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SYNOPSIS OF LECTURE IV The need of a supernatural remedy for the evils of non-Christian society is asserted and advocated, and the adaptation of Christianity to wage a beneficent and effective crusade against the moral lapses and social cruelties of heathenism is argued, under the following heads: I. Christianity alone offers the perfect and final solution of the problem of sin. Its method of expiation and its assurance of justification and forgiveness contrast favorably with every expedient known in the religious history of man. II. It provides a new and powerful motive in the moral experience of mankind. III. It suggests new views of society. Its estimate of the individual man brings it into sharp and significant contrast with the pagan conception, which is substantially the prevailing one in the non-Christian world of to-day. IV. The code of social ethics advocated by Christianity is an immense improvement upon that which prevails under any ethnic system of religion. The ethical systems of Buddhism, Confucianism, Hinduism, and Mohammedanism are examined and compared with the social ethics of Christianity. The superior ideals and the beneficent fruitage of the Christian code are demonstrated. V. Christianity introduces new moral forces into heathen society, especially the noble impulse to missionary service. VI. Philanthropic ideas are generated and quickened into activity by the entrance of Christian teaching and example among non-Christian peoples. VII. Historic Christianity is declared to be equal to the task above outlined. Its power is shown to be in its supernaturalism and its transcendent appeal to the heart and will of man. Its sufficiency in itself, without any compromise with the ethnic faiths or any surrender of its unique and exclusive character, is insisted upon. Its claim to be a supreme, absolute, universal, and final religion, having its origin in the infinite wisdom and condescending love of God, is accepted unreservedly and in opposition to the theory that it is a product of natural evolution, or the outcome and consummation of the religious searchings of the race, or the outgrowth of other religious systems. Christianity is from Christ, and Christ is from God. In His own incarnate personality He is the highest source of wisdom. In His teaching and example we have the inspiration and pledge of individual righteousness and social morality. LECTURE IV
CHRISTIANITY THE SOCIAL HOPE OF THE NATIONS
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"There is one great difference between Christianity and the best of other religions. They come to men as they are, and tell them that they must make themselves good. But Christianity comes to them and changes them from what they were, brings them a new birth, touches them with a divine life and power in their hearts, and so enables them to begin to be better. The religion of Jesus is a new commandment, with power to obey it." REV. HENRY VAN DYKE, D.D. "Certainly whatever else Christianity may be, it is a religion whose object is to make men moral. And any one who affirms that Christianity did not introduce into the world new moral forces merely convicts himself of ignorance of history. Granted that the Christian Church has made many mistakes and committed many crimes; granted that she has on particular occasions retarded science and obstructed healthy political movements ; yet it is not to be denied that the Christian religion tends to make men moral, and does so with a persuasive and effective force which belongs to no other influence which has ever been brought to bear upon men. The individual is necessary to society; and the morality of the individual is essential to the wellbeing of society. In the interests of civilisation, therefore, Christianity is indispensable as the only hitherto discovered efficient and universally applicable conservator of the morality of the individual." REV. MARCUS DODS, D.D. "The great characteristic of Christianity and the proof of its divinity is that it has been the main source of the moral development of Europe, and that it has discharged this office, not so much by the inculcation of a system of ethics, however pure, as by the assimilating and attractive influence of a perfect ideal. The moral progress of mankind can never cease to be distinctively and intensely Christian as long as it consists of a gradual approximation to the character of the Christian Founder. There is, indeed, nothing more wonderful in the history of the human race than the way in which that ideal has traversed the lapse of ages, acquiring new strength and beauty with each advance of civilisation, and infusing its beneficent influence into every sphere of thought and action." WILLIAM E. H. LECKY, LL.D. "That Christianity should become the religion of the Roman Empire is the miracle of history; but that it did so become is the leading fact of all history from that day onwards." EDWARD A. FREEMAN, LL.D.
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LECTURE IV
CHRISTIANITY THE SOCIAL HOPE OF THE NATIONS OUR survey of non-Christian society has brought to the front many desolating and cruel evils which all must acknowledge need correction. Our scrutiny of remedial agencies apart from the Christian system has not encouraged hope and expectation as to their efficiency. The object of the present lecture is to show the adaptation of the religion of Christ, by virtue of its lofty ethical teaching and its subtle spiritual sway over the higher nature of man, to mitigate or abolish those evils which have so arrested our attention and aroused our sympathies. This is a large and majestic claim for Christianity, and, if it can be sustained, puts it in the front rank of the beneficent and helpful forces of social progress. The consensus of spiritual experience justifies the conclusion that
A supernatural remedy needed.the effective remedy must be extra-natural; that is, it must be from some external source. It will not spring up as a spontaneous outgrowth of man's natural gifts, having its roots in the powers and capacities of the individual soul or in the moral tendencies of human society. It is not inherent in man's mental and spiritual nature, weakened and depraved as it is by sin. He is not, by any ordinary gift of his being, competent to organize and accomplish either individual or social regeneration as a self-originating process. This may seem a bold statement to some who know humanity only in the environment of Christendom, but it should be noted that man as a factor in the Christian civilization of our day is himself the product of Christian forces which for generations have wrought towards his moral elevation, and have produced in him a degree of discernment and a
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measure of capacity to respond to higher ideals which otherwise he would never have possessed. This remedy must, moreover, be religious in its essence and power, not simply political, patriotic, economic, social, or even ethical, in its tone and scope. It must take possession of the deep springs of the spiritual life of man, moving him from within, quickening and renewing the vital energies of the inner life, and supplying motives and impulses which find their realm of influence and activity in the higher faculties of the soul. We go a step further and assert, in loyalty to the whole spiritual history of mankind, that the remedy must be from a divine rather than from a human source. A weighty confirmation of the truth of these statements may be
Religion the saving force of history.derived from the fact that the natural tendency of society everywhere, apart from some supernatural interposition bringing inspiration, guidance, and power, is to go wrong and stay wrong. There are certain grooves of evil into which human nature untouched by the remedial agencies of divine influence is sure to run, and its course therein is ever towards lower depths. Evolution may be downward as well as upward, and under merely natural auspices it is found to be invariably in the direction of moral degeneracy. There is no effective moral revolution on record except that which has been prompted and guided by supernatural forces as the adjuncts of a God-given religion. This is the strong position of Mr. Kidd in his recent volume on "Social Evolution." Religion has ever been the saving force in human history. How otherwise can we explain the moral helplessness and social decay of humanity, as a universal rule, up to the present hour, wherever the spiritual inspiration and the ethical force of religion have been absent? Left to itself, society seems to be self-destructive and to have no remedy within its own resources.1 This sociological point 1 "Taking society as it is, with power to originate its destruction, and ever multiplying its infirmities without alleviation or remedy, it is more than a mystery. It evokes the most considerate inquiry as to its nature, its constitutional diathesis, its inherited bias, its proclivities to evil and good; and especially does it suggest an inquiry into its origin, whether it is resting on a right basis, and whether it possesses the power of recuperation or the power of adequate recovery to an ideal. History speaks with no uncertain voice of the infirmities of the social structure, of collapses of governments, religions, and nations from inherent corruption, and of the inability of society to correct its evils. As a natural organism or the product of the instincts of human beings, it has been on trial long enough. For relief from its infirmities it has resorted to naturalistic remedies, but always without avail. In other words, it has sought to restore itself by the very means that destroyed it. "The world has tried pagan sociology long enough. Neither by Plato and Socrates, nor by Seneca and Marcus Aurelius, has the race advanced beyond the boundary lines of its infirmities or overcome the friction of its activities. Under the influence of pagan philosophy social degeneracy ensued, and the mighty civil structures of Greece and Rome perished. Equally futile in modern times have been the naturalistic theories of reformers, socialists, and economic teachers, all of whom, in their short-sightedness, have failed to apprehend the situation, and provided inadequately for its improvement. Wise and learned they may have been, but society has reveled in corruption while they proclaimed their theories. . . . The explanation of the failure of the political economist is not in his want of wisdom, but in his naturalistic conception of society and in his theory of the adequacy of naturalistic forces and processes for its preservation and restoration. He needs to learn a new lesson without forgetting the old."--Article on "Sociological Christianity a Necessity," in The Methodist Review, May, 1891, pp. 451, 452.
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of view does not involve any change in the scientific aspects or the natural construction of society, but it brings into the foreground the necessity of a change in its temper, its moral tone, and its impelling spirit. It suggests the natural status plus moral power; it implies the scientific product plus spiritual energy. What human society needs in order to make possible any substantial progress towards perfect conditions is a moral resurrection, and this science alone will not suggest and cannot provide; it can hardly discover that it is necessary. Loyalty to the facts of history, however, requires us to be still more
The determining moral factor in a Christian philosophy of progress.explicit, and points to the simple truth of experience that without the light and guidance of Christianity, or the religious life which was distinctively preparatory to it, human nature has developed in the direction of moral disability and decadence, with no power in itself to escape from this downward trend. The present condition of the non-Christian world, after centuries of experience, only gives an added emphasis to this statement; rather it places it upon the plane of demonstrated and incontrovertible truths, based upon data as old as humanity and yet as fresh to-day as ever. The irresistible presumption is thus created that humanity is, and will continue to be, sunk in a moral slough, save as the religion of Christ offers it a solid basis upon which to stand. Apart from Christianity and its vital influence, there is no hope. The principles which have helped mankind, the institutions around which society has rallied, the motives which have permanently inspired the beneficence of the race, and the watchwords which have put heart into altruistic undertakings, have all come from Christian sources, reckoning these sources as inclusive of the divine religion as it has existed in the world both before and after the Incarnation. The full consideration we have given to the claims of certain rival gospels of social regeneration has not been time misspent if it has con-
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vinced us that they are not gifted with the necessary moral force and spiritual vitality to
Christianity's endowment of power.carry society to higher levels and make its individual members each a new creature, in touch with the eternal Source of power, and moulded by saving ideals. We will endeavor now to complete our survey of the situation by a careful study of the special adaptation of Christianity to effect a permanent and saving transformation of society when once it has been introduced. Nothing, surely, has ever wrought in human history which was better able to accomplish radical and fundamental changes in the tendencies of society, and create an environment so directly conducive to the lasting well-being of humanity. Its great distinguishing characteristic, aside from the transcendent wisdom of its teachings, is its power of moral renovation and its motive energy. The trouble with other instrumentalities is that after they have done their best and produced their ultimate result in human character, they leave man still morally incapable and give him no permanent impulse in the right direction. However much they may inform the mind, polish the manners, and restrain the external acts, however great may be the patriotic enthusiasm and the religious fervor which are produced, yet the basis of incorruptible moral principle is lacking, the illuminating guidance of truth is missed, and the inspiring touch of spiritual life is absent. The relation of Christianity to the world's progress is an aspect of the philosophy of history which has been thrown far too much in the background in the thinking of our present generation. Christian philosophers—at least some of them—have not asserted it as boldly and as unreservedly as they were justified in doing, while the evolutionary philosophy which has so overshadowed and permeated the intellectual drift of our times has magnified to an unwarranted degree the scope of naturalistic forces in social evolution.1 The function of Christianity, l "Evidently the Master, at whose feet reformers must sit, did not organize as to its form a new society, for it remained in His hands entirely unchanged. He did not interfere with its ineradicable tendencies to home, government, industry, and religion. Had He intended to promote a revolution in social science He did not manifest the purpose by overturning, checking, or to any degree interfering with, the fourfold naturalistic products. . . . While, however, He recognized society in its naturalness as a product, and in its wholeness as a human necessity, He saw the impossibility of reconstruction, repair, and progress through human and naturalistic agencies, and provided for its necessities as no philosopher or reformer had conceived or understood. He must be credited with holding such a view of the race as would allow the introduction of a new spirit, new principles, and new purposes, and of forces non-naturalistic and non-human. As man cannot regenerate himself, so society cannot regenerate itself. The one as well as the other must be born from above. . . . Yet the change proposed by the Master was not a change in constitutional form, but of essence, of spirit, of principles, of laws, of methods of life, and of relation to divine ideas and agencies. Going deeper into the problem than all others, He distinguished between naturalistic forms and idealistic principles, preferring to state the latter, while the forms might be left to care for themselves."— The Methodist Review,May, 1891, p. 454.
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(including the Old Testament, as part of its history) as an influence in the transformation of human life, its range and power as a, factor in the whole complex movement of the world towards its goal, is one of the most fascinating and noble phases of social science, and will be recognized as such more and more as the sublime mission of Christianity in society becomes further apparent. The scope and importance of the subject demand that we scrutinize more in detail the essential features of that social ministry which reveal the unique adaptation of the Christian religion to promote the welfare of mankind. I Christianity alone provides an adequate method of deliverance from sin and its penalty.
Christianity alone has solved the difficulties of sin.This may seem to bear more directly upon individual than upon social experience. This is true; but sin is a social curse as well as an individual offense, and only sin-freed souls can constitute a perfected society. A society of saved individuals is potentially a saved society. In fact, even a modicum of illuminated, regenerated, forgiven, God-inspired, and God-possessed individual souls forms a moral leaven which will eventually penetrate and save the whole; and, moreover, there is no possibility of social renewal and transformation except through the personal work of divine grace in the individual heart. Let us cling unhesitatingly and unreservedly to this vital dictum of our Gospel, "Ye must be born again." The new birth is the central fact in the spiritual environment of the Christian. It involves that illumination of spirit and that act of faith which are in themselves the signs of a majestic change in the whole attitude and outlook of the soul, and which secure to it all the benefits of the Redeemer's atoning work. Christ Himself thus becomes the sin-bearer. He removes the crushing burden of conscious guilt. If that be not lifted, the true religious life of humanity is paralyzed and society is morally helpless. Every ethnic religion has stumbled just here. Its
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doctrine of sin and the measures it proposes for deliverance have been the sign of its failure. On the other hand, this is the distinctive excellence of Christianity. There is a common basis of ethics in the reason and conscience of humanity, but Christianity reveals the only way of deliverance from sin. We may have the most elaborate system of ethics,—Confucianism glorified, Buddhism transfigured with a flawless code of conduct,—but, like the perfect law of Judaism, all this will only reveal more clearly the incapacity of man to exemplify ethical perfection. We need not insist upon the fact that sin reigns in non-Christian hearts.
