The last point may be noticed in another connection. At present we may suggest, in reply to these reflections, one consideration. The objector forgets that Christianity does not merely present a moral standard to men; it provides them with an entire system of moral education. The Church recognises different degrees of maturity and attainment in her children. It is no part of her method, though possibly an accident of a particular age or set of conditions, that she sets strong meat before babes, and appeals to children as if they were grown men. That very 'individual treatment' of characters on which the writer of the Service of Man insists, is a fundamental principle of the Christian system[560].
IV. Christ the Source of the Recreation of Character.
The subject which we now approach is, taken as a whole, peculiar to Christian Ethics. For it will be admitted that Christianity alone offers a solution of the practical problem, how is the ideal of virtue to be translated into life and practice? 'It is the essential weakness,' says a living writer, 'of all mere systems of morality, and of most, if not all, other religions, that they confine themselves to pointing out what the facts of life ought to be, and make no provision whatever for dealing with facts as they are.... It is their main defect, not that they conflict with Christianity, but that they fail to touch the problem with which it most directly deals[561].' Of course, in advancing this claim for Christianity, we imply that it is something vastly greater than a system of morals. It is a Divine way of salvation, that is, of deliverance from sin, as well as from its effects; the process by which the ideal becomes actual in life and character is also, as we have seen, a process of restoration. Christianity, in fact, professes to be a Divinely-provided remedy for disorder and disease; strictly speaking, therefore, a treatise on ethics must investigate the pathology of sin, regarded as the violation of moral order, and the fatal misdirection of desire. This aspect of the Gospel has been too much disregarded, even by Christian thinkers[562]. It follows, however, from the Scriptural account of man that he has lost something which can only be supernaturally restored: and it is the practical task of ethics to point out the means of renewal, which Divine Wisdom has provided.
The mysterious facts which lie at the root of the recreative process must be briefly noticed. Christian holiness is the reproduction in the individual of the life of the Incarnate Son of God. That this might be possible, there took place that series of events which S. John describes as the glorification of Jesus Christ. The life, perfectly well-pleasing to God, and therefore the supreme standard of holiness, passes through the stage of death. The Sacrifice on Calvary removes the barrier raised between the Creator and His creatures by sin. The Resurrection is, on the one hand, the seal of God's acceptance stamped upon His Son's atoning work; on the other, marks the final stage in that process by which Christ's human nature is 'perfected[563].' For by the Resurrection that Nature is spiritualized, is released from earthly limitations, and becomes available as a recreative force. The Ascension is the condition of Christ's manifestation as 'a quickening Spirit,' as the 'power of God.' By sacramental channels He communicates to our entire nature His life-giving humanity, as the means of our recreation after the image of God. Thus the life of the Incarnate is extended in the life of the redeemed, and by a natural and orderly growth, the character of Christ is reproduced in His members through the continuous operation of the Spirit, whose office it is to 'take of the things of Christ and shew them unto' men. He who is outwardly our example thus becomes an inward principle of life.
We now are in a position to estimate the extent to which Christian morality depends on dogmatic truths. Apart from Jesus Christ there can be no true life. The secret of holiness lies in a permanent relation to a living Christ. He, by His life and death, 'became unto us Wisdom, Righteousness, Sanctification, Redemption[564].' The example was not upheld in vain; for Christ placed within our reach the spiritual forces by which alone the pattern can be reproduced in human life. 'Sanctification' means the progressive appropriation by man of the life of the Son of God; the formation in him, by successive stages, of the very image of Christ. The objective aspect of Sanctification is clearly presented in the Old Testament; holiness there implies consecration, and is thought of chiefly as an objective work of God. In the New Testament, the idea of holiness passes from the sphere of worship to that of morality. But the Old Testament conception is not lost; it is expanded. Holiness, according to the Christian view, results not from the efforts of man, but from the outflow and operation of a Divine Life. Holiness is spoken of as 'the righteousness of God,' as a 'free gift' imparted to man; and in the first instance requires receptivity rather than activity on the part of the human soul.
The ethical significance of baptism is thus intelligible. By baptism the individual is brought into vital contact with the Source of the new life, and enters the sphere within which radiate the spiritual forces that flow from the glorified humanity of Christ; the germ of a new personality is imparted; the kingdom of God is entered. But in this new birth the work is only begun; for the 'Grace of God that bringeth salvation' has an abiding home among men. It is misleading to speak of Grace as 'an unknown factor.' Still more so to assert that 'Theology has always been celebrating the power of Grace to the depreciation of Ethics[565].' Grace has its fixed channels and methods, its orderly movement and outflow, its certain conditions, its appointed places and seasons, its definite, though mysterious, laws of operation[566]. Grace is, so to speak, stored and dispensed within the mediatorial kingdom which Christ founded in His Church. From an ethical standpoint the Church of God is before all else a school of character[567], the Divinely-appointed sphere in which, normally, the recreation of personality proceeds, in which men are sanctified by being kept in living union and contact with Jesus Christ Himself.
To enumerate the several 'means of grace' committed to the stewardship of the Church is the task of theology, as also to explain the conditions of fruitfully using them. On one point only it may be worth while to make a few remarks.
To Christianity, as we have seen, each individual personality is an end in itself. Each has a right to moral education; each was called into being that it might embody a particular thought of God, that it might fulfil good works prepared specially for it, and correspond with its own separate ideal[568]. Hence, true to the spirit of Him who was a Physician of the sick, Christianity offers her Divine remedies to the worst and most hardened natures. She believes in her power to renew and transfigure them, to achieve in them a moral miracle. Nobler natures, again, she endeavours to train up to the full stature of Christ-like character, sanctifying, consecrating, and elevating the innate capacities of each. Her healing mission extends to all men. She knows nothing of the aristocratic temper of ancient ethics, which would confine the very possibility of a moral life to the few. She rejoices in the infinite variety of typical forms which character may assume. A Christian poet has said—
There is not on the earth a soul so base
But may obtain a place,