And the universality of religion is no less a gain. So far as religion was of the group it tended to emphasize the boundary between Jew and Gentile, Greek and Barbarian, between the "we-group" and the "others-group." But when this group religion gave place to a more universal religion, the kingdom of Israel could give place to the kingdom of God; brotherhood could transcend family or national lines. In the fierce struggles of the Middle Ages the church was a powerful agency for restraining the powerful and softening the feuds of hostile clans and peoples. The "peace of God" was not only a symbol of a far-off ideal, but an actual relief. The universality might indeed be sought by force in a crusade of Christian against Moslem, or in the horror of a thirty years' war between Catholic and Protestant. But as the conception of religion as a spiritual relation becomes clearer, the tendency must inevitably be to disclose religion as essentially a unifying rather than a divisive and discordant force. If any religion becomes universal it will be because of its universal appeal. And so far as it does make universal appeal, like science, like art, it invites its followers.
The differentiation of the moral from the religious is often difficult to trace. For the religious has often been the agency through which certain of the characteristics of the moral have been brought about. The inward and voluntary aspect of the moral, as compared with the verdicts of law or public opinion, has been emphasized. But this is often developed by the religious conceptions of an all-seeing God, an all-wise judge. "Man looketh on the outer appearance, but the Lord looketh upon the heart" has its literary parallels in Xenophon and Plato and Shakspere. The distinction between higher and lower values has received its most impressive symbol in the conception of "another world," in which there is neither pain nor sin, but eternal blessedness and eternal life. Ideals of character, when embodied in divine persons, command love, reverence, and devotion in supreme degree. A society in which love and justice are the law of life has seemed more possible, more potent to inspire sacrifice and enthusiasm, when envisaged as the Kingdom of God. But in all these illustrations we have, not the religious as distinct from the moral, but the religious as modified by the moral and embodying the moral in concrete examples and imagery. We can see the two possible types of development, however, in the concrete instances of the Hebrews and the Greeks. In Israel religion was able to take up the moral ideals and become itself more completely ethical. The prophets of religion were at the same time the moral reformers. But in Greece, in spite of the efforts of some of the great poets, the religious conceptions for the most part remained set and hence became superstition, or emotional orgy, or ecstasy, while the moral found a distinct path of its own. Religion at present is confronting the problem of whether it will be able to take up into itself the newer ethical values—the scientific spirit which seeks truth, the enhanced value of human worth which demands higher types of social justice.
A brief characterization of the respective standpoints of religion and morality may be added, as they both aim to control and give value to human conduct. The religious has always implied some relation of man's life to unseen powers or to the cosmos. The relation may be the social relation of kin or friend or companion, the political of subject to a sovereign, the cosmic relation of dependence, or that of seeking in the divine completer meaning or more perfect fulfillment for what is fragmentary and imperfect. In its aspect of "faith" it holds all these ideals of power, wisdom, goodness, justice, to be real and effective. The moral, on the other hand, concerns itself, not with unseen beings or cosmic reality, but with human purposes and the relations of a man to his fellows. For religion, conscience may be the "voice of God"; for morality, it must be stated in terms of thought and feeling. The "moral law" must be viewed as a law which is capable of being approved, at least—and this implies that it may also be criticized—by the mind. The difference which religion states as a choice between "God and mammon," between heaven and earth, morality must state in terms of good and evil, right and wrong, ideal interests and natural appetites. Instead of regarding its standards as laws established once for all by a divine authority, morality seeks to reach principles. Instead of embodying its ideals in persons, the moral seeks to reshape them continually. It is for religion to hold that "God reigns," and therefore "All's right with the world." The moral as such must be continually overcoming evil, continually working out ideals into conduct, and changing the natural order into a more rational and social order.
FOOTNOTES:
[96] Grote, Plato and the Other Companions of Sokrates, Vol. I., p. 249.
[97] Nearly every railway journey or other occasion for observing family discipline discloses the prevalence of this agency of savage morality. "If you are not quiet I'll give you to the conductor," "the black man will get you," "Santa Claus will not give presents to naughty children." That persons who in many respects are kindly and decent should aim to cultivate morality by a system of deliberate lying and more or less brutal cruelty is one of the interesting phenomena of education. The savages who used taboos believed what they said.
[98] Sumner, Folkways, p. 36.
[99] Plato's wording is given on p. 132.
[100] "Recognition" has the same double sense. So has "acknowledgment," with greater emphasis upon rendering allegiance in action.