[31] Marshall, Principles of Economics.
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CHAPTER XIV
CONCLUSION—THE PERMANENCE OF CHRISTIAN ETHICS
In bringing to a close our study of Christian Ethics, we repeat that the three dominant notes of the Christian Ideal are—Absoluteness, Inwardness, and Universality. The Gospel claims to be supreme in life and morals. The uniqueness and originality of the Ethics of Christianity are to be sought, however, not so much in the range of its practical application as in the unfolding of an ideal which is at once the power and pattern of the new life. That ideal is Christ in whom the perfect life is disclosed, and through whom the power for its realisation is communicated. Life is a force, and character a growth arising in and expanding from a hidden seed. Hence in Christian Ethics apathy and passivity, and even asceticism and quietism, which occupy an important place in the moral systems of Buddha and Neo-Platonism, in mediaeval Catholicism and the teaching of Tolstoy, play only a subsidiary part, and are but preparatory stages towards the realisation of a fuller life. On the contrary all is life, energy, and unceasing endeavour. 'I am come that ye may have life, and that ye may have it more abundantly.'
There is no finality in Christian Ethics. It is not a mechanical and completed code. The Ethic of the New Testament, just because it has its spring in the living Christ, is an inexhaustible fountain of life. 'True Christianity,' says Edward Caird, 'is not something which was published in Palestine, and which has been handed down by a dead tradition ever since; it is a living and growing {246} spirit, and learns the lessons of history, and is ever manifesting new powers and leading on to new truths.'
The teaching of Jesus is not merely temporary or local. It is an utter perversion of the Gospels to make the eschatology present in them the master-key to their meaning, or to derive the ethical ideal from the utterances which anticipate an abrupt and immediate end. Jesus spoke indeed the language of His time and race, and often clothed His spiritual purpose in the form of national expectation. But to base His moral maxims on an 'Interim-Ethic' adapted to a transitory world is to 'distort the perspective of His teaching, and to rob it of its unity and insight.' On the contrary, the Ethics of Jesus are everywhere characterised by adaptability, universality, and permanence, and in His attitude to the great problems of life there is a serenity and sympathy which has nothing in common with the nervous and excited expectation of sudden catastrophe.
In like manner it is a misinterpretation of the teaching of Jesus to represent asceticism as the last word of Christian Ethics. Renunciation and unworldliness are undoubtedly frequently commended in the New Testament, but they are urged not as ends in themselves but as means to a fuller self-realisation. Such was not the habitual temper and tone of Jesus in His relations to the world, nor was the ultimate purpose of His mission to create a type of manhood whose perfection lay in withdrawal from the interests and obligations of life. 'To single out a teaching of non-resistance as the core of the Gospels, to retreat from social obligations in the name of one who gladly shared them and was called a friend of wine-bibbers and publicans—all this, however heroic it may be, is not only an impracticable discipleship but a historical perversion. It mistakes the occasionalism of the Gospels for universalism.'[1]
Finally, there are many details of modern social well-being with which the New Testament does not deal, questions of present-day ethics and economics which cannot be decided by a direct reference to chapter and {247} verse, either of the Gospels or Epistles. The problems of life shift with the shifting years, but the nature of life remains unchanged, and responds to the life and the spirit of Him who was, and remains down the ages, the Light of men. The individual virtues of humility, purity of heart, and self-sacrifice are not evanescent, but are now and always the pillars of Christian Ethics; while the great principles of human solidarity, of brotherhood and equality in Christ, of freedom, of love, and service; the New Testament teachings concerning the family, the State, and the kingdom of God; our Lord's precepts with regard to the sacredness of the body and the soul, the duty of work, the stewardship of wealth, and the accountability to God for life with its variety of gifts and tasks—contain the germ and potency of all personal and social transformation and renewal.
[1] Prof. Peabody, Harvard Theological Review, May 1913.