Conscious guilt among non-Christian races.There is a feeling in some quarters that pagan society is comparatively innocent in God's sight, because its members cannot be held responsible to the same extent as others who enjoy the full light and knowledge of the Gospel. Let heathen society be judged by its own standard of knowledge and conscious responsibility, and there can be no shadow of doubt that sin, both in the sense of personal sinfulness and of overt transgression, is one of the most vivid and pervading facts of consciousness among all non-Christian races. To be sure, the natural result of the prevalent legalism is to develop spiritual pride and a complacent consciousness of merit, but this only indicates that the heathen have a mistaken confidence in the effectiveness of their own self-imposed methods of gaining the favor of their gods and of securing deliverance from the wrath and judgment which they are conscious their sins deserve. The various methods of propitiation, and the apprehension of judgment and punishment in the prevalent religious experience of non-Christian peoples, indicate plainly enough the consciousness of guilt. The inner experience of Christian converts testifies to their previous consciousness of sin and condemnation, and reveals their grateful appreciation of the assurance of forgiveness and reconciliation. In all the ethnic faiths there is a sufficient recognition of the misery and condemnation which sin involves, but the burden of sin finds expression rather in the fear of vengeance and in the dread of calamity, woe, and suffering, than in a sense of guilt, impurity, and transgression of a holy law. The result is that the deliverance expected and implored, either as the reward of merit or the fruit of sacrifice, by the disciples of non-Christian cults is from the calamities, miseries, misfortunes, and fierce judgments of deity, both in this life and the life to come, while Christianity alone teaches the sweet secret of repentance and puts into the heart the humble plea for forgiveness and reconciliation through the merits of Christ. It brings thus an immediate peace to the conscience-stricken heart, insures a
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present forgiveness, and opens a new path of hope, bright and fragrant with the presence of a reconciled Lord. Here is the old, the vital, the precious, the matchless preëminence of the Gospel as a deliverance from sin illustrated in contrast with all the abortive methods of heathenism. It brings, through faith in an atoning Mediator, a full, free, and immediate assurance of salvation from sin and its condemnation, while all other systems involve the hopeless task of earning this coveted benefit by long, wearisome, uncertain, and virtually worthless methods of sacrifice and legal obedience. The practices in vogue, for example, in connection with popular
Hindu methods of expiation.Hinduism to obtain merit and to secure the pardon of iniquity are in many instances so puerile and degrading as to be repugnant to the common sense of humanity. The giving of alms to lazy mendicants, notorious for vices, the participation in pilgrimages which are too often characterized by license without ordinary restraints, the torture of the body, the pronouncing in endless iteration of the names of the gods, the elaborate sacrificial ritual, the paying of due reverence to the Brahman, the swallowing of penitential pills of disgusting character, are among some of the expedients adopted by Hindu devotees. The spiritual counsel embodied in many of the "Sacred Books of the East" is such as no Christian reader can peruse without sadness and loathing. It is said in the "Padma Purana," "He who carries in his body a drop of water in which a Brahman's toe has been washed gets all his sins immediately destroyed." And, again, in the "Mahabharata" is found the following strange announcement: "He who contemplates the Ganges while walking, sitting, sleeping, thinking of other things, awake, eating, breathing, and conversing, is delivered from all sins." Such trifling as this with the mighty power of sin is all in vain. Such shallow expedients for lifting the burden of guilt and providing any satisfactory basis of reconciliation with the deity are futile and hopeless. On the other hand, the Gospel of perfect and final reconciliation, if accepted with full recognition of its import, stills at once and forever the reproaches of a guilty conscience, and imparts to the soul the peace and courage of assured forgiveness. With this marvelous experience comes a new self-consciousness, which humbles at the same time that it uplifts the soul. A higher value is thus given to life, a fresh hope to existence; a strange passion for good is aroused where formerly a love for evil prevailed. The man is, in fact, a new creature, and has within his transformed individual character the promise and potency of a nobler social ideal.
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The old Gospel is as potent and as true to its transforming record in mission
The Gospel has lost none of its potency.fields to-day as it was in the apostolic age. The classic story of Paul's conversion on the way to Damascus can be paralleled in the history of mission conversions on many fields. A Chinese native preacher was proclaiming the Gospel of immediate, perfect, and eternal salvation to a group of countrymen. A notorious character, the chief of the gamblers of that district and the terror of the neighborhood, was passing by. He was a bold, desperate, and hardened leader in all iniquity. He paused and listened, and that wondrous message reached his heart. "If Jesus can do this for me," he said, "then He shall." He then and there accepted Him, and went to his home to close his haunt of crime, and broke at once and forever with his past life and former associations. This incident, told at the Shanghai Conference of 1877, is but a typical illustration of the unimpaired power of the Gospel, if sincerely and unreservedly accepted, to secure an instant and complete change in the relation of the soul to God and His holy law.1 The experience of pardon and reconciliation is not all that the Gospel brings in its
It brings not only pardon, but imparts power.remedial mission to sinful man. It gives him also an endowment of power to resist sin and live in righteousness. Nowhere else can the soul obtain the high impulse and the moral stamina which it needs to engage successfully in its conflict with temptation and surrounding evil. "There is no good Indian but a dead one" is the complacent verdict of those who have aroused the hostility and treachery which lurk in his natural heart. "There is no good Indian but a regenerate one" is the more kindly testimony of the missionary. Lieutenant W. H. Wassell, in Harper's Magazine for November, 1894, gives abundant testimony to confirm the truth of this happier verdict concerning the once barbarous and bloody Sioux. A few facts here, and only a few, can be quoted, gathered at random from fresh missionary testimony in widely separated fields, as revealing the power of Christianity at the present hour to transform the moral character not only of individuals, but of whole communities. In November, 1894, on the east coast of Formosa, a sailing vessel was slowly drifting landward in a dangerous sea. On the shore, face to face with the doomed vessel, were a mission chapel and a village of Christian converts, the fruit of the missionary toils of Dr. G. L. MacKay, of the Canadian Presbyterian Church. The native pastor, Mr. A-Hoa, 1 "Records of Shanghai Conference, 1877," p. 103.
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Dr. MacKay's first convert on the island, hastily beat the drum as if to call the villagers to worship,
Som representative facts gathered from recent reports.but his object was to gather them all for the work of rescue. Some of them were sent to the ship through the heavy sea to let the crew know that there were no savages and that if they wished to come ashore there was a Christian chapel which would be placed at their disposal. The captain, his wife and child, and the entire ship's crew were safely housed in that place of refuge, and before the close of the day twenty-one Europeans and Americans met one hundred and forty-six native converts for a service of thanksgiving and worship in that house of prayer. "Note well," says Dr. MacKay in reporting this incident, "that twenty-five years ago that crew would have been murdered, the vessel plundered, and no one left to tell the tale."1 At the recent Annual Meeting of the Rhenish Missionary Society, Herr Pilgram drew a striking contrast between the state of society thirteen years ago and at the present time in the Toba District of Sumatra. "Then everything was unsafe; no one dared to go half an hour's distance from his village. War, robbery, piracy, and slavery reigned supreme. Now there is Christian life everywhere, and churches full of attentive hearers. . . . The faith of our young Christians is seen in their deeds. They have renounced idolatrous customs; they visit the sick and pray with them; they go to their enemies and make reconciliation with them. This has often made a powerful impression on the heathen, because they saw that the Christians could do what was impossible to heathen—they could forgive injuries."2 Two Bavarian missionaries were chatting one day with a group of converts in Central Australia, when the conversation turned upon the moral character of their lives before their conversion, and it was asked if any of them had ever committed a murder. Out of nine converts who were present only one had never killed a man. But Christianity had wrought a mighty change in each case and given the strength of a renewed nature.3 In the northeastern extremity of Australia, upon Cape York peninsula, is Mapoon, where the Moravians, in connection with the United Presbyterians of Australia, have established a mission among the Papuans, who were known as degraded cannibals sunk in immorality, and especially bloodthirsty and treacherous. The result of their labors 1 The Missions of the World, March, 1895, p. III. 2 Quoted in The Chronicle, February, 1895, p. 48. 3 The Chronicle, June, 1895, p. 174.
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has been wonderful. "Four years ago no unarmed vessel dared to put into Port Musgrave, owing to the reputation of the Batavia River blacks for savagery and cannibalism. Now they come there to make repairs. About two years ago a party of shipwrecked sailors were rescued from cannibal blacks, fed and cared for, and led through miles of jungle to Mapoon by the mission Papuans, without the knowledge of the missionaries until they arrived there."1 Among the Kols in India has just been celebrated the jubilee anniversary of the establishment of the Gossner Mission, a report of which was given in Der Missionsfreund, the organ of the Berlin Missionary Society. The number of professing Christians connected with the mission is about forty thousand, and their jubilee commemoration was a season of Christian enthusiasm and rejoicing over the power of the Gospel. The mission was begun in 1845, when the people were given to devil-worship and led a deeply degraded life. "Surely such a Jubilee," writes the chronicler, "is a grand testimony to missionary work, to the presence and power of the Spirit, as in the apostolic days, in reclaiming the most abject, and raising them speedily to a high plane of earnest Christian faith and life, and consequently of civilization."2 The late Rev. Dr. Tyler, a veteran missionary among the Zulus, stated that "after forty years of service the contrast between the time when I entered and left the field was very wonderful. Witchcraft had ceased, the cruelties practised by spirit-doctors were ended, superstitions had lost their stronghold, and a knowledge of Gospel truth was widely diffused. . . . The reports of an annual meeting of Zulu Christians a few years ago showed the contributions for that year to have amounted to $2573 for 1509 members, or the sum of $1.70 for each church-member."3 "Look at our Christians," writes, in a private letter, a missionary in Assam. "What attractive Christian homes you can find in Sibsagor! what patriarchal simplicity and purity among our Christian Kols! See heathenism with its incredible vice, and then see our hundreds of Christian homes in upper Assam, with their simple, beautiful family life, and you will then know what Christianity has done for these people. Come and see our church in Sibsagor, full of clean, well-dressed attendants, all of whom are Christians. You will find among our sixteen hundred Christians no paupers, no beggars, no criminals. Go to 1 The Missionary Review of the World, July, 1896, p. 494. 2 The Mission World, November, 1896, p. 504. 3 Life and Light for Woman, August, 1895, p. 356.
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the jail here, which is full, but you will find no Christian in it. Come and see, and you will be convinced that Christianity is the power to lift these heathen people out of their degradation."1 From the scenes of recent cruel massacre at Erzingan, in Eastern Turkey, is reported the death of a convert from Mohammedanism, who was once a member of that fierce community of whose cruel outrages upon Christians we have lately heard so much. The Rev. W. N. Chambers, of the American Board, in writing of him says: "His life had been stormy, but his death was peaceful and triumphant. His wife, still a strong Moslem, used to say, 'I am thankful to the Protestants. My husband used to blaspheme and beat me. Now he treats me with gentleness and consideration.' "2 In the far north of our own Continent the venerable Archdeacon Phair writes from the Diocese of Rupert's Land of the change which the Gospel has produced in the lives of Indian converts. Gambling, conjuring, dancing, and all sorts of heathenism have given way before the mighty power of the Gospel. "The men who, with painted face and plaited hair, spent their days and nights in yelling and beating the drum are now found 'clothed, and in their right mind, sitting at the feet of Jesus.' Outside the Gospel there is not enough power in the world to accomplish a change like this."3 Amid the darkest heathenism of the Pacific Islands may be gathered some of the most striking testimonies of changed lives through the influence of the Gospel. In a recent article by the Rev. Robert Mackenzie, on "A Century's Conquest in the Pacific," is a record of humanity redeemed from the vilest depths of heathen abomination and cruelty to reformed character, righteous living, and humane customs, which cannot be surpassed in the earth's history. Group after group of savage islands has been transformed and cleansed, and new men and women have sprung up out of a horrid environment of licentiousness and bestiality. If there were no other chapter of Gospel triumph in the history of missions, this alone would be sufficient to demonstrate the power of Christianity to regenerate society.4 When the Jubilee of the Wesleyan Methodist Mission in Fiji was celebrated in 1885, the Rev. James Calvert wrote concerning it that fifty years previous there was not a Christian in all Fiji, but then there was not an avowed heathen left. Cannibalism had for some years been 1 The Rev. C. E. Petrick (A. B. M. U.), Sibsagor, Assam. 2 The Missionary Herald, July, 1893, p. 283. 3 The Church Missionary Gleaner, May, 1894, p. 67. 4 The Missionary Record, December, 1894, p. 336.
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wholly extinct, and other customs of cruelty and barbarism had disappeared. Concerning these changes Baron de Hubner, a German scientist and statesman, who had travelled extensively, remarked to the Rev. A. J. Webb, "I must say that the change which has come over these islands is wonderful—no candid man can deny it."1 Concerning the transformations effected by the Gospel in New Guinea, the Rev. S. McFarlane, LL.D., has given most emphatic and striking testimony. "I feel sure," he writes, "if the churches could be made to realize the present salvation which Christianity brings to these people, saving them from the hell of heathenism, with its cruelty and cannibalism, and lifting them into a very heaven of peace, happiness, and progress, they would cease to speculate so much about the future, feeling that there is enough in their present salvation to fire our enthusiasm."2 It is perhaps almost unnecessary to take the time to bring forward facts like these, which could be multiplied from many mission fields, but, strange to say, there are many who deny the efficacy of missions to produce the ordinary fruits of Christianity in the hardened and sterile soil of heathen lives. Charles Darwin described a Christmas that he once spent among the Maori converts to Christianity, and said, "I never saw a nicer or more merry group, and to think that this was the centre of the land of cannibalism, murder, and all atrocious crimes! The lesson of the missionary is the enchanter's wand." Sir Charles Elliott, formerly Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal, remarked in a recent address on missions in India, "The Government [referring to British rule in India] cannot bestow on the people that which gives to life its colour or to love of duty its noblest incentive. It cannot offer the highest morality fortified by the example of the Divinely Perfect Life."3 II Christianity, however, does much more than provide a redemption from sin. It brings the soul under the sway of loftier incentives. It 1 Work and Workers in the Mission Field, May, 1892, p. 12. Cf. also, for information upon mission work in the South Sea Islands, The Missions of the World, June, 1894, p. 156; The Chronicle, December, 1892, p. 283; July, 1893, p. 194. 2 The Missionary Review of the World, July, 1895, p. 511. Cf. also an article entitled "Pioneering in New Guinea," by the Rev. R. Mackenzie, in The Missionary Record, August, 1895, p. 230. 3 The Church Missionary Intelligencer, April,1894, p. 250. For an extended quotation from the address, see supra, p. 374.
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places the new man under the power of convictions which give a fresh meaning and zest to life.
The supremacy of the Christian motive.He finds himself intently scanning a programme of service which has become strangely attractive and imperative. The spirit with which he regards his fellow-men is changed, and he begins to play a new rôle in social life. The Christ in His personality, His example, and His ideals comes into the foreground. We all know the immense power and commanding influence of motive. Mere knowledge of what is right and obligatory may be entirely inoperative without the? impelling incentive. Christianity supplies the living motive in a new and powerful form. Ethnic religions in their philosophic content are possessed of moral maxims and theoretical ideals which, if strictly observed in practice, would make them a beneficent ministry to the world. But, aside from their fatal imperfections in methods of dealing with sir, they are weak almost to the extent of moral paralysis in the realm of ennobling impulse. Not that they are without strong appeals to man's cravings and hopes, but this appeal is to the lower rather than to the higher susceptibilities of his nature. If we compare the secret springs of action and the incentives to duty which we find in Confucianism, in Hinduism, in Buddhism, and in Islam, with the lofty, soul-quickening, and soul-transfiguring motive power of the Gospel, we will note the great difference in the quality rather than in the quantity of the motive. Christ Himself is Lord and Master in the realm of Christian incentive. There is nothing more wonderful in God's universe than the personality of Christ; there is nothing more marvelous than its influence over the human heart. In the great battle with individual temptations, as well as in the strenuous struggle with old associations, in the break with traditional customs, in the uprooting of deeply seated tendencies, in the pangs of isolation, perhaps in the stress of persecution, and in the paths of sacrifice, obedience, and service, only the motives which contact with Christ inspires can sufficiently cheer, invigorate, and fortify the soul. Some one has said that the great need of Africa is a conscience.
