1. In some degree by the completion of the ethical view itself. The clearer light is forceful and efficacious for a better realization of the moral task. "Knowledge is power," especially knowledge which throws into view the most impressive realities and relations, and appeals with the most cogent motives. By the strong illumination shed upon the general principles of right and virtue, by the definiteness and detail of the instruction and precepts for all situations in life, by the elevation of view in which the moral horizon is widened and extended, so as to show a living brotherhood of every man with every other round the world and a range of moral interests and responsibilities interminable as eternity, by the emphasis with which men are made amenable to God for all moral duties, even those to men, thus vivifying the whole moral consciousness with a sense of a close, unescapable accountability to God the conscience is better enlightened and quickened for its task, strengthened by the fullest certainty and under the vigor of a new inspiration. It has more light for direction; it bears grander motive forces before the will.
Assurance of Success.
2. By giving assurance of success. In the face of the greatest hindrances and natural incompetence, it certifies an inspiring goal of the moral endeavor. Pointing to redemptive grace, it makes manifest that the administration of this world is not on the side of moral evil, or indifferent to its wrong and blight, but is working for its overthrow, the deliverance of its subjects, and their triumph over it. It proclaims an established and ever-advancing "kingdom," whose consummation will bring all those who, as its subjects, "hunger and thirst after righteousness," triumphantly through and beyond the present militant stage of the moral life into final victory over evil, "a new earth and a new heaven wherein dwelleth righteousness." In this divine assurance that the domination of moral evil, with its anarchy and misery in the soul, is no necessity, that its overthrow is provided for, and that God's government is so in the interest of righteousness and love as to guarantee victory to even the feeblest that in faith appropriate his grace and help, there comes the full inspiration, not only of hope, but of sure success in the moral endeavor. Moral effort is not compelled to be
"Like ships that sailed for sunny isles,
But never came to shore."
It has the certainty that
"To him who sides with God
No chance is lost."
The moral help thus supplied by Christianity is well illustrated by the contrast which it presents to some other teaching, say as seen in Buddhism, extolled in poetry as "The Light of Asia." This is known as one of "the great religions." It is, rather, a philosophy of life, a directory for conduct. It is an atheistic, or at best a pantheistic philosophy, recognizing no personal God and emptying the idea of Deity of practical validity. It had its origin in a deep and oppressive sense of the evil and misery of life, and aimed at their solution and the way of deliverance. On the basis of the oriental "metempsychosis," with its supposed perpetual re-births, on account of earlier sins, into successive distressful lives, it elaborated, for deliverance, a code of duty pervaded by the ascetic spirit and demanding the severest self-discipline. In many of its separate precepts it rises, indeed, here and there to elevations and beauties of moral idea that seem almost akin to the finest and purest of New Testament inculcations. But whether viewed as a philosophy or a religion Buddhism has no personal God, who loves and values men as his own children made in his own image, and ready to come to their help. It has heard, and in its atheistic cosmos, can hear, no voice of redemption, knows of no manifestation of a loving God for deliverance of his sinful children from their sins and their exaltation to the dignity and happiness of fellowship with Himself. In this despair of help from God, in this dolefully pessimistic view of the world and life, and driven to depend only on self-help, is it any wonder that the moral task is directed, not to the development, elevation and joy of personal life, but to its repression, subjugation, and reduction, so as to bring it, at its earthly close, to Nirvana, extinction of conscious individual existence, as the greatest good! By as much as this theory of despair is suited to atrophy all nerve for the ethical task, and sink personality from its true intended elevation of divine fellowship and excellence into the inanity of unconscious being, by so much does the Christian truth of the assured success and victory of right and goodness in the advancing kingdom of God's grace and eternal love, exalting the worth and force of personality to the highest, inspire and sustain the moral endeavor. "Forasmuch as ye know that your labor is not in vain in the Lord."
Much has been written in late years about "the evolution of the moral life," by writers who seek to account for it through the action of merely naturalistic forces in the human constitution and in its physical environment. The above contrast is suggestive of factors in the problem which many of these writers overlook.
Religious Interest.
3. By uniting the moral side of life with the religious, and so bringing all the powers of the religious interest in vital help for the moral task. The common false diremption between morality and religion, classifying duties to God as religious, and only duties to fellow-men or self as moral, each standing in isolation, and largely of separate accomplishment, allowing men to be "moral" while repudiating all their duties to God, or "religious" while without a conscience enforcing duty to men, leaves flabby nerve for moral endeavor. All the mighty motives from the Godward side are lost. No quickening force for inter-human duties comes from a consciousness of God and his authority, or the future life. Any view that severs morality from God and is bounded by this world and temporal good, must fail to realize the moral life of man. But the Christian view allows no such separation. It unites the two as two sides of the same life of duty, out of one conscience, with vision of both God and men, and one heart true to the indivisible spirit of right. As religious duties are all moral, as obligations to God, and all moral duties are religious, as due to Him, the Christian consciousness of God must re-inforce and vivify with new efficiency the whole twofold moral endeavor. All the distinctly religious interests and forces, reverence of Deity, repentance before God, gratitude, faith, love, hope, spiritual joy, aspiration, desire of immortality and endless blessedness, thus brought into concurrent action with the Christianly enlightened natural conscience, bring an immensely advantageous condition for the actualization of the ethical life. "To believe in an ever-living and perfect Mind, supreme over the universe, is to invest moral distinctions with immensity and eternity, and lift them from the provincial stage of human society to the imperishable theatre of all being. When planted thus in the very substance of things, they justify and support the ideal estimates of the conscience; they deepen every guilty shame; they guarantee every righteous hope; and they help the will with a Divine casting-vote in every balance of temptation."[68]