In its essence it is sensualism; in its manifestations it will be refined or coarse, according to the dispositions of the persons by whom it is accepted. Now its worship will be accompanied with music and song and dance; at other times it will sink to those orgies in which man becomes only an unnatural animal.
Let us now turn to the Christian religion, and consider its teachings in their bearing upon the subject we are discussing. They are the very opposite of those which we have just read, and proceed from principles which are in direct contradiction to the cosmic philosophy. God is the highest, the Creator of all things, which are of value only as they relate to him and are in harmony with the laws of his being. The earth is but the threshold of heaven or of hell, as the case may be. This life is a preparation for a future one, which is eternal; and all human interests, whether individual or social, to be rightly understood, must be viewed in their relation to this truth. Man is essentially a moral being, and duty, which is often in conflict with pleasure, is his supreme law. He is under the action of antagonistic forces; seeing the better and approving it, he is drawn to love the worse and to do it. Thus self-denial becomes the condition of virtue, and warfare with himself his only assurance of victory.
“But he said to all: If any one wishes to come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross every day, and follow me.”
Wealth, which is the world’s great slave and idol, and universal procurator of the senses, though in itself not evil, is yet a hindrance to the highest spiritual life. “If thou wouldst be perfect, go sell what thou hast, and give it to the poor, and thou shall have treasure in heaven: and come and follow me.”
As duty is the supreme law of the individual, it follows that we must seek the ideal of society in the moral order, to which all other social interests should be made subservient, or else they will beget only an unbounded and lawless activity. Even education is valuable only in so far as it gives man a deeper sense of his responsibility to God, and enables him more thoroughly to understand and perform his duty.
The social problem as between Christianity and modern paganism may be stated in this way: is it the end of society to grow strong in virtue through self-denial, or to increase indefinitely the means and opportunity of indulgence? On which side is progress, on which decline?
We cannot now go farther into this subject, but before leaving it we wish to quote the words of Fitzjames Stephen, who will hardly be called a Christian, on modern progress.
“I suspect,” he says,[230] “that in many ways it has been a progress from strength to weakness; that people are more sensitive, less enterprising and ambitious, less earnestly desirous to get what they want, and more afraid of pain, both for themselves and others, than they used to be. If this should be so, it appears to me that all other gains, whether in wealth, knowledge, or humanity, afford no equivalent. Strength, in all its forms, is life and manhood. To be less strong is to be less a man, whatever else you may be. This suspicion prevents me, for one, from feeling any enthusiasm about progress, but I do not undertake to say it is well founded.… I do not myself see that our mechanical inventions have increased the general vigor of men’s characters, though they have no doubt increased enormously our control over nature. The greater part of our humanity appears to me to be a mere increase of nervous sensibility in which I feel no satisfaction at all.”
The general superiority, and even the greater wealth, of Christian nations as compared with others we would attribute, in great part at least, to the influence of their religious faith, to which they owe their sentiments on the dignity and sacredness of human nature in itself, apart from surroundings; on the substantial equality of all men before God, which tends to produce as its counterpart the equality of all before the law, thus leading to the abolition of slavery, the elevation of woman, and the protection of childhood. To it also they owe their ideas on the family, which, in its constitutive Christian elements, lies at the very foundation of our civilization. To Christianity they owe the principles of universal charity and compassion, which have revolutionized the relations of social life; and, finally, to it they are indebted for the rehabilitation of labor, the chief source of wealth, which the pagan nations looked upon as degrading.
“I cannot say,” writes Herodotus, “whether the Greeks get their contempt for labor from the Egyptians; for I find the same prejudice among the Thracians, the Scythians, the Persians, and the Lydians.”