A master motive in morals the great need of the world.The great need of the world is a sufficiently powerful and truly unselfish motive, backed by conviction of duty and inspired by personal devotion to Christ. This, and this only, is able to overcome the trend of heredity and lead the soul to break with its past, rise above its environment, and become Christlike in its attitude to its fellow-men. The great social evils of the world are impregnable, except as this motive of Christlike devotion inspires the heart. The social espionage
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and despotism of the Orient are even more terrible than its State tyranny. Who has raised a finger against the giant wrong of caste, except as he drew the courage and the wisdom to do so, either directly or indirectly, from the religion of Christ? The words of Dr: Duff were true when he said: "What, then, can exorcise this demon spirit of caste? Nothing—nothing but the mighty power of the Spirit of God, quickening, renewing, and sanctifying the whole Hindu soul. It is grace and not argument, regeneration of nature and not any improved policy of government, that will effect the change—in a word, it is the Gospel, the everlasting Gospel, and that alone, savingly brought home by the energy of Jehovah's Spirit, that can effectually root out and destroy this gigantic evil." This supreme motive of love, this mystery of devotion, which the Gospel of Christ awakens and vivifies, is the open secret of missionary effort, not in Christian lands alone, but wherever Christian churches have been planted among non-Christian peoples.1 Nor is it only this; it is also the incentive to social reform in these foreign communities. The inspiration to deliver society from its traditional evils is but another phase of the workings of the missionary spirit of the Gospel. This we are beginning more fully to realize, and to give it its due not only for its beneficent operations, but for its comprehensive scope—seeking not only for the highest spiritual progress of humanity, but also for its truest moral and best material well-being. 1 "We have no room in this short chapter to describe the villages, houses, canoes, pottery, weapons, and native life of the New Guineans, nor to trace the history of the different stations formed along its coast. For these details the reader can turn to the books written by Mr. Chalmers and Dr. McFarlane. There is, however, one thing we must find space for, and that is to raise a memorial in honour of the noble army of South Sea island missionaries and martyrs, who have given their lives for the salvation of its people. During the past twenty-three years nearly three hundred Christian teachers and their wives from the Society, the Hervey, the Samoan, and the Loyalty Islands, or from noble little Niué, have willingly, even eagerly, gone forth to labour there. Some have been spared to work on for many years—Conspicuous among them Ruatoka, the greatly respected teacher of Port Moresby, who has been at that station since its commencement; but others have been obliged to leave, broken in health, aged before their time; and, sadder still, no less than a hundred and twenty of them have died of fever, or have been poisoned, or brutally killed. Well may a missionary express his conviction that, though perhaps lacking the polish and culture of Europeans, these faithful native teachers will bear comparison with Christians anywhere for strong, sincere, and whole-hearted devotion to Christ."—Cousins, "The Story of the South Seas," p. 192.
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III Christianity gives a new aspect to society. It not only changes the man and his motive,
but also his outlook towards his fellow-men. What is the Christian as distinguished from the non-Christian conception of man? Does it not consist in this: that Christianity places a far higher and more ennobling estimate upon the individual as created in the likeness of God, and the object of divine love and compassion, for whom a marvelous sacrifice has been made, and for whose sake God, in the person of His Son, has taken the form of a servant? There is no religion which regards with such respect the individuality of man and seeks so sympathetically to guide, foster, and develop it, and eventually assigns to it a destiny so glorious. Other religions are sure to supplant or suppress it and, it may be, claim an undue sovereignty over it. The non-Christian conception in all ages of history has been marked by an underestimate of the individual and an undue exaltation of civil, political, and religious authority as represented by the hierarchies of the State and the Church. It was so in ancient paganism, and such is the case now in all barbarous and even semi-barbarous environments. The dignity of the individual as Godborn, and endowed with freedom, with civil and religious privileges, with personal rights which no human authority can legitimately ignore or violate, is the exclusive legacy of Christianity to humanity. These things have never been recognized except where Christian conceptions of man have prevailed. "The great notion in all the ancient empires," writes Dr. Fairbairn, "was that the king or the priest owns the people. The idea of man as a conscious, rational, moral individual, of worth for his own sake, of equal dignity before his Maker, did not exist in antiquity till it came into being through Israel."1 That this monstrous misconception of the social, civil, and religious status of humanity
The pagan conception still lingers in Oriental tradition.still prevails throughout the non-Christian world may be demonstrated by the study of the conditions of human life in almost any one of the great empires of Asia or among the tribal governments of Africa. No more ghastly illustration of the spirit and tendencies of Moslem rule can be found, even in all its dark and desolating record, than that which Christian nations have recently beheld, with shuddering sorrow and indignation, but with 1 "Religion in History and in Modern Life," p. 123.
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strange apathy, in the contemporary history of Turkey. The Turkish Government, with imperious complacency and arrogant assumption of power, claims to own those subject Christian races. Their life, their property, their sacred honor, their earthly all, are regarded as wholly at its disposal. Persia, if its slumbering fanaticism were aroused, would be ready for the same overweening rôle of defiance to every right of humanity. India, previous to the restraints of British rule, held in slight esteem some of the most precious prerogatives of human life, and even to-day, were that rule withdrawn, there is no guarantee, save the power which Christianity may have attained, that man, woman, or child would be safe from the old barbarism of the past. Not only the social and civil, but even the religious, status of man in India is after the pagan rather than the Christian ideal. The Roman arena may not be there, but that great Colosseum of Caste seems to make all India one vast pit where, with hardly any figure of speech, humanity is thrown to the lions. There is no pity, no compassion, for low-caste humanity. The only sanctity that is recognized pertains to the higher ranks of caste exclusiveness. The Pariah is the offscouring, while the fact that he is a man rather than a beast is a matter of insignificant importance. He is simply the victim of a great system with no basis of morality, with no respect for his humanity, which appears to have been devised for the express purpose of establishing over him an inexorable tyranny. Turn now to China, and we find the same failure to appreciate the sacredness of man as man, the same crushing and grinding power of what in that country represents the State. We have not to go back far in the history of Japan before we meet with an overshadowing system of feudalism, while even at the present hour the theory that the Mikado, if not divine in his person, is divine in his right and authority, is still a part of the political code. In the realms of savage as distinguished from semi-civilized rule man is everywhere but a puppet and a slave, with even his right to live taken from him or at any moment liable to be ignored. It is characteristic, therefore, of the non-Christian estimate of man that it fails to recognize the sacredness of his personality, ignores his rights and privileges as an individual, and counts.him a victim and tool of Church or State, as occasion or mere caprice may require. Man as representative of humanity has no charter of rights, while the poor, the weak, the ignorant, the enslaved, the helpless, the widow, and the orphan are those who, as a rule, have to bear the burdens and sufferings which are incidental to the system. Nothing is more striking than that deep and happy consciousness which so often comes to
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Christian converts when they first realize the magnitude of the change in their personal status which has been wrought by their acceptance of Christianity. It is hard for them at first to realize that their old position of inferiority and insignificance as the puppets and slaves of power has at least in theory, if not altogether in fact, entirely passed away, and that they have entered into a new and direct relationship to Christ, the King of kings and Lord of lords, and have joined the common brotherhood of the redeemed. Christian missions are the champion of this new conception of man as man, which is destined in the end to revolutionize the political and social ideals of non-Christian peoples. The success of missions will be revealed and emphasized more and more, as time goes on, by the intensity of the irrepressible conflict between the old and the new view of man as a citizen of the State and a member of society. On the strength of this, some critic of missions may be inclined to denounce them as an unwarranted intrusion into a peaceful realm of traditional wrong and well-established despotism; but is not this resistless tendency to bring in new and beneficent changes the historic glory of Christianity which commends rather than condemns it ? Another conspicuous aspect of the non-Christian estimate of man is its undervaluation
Heathen statecraft still clings to its absolutism.of the sacredness of life. It is Christianity which establishes the idea that the State, as represented by its rulers, is bound to respect human life and will be held accountable to God for any violation of its sanctity. The pagan theory was not only that the State possessed absolute mastery over its subjects, but owned its gods as well, and was the appointed guardian of their rights, and entitled to enforce the observance of every religious duty, even at the instant sacrifice of the sacred right to live. That the State is accountable to God, because man is the child of God and under His protection, is a new and revolutionary teaching of Christianity. The State, without any offense to the non-Christian theory of its relations to human life, can destroy it at will for any one of many reasons: it may be to dignify worship, to gratify vanity, to allay superstition, to ward off evil, to satisfy vengeance, to sate the appetite for blood, or even to free from the burden of support. The old heathen empires would never tolerate a question as to their authority on this point. God Only has ever called them to account, and it is the Providence of God in our day which has marked the guilt, and in His own time will allot the punishment of the Turkish Empire, whose dark history of oppression and unscrupulous violation of the sacredness of human
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rights will surely ere long consign it to judgment at the hands of the Almighty. A further characteristic of the non-Christian estimate of man is a
An inadequate conception of brotherhood.failure to recognize the fact of human brotherhood. We should place an emphasis here upon the word "human," since our reference is to the larger brotherhood of humanity which Christianity teaches. There is in the higher ethnic faiths, especially Buddhism and Mohammedanism, a recognition of a narrower tie of fraternity, based upon religious or national affinity. It is, however, only the shadow of Christian brotherhood, an artificial and forced relationship founded upon religious or political expediency, rather than rooted in the deep spiritual consciousness of a common love and a common destiny through living union with a divine Lord and Saviour. In the larger outlook of a common origin, a common provision for redemption, and a universal mission of love and service, it gives no sign of the grander ideal of Christianity. That this larger recognition is characteristic of Christianity needs no proof, and that Christianity carries it into heathen society is a matter of history and experience. It is the Christian spirit among native converts of India which has established at Madras a "Native Christian Association" for promoting the personal and social interests, while at the same time advancing the influence of Christianity through the "manifestation of a higher character in the individual, and a more beneficent spirit in the corporate life." It is in harmony with the historic tendencies of Christianity to promote mutual helpfulness, and plan for the higher progress of humanity. Another estimate of society which is characteristic of the non-Christian
Meagre philanthropic results of heathen systems.outlook is that of predominant selfishness and a prevalent indifference to the public good. Uhlhorn has convincingly shown, in his "Conflict of Christianity with Heathenism," that all pagan antiquity was thoroughly egoistic. "Self was the centre around which everything revolved. A man of the ancient world despised whatever he drew into his service, and hated everything which opposed him."1 The spirit of benevolence and altruism introduced by Christianity, which finds its highest spiritual expression in the missionary outlook and purpose of the Christian religion, is at variance with the whole temper of the heathen world. The conception, no less than the working, of this ideal is so out of harmony with the previous outlook of converts to Christianity that it is difficult to bring them to a full and Replace This Text 1 "Conflict of Christianity with Heathenism," p.192.
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generous practical recognition of it. It is something so new and difficult of comprehension by the average mind of man that even Christendom is not entirely free from the subtle sway of the pagan conception. Israel of old could hardly grasp the significance of missions, and to this day there is need of a far more loyal and generous appreciation on the part of the Christian public of this regnant thought of the Gospel. Christendom is too busy, or too preoccupied, or does not realize as it should, the value of an individual soul in God's sight, although, to its immortal honor, the Christian Church, and to some extent its environment of Christendom, is recognizing with new enthusiasm the supreme obligations of spiritual unselfishness as a first law of the Gospel. Even mission fields are bringing forth fruit, and missions are reduplicating themselves abroad. This new outlook dawns slowly both in Christendom and outside of it, but it comes with the acceptance of Christianity. The vision seems to tarry, but the prospect brightens. The world needs this new atmosphere in the home, this new spirit in the community, this new force in the nation, this new estimate of the value of man as in God's likeness and in God's care. Have we not, even in contemporary European history, evidence at once painful and startling that the heart of civilization does not yet beat at all true to the idea of human brotherhood? This is the spirit of Christian missions, in whose outlook upon humanity "there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for all are one in Christ Jesus." IV Christianity provides a code of ethics which is both essentially valuable and
The rue criteria of value in ethical systems.sufficiently authoritative. The value of an ethical system depends upon several vital points: (1) The ideals should be correct. (2) The precepts should be right. (3) The motive should be sufficient. (4) The authority should be supreme. Tested by these criteria the value of various systems of ethics in force among non-Christian peoples becomes open to question; yet an imperfect or a partially effective ethical code may not be without a certain value. It may be good and useful in some particulars or up to a given point, and even though it may be positively objectionable in some respects, yet its usefulness as a whole may not be entirely destroyed by this fact. The ethics of Confucianism and Buddhism, for example, whatever may be the
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imperfection which characterizes them, have nevertheless differentiated the existing civilization of Asiatic nations from barbarism and bestial savagery. They have accomplished this, however, because there is in them something of essential excellence, and owing to the fact that they teach many things which are found in more perfect form in the Christian code. They reflect the natural conscience of man, and represent, although in a disproportionate and disjointed system, much of the ethical content of primitive revelation and of the later Hebrew Decalogue. In fact, the ethics of non-Christian religious systems, where they have not been made subservient to evil desires and prostituted in fleshly compromise, are in a large sense the analogue of Christian ethics, but in an emasculated state—the life-essence having been withdrawn, the moral force weakened, and the impelling motive enfeebled. We may change the illustration and say that the various parts of the skeleton are to be found in a more or less imperfect state, but without proper articulation, and of course unclothed with flesh and destitute of vital energy. Life, the symbol of authority and the mystic sign of an indwelling spirit of power, is wanting. The graces and signs of righteous living—in biblical language, the "fruits of the Spirit"—as the culmination and crown of a vitalized ethical code, are not present. The best side of ethnic religions is, however, their ethical teachings.
