This use of the Scriptures as the determinative authority, however, must take account of the fact that they present an historical and progressive revelation. As God's redemptive action advanced historically, unfolding religious truth and grace gradually and educationally, so the moral ideal, which Christianity in its fulness of provision and power should exhibit, is found more and more clearly revealed till the view is completed. This accounts for the higher ethical view reached in the New Testament.
The Old Testament, which is the record of the earlier stages of the Christian revelation, distinctly preparatory and prophetic, forms a continual instruction in duty and righteousness. It grounds the moral life essentially in the religious, but religion must walk in holiness. Fundamental in it stands the decalogue, a summary of moral law, of most profound and comprehensive sweep, which is still the great code of duty for the guidance of human conduct, and so clearly beyond the mere thinking of Moses or the people he led, as to prove its divine origin. All the types and symbols of the Old Testament, its sacrifices of cleansing and expiation, are impressive condemnations of sin and calls to repentance. The ever-ringing voices of prophecy are thrilling rebukes to wrong-doing and clarion appeals for righteousness. Its psalms and music are but echoing praise for the divine grace that renews the heart and restores the life to the blessedness of obedience to the moral laws of God. The lofty ethical demands of the Hebrew Scriptures, along with their revelation of grace, form a unique and distinguishing feature among ancient literatures. Their ceaseless voice is: "Keep judgment and do righteousness"; "Cease to do evil and learn to do well"; "Offer to God the sacrifices of righteousness." Nowhere else at that day was the moral ideal lifted so high, or with such imperative authority. The Old Testament ethics was a fit prophecy and preparation for the full Christian teaching. "If the ethics of the old dispensation had not passed into the fulfilment of the new, the Hebrew prophets and poets would still be the world's most inspiring teachers of high ethical hopes and ideals, and the moral code of Israel would be the school of righteousness, reverence, and law, to which the generations should go for the loftiest instruction."[65]
The New Testament, which completes the authoritative records of Christianity, completes also Christianity's normative statement of the truths and principles of duty. These appear in the threefold form of (1) Christ's recorded teaching, (2) His personal example, and (3) the inspired interpretations of Christian duty in the apostolic writings. The teaching of Jesus, all through the gospels, while primarily religious and religiously spiritual, deals with the great realities of character and conduct, and, particularly in the Sermon on the Mount, ascends to the very heights and penetrates to the very depths of the laws of duty. It carries those laws into a spirituality, solemnity, and glory before unknown, and forms a representation which stands before the moral sense of the race as the unsurpassed and the unequalled ethical ideal. The view is carried up to the goal: "Be ye perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect." This divine teaching is at the same time reflected from the personal life of Christ. It is presented in living form. The example is part of the teaching—an example which is never lowered below the exalted range of the given precepts, and which has been instructing and inspiring all the centuries since. In the apostolic writings, under the guiding Spirit of truth, the teaching and pattern of Christ, together with his redemptive gospel, are applied to wide and varied ranges of practical life, the apostles themselves being filled with an ever-increasing appreciation of their divine import and transcendence. These inspired Scriptures, because of their unique and supreme authority for Christianity itself, are the fundamental and decisive standard of Christian ethics.
(2) But there is a secondary and auxiliary source for formulation of Christian ethics—in the Christian moral consciousness. In this, Christianity exhibits its moral principles and meaning as they enter into the inner experience of men, where they may be studied and estimated. Christianity is a "life," a "new life," in whose moral consciousness its principles and forces are acting formatively for character. Not only of "the life" that in Christ was "the light of men,"[66] but of all the pure life that is from him, is it true: "the life is the light of men." The ethicised Christian consciousness reveals the principles and laws that have come into it. It is a maxim in theology that only the regenerated and sanctified mind has a clear interpretative insight into spiritual truth, and can form the true theologian. The maxim holds, just as truly, with respect to moral truth. The spiritual and moral are inseparably united, and no man can judge with unhindered and reliable discrimination in matters of Christian ethics whose heart is unsympathetic or averse to the duties of the Christian life. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness comprehends it not. Christian ethics, therefore, in formulating its ideas and completing its theoretical view rightly, draws upon the Christian consciousness, as that consciousness is scripturally determined, and interprets, not the Scriptures alone, but also, in auxiliary relation, the ethicised life of Christian humanity. While, therefore, it is the science of Biblical morality, it is also of the whole moral development of Christianized life, both in personal consciousness and in the observed historical fruitage of Scripture doctrine.
