It is our Lord's method to present to men an ideal, before He descends to the requirements of practical life. The Sermon on the Mount describes the life of 'blessedness' before it treats of duty; and from duty, passes to the means of holiness. Such an example suggests one or two concluding reflections.
First we may recall the true bearing of a methodical inquiry into Christian Ethics. The kingdom of God stands in contrast with, but in special relation to, all modes and products of social activity. It makes use of all the material which human life offers, or human faculties supply, so far as it is capable of serving a Divine purpose, or revealing any aspect of the Divine Life. For that Life having once for all intervened in history, continues ever to appropriate and hallow all that comes within the wide range of Its outflow; Education, Criticism, Science, Art; Industry, Wealth; Law, Polity—all these are capable of becoming ethical forces, of ministering to man's true end, of contributing something to the highest life. Into the Holy City the kings of the earth bring their glory and honour: and to a Christian Church are addressed the far-reaching words, 'All things are yours[597].'
There is in fact a 'world-appropriating' element in Christianity, as the ethical religion; and it is essential that the significance of this fact should be grasped, if Christian morality is to be rightly apprehended, or fairly presented in systematic form.
Further, in advancing a claim to mould and regenerate human society, the Christian Church can only continue to rely on her traditional instrument,—the recreation of individual character. The social movements which an enlightened Christian judgment approves, are those gradual and irresistible changes which result from the slowly-reached apprehension of some neglected moral truth, as it gradually commends itself to individual consciences. And such movements are to be judged as they display, or bear upon character. If for example a Christian mistrusts the extravagant schemes of some forms of Socialism,—it is not because he is insensible to the wrongs and miseries which suggest a violent remedy, but because all such sweeping proposals would merge the individual life, would repress and mar the fulness of that organized social life which gains elements of richness and diversity from the free play of individuality.
The study of ideals will also have suggested the relation which the Church bears to modern life. The Church, we have seen, is the school of human character; the nurse, therefore, of such civil and social virtues as give stability to human institutions. In her midst, Divine forces are really and manifestly at work, tending to bring about the regeneration of mankind. And in connection with this view of the Church, we need to observe the power of character; the practical 'supremacy of goodness,' or at least its tendency to be supreme; its capacity to control and modify the pressure of circumstance. A condition of all true thinking about the social future will surely be a just estimate of character as a social and industrial force; it is a growing sense of this truth that is doing much to revolutionize our economic theories. We are learning perhaps that manfulness, mercy, self-control, pity are among the forces which must be taken into account by social science.
And if the Church is a gift of God to mankind, and there be but one end of all His gifts, namely, the restoration of His image in man, we must believe that the fairest fruits of Christianity, and the many-sided fulness of Christlike character, can appear only in those who live loyal to the moral discipline of the Church, who are ruled by her wisdom, chastened by awe of her beauty, penetrated by her spirit. The kingdom of God is more—infinitely more—than an ideal condition of human society; but we know that the kingdom, even in this limited sense of the word, will be the heritage only of a nation 'bringing forth the fruits thereof.'
[456] 1 S. Pet. i. 21 ὥστε τὴν πίστιν ὑμῶν καὶ ἐλπίδα εἶναι εἰς θεόν.
[457] Heb. i. 1.
[458] See Dorner, Syst. of Christian Ethics, § 35.
[459] Eph. i. 4.