The importance of the ethical element in religions.A religious system can hardly afford to fail altogether in its theory of morals. Even whatever of moral laxity, judged by Christian standards, exists in the ethics of Buddhism or Mohammedanism, for example, is stoutly defended by the disciples of those religions as correct and unobjectionable from an ethical point of view. No serious religious system can safely risk its influence and its prestige by upholding a moral code which offends the universal natural conscience of mankind. We do not expect, therefore, to find that the ethical standards of the great non-Christian religions do serious violence to the natural instincts and the imperative moral judgments of mankind. Their defects and failures will appear rather by comparison with the revealed will of God and the religious sanctions which He has established for the guidance of human conduct. It will be found that their basis of morals is insufficient and that the source of authority has been perverted. It is because the wisdom which propounds is inadequate, and the power which commands is deficient, that non-Christian ethics reveal such fatal weakness, and result in such an abortive practical outcome. Another point which deserves emphasis in this connection is that ethics as at present under discussion are not confined merely to the
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theoretical code, but include also the practical outcome as
How can the value of an ethical system be verified?historically exemplified in the moral life and conduct. By Buddhist ethics, for example, we mean not only the didactic code of morals covering the right and wrong of conduct which is taught by Buddhism, but the resultant which we find in the life and conduct of its followers. A theory of ethics is of little value if it is not exemplified in practice and if it has not the power to vitalize the moral nature and govern the conduct of its adherents. The serious point of difference between the ethics of Christianity and Buddhism is not chiefly in the content of their respective codes, but in the spiritual completeness and the impelling power towards realization which are characteristic of Christianity. Christian morals are not only pure and perfect in substance, but they are gifted with that subtle energy which marks the Gospel as a spiritual force. They are not concerned simply with what ought to be, but they demand realization in the life and conduct. In estimating the ethics of ethnic systems we should not fail to take into consideration, in addition to the morals which are taught in the code, those which are revealed in the life. When we speak, therefore, of the importance of transformed ethics in non-Christian lands we refer not only to the necessity of a new ethical code, but to the urgency of a new moral life. In fact, the advent of another system of ethics would be useless if it did not result in a corresponding change of conduct. An additional emphasis is given to this point if we note that even the theoretical ethics of ethnic religions are virtually out of sight in the practical life of the people. Society is ruled rather by the law of custom—the ethics of the status quo—than by the ideal code which is recorded in the books. Ethical principles have been largely supplanted by the unwritten law of custom, so that when we speak of Buddhist ethics, for example, we are referring for all practical purposes to Buddhist living rather than to its ideal code. The latter, although not perfect, is quite a different thing from the ethics which we find embodied in the moral habits of the people. Even their moral judgments have, as a rule, drifted away from the code, and reflect rather that environment of traditional custom which has become the standard of social morality. The ethical development has been chiefly in the wrong direction, and has culminated in fixed habits of life, which have become the reigning force in society rather than the authoritative moral code which is in the background. The resultant life is either utilitarian or hedonistic or ascetic rather than strictly moral in its controlling motives. It lacks sound fibre, has little, if any, consciousness of God, a feeble
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and darkened realization of duty, and no clear and commanding standard of right and wrong. In the previous lecture we examined the practical outcome of the ethnic religions as
The scope and purpose of the present discussion.revealed in their impress upon the personality, with a view to gauging their social influence and value. We found reason to regard their effect as depressing and enfeebling, and, in large measure, destructive of the nobility and stamina of the personality as a social dynamic. In the present lecture we shall scrutinize rather their ethical basis and outcome, both as recorded in the code and revealed in the life. Our object will be to make it plain that the world needs the ethics of Christianity, that the ethnic systems do not provide a substantial basis for morals, nor the authority, the motive, the standard, the ethical content, the sustaining energy, and the spiritual glow which are necessary in a practical code in order to secure individual victory as well as the moral progress of society. With this purpose in view we must examine in some detail the ethical structure and the underlying religious basis of the more important of the ethnic faiths. 1. The ethics of Buddhism, regarded either as a code or as a life, if closely scrutinized, fail to retain that position of eminence which is claimed for them by some apologists. High praise has been accorded to Buddhism because of its ethical system, which certainly has many excellencies; and were it based upon theistic premises and inspired with the Christian rather than the Buddhist ideals, it would be a powerful instrument in the establishment of a high morality. It is the interpretation of the code in harmony with Buddhist notions, and the consequent import given to its terms, which ruin its usefulness as an incentive to sound and true morality. A word of caution is in place here as to the impropriety of reading Christian
The ethics of Buddhism--some introductory remarks.ethical conceptions into Buddhist phraseology. Whatever significance Buddhist terms may have, they cannot be regarded as synonymous with similar expressions in the Christian code. If we find, for example, that "doubt" is forbidden, it must be borne in mind that it is doubt as to the truth of Buddhist doctrine; and so "ignorance" should be interpreted as ignorance of the teachings of Buddhism. The word "law" means always the Buddhist conception of law, as having no reference to a supreme Law-giver, but rather to that "unchangeable order of things according to which we must regulate our lives if we would escape pain." The Buddhist knows no law of the conscience and no law of God. Again, when the soul or the
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self or the individuality is spoken of, we must not forget that, in the estimation of the Buddhist, all separate existence of an independent entity known as the soul is a delusion. Man possesses no independent existence, and cannot say, "This is I," as he is only a transient, perishing part of a great whole.1 When the word "salvation" occurs it is not to be understood at all in the evangelical Christian sense. No Buddhist "seeks for any salvation which he is himself to enjoy in any future world." It pertains to his present life, and it signifies deliverance from those delusions, desires, and apprehensions which the Buddhist creed repudiates. Nothing is known about salvation from sin or its penalty.2 Again, in the "Noble Eightfold Path" there is a strenuous demand for rightness in several particulars, but the "right" things which are called for are to be understood and interpreted in accordance with Buddhist conceptions.3 The "saintship" of the Buddhist code is that consummation which is contemplated in Arahatship, or the becoming worthy in the Buddhist sense. All idea of "immortality" must be interpreted in the light of the doctrine of Karma, in accordance with which man is simply a link in the chain of cause and effect, and thus his immortality means that he cannot escape from the law of Karma, that is, he will only continue to exist in the sense of forming a part of the endless chain of sequences.4 It is plain that Buddhist terms cannot be understood in the Christian sense without a reversal of their meaning. The idea that there is a community of life and spirit between the two, or that Christianity is in any way derived from or dependent upon Buddhism for its history and teachings, is wholly without foundation, as the highest authorities upon Buddhist literature unhesitatingly affirm.5 Buddhism is a gospel of deliverance from the miseries of existence. Its method is through man's unaided mastery of himself and victory over his environment. It draws a sharp distinction between the laity, or the rank and file of its adherents, and a superior order known as the "Brotherhood of the Elect" (Sangho), consisting of all those who separate themselves from the rest of mankind by entering upon the struggle after Arahatship and the attainment of Nirvana. The members of 1 Rhys Davids, "Buddhism: Its History and Literature," pp. 125-127, 133,142. 2 Ibid., pp. 131, 149, 150, 154. 3 Kellogg, "The Light of Asia and the Light of the World," pp. 301-304. 4 Rhys Davids, "Buddhism: Its History and Literature," pp. 128, 129. 5 Cf. Ellinwood, "Oriental Religions and Christianity," pp. 164-170; Grant, "The Religions of the World," p. 129.
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this order are called bhikshus, or monks, and samanos, or ascetics.
Some distinctions to be noted.The two classes are frequently called aryos, that is, the noble or elect, so that the expression the "Brotherhood of the Elect" may be regarded as a comprehensive designation of those who are in rank above the laity and are seeking for sainthood. When they have attained the rank of saints they are known as Arahats, or possessors of Arahatship. These latter only are possible candidates for Nirvana, a height of attainment to which no layman aspires or can expect to reach. The most that a layman can hope for is a favorable rebirth, and it is this discouraging prospect of endless rebirths from which the Arahat hopes to be delivered. It will be noted that the basis of this system is pessimism.1 Its underlying postulate is the misery, not chiefly of moral degradation, but rather of physical existence. By existence is understood our career 1 The following readily accessible sources of information, to most of which repeated references are made in this section, are recommended to those who desire to study further in popular literary form the ethics of Buddhism: "A Buddhist Catechism," by Subhadra Bhikshu (New York and London, G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1895). "Buddhism" (the Duff Lectures, 1888), by Sir Monier Monier-Williams (London, Murray, 1889). "Buddhism: Its History and Literature," by T. W. Rhys Davids, LL.D., Ph.D. (New York and London, G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1896). "Buddhism" (a manual in the series of "Non-Christian Religious Systems"), by T. W. Rhys Davids, LL.D., Ph.D. (sixteenth edition, London, S. P. C. K.; New York, E. & J. B. Young & Co., 1894). "Christianity and Buddhism," by T. Sterling Berry, D.D. (London, S. P. C. K.; New York, E. & J. B. Young & Co., n. d.). "The Light of Asia and the Light of the World," by S. H. Kellogg, D.D. (London and New York, Macmillan & Co., 1885). "Oriental Religions and Christianity," by F. F. Ellinwood, D.D. (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1892). "Mohammed, Buddha, and Christ," by Marcus Dods, D.D. (London, Hodder & Stoughton, 1893). "The Religions of the World," by G. M. Grant, D.D., LL.D. (London, A. & C. Black; New York, A. D. F. Randolph & Co., 1895). Articles on Buddhism in Bettany's "The World's Religions," "Religious Systems of the World." "The Faiths of the World" (Giles Lectures), and "Present-Day Tracts," No. 46. Article entitled "A Plain Account of Buddhism," by John Beames, B.C.S., in The Imperial and Asiatic Quarterly Review for July, 1896, and January, 1897. Articles entitled "Nine Centuries of Buddhism," by F. Becker Shawe, of Ladak, Tibet, in The Missionary Review of the World for April, May, June, July, and August, 1896.
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here upon earth, involving as it does sorrow and suffering as an inevitable lot,
The pessimistic basis of Buddhism.and also our continued existence in the interminable cycles of rebirth. Death is, therefore, simply a phase in the changes of existence, to be followed by rebirth in accordance with the good or evil we have done in this life, or, in other words, in harmony with our Karma, by which our present state has been determined and which will decide hereafter the character of future rebirths. Karma simply represents the inexorable workings of the law of causality, by which absolute justice is meted out to every human being, as determined by his deserts, whether they be good or evil.1 The problem of Buddhism is, therefore, how to escape from existence with its attendant miseries. It offers no help in securing this deliverance from any source other than man's unaided power to master himself. Man must in his own strength enter alone upon a desperate struggle to suppress his "will to live,"2 to annihilate his desires and passions, reverse the constitutional tendencies of his nature, triumph over everything in his earthly environment which would attract or chain him to life, and become superior in his mental state to everything earthly and material. It is part of his victory to loathe his physical self, to despise every pleasant and desirable thing connected with ordinary earthly life, and become separated from his fellow-men in a realm of shadowy and colorless mental exaltation. It will occur to us at once, as we compare this system with Christianity, that it is established
The secret of its wide extension.upon the basis of man's wisdom; it represents blinded and staggering humanity, crushed and dismayed by the insoluble problem of sorrow, and baffled by the dismal enigma of existence, searching for light and groping after a way of escape. It arose amid the intellectual and spiritual darkness of India six centuries before the Christian era, when the consolations of religion and the inspirations of morality were so sadly needed. The very fact that Buddhism proposed a way of deliverance from the sorrows and miseries of life was in that age and in that environment its secret of success. It brought also a message of universalism, in opposition to the limitations of caste, and advocated an ethical system in place of the burdensome and elaborate ritualism of Brahmanism. Its timeliness, as well as the purport of its message, was the secret of its expansion. It was a creed of action, a code of virtue, as opposed to wearisome 1 "A Buddhist Catechism," p. 48. 2 Ibid., pp. 47, 48.
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may disregard if he prefers. They are intended as "counsels of perfection," and are especially important only upon certain sacred occasions. These are as follows: (6) Not to eat at prohibited seasons. (7) To abstain from dancing, the singing of worldly songs, the visiting of public plays and musical exhibitions. (8) To avoid the use of ornaments of every kind, perfumes, oils, and ointments—in short, anything that leads to vanity.1 The commandments which are incumbent upon the bhikshus (monks) form a still higher code, and include the eight rules already mentioned, with the substitution of strict celibacy in place of the third, and the addition of two other commandments, as follows: (9) To abandon the use of luxurious beds, to sleep on a hard, low couch, and to avoid all and every worldly vanity. (10) To dwell always in voluntary poverty. There is still a third or highest code, which is intended for Arahats, or those who are in the way of saintship. The substance of this exalted law is included in what is known as the "seven jewels of the law," which are to be strictly observed, and in the "ten fetters" from which the candidate for saintship must free himself.2 The marked distinction between the laity and the priesthood in the application
The status of the Buddhist laity.of these different codes has resulted in a degree of laxity and indifference to all ethical requirements on the part of the laity which has placed them by theselves and freed them largely from all moral restraints. They are practically without oversight on the part of the superior orders, and are left to live as they will, in accordance with their own inclinations. They are accountable to no one, and live pretty much as they please. In fact, they are little ac- 1 "A Buddhist Catechism," pp. 60, 61. 2 The "seven jewels of the law" are as follows : "The four earnest meditations; the fourfold great struggle against error; the four roads to saintship; the five moral powers ; the five organs of spiritual sense; the seven kinds of wisdom; and the noble eightfold path." The "ten fetters" to be overcome, according to Dr. Rhys Davids, are as follows: "The delusion of self; doubt; dependence on rites ; sensuality, or bodily passions ; hatred; love of life on earth; desire for life in heaven ; pride; self-righteousness; ignorance." For a full exposition of the "jewels" and the "fetters" consult Rhys Davids, "Buddhism: Its History and Literature," Lecture IV. and Lecture V. "4. The Noble Truth of the Path which leads to the Cessation of Suffering. The holy Eightfold Path; that is to say, Right Belief, Right Aspiration, Right Speech, Right Conduct, Right Means of Livelihood, Right Endeavour, Right Memory, Right Meditation."—Page 365.
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quainted with the moral teachings of Buddhism, which have hardly any perceptible influence over their lives. They are not candidates for saintship, nor are they seeking to attain Nirvana. They know nothing of the "Noble Eightfold Path" as a rule of conduct. The sense of obligation is feeble, the consciousness of duty as an impelling motive has little, if any, determining sway. The layman's attitude to Buddhist ethics is, therefore, one of practical indifference.1 In the case of the priesthood and the candidates for Arahatship the code is one of strict asceticism, withdrawing them from contact with human life, and segregating them in a special order, in which strict celibacy, poverty, and mendicancy, attended with mystical meditation and severe struggles after a superiority to earthly environment and to the ordinary constitution of man, are characteristic features. It will be seen that in the case of laymen this superior code is entirely inapplicable and inoperative. In the case of priests and seekers after Arahatship its application involves such isolation, asceticism, and practical withdrawal from contact with society that it robs them of all capacity for social service. There are several points in the Buddhist ethical system which deserve
Some characteristics to be specially noted.special notice if we are to discover its defects and recognize its incapacity to meet the social needs of man. Its ideals are unworthy, profitless, and obscure. They have no reference to the development of individual character. There is no goal of positive attainment in sight. The result desired is negative, consisting of the suppression, elimination, and evacuation of the social relationships and the nobler aspects of manhood. Escape is the key-word, asceticism is the method, Nirvana is the goal. Existence is that which is to be escaped from, and in the process nature as revealed in the spiritual, intellectual, and physical constitution of man is to be trampled upon and stamped out as an evil and hateful thing. Individuality, as has been noted, is not only undesirable in itself, but is a delusion, since the development of individual character is an impossibility, and even if possible would simply make man a more helpless and wearied victim of the evils of existence and the curse of rebirth. The only identity of individuality which Buddhism allows is that of an endless chain of sequences, linking cause and effect in unbroken continuance, known as the doctrine of Karma. This may be interpreted as a resistless destiny, determined by the fact that man reaps what he sows, his life here determin- 1 Cf. in confirmation of this statement a series of articles by F. Becker Shawe, of Ladak, Tibet, entitled "Nine Centuries of Buddhism," in The Missionary Review of the World, April, 1896, to August, 1896.
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ing the character of his rebirths hereafter. We find in this nothing corresponding to our conception of the soul as the seat of permanent character; in fact, it denounces what it calls this "heresy of individuality." Its conception of sentient being is that it is a congeries of qualities (skandhas) consisting of five constituents: material attributes, sensations, ideas, tendencies, and thoughts. The resultant is sentient existence, but under conditions of impermanence.1 There is, therefore, an entire absence of the inspiration which is based upon the
What is the Buddhist victory?consciousness of permanent individuality. Man is simply a part of the moving current of destiny, and is swept on to a fate which cannot be distinguished from oblivion. The only victory to which he can aspire is somehow to escape his destiny, and the method by which he hopes to attain deliverance is destructive rather than constructive. After he has passed through a round of experience which is implied in asceticism, celibacy, mendicancy, withdrawal from the world, suppression of desire, contempt of existence, all-conquering equanimity, sublimated mysticism, and sublime independence of the rest of mankind, he is about as useless and inane a specimen of masculated humanity as can be conceived of; yet this is his great victory. He has been retired from the world and crowned with Arahatship. He has attained a perfection so subtle that it cannot be described except in negative terms. He has become so saintly that he is absolutely worthless to the world. He has escaped from self, and from all the misery which selfhood involves, and has passed into a realm of ecstatic inanity.3 What that state is which is popularly known as Nirvana is apparently beyond
The mystery of Nirvana.the power of the most learned students of Buddhism clearly to determine. A careful perusal of the writings of Buddhist scholars leaves one in a maze of perplexity as to whether Nirvana means annihilation or simply freedom from the weariness and pain of existence.4 The definition of the term given in "A Buddhist Catechism" (p. 45) is as follows : "A condition of the mind and spirit 1 Rhys Davids, "Manual of Buddhism," pp. 90-93. 2 "The most sacred bonds that unite man to man—the ties of home life and of
affectionate friendship—were absolutely condemned as hindrances to spiritual progress ; and no place was found for a Being who might alike be adored and loved with all the heart and all the strength and all the mind."—Berry, "Christianity and Buddhism," p. 103. 3 Kellogg, "The Light of Asia and the Light of the World," p. 350. 4 "What is Nirvâna ? If we go back to the literal meaning of the Sanskrit word, Nirvânam (pronounced in Pali Nibbânam), we find that it means extinction, or, more strictly, the state of being blown out—as the flame of a candle is blown out. But scholars have long been disputing whether in its application to Buddhism this word means total annihilation or simply blissful existence. It may be stated thus. That Nirvâna means extinction all admit. But the question is, What is it that is extinguished? "Is it the man himself? If so, then Nirvâna means total annihilation. Is it the man's passions? If so, then Nirvâna means a state of blissful rest, and freedom from the pain of desire and existence. . . . "The view most recently advocated by Oldenberg and others, and that which, on the whole, seems to be nearest the truth, is that neither Buddha himself nor his earlier disciples laid down any clear and definite dogma on this point. The Buddha himself seems, in fact, to have shrunk at the last moment from the logical consequences of his own arguments. They brought him to the brink of the awful unfathomable gulf of nothingness, and he recoiled from the prospect. He was asked whether the ego, the self, exists after death. He gave no answer. Then he was asked whether the ego, the self, perishes at death. Again he gave no answer. The enquirer, not being able to obtain a reply, went away. Then his disciples asked him why he gave no answer. He replied, because to say either yes or no to either of these questions might engender error."—John Beanies, B.C.S., in The Imperial and Asiatic Quarterly Review, July, 1896, p. 155.
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when all will to live, all striving for existence and enjoyment, has become extinct, and with it every passion, every desire, all covetousness, every fear, all ill-will, and every pain. It is a condition of perfect inner peace, accompanied by unswerving certainty of salvation gained, a condition words cannot describe, and which the imagination of a worldly-minded person would strive in vain to paint. Only one who has himself experienced it knows what Nirvana is." This is further explained in a note appended to the above definition, which reads as follows: "In spite of the correct explanation of Nirvana, given long ago by distinguished scholars, there still prevail among most Europeans curious conceptions concerning it. Literally translated, Nirvana means: Being extinct, being blown out, as of a flame extinguished by the wind, or which expires from want of nourishment. From this it was believed that the inference to be drawn was that Nirvana signified 'nothing.' This is an erroneous opinion; Nirvana is rather a condition of the highest spirituality, of which, however, no one can have an adequate conception who is still fettered by earthly ties. What is it, then, that is extinguished or blown out in Nirvana? The will to live is extinguished—that striving for existence and enjoyment in this or in another world; extinguished is the error that material possessions have any inner value or can endure; extinguished is the flame of sensuality or desire; extinguished for ever the wandering will-o'-the-wisp of the I (ego). It is true, the perfect saint, the Arahat (only such an one can attain Nirvana in this life), continues to dwell in the body, for the effect of error and guilt in earlier births, which has already
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begun to be active, and therefore represents itself as animated body in temporality, cannot be made void ; but the body is perishable, the hour soon comes when it passes away. Then nothing remains which might induce a new rebirth, and the Arahat passes on to eternal peace, the Parinirvana, the Nirvana beyond. Parinirvana in the sense of other religious doctrines and scientific materialism is, it is true, total annihilation, complete dissolution of individuality, for nothing remains in Parinirvana which in any way corresponds to the human conception of existence. But from the point of view of one who has attained the degree of Arahat the world with all its phenomena is rather a 'nothing,' a mirrored picture, a gleaming soap-bubble, a tormenting dream, and Parinirvana the entrance into true being, into the eternal, the imperishable, where there is no state of differences, no strife, and no suffering." Dr. Rhys Davids is a strenuous advocate of the view that Nirvana is synonymous with perfected Arahatship, is attained, if at all, in this life, and represents the ideal saintship of the successful Arahat, who, however, passes on into final extinction beyond death; but this extinction (Parinirvana) is not Nirvana, but rather the issue or result of it.1 In any case Nirvana cannot be the portion of laymen, but is reserved for the Arahats.
The crown of Arahat.Arahatship becomes, therefore, simply another name for sublimated egoism. It is in certain of its as pects self-mastery, but it is also, so far as the service of mankind is concerned, self-negation. The ideal Arahat is a man who is side-tracked off the main line of altruistic aspiration and effort. He stands aloof from the world's conflicts, out of touch with human development, profoundly satisfied with his own serene isolation.2 The outcome of this system is pessi- 1 "Manual of Buddhism," pp. 111-123; "Buddhism: Its History and Literature," pp. 150-152, 163, 164. 2 "It [Buddhism] does not tell the ascetic to live in the world in order by his teaching and example to raise it to a higher level. He is to pity the world, but to pass it by and devote himself to solitude, abstraction, and indifference. Indeed, the Eight-Fold Path itself is to be followed, not from love to one's neighbour, but as a means of securing one's own release from the pain of existence. The eight right things group themselves under three heads: Righteousness, Abstraction, Knowledge; and these in their turn lead to Nirvâna. But it has already been pointed out that in order to attain Nirvâna there must be total severance of the soul from all sublunary affairs. If, therefore, a man loves his neighbour he breaks the rule of indifference. An ancient text says : 'All pain and suffering on earth arise from that which is dear to me. He, therefore, to whom nothing is dear is free from pain, and he who strives to attain to that state in which there is no pain allows nothing in the world to be dear to him.'" —The Imperial and Asiatic Quarterly Review, July, 1896, p. 157. Cf. also Ellinwood, "Oriental Religions and Christianity," p. 176.
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mism as a social creed. There is no room for optimism so far as any plan for the moral elevation of society is concerned. We note further that the precepts of Buddhist ethics are obscure and morally confusing.
Moral confusion in Buddhist ethical precepts.They are all aimed at escape from existence, and have nothing to say about deliverance from sin. In fact, the Christian conception of sin as the transgression of a divine law is unknown to Buddhism. The great evil to be contended against is not disloyalty and disobedience to a supreme will, but is inherent in the very fact of existence. Man's misery, therefore, is not traceable to his sin, but to his existence, and there is no remedy except in his escape from that environment in which he has been placed by the Creator. The consequence is that the ethical precepts of Buddhism are intensely legal, exceedingly detailed in their application, and involve a severe struggle on the part of man, with no helper to aid him. He works out his own deliverance with no reliance upon a higher power, with no place for prayer, and no one to listen even should the heart cry out for help. Then, again, the great motive which underlies the ethical aspiration of Buddhism is
The abasence of a nobel motive.selfish desire. In the case of laymen, as Arahatship is not within the range of their hopes, even the stimulus of selfish aspiration is absent, and they are left to themselves with hardly any commanding motive influencing their lives. The Buddhist laity are, therefore, almost universally in a state of moral indifference, living commonplace lives, with hardly any outlook beyond their material environment.1 There is no moral struggle, no social aspiration, no ethical impulse. Life becomes a careless existence, with little moral nerve or serious purpose. Christian altruism based upon love of God and love of humanity is only feebly, if at all, operative. The elaborate but ineffective ethics of Buddhism have failed utterly to arrest
Wherein Buddhist ethics have failed.idolatry or to check polygamy and polyandry. They have not produced a high standard of morality, nor have they led mankind into the path of progress, or stimulated the spirit of practical philanthropy. On the contrary, the growth of individual character has been stunted, and social life has been kept on a level of moral torpidity. Buddhist ethics have failed to adjust themselves even to the requirements of the simpler and freer life of Eastern society, and it is plain that they could not be reconciled with the more complicated demands of modern industrial and economic progress. Present-day civ- 1 The Missionary Review of the World, May, 1896, pp. 327-332.
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ilization would of necessity be compelled to ignore the whole system. It is a simple fact that some of the most sterilizing and demoralizing forms of social evil found in the non-Christian world are dominant in lands where Buddhism prevails, and, although it would not be right to charge these things directly to its account, yet it has done little in past centuries to modify or remedy these vitiating customs, and there is no prospect that it will do better in the future.1 There has been an enormous development of monasticism under especially burdensome conditions, so that all Buddhist society is loaded with a horde of useless drones.2 Ceremonialism, in spite of its repudiation, has had a phenomenal development, while its ingenious mechanical devices for devotion have never been surpassed in the history of formalism.3 That another code of ethics than the one identified with Buddhism is needed for the highest welfare and perfection of human society is, therefore, evident. Another ethical foundation than that of the constitution of nature is necessary, since without a supreme personality as a source of authority ethics become a more or less vague and uncertain 1 "This religion is not a social force; it aims not at a Kingdom of God to be built up by the united efforts of multitudes of the faithful, but only at saving individual souls, which in the act of being saved are removed beyond all activity and all contact with the world. Buddhism, therefore, is not a power which makes actively for civilisation. It is a powerful agent for the taming of passion and the prevention of vagrant and lawless desires; it tends, therefore, towards peace. But it offers no stimulus to the realisation of the riches which are given to man in his own nature; it checks rather than fosters enterprise; it favours a dull conformity to rule rather than the free cultivation of various gifts. Its ideal is to empty life of everything
active and positive rather than to concentrate energy on a strong purpose. It does not train the affections to virtuous and harmonious action, but denies to them all action, and consigns them to extinction. This condemnation it has incurred by parting with that highest stimulus to human virtue and endeavour which lies in the belief in a living God."—Menzies, "History of Religion," p. 379. 2 " Where are Buddhist charitable hospitals ? Where free dispensaries ? Where orphanages? Where teachers of the deaf and dumb? Where asylums for the idiot or the leper? We must go to Christian countries, and to the efforts of Christian people in Buddhist countries, if we would see these. While Christian countries are —very slowly and with many a halt and relapse, yet still surely—advancing, Buddhist countries have been for centuries stationary, or are even, as Tibet and Mongolia, engaged in a retrograde movement."—F. Becker Shawe, in an article entitled "Nine Centuries of Buddhism," in The Missionary Review of the World, August, 1896, pp. 583, 584. 3 For a condensed résumé of the defects of Buddhism, consult Grant, "The Religions of the World," pp. 147-157; Kellogg, "The Light of Asia and the Light of the World," pp. 376, 377: and Dods. "Mohammed. Buddha, and Christ," pp. 169,170.
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reflection of impersonal law. Another doctrine of responsibility, emphasizing the facts of sin and guilt,
Why Christian ethics must supplant the Buddhist code if there is to be social progress.and recognizing the possibility of pardon and deliverance, is essential to the culture of moral character. A clearer standard of right and wrong is necessary for the guidance of conduct and the accentuation of duty. Another ideal of existence and its significance is required, unless life is to be altogether misinterpreted and misused. There must be another theory of personality, or soul existence; another programme of a religious life and of the application of the ethical code to all classes of men; another view of the claims of the unfortunate and the afflicted, who, in spite of the supposed humanitarianism of Buddhism, are now despised and practically ostracized from the consolations and hopes of religion. There must be another conception of man's duty to society, as involving a call to service rather than the desire of isolation ; another view of the essence of duty and the basis of obligation, which are now resolved into selfish expediency; another view of the sacredness of human nature and the possibilities of regeneration, sanctification, and redemption through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit and the resurrection of the body. There must be another conception of the sacredness and dignity of the daily life of mankind, since no industrious and faithful son of toil can now hope for the higher blessings of Buddhism, or be counted other than an alien and an outcast from its choicest privileges, and that for the very reason that he is walking in the humble path of earthly duty. There must be a truer vision of the destiny of man in place of the dismal doctrine of rebirths, the inexorable law of Karma, and the mysterious annihilation which is incidental to Nirvana ; and, finally, there must be an entirely new appreciation of the fact that man is in desperate need of divine help, since the only practical outcome of present experience is either foolish complacency or listless indifference. Buddhism fails to recognize the moral needs of man and is impotent to supply them. With all its fine ethics, it is the most notable example of the policy of laissez-faire, both in religion and sociology, which the annals of heathenism record.