4. It is necessary to look at some of the particular elements or features of the clearer and fuller ethical view which comes from these sources.
Duties made More Definite.
(1) Most of the duties naturally discerned by the conscience from the known relations of life are brought into more distinct and definite view by Christian revelation and experience. The natural discernment is often unclear, uncertain, partial, and faulty. The blindness, mistakes and misgivings of the moral sense form a large and perplexing chapter in the story of non-Christian morality. It has often led to doubt whether there is such a thing as a fixed, sure, immutable morality. A remedy for this has been needed. By its immense number of specific precepts for particular relations and circumstances, revelation gives correctness, minuteness, and fulness of application to the general principles of duty asserted by the moral sense. In manifold cases the conscience would be in the dark, or have only obscure or partial view, without the instruction and guidance thus supplied. Scarcely a situation or emergency in life can be named for which precept and counsel have not been given. When the sun rises the eye sees not only farther, but more minutely and with more certainty. Myriads of objects and relations before unseen flash into view. So by the light of the Scriptures, more of duty is known and better known. By common consent, even among skeptics as to the Christian religion, the ethical precepts of Christianity, in their purity and elevation, in their quickening directness and radical thoroughness, in their explicitness and universality, form an aggregate moral directory unapproached by the best codes of pagan sages or human philosophies, and add a grand aid to the moral judgments.
Human Relations.
(2) The human relations, on which duty rests, have been brought into broader and fuller view by Christian teaching. Much of the disability, under which morality has suffered, has always come from a faulty understanding, if not total ignorance, of the varied relations which are to be filled out with their exact and full measure of duty. The idea of God and man's relation to him has often been falsely or misleadingly conceived. The history of thought as to inter-human relations, from the closest to the most extended, presents a sad story of misapprehension, error, ignorance and consequent wrong. When these great vital relations are themselves misconceived, looked at from a false or obscuring view-point, one of the prime conditions for correct moral judgments is absent. Positive misdirection is in play. When our knowledge has not yet shown us clearly man's place in God's plan of the world, or the adaptations and purposes in human nature itself; when neither the great fact of personality nor that of human solidarity is correctly understood, as for example, when the individual is reduced, as has often been the case, to mere material for the state or for possible enslavement by captors, or he is, on the other hand, looked upon as an isolated and unrelated unit; or when the reality and meaning of the universal brotherhood of man, under the universal fatherhood of God, is not seen, the duties and obligations of life must necessarily be much obscured and unperceived.
But here the Christian revelation comes in with one of its great forms of help—a divine disclosure of our moral relations. It reveals some otherwise undiscoverable relations, opening to view additional obligations and responsibilities. It sets before us our solemn relations to God, to his renewing and saving grace, as well as to his creating and preserving love, to offered blessings, gracious rewards, and eternal destinies. The whole horizon of life is lifted and broadened, and the sphere of the moral activity and consequences extends into a future life. Man becomes a child of immortality and his home is eternity. The world and human life have a grandly changed meaning under the gospel. Man's place in the system of things, as to the past, present, and future is revealed in a light increased and broadened like that on the landscape when morning rises upon night; and in this light he sees a thousand new responsibilities on which he is touching every moment, and which stretch out and on in illimitable ranges. Conscience is enabled to act in view of all these new relations as well as the irradiated old ones, and taught to hold the heart and life, the will and activities to the moral requirements of this enlarged and illuminated ethical domain.