Epictetus gives the heaven of the conscience, Jesus of the heart,
Emerson of the intellect.
Man's problems now are to find the physical and the social heaven,—to rightly correlate the spirit with the body and the earth, and to more perfectly organize society.
The modern man, instead of appealing to Jehovah or Christ, grasps the
powers of nature and of life as they are put into his own hands.
Walter Scott writes in his journal, in a sharp exigency: "God help—no,
God bless—man must help himself."
"Love God and man; what higher rule can there be?" we are asked. But the actual work of the modern man is widely different from what Jesus or Paul perceived. To understand natural forces and ally himself with them; to rightly order that vastly complex organism, the state; to frankly enjoy the pleasures of the healthy body; to discern the beauty of the surrounding world; to reproduce beauty in art; to relish the humor of the world,—these are aims which would have sounded strange to Paul, to Jesus, or to Epictetus.
To seek the best, not for ourselves alone but for others, even at cost to ourselves; to control our lower natures by our higher natures; to feel a relation with the Supreme,—these were the aims and inspirations of the earlier Christianity; and they remain, but with enlarged and new application.
Science has not penetrated to the inner secret of life, which is best reached by other approaches. But it has enormously affected all thinking by the discovery of Evolution. The recognition of growth—a gradual, causal process—in mankind's whole advance, alters the entire face of history and prophecy. Just as it eliminates supernaturalism from the past, so it guides present progress and inspires while it moderates anticipation of the future.
There grows the sense of some unfathomable unity. Creator and creature are not sharply separated, as by the theologians: they are even more closely united than the "father" and "son" of Jesus. So, too, the unity of humanity—of all souls—until the idea of personal immortality blends with some dimly conceived but greater reality.
It is impossible to portray under a single image the ideal of to-day, because many ideals coexist. There is infinite difference of moral development, as many characters as there are men; the variety of the spiritual world is like that of the material world, and the diversity gives richness and charm. And the forward movement of the ages is immeasurably complex. Yet certain broad movements are traceable.
"Do right and fear nothing," was the word of Stoicism.
"God is holy; be ye holy," was the word of Hebraism, growing clearer, stamping itself by institutions and inheritance.