2. Confucian ethics have produced apparently the best social status we can find outside of
The ethics of Confucianism.Christendom. The social and domestic life of Japan is largely the product of Confucianism, and this is of course true of China, so that in this respect both nations are representative. Professor Henry Satoh, of the Imperial Commercial College, Tokyo, has stated that Buddhism is a failure among educated Japanese, and that the Confucian system of ethics is preëminent
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there.1 Both of these great nations are favored above all others, apart from Christendom, in having the influence upon their people of whatever is good and helpful in Confucian morality and in its comparatively high ideals of domestic and social life. That there are, however, grave and vital defects in the ethical teachings, and especially in the moral forces of Confucianism as compared with Christianity, cannot be denied. The scope of its ethics is narrow, being confined to earthly relationships, with exclusive reference to an earthly environment. Responsibility is here narrowed and dwarfed ; God is afar off,—in fact, unrecognized,— while the motive is earth-born and temporal. The source of authority is impersonal and undefined; it may be said even that it is hardly discernible. The filial relation, with the obligations it implies, has, in reality, almost altogether taken the place of the God relation. The whole system has drifted into a deification of the dead and a religious worship of the departed, especially of immediate ancestors. "Serve the dead as the living, the departed as the present," is the summary of the code of ancestral worship.2 This is probably the least objectionable phase of idolatry which the world presents; yet how far is it beneath the worship of the great Creator, and what a shadowy basis of moral obligation it affords! The portentous complacency of the Chinese is nowhere more conspicuously
The Confucian view of the moral status of man.illustrated than in the estimate of man which Confucianism places at the basis of its moral system. "The heart of man," it is authoritatively stated, "indeed, is naturally perfectly upright and correct." And again: "He [man] is endowed with a natural rectitude all complete."3 Where, then, is the standard of Confucian morality? It is virtually in man himself, and what authority is back of the law other than that of the one who is himself to honor and obey the law? True, there are references to heaven and to nature, but they represent an impersonal source of authority, of which the Chinese have practically but a feeble consciousness, if, in fact, they recognize it at all. The great unknown "It" of Confucianism cannot be regarded as a possible substitute for the God of Christianity, who dwells in the heart, makes sacred by His presence the home, and pervades with His influence the society of Christian communities. It is just here that Confucianism, with its cold and elaborate ethical formulae, signally fails.4 1. The Gospel in all Lands, September, 1895, p. 449. 2 Faber, "A Systematic Digest of the Doctrines of Confucius," p. 81. 3 Legge, "Christianity and Confucianism," p. 10. 4 "But after our most generous estimate of the results of Confucian culture, we must at last confess that it has failed to realize its own ideal of the State, of the family, of society. We must further urge that many of the evils of Confucian civilization are inherent, and not accidental, that they are the fruits of the system of teaching, and not simply those evils that belong to human nature, which Confucian culture has not thus far succeeded in uprooting. Virtue is extolled as the highest good, but it has no perennial fountains from which to derive its life. It is at best only the fruit of self-culture, and begets in the heart of the Confucian scholar the sense of superiority over other men. The tendency of this self-culture is revealed in the fact that reverence for sages and ancestors has terminated in idolatry. Selfishness is the tap-root from which all the evils that afflict human nature have had their nourishment; and Confucian culture, while it has done much to repress the repulsive manifestations of selfishness, has done little to check the luxuriance of its growth. Selfishness rules in the relations of the family, in the intercourse of friendship, in the organization of society, in the transaction of business, in the administration of government, in the worship offered to ancestors, heroes, sages, and other imagined gods. Even the best moral and spiritual aspirations of the people terminate in self, and do not lay hold of any permanent good."—Rev. D. Z. Sheffield (A. B. C. F. M.), in the "Report of the Shanghai Conference, 1890," p. 468.
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It gives us its commandments without a commander. It provides a court of justice, but withholds the judge. It establishes a system of constitutional law with no executive. It has much to say in the abstract about "the way of the superior man,"1 but little power to enforce its precepts. It is like a modern engine, built with mechanical skill and elaboration, but destitute of the facilities for generating steam. The social fruits of Confucianism reveal the magnitude of this defect. We find that the
Some social frutis of Confucian ethics.irresponsible power which has been given to parents develops into a system of domestic tyranny. The fine ethics of the home have been of little avail against the stormy waves of passion, which have swept them under and obliterated them in favor of a polygamous system. Truthfulness, sincerity, and the recognition of the rights of others have not been characteristic of Chinese social life. Its failure to adjust moral standards to each other is seen in the fact that the discharge of filial obligations is in reality a sufficient religious cult, and that duty, or even ordinary filial behavior towards parents, takes precedence of what may be considered moral obligation.2 The law of chastity applies only to woman; for man there is license. The fraternal relationship in the family, moreover, involves such a subordination on the part of the younger brother that there is practically no equality in brotherhood, while "sisters are not even mentioned." 1 Faber, "Systematic Digest," pp. 54-101. 2 "In China filial piety is recognized as the basis of social order. By the orthodox it is even held to supply the place of religion; so that 'he who serves his parents at home has no need to go far away to burn incense to the gods.' "—Martin, "Hanlin Papers," Second Series, p. 199.
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The nobler, the more vigorous,—in fact, the God-given and God-enforced,—ethical code of Christianity must be substituted in place of the impersonal and imperfect ethical system of Confucius, if domestic and social life in China and Japan is to take on a higher form and be saved from degradation and decay. The supreme achievement of Christian missions would be to introduce God into China and Japan, and give Him His rightful place of authority,1and His Son Jesus Christ His incarnate dignity and His mediatorial office. At present the ultimate source of wisdom and of authority is the "nature of things." Moral obligation is based upon what may be designated as the inherent fitness of things, or upon the perception of the relation of man to his environment, both material and social. The fountainhead of morality may be indicated as what ought to be—man himself being the judge, and the constitution of nature and society being regarded as the symbol of moral authority. Of this system of ethics Dr. Martin has written : "Whatever of value to the student of virtue it may have contained, it certainly did not contain the 'beginning of wisdom.' For, skilfully as Confucius had woven the chain of human relationships, he failed to connect the last link with heaven—to point out the highest class of our relations. Not only, therefore, is one grand division of our duties a blank in his system, but it is destitute of that higher light and those stronger motives which are necessary to stimulate to the performance of the most familiar offices."2 3. The practical ethics of Hinduism have been incidentally before us in previous lectures.3 Some of its moral teachings resemble those of Buddhism, but in others we find something more degenerate and objectionable. In place of Buddhistic atheism we have pantheism as a 1 "It may be true enough that God reflects His will sometimes in the deepest instincts of our nature, sometimes in the organic requirements of human society, which, indeed, is not less His work than are the body and soul of man; but unless moral precepts be rested on belief in Him, ay, and, let me add, on what He has told us about Himself and His will, they will not really control conduct and life in the long run. A society which is losing or which has lost those masculine beliefs, those energetic, soul-controlling convictions, which purify and invigorate the heart and will, cannot recover its vital forces by a talismanic repetition of beautiful moral sentiments or by a picturesque delineation of their practical effect."—Liddon, "Essays and Addresses," pp. 58, 59. 2 Martin, "The Chinese: Their Education, Philosophy, and Letters," pp. 132,133. For an elaborate exposition of Confucian ethics, consult the article from which the above quotation is taken, entitled "Remarks on the Ethical Philosophy of the Chinese," Ibid., pp. 125-149. The same essay is published in " Hanlin Papers," First Series, pp. 163-193, and in the volume of The Princeton Review for 1862.
3 Supra, pp. 72, 89-91, 119-125, 131-133, 157, 241-251, 331-333, 387-389.
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philosophical and polytheism as a practical basis, and from an ethical point of view the
The ethics of Hinduism.difference is slight. Over against the Buddhist negation of the soul as a distinct and permanent entity we have the pantheistic conception of a temporary, separate existence as part of a great whole, to be in time absorbed again into the original substance from which it came. In place of the distinctively spiritual and ethical tone of original Buddhism we find a materialistic element and a tendency to nature-worship which place Hinduism on a lower level and give it a grosser trend. The religious feelings of the early Hindu seem to a remarkable degree to have been impressed with the phenomena of the material universe. Light, fire, the wonders and terrors of nature, the reproductive powers, and even bodily stimulants and intoxicants, became objects of religious veneration. An element of vague and undefined personality attached itself to some mysterious beings, of whose existence the phenomena of nature were the signs and evidences, and to whom religious worship was rendered. The earliest of these seems to have been Varuna, the God of Heaven, possibly the waning shadow of the true God of early monotheism. Indra, a fierce and cruel deity, and many others might be named. The tendencies of nature-worship led these early Aryans by easy and sure steps downward towards polytheism and idolatry, and into the realm of superstitions, charms, talismans, incantations, sacrificial rites, and unrestricted ceremonialism, with a phenomenal development of sacerdotalism. The deities were not all good ; in fact, those which were evil seemed to grow in number and power, and must be especially recognized and propitiated. Thus the historic trend developed into modern Hinduism—the most consummate product of superstitious fear, religious pride, fleshly compromise, sacerdotal pretension, and idolatrous abandon which the world has ever presented in systematic form.1 The elevation of the Brahman to the exclusive and mystical prerogatives of the priesthood, whatever of national or racial basis there may have been in the Aryan invasion for the caste system, synchronizes precisely with its coalition and adoption as a characteristic of Hinduism. Religion became a matter of external rites performed by an exclusive caste, with hardly any reference to spiritual worship of a 1 Cf. article on "Hinduism as It Is," by the Rev. Jacob Chamberlain, M.D., D.D., in The Missionary Review of the World, April, 1897. Dr. Chamberlain rightly objects to the thoroughly untrue and idealized picture of Hinduism which was presented by Swami Vivekananda and others at the Parliament of Religions.
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supreme deity. The era of speculation and philosophy led Hinduism into the mazes of an intellectual labyrinth. The clue of primitive revealed truth, if, indeed, it had not been already lost, was now wholly gone, and with it all hope of philosophical sobriety and sanity. It is a question if modern Hinduism does not represent the most startling and dismal aberrations in the history of religious speculation.1 The foundation of ethics, according to Hinduism, is neither in God nor in the God-implanted conscience.
The Hindu regulates his own standards.Pantheism refers questions of ethics ultimately to the human reason, or at least to human interpretations of the system of nature, which of course can be made to subserve man's own purpose, while the measure of responsibility is reduced to a minimum. Polytheism will give its sanction to almost any virtue or any vice which the imagination of man may conceive. The very sins and cruelties of the Hindu have in many instances an ethical and religious endorsement. Nothing can be more erroneous and dangerous than the Hindu conception of the Godhead as an unconscious substratum of being which becomes conscious in the material universe, 2or in living creatures, or in divinities which man's imagination has created. By this process the stream of ethical thought is poisoned at its 1 "Hinduism, as it has been developed during the last thousand or twelve hundred years, resembles a stupendous, far-extended building, or series of buildings, which is still receiving additions, while portions have crumbled and are crumbling into ruin. Every conceivable style of architecture, from that of the stately palace to the meanest hut, is comprehended in it. On a portion of the structure here or there the eye may rest with pleasure, but as a whole it is an unsightly, almost monstrous, pile. Or, dismissing figures, we must describe it as the most extraordinary creation which the world has seen—a jumble of all things : polytheistic pantheism; much of Buddhism; something apparently of Christianity, but terribly disfigured; a
science wholly outrageous ; shreds of history twisted into wild mythology; the bold poetry of the older books understood as literal prose; any local deity, any demon of the aborigines, however hideous, identified with some accredited Hindu divinity; any custom, however repugnant to common sense or common decency, accepted and explained; in a word, later Hinduism has been omnivorous ; it has partially absorbed
and assimilated every system of belief, every form of worship, with which it has come in contact. Only to one or two things has it remained inflexibly true. It has steadily upheld the proudest pretensions of the Brahman, and it has never relaxed the sternest restrictions of caste. We cannot wonder at the severe judgment pronounced on Hinduism by nearly every Western author. According to Macaulay, 'all is hideous and grotesque and ignoble' ; and the calmer De Tocqueville maintains that 'Hinduism is perhaps the only system of belief that is worse than having no religion at all.' " —J. Murray Mitchell, "The Hindu Religion: A Sketch and a Contrast" (No. 33 of "Present-Day Tracts"), pp. 32, 33. 2 Monier-Williams, "Hinduism," p. 86.
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fountainhead. It is made corrupt and deadly before it enters into the life of man, where it is often transformed into moral rottenness. This becomes in its turn, according to pantheism, a revelation of deity; so the vicious circle is complete. Personal guilt is thus a very secondary matter. It is almost impossible for a Hindu to sincerely and humbly repent before a Supreme Being for what he himself is morally. Ceremonialism is the highest law of his religion, and morality in thought and conduct is something which historically he regulates for himself. Atonement is thus transferred from a moral to a ceremonial plane and becomes only puerile in its spirit and practice. The goal of personal holiness embodied in permanent character is out of sight. The transmigration of the soul is the most that Hinduism can promise until there is final absorption and extinction in the great ocean of being. With this system as its foundation, do we wonder that the ethical code of Hinduism has gone astray to an extent hardly paralleled in religious history ? It has degraded the sources of its authority by its bald pantheism and the low moral character of its gods ; it has devised principles and precepts which are an offense to even the natural conscience of man ; it has produced discord in moral relationships; it has confused the physical and the spiritual; it has adopted and sanctioned caste, making moral and religious differentiation a matter of blood and fate rather than of character;1it has shadowed family life by its treatment of women, by child-marriage and the horrors of Indian widowhood, which would still include the sati if all restraint were withdrawn. The notes of failure in Hindu ethics are discovered when we point out that there must
Some grave defects in Hindu ethics.be a changed conception of God in His being, His personality, His relation to the universe, His moral character, and His supreme authority; another view of the personality and destiny of man; a recognized distinction between the moral and the immoral; a cleansing of the Augean pantheon of the gods; a recognition of righteous character combined with humility as the true sign of honorable caste in the spiritual kingdom; a discovery of the dignity of the inner graces of purity and love in contrast with empty ceremonialism ; an acceptance of the practical obligations of brotherhood and humanity as regards the submerged nine tenths of India; a discrediting of asceticism as the badge of holiness and the sign of superiority; a total change in the status and treatment of woman; a suppression of child-marriage ; a removal of the disabilities of widowhood; and an abolishment of the unclean scandals connected with shrines and temples. 1 See supra, pp. 241-251.
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Several of these may seem to be religious rather than strictly ethical features of Hinduism, but a true and vital system of ethics depends upon a religious basis. If religion goes wrong, then ethics are sure to be blighted or distorted. It is impossible, moreover, to derive the ethics of Christianity from the religion of the Hindu. No permanent or worthy system of ethics can be founded on Indian pantheism, Hindu reform movements, unless they are essentially Christian, are therefore doomed to failure. "Back to the Vedas" as the watchword of a Brahmanical revival is no doubt an attractive idea to devout Hindus, but as a method of reform it is a delusion. Nothing can grapple with the deep-rooted religious and social customs of Hinduism which does not arise in the strength of a renewed nature and in the power of a transformed character. The only twice-born men who can change the morals of India for the better are those who are born again by God's Spirit into the likeness of Christ. 4. The ethics of Islam remain to be considered. Mohammedanism originated in an attempt at
The stength and the weakness of Islam.reconstruction by one who was profoundly and justly dissatisfied with the religious life of his times. His sources of information were Jewish, Christian, and heathen, for the religious life of Arabia in the seventh century was essentially heathenism. Islam is therefore a compilation of teachings and practices drawn from the above sources, and expanded under the guidance and pressure of circumstances into a system. Its strength has been that much essential truth was incorporated, chiefly adapted from Judaism ; in fact, in many respects Islam is a garbled reproduction of the religion of the Old Testament, with the evangelical element left out and its ethics twisted and misinterpreted. Its weakness consists in the adoption of religious ideas and social customs which are saturated with error, loathsome with immorality and injustice, antagonistic to both natural and revealed ethics, and stale with the provincialism of the desert.
