A Master to obey, a course to take,
Somewhat to cast off, somewhat to become....
How could man have progression otherwise?
The postulates may conveniently be distributed under three main heads: the doctrine of God, of Man, of Christ.
For the purpose of ethics, two simple truths as to the Being of God require attention.
God is an Infinite, but Personal Being; existing from eternity in the completeness of His own blessedness, yet willing to become the centre of a realm of personalities. To this end He called into existence a world of personal beings, in a sense independent of Himself, but destined, in communion and intercourse with Himself, to find and fulfil the law of their creaturely perfection. To these free and rational beings, Almighty God deigns to stand in self-imposed relations.
Again, God is an Ethical Being: He is essentially Holy and Loving.
He is Holy; and appoints that for the entire realm of personality, as for Himself, holiness should be the absolute law. He alone can communicate to His creatures the idea of holiness; of a supreme, eternal, ethical Good. The Good exists only in Him; is the essential expression of His Nature, the reflected light of His Personality. The idea of ethical Good is not therefore due to a natural process by which the accumulated social traditions of our race are invested with the name, and sanction, of moral Law. The idea is communicated, derived from the living Source of Good freely acting on the faculties of intelligent creatures who are capable of receiving such communications 'in divers parts and in divers manners[457].'
The apprehension of moral Law thus appears to correspond with a progressive apprehension of God. Along with the idea of the unity and absoluteness of God, heathendom lost the sense of an absolute moral Law[458]; and conversely, in proportion as the Divine Nature manifests Itself more fully to human intelligence, the idea of moral Good gains expansion and depth.
God is also Love: a truth which as it helps our thought to a more profound and consistent view of His mysterious Being, so implies that God must needs will His rational creature to be what He Himself is, 'holy and blameless before Him[459];' to engage itself in activities resembling His own; to be free with His Freedom; enlightened by His Light[460]. Nor can we think that Divine Love is content with a bare revelation of moral requirement. We believe that what God requires, He is ready and able to impart; He will empower man to render what His righteousness exacts. Finally, if His purpose for man be interrupted or thwarted, He will 'devise means' for its final and victorious fulfilment. He, the Author of Creation, will in due time provide for a recreation, not less potent and complete in its effects than the evil power which has invaded and marred the first creation[461]. For we can form no idea of Love other than that of an active, energizing principle by which a personal Being reveals Himself; a Being tenacious of His purpose, multiform in His expedients, supremely patient in His beneficent activity. The God presupposed in Christian Ethics is One who displays holiness combined with power, love controlled by wisdom: in a word, He is the God of redemptive history. Thus morality finds its starting-point in theology[462].