which they put it. A man's freedom does not consist in having rights, but in fulfilling them. 'After all,' says Mazzini, 'the greatest right a man can possess or recognise—the greatest gift of all—is simply the privilege and obligation to do his duty.'[7] This is the only Christian doctrine of rights. It underlies our Lord's teaching in the parable of the Talents. We only have what we use.
(1) Much has been written of the 'Natural rights of Man.'[8] This was the claim of a school of political philosophy of {204} which Paine was the most rigorous exponent. The contentions of Paine were met as vigorously by the negations of Bentham and Burke. And if it be supposed that the individual is born into the world with certain ready-made possessions, fixed and unalterable, the claim is untenable. Such an artificial account of man ignores entirely the evolution of moral nature, and denies the possibility of development in man's conception of law and duty. 'It is,' as Wundt says, 'to derive all the moral postulates that have been produced in our minds by previous moral development from moral life as it actually exists.'[9]