Mohammed's conception of God is, after all, but a half-truth. Some attributes have been
Half-truths and ethical compromises of the Moslem religion.grasped boldly and firmly, but are altogether out of focus with other perfections which, although essential elements of the divine character, have been ignored or misinterpreted. The deity presented in Islam represents an effort of the Arabian imagination to adjust God to an uncouth and immoral human environment, without too much disturbance of the moral status quo. Some characteristics of the Godhead have been exalted and emphasized to the
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extent of exaggeration ; others have been forgotten and eliminated to the extent of detraction. The Moslem, true to the Eastern conception of absolutism, has drawn a realistic picture of the inexorable supremacy of God as the master of destiny and the universal ruler, while, on the other hand, no one can fail to perceive how offensive to a desert warrior of the faith is the Gospel of heavenly condescension as revealed in the Incarnation, the Atonement, and the doctrine of divine indwelling, or in the privileges of fellowship, communion, and personal, spiritual union of the soul of man with its God. It is true that Mohammedanism declares God to be "compassionate and merciful," but it is to sin as well as to the sinner that He offers His condoning grace. Herein is the fatal defect in the ethics of Islam. God is made to forget Himself and to become in certain respects a participator by law and by sanction in the iniquities of the Islamic code and the irregularities of Islamic practice. More than this, with bold and shocking realism, God is pictured on the throne of His majesty, in the white light of His stainless purity, as the distributor of "houris with large dark eyes," and the maker of "lofty couches" for the nameless pleasures of Paradise.1 Mohammed as a reformer was incapable of coping with his moral and social environment. The result has been that, owing partly to his imperfect vision of truth and his inability to comprehend the higher moral harmonies of righteousness, and partly through force and stress of circumstances as his leadership became more real and responsible, he compromised and adjusted both religion and morality to the degenerate spirit and life of his times. He grasped the sword; he toyed with sin; he made it easy for men to be his followers without a break with scandalous social customs; he made room for iniquities which to his moral sense at least were venial,—perhaps not even objectionable, —or which, in any event, it would cost too much to condemn; he conceived the idea of a religious headship holding at the same time the sceptre of political power. The results are Islamic history written in blood
Islamic ethics far below the danger point.and tears, a militant religion with a trail of despotism covering large sections of three continents, and an ethical and social system which has not ceased to be a menace to the world. Its civil creed is powerless to lead mankind out of degradation, since it despises woman, sanctions polygamy and concubinage, allows divorce at will, and justifies slavery. Its political creed will never point the way to freedom—rather it for- 1 The Koran, sura 56, verses 12-37. Cf. also sura 55, verses 54-78; sura 2, verse 25; sura 3, verse 15.
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ever sounds its knell.1 Its fanaticism, which has usually been quiescent by restraint rather than by choice, is still ready for any excesses with all who do not yield allegiance to its demands. Its political supremacy has exercised over soul and body a withering bondage, and its religious experience has been legalistic and external, making man's higher life a round of observances rather than an inner spirit of moral purity and power. Words hardly seem needed to show that the ethics of Islam have sunk far below the danger point, and that social life can never be morally pure, or political progress be towards light and freedom, or individual standards of living become ethically straight and sound, until a nobler moral code shall prevail. The stern finger of history, dark with blood-stains of the past, and dripping even now with the fresh blood of victims, points steadily to the outer darkness of social barbarism and political tyranny as the unchangeable way of Islam. It is hardly worth our while to take up in detail other non-Christian religions. Those that have been mentioned are representative, and in some respects the best that can be found in the history of the race. If we now call Christianity to our aid as a teacher of social ethics, we are conscious at once of a marvelous
The nobility of Christian ethics.and subtle change in the moral atmosphere. There is not only high obligation, conscious responsibility, and recognized accountability, but there is sufficient authority to quicken and invigorate the conscience. We enter an atmosphere of love, loyalty, and privilege, We have a high code of social duty, vivified by the personal influence and winsome example of Christ, the great Teacher and Exemplar. Christ's assumption of His supreme place as the ruler of human society is called by Dr. Fairbairn "the most dramatic moment in the experience of collective man." When our Lord enters the realm of human intercourse and mutual obligation He brings with Him those matchless ethical principles which make the social standards of Christianity the most refining and ennobling that the world has ever known. These principles, fortified by Christ's love and put into practice, are not only regulative, they are 1 "If in Christendom the attempt has been often made to weave into one inextricable woof the kingdom of God and the kingdom of Cæsar, yet, as we thankfully own, in the end the attempt has always failed. In Islam it has completely succeeded, and succeeded, not as a perversion and defeat of the intentions with which Mahometanism was founded, but as the truest realization of all which it was intended to be. The despotisms of the East are not accidents, but the legitimate results of the Koran; and so long as this exists as the authoritative book nothing better can come in their stead."—Trench, "Lectures on Medieval Church History," pp. 55, 56.
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aggressive. They rule out what is evil; they rule in what is right. No hoary custom is sacred if it is wrong; no time-honored traditions are to be spared if they should perish; no selfish indulgences are to be condoned if they do injury to our fellows; no code of indifference, or fatalistic pessimism, orlaissez-faire philosophy is to be allowed to hold sway in defiance of the Gospel law of love. The social code of Christianity touches the conscience, awakens responsibility, and inspires action. It is broad and far-reaching in its scope; it insists upon individual and domestic purity; it introduces the principles of liberty, toleration, individual equality before God, justice, philanthropy, mutual respect and consideration, and the highest standards of righteousness, as equally binding in all social relations as in the individual life. It has a clear and ringing message as to the honor of womanhood, the rights of children, the sanctity of marriage, the duties of truthfulness, morality, and temperance, the obligation to respond to the claims of humanity, the call of suffering, and the appeal of the weak and dependent. It teaches a noble ideal of citizenship, and enforces that consideration which is due to the public weal from every individual member of society. It presents a high standard of commercial integrity, and denounces fraud and deceit in business as an offense, in view not only of what man owes to man, but to God as well. It scrutinizes the principles and practices of government, and is in active sympathy with just taxation, equitable laws, and their fair execution; it looks into prisons and into all departments of civil and police administration. It brings to book ecclesiastical authorities wherever a religious hierarchy assumes to countenance moral laxity by license or example. It demands religious liberty even at a perilous cost. Christianity stands for much besides, but it is essentially a teacher of ethics, and as such it has never faltered or failed. From its earliest conflicts with the abominations of Roman society down to our own times it has been a fountain of ethical culture and a valiant champion of morals. "The early churches were societies for the amendment of life," and the Christian atmosphere to-day in all lands is one in which immorality is treason, and injustice an intolerable offense. The Christian spirit, moreover, if it is true to itself, must seek, not its own, but that which is its neighbor's. It cannot be bribed into silence, it cannot be cowed into acquiescence, it cannot be beguiled into indifference, when it is face to face with what is unfair, unjust, unrighteous, and morally injurious to society. It has no easy battle to fight. Christian social ethics are and must be militant in their spirit throughout non-Christian society. In fact, they must be militant here in the best at-
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mosphere of Christendom. No man liveth to himself if he is an apt pupil in the school of Christianity, and it is an immense and splendid gain wherever this new code is made effective in the practical life of heathenism. It is just here that one of the noblest functions of Christian missions appears; for how can the Christian system of ethics be introduced into the personal and social life of heathen lands except by their agency? V Christianity introduces a new moral force into social life. No one can come into close contact with
Christianity introduces new moral forces into mission lands.Oriental lands, or with primitive conditions in any part of the non-Christian world, without being conscious of the overshadowing power of the dead past. To be sure, the Orient of to-day is awakening, but only in sections of its vast area, and not even in these scattered localities by virtue of any inherent tendencies towards progress, but because Christian missions and Western enterprise are beginning to exert their quickening and broadening influence. This change comes slowly, and the historic environment is still mighty. The stupefying spell of inertia, the holding power of conservatism, the misguiding influence of false patriotism, the tyranny of custom, the fear of persecution, the dread of defying public opinion, the apathy of intellectual and moral sluggishness, incapacity to deal with new social questions, and habitual surrender to tradition and archaic usage, are still the reigning factors in Oriental society. There is no vivid consciousness of the possibility of better things, no inspiring call to action, movement, agitation, and struggle towards reform. The law of heredity has been working the wrong way for centuries, until moral capacity has lost its fibre and become enervated and all but lifeless in its stagnation. All things yield to the thrall of moral surrender. The will-power lies in a dead calm, sleeping in the lotus-laden air of that to-morrow and to-morrow spirit of the Orient. Under such conditions as these a self-prompted and aggressive movement for social reformation is not within the range of probability, unless a life-giving breath of higher aspiration comes to quicken the deadened sensibilities. Christianity, however, brings new energies, new ideals, and new hopes. Its historic record in all ages reveals a wonderful and subtle power to develop unexpected, even unsuspected, capacities in individual men, and to crystallize character in society. It can do what nothing else can accomplish; it can make alive. It possesses the power of moral change, the secret of a quickened conscience; it can renew and
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transform the man, no matter what may have been his antecedents, and however discouraging his surroundings. Then what a penetrating and transforming power there is in the quiet working of its spiritual leaven! what an intense touch, what a varied influence, what an allround enforcement of right principles and straight living! It is only as social activities are rallied around recognized principles, and inspired with Christian impulses, that the light breaks, and the life comes, and society becomes a new creature in which "old things have passed away." Dr. James Stewart, in his beautiful volume upon "Lovedale," that ideal missionary institution in South Africa, says in his chapter upon "The One Hope of Africa" : "I never yet met an African who wanted to be troubled with the Gospel till it began to trouble him. But when it does trouble him effectually, marvellous is the change it makes. It would delight the heart of the most thoroughgoing evolutionist of the school to which the now distinguished author of 'Social Evolution' belongs, to see how the preferences and 'interests of the individual' become subordinate to 'those of the social organism,' and how the antagonism between 'the inner and the outer life, the natural man and the spiritual man,' is reconciled when the new religion lays hold of the slightly evolved primitive man. It all lies in this, that Christianity awoke the sleeping spiritual man. Or if the evolutionist, as necessary to his argument, will not concede that the spiritual man was sleeping, the new religion took him by the hand and led him out of a land of thick darkness, gloom, and horror,—filled with malevolent shades and dreaded spectral powers,—and brought him into the clear, sweet light of a simple belief in a God of goodness and love, such as Christianity reveals. It cannot be otherwise, since that religion comes from Him in whom is no darkness at all."1 Christianity is morality, butit is far more than codified moral principles. It is religious consciousness, but it is much more than an inward emotional experience. It is truth, but it is something finer and better than a perfect norm of doctrine. It is truth lived, truth vitalized in character, truth assimilated and reproduced in Christian manhood and womanhood. In the lawless it can inspire the love of order and respect for authority. Nations of cannibals, as in the South Sea Islands, have been made so orderly and law-abiding that no armed force is needed to maintain the public peace. There is a hopeful and permanent outlook to this transforming power of Christianity in the fact that it is the universal custom of missions to develop the missionary spirit in native churches, to establish 1 Stewart, "Lovedale, South Africa," p. 43.
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institutions and implant moulding agencies which become growing factors in social development.
It carries with it the law of missionary service.From every field which missions have entered, far and near, among receptive races as well as among those which were unresponsive and unimpressible, come the same tidings of the living energies of the Church of Christ, and its adaptation, due to the indwelling Spirit of God, to introduce a new era of social progress and nourish by its mysterious spiritual power the impulses and aspirations of a better life. Transplant the Church of Christ to any strange and hitherto alien society, and it carries with it that great law of missionary propagation which its Master has imposed; and what is the spirit of missions embodied in that great command of Christ other than the biblical or divine formula for individual and social reform? It will make the Church of Christ in all heathen lands the herald of a new age. With Christian missions come Christian literature and organizations for its dissemination, of which those noble agencies, "The Society for the Diffusion of Christian Knowledge among the Chinese" and "The Christian Literature Society for India," are conspicuous examples. Then, again, there are the vivifying and stalwart energies of Christian education, in themselves an immense increment to the vital forces of peoples who have hitherto lived in ignorance. The mission school is the maker of a new generation in mission lands, and a generation once educated demands a like privilege for its children.
Here are moral forces to conjure with in social development. They are the makers of character. They fit men to rule themselves and to rule each other, and no social conditions can be permanently bettered unless there is character, individual and social, back of them. Christianity is our only hope where these transcendent spiritual forces are to be planted anew in the deeper life of society. VI Christianity gives a new import and stimulus to benevolent and philanthropic effort.
Christianity a stimulus to philanthropy.We might say rather that it advocates a new policy of kindliness, for heathenism, ancient and modern, has practically no programme of philanthropy and humanitarian ministry. That this is true of ancient pagan cults is the testimony of history, emphasized by the highest scholarship. We do not mean that either in ancient or modern times separate acts of beneficence and
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charity were not to be found, or that there were no tender hearts, no humane sympathies, among individual members of society. Instances which reveal kindly instincts and generous deeds on the part of large-hearted men and women may be found, as Uhlhorn has indicated. What we understand, however, by benevolence, philanthropy, and humanitarian charity, as a religious principle in contradistinction to an individual impulse, as a code of duty in social relations, as a system to be advocated, sustained, and continuously practised, was not, or is not now, a feature of ethnic religions. If the semblance of an argument to the contrary can be based upon the theoretical content and philosophical spirit of their sacred books, it cannot be argued with any success from the evidence of practical living, or demonstrated by the actual outcome of the social history of heathen society. Regulated and systematic benevolence is historically a child of Christianity. We could present not a few instances and illustrations from modern
Illustrations from the field.
missionary history revealing the growing impulses of Christian philanthropy in the lives of converts and in the organized work of mission churches. Examples like the Okayama Orphanage of Mr. Ishii, in Japan, are visible signs of that philanthropic culture which the religion of Christ, in spite of many hindrances, quickens as beautifully in the Christian hearts of the present generation as in those of any other age. The postal telegraph and the railway were hardly established in Japan before a "Postal Telegraph Mission" and a "Mission to Railway Men" were organized—the former reaching with a gift of the Scriptures and a personal message each postmaster in the realm, and the latter visiting through its agents every railway station in the empire, providing it with a copy of the New Testament, and seeing personally its employees. There are already movements on behalf of prisoners both before and after their exit from the jail. And so the great outlying field of social life, with its toilers, its outcasts, its distressed victims of crime and calamity, is entered by the Christianity of mission fields—somewhat slowly, it may be, but in the end as earnestly and as loyally as elsewhere; and the same sweet story of large-hearted charity which has characterized its earlier history will mark the development of the Christian spirit in the environment of modern heathenism. Another and a very important phase of this philanthropic ministry is its programme for the elevation and improvement of society, as well as for the relief of its distresses. Christianity stands for the making as well as the mending of mankind. It believes in the discipline of im-
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provement as well as in remedial offices in behalf of the unfortunate. It is working towards a "new heaven and a new earth," and not merely one which is patched up and made over on the principle of doing the best you can with a hopeless case. I do not see, therefore, how any candid student of the social and economic progress of the
Missions entitled to a place among civilizing agencies.world can fail to be impressed with the value of missions as a reforming, civilizing, and philanthropic agency. Where can we find an instrument so capable, so efficient, so direct and resistless in its workings upon the inner life and the outward form of society? Are we to wait forever upon evolution, when the secret and power of involution has been committed to our trust? In this sphere of service missions have been quietly working to an extent which has secured scant attention in comparison with their more spiritual achievements. Their social influence has developed slowly and is not conspicuous as yet in its visible outcome; but the task is immense and difficult, and it is not strange that results should mature gradually and somewhat obscurely. If, however, it is true, as we may surely believe, that Christian missions carry with them to non-Christian lands a sovereign and effective method of deliverance from sin, while at the same time they implant in the life of society new capacities, new desires, new motives, new appreciations, perfected ethics, vitalized moral forces, and fresh altruistic impulses, then Christianity is indeed the hope, as its Master is the Light, of the world. It is, at least in its spiritual sphere of influence and impulse, a divine remedy for social evils and a divine programme of social progress. Its ideals and its resources for realizing them form the noblest spiritual gifts of God to human society. We do not mean, of course, that the religion of Christ indicates precisely the practical method of dealing with social problems either at home or abroad, but that it creates the atmosphere which makes the approach to their solution easy and possible; it lays down principles which are a mighty solvent of difficulties; it puts into the heart the paramount desire for an honorable and fair adjustment of mutual rights; it gives an infallible standard of justice and morality which points to the conditions of a true and permanent civilization. No problem can be finally solved, no evils can be effectually banished, unless approached in a spirit essentially Christian. No system of sociology as a whole can be finally adopted and made serviceable to society, unless it is pervaded by Christian ideals and controlled by Christian principles.
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VII We have considered in some of its prominent features the adaptation of Christianity to produce
Is historic Christianity equal to the task which has been outlined?satisfactory results in the realm of social regeneration. Another and an important question remains to be considered: Is historic Christianity capable of accomplishing this noble mission? Is it what the individual and social man universally needs? Is it suited to every race and to every phase of religious and social degeneracy? Is its influence alike helpful and effective to all national temperaments and all racial developments? Is it indeed universal in its adaptability, unlimited in its capability, indestructible in its spiritual forces, imperishable in its historic position, with power to adjust itself to every nationality and every social environment, and to work out its surpassing results in every land and every century without the slightest diminution of its vigor or the least decadence of its mastery over the history and destiny of the human race? We have no hesitation in replying to this question in the affirmative, and with a special
The supernaturalism of Christianity is the secret of its power.emphasis on the word "historic." Indeed, it is just historic Christianity—that is, Christianity true to its historic ideal—which is needed, with its incarnate Christ, its revealed Word, its regenerating Spirit, its illuminating doctrine, its basis of sober history, its practical inspiration, its law of righteousness, its mighty secret of love, its lessons of brotherhood, charity, simplicity, humility, and crowning devotion to the welfare of humanity. These supernatural agencies and spiritual forces are not in the least irrational or incongruous in that divine system which has been established for the government and development of the race. In God's working plan both the supernatural and natural coöperate in harmonious unity; they often coalesce, so that to man's vision the dividing-line is blotted out. It is not necessary, as some mediators in the interest of science are inclined to do, to resolve the supernatural, almost to the extent of effacement, into the natural; nor is it wise to suppose, with others, that there is any hopeless conflict or mutual antagonism between nature and reason. There is surely a higher unity which nature, reason, and the supernatural subserve, each in its place, in fulfilling the divine purpose. All of these have ministered to the culture of man and the progress of the race as chosen instruments of a Supreme Will whose mastery over
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them is complete, yet without any dishonor or misuse of any one of them.1 Staking all upon nature, and making faith in the apparent teachings of biological history, however
A sufficient basis for faith in the Christian system.instructive in their proper sphere, a source of certitude more solid and satisfying than faith in the supernatural as revealed in the spiritual and providential activities of God, is placing the limited powers of nature too exclusively in the foreground. It is reducing the Deity to the domain and dictum of science to an extent which cannot be justified when we consider the explicit teachings of Scripture on the subject, and the immense probability in favor of other methods used by God in guiding humanity towards perfection. We must not forget either that a notable majority of master minds, eminent in the history of mankind for intellectual insight and discrimination, have regarded the evidences of a supernatural system as worthy of their abiding confidence. The inner realm of God's gracious contact with the individual intelligence of man is an unwritten, even unknown, factor in history, and it is just here, in the scope and power of the supernatural, that there is possible reconciliation of the mysteries of God's dealings with man. The difficulty is that absolute demonstration is practically impossible; yet to him who has eyes to see and ears to hear, there is ever accessible a realm of experimental evidence where 1 "The belief, absorbing and pervading, of the Kingdom of God was the heart and strength of the Psalmists' religion. With this belief they interpreted their own marvellous history; with this belief they looked abroad on nature, they trained and quickened their own souls. Translated into our modern ways of speaking, it was a profound, ever-present conviction of the reality of the supernatural and unseen. I say 'supernatural' for want of a better word. I mean that, beyond and around this great familiar order of things under which we live, and our fathers have lived before us, whose general conditions and laws we have faculties to discern, there is another and greater order implied in the very mention of the name of God; an order whose laws and ways, except that they must be moral ones, we know not and cannot know. To the Psalmists the Kingdom of God is not merely an ideal, but, though they cannot explain or grasp it, an actual, present reality. The things unseen are ever accompanying, bordering on, influencing, the things that are seen. That real existence, which we, with our habits of thought and imagination, confine to things which we can handle and test here, belongs as certainly to the works and doings of the unseen Lord of the world in that vaster universe which even our thoughts cannot reach to. And it was not only the reality of this unseen system and order which had such hold on the Psalmists' minds: it was its supremacy over that order to which we are here accustomed, its continual presence, its uninterrupted permanence. The things which are seen—it was their faith as well as St. Paul's—are for the time; the things which are not seen are eternal".—Dean Church. "Pascal, and other Sermons," pp. 167, 168.
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individual belief may be nourished and deepened into personal conviction. As a general rule, however, the law of faith is fundamental in the spiritual kingdom; but we may have faith in the direct activities of God through spiritual agencies in the history of universal man, as well as in nature and natural law. They all represent the open secret of His system of government. We shall then have all that faith needs to sustain and cheer the heart and to illumine the intelligence in face of the "Riddle of Existence." That the actual progress of Christianity in the world has been characterized by
Historic Christianity defined.many a slip—that, as exhibited in the lives of men, it has often missed its opportunity, neglected its privileges, misused its power, and been untrue to its Lord in spirit and practice—cannot be denied. Misinterpreted and misapplied Christianity, however, is not historic, except in the sense of a defective exemplification of it. Its true historic character as a religious system is based upon the facts which mark and distinguish its genesis and history as a God-founded and God-established religion, and which differentiate its teachings, requirements, and ideals from all other religious systems. Historic Christianity is God-illumined rather than man-reflected. There is no one period of Church life to which we can point and say, "Here we find ideal historic Christianity fully, absolutely, and universally reproduced in human experience." There is a serious difficulty, therefore, in identifying its reproduction in human life with its ideal character. We turn to the original conception, the essential essence of the religion of Christ as He revealed it in His life and example, and as His Word pictures it, and establish its historic character upon the basis of its genesis, requirements, and manifest tendencies. To what extent fundamental and ideal Christianity has been exemplified in the world concerns its reproduction in the lives of its followers rather than its historic character. It is happily true that its history has been also a practical exemplification of its principles in the lives of sincere believers and loyal followers in all ages— not by any means a perfect exemplification, but one which God has manifestly been pleased to accept and honor, and which the world has recognized with admiration and reverence. It must be acknowledged, however, that the glorious name and the fair fame of Christianity have been sadly tarnished and dimmed by corruptions of doctrine, usurpations of authority, and travesties of practice. We may regard this as the work of an enemy, involving a result which, in some respects, is a practical reversal of the purpose of Christ. This corrupt product may
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be pronounced to be unworthy and unhistoric rather than historic. Only biblical Christianity, Scriptural in theory and in practice, is representative and entitled to be called historic; and concerning this broadly orthodox form—so broad as to include the true invisible Church of Christ as represented in all evangelical believers—it may be boldly said that it is fully sufficient for the task of the world's social regeneration. The distrust of historic Christianity, or rather the demand for a revolutionary reconstruction of principles and methods,
Why is historic Christianity distrusted as a social power?is traceable at the present time to two sources. It is manifest in Christendom in a disposition on the part of some social reformers to arraign Christianity, chiefly as represented in the visible Church, with intemperate criticism and severe condemnation as having outlived its usefulness, because of its alleged indifference and scandalous shortcomings in the sphere of social duty, and its unwillingness to exchange its function as a spiritual teacher for a militant entrance into the arena of economic conflict. Another manifestation of a distrustful and derogatory estimate of the historic value of Christ's religion is to be found in the spirit of compromise exhibited both at home and abroad. The new science of the Comparative Study of Religion has allied itself in some instances with a creed of rationalistic liberalism, and cultivated a tendency to rate Christianity as simply one of many other equally accredited religions. In the foreign field an imperfect grasp of its unique and exclusive character on the part of some native scholars has encouraged a disposition to essentially modify it by a compromising combination with other religious systems. With reference to the assaults of radical reformers it is sufficient to say that Christianity as God has given it,
Are the criticisms of social extremists justified?with its essential teachings and ordinances, represents the most facile and effective instrument for influencing the individual, and through the individual for renewing society, which has yet been devised in the history of religion. If this is the divinely chosen system for bringing truth into contact with men, then it is hardly to be expected that those who seek light from God rather than from human wisdom will be prepared to give up their faith in the value of Scriptural agencies. That Christian methods of work may be improved and readjusted is true, and few, if any, would assert that Christianity is fully grasping its opportunity; but that the Church of Christ is the appointed instrument for developing spiritual culture and impulse is equally clear. There is an ever
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The spirit of compromise to which we have referred is too much inclined to ignore the exclusive
Must Christianity compromise with the ethnic faiths?character of Christianity and its Old Testament forerunner, which was itself in the direct line of descent from primitive revelation, and to tone down the Christian religion to a spiritual affinity with ethnic systems. Christianity is thus made to divide its honors with other religions, as differing from them, not in genesis and kind, but merely in degree. A mistaken conception of the origin of Christianity and the dignity of its lineage is usually at the root of this inclination to rank it as on the same level with other religious systems. All religions, Christianity included, being regarded as the product of evolutionary processes, the entire religious development of the race is read and interpreted in terms of evolution. Christianity, therefore, becomes simply one branch of an original trunk, one phase of the religious growth of mankind. In this aspect of it there is nothing exclusive or supreme in its origin or history. Other religions are, according to this view, as likely to be true in their teaching, to reveal with equal precision the will of God, and to contain genetic elements traceable to an origin not less worthy and authoritative. A slightly different and even more subtle form of discrediting the claims of Christianity in this spirit of
Shall Christianity be regarded as the outgrowth of other religious systems?compromise is to consider it as the outcome and consummation of the religious searchings and struggles of the race. According to this notion, it is a sort ofsummum bonum of the religious history of mankind. It is conceded to be an advance and improvement on other religions, but is made up of what is good therein. Christ, according to this view, was a compiler rather than an author of religion. While Christianity is acknowledged to be divine in its dignity, it is not regarded as the only religion which God has founded, or as the one religious system which can be directly traced to a divine source, and which has come to man as a distinct gift through chosen channels of inspiration based upon unique historic verities, and identified with the one incarnate Christ, the one divine Book, and the one dispensation of the Spirit which human history has known. Christianity stands rather as a supplement and consummation. It is a sort of latter-day harvest and ingathering of, all the excellencies of other religious systems, and simply a fuller revelation of what had been imperfectly presented therein. The result of this generalization is that several ethnic religions must be regarded as occupying about the same relation to Christianity that Judaism does. They are partial and preparatory, or in some instances parallel, and find in Christianity their per-
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fect consummation. This idea so multiplies the channels of divine communication with man that we must find God as a direct teacher and a gracious, saving factor in all religions, which must be regarded as authoritative expressions, albeit imperfect and partial, of His thought, to be eventually supplemented by the Christian system. The logical result of this conception is that Christianity, in its turn, may undergo a process of evolution in its contact with and assimilation of existing ethnic systems, and result in a compromise suited to the tastes of contemporary heathenism. The moving current of religious evolution may thus go on and on until the comprehensive, all-inclusive conglomerate appears. The attitude of God, therefore, as a religious teacher in human history has been tentative, with no marked discrimination in favor of any one religious system, until by a process of combining shadowy half-lights He has produced the fuller and more perfect light. This whole theory, in both of its aspects, is unhistoric, unscriptural, and even irrational. The religion of
The unique and exclusive glory of Christianity as a religious system.Christ is not an amalgam; it is not of mixed blood, a sort of Eurasian among religions. It is of royal blood; its lineage is direct and its birth divine. The honor and dignity of its inheritance it can share with no other religion. Although it is manifest that in other religious systems there may be more or less original truth derived from primitive divine teaching, yet as a whole they are so dominated by error and corrupted in practice that the modicum of truth which they contain has been neutralized and practically reversed by the predominance of the false over the true.1 1 "Take that Sacred Book of ours; handle reverently the whole volume; search it through and through, from the first chapter to the last, and mark well the spirit that pervades the whole. You will find no limpness, no flabbiness about its utterances. Even skeptics who dispute its divinity are ready to admit that it is a thoroughly manly book. Vigor and manhood breathe in every page. It is downward and straightforward, bold and fearless, rigid and uncompromising. It tells you and me to be either hot or cold. If God be God, serve him. If Baal be God, serve him. We cannot serve both. We cannot love both. Only one name is given among men whereby we may be saved. No other name, no other Saviour, more suited to India, to Persia, to China, to Arabia, is ever mentioned—is ever hinted at. 'What!' says the enthusiastic student of the science of religion, 'do you seriously mean to sweep away as so much worthless waste-paper all these thirty stately volumes of Sacred Books of the East just published by the University of Oxford?' No, not at all; nothing of the kind. On the contrary, we welcome these books. We ask every missionary to study their contents and thankfully lay hold of whatsoever things are true and of good report in them. But we warn him that there can be no greater mistake than to force these non-Christian bibles into conformity with some scientific theory of development, and then point to the Christian's Holy Bible as the crowning product of religious evolution. So far from this, these non-Christian bibles are all developments in the wrong direction. They all begin with some flashes of true light and end in utter darkness. Pile them, if you will, on the left side of your study table, but place your own Holy Bible on the right side—all by itself, all alone, and with a wide gap between."—Sir Monier-Williams, in an address at the anniversary of the Church Missionary Society, in London, 1887.
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The fact that there is nothing which is true in itself in other religions which is not more fully and perfectly revealed in Christianity does not at all indicate that Christianity is therefore made up of what is good in other radically defective or imperfectly developed religious systems. While it may be correct that Christianity, in a certain sense, is a supplement, complement, and corrective of other religions, yet this fact does not give us the secret of its true genesis. It is thus perfect because it is the gift of infinite intelligence. It is thus complete because it contains, either in direct statement or by implication, all the absolute truth which God has been pleased to reveal. The norm of religious truth, which was implanted in the early history of the race, as we have reason to believe,
Two general tendencies in the religious history of mankind.by a primitive revelation, was monotheism, with its simple duties of worship, sacrifice, faith, and obedience. From this norm there was in one direction a development towards corruption and apostasy, but with original truth still lingering deeply imbedded in the religious creeds of heathenism, however it may have been corrupted. This heritage of truth, with much of its original likeness destroyed, appeared in the later ethnic systems of the world, but so distorted that it was recognizable with difficulty. Yet in this sense there is truthin heathen systems, just as there is God's likeness still in humanity, however fallen; and this truth in some individual instances has fructified into nobility and beauty of character through what we must regard as the special agency of that free Spirit of Life who worketh when and where He willeth. In fact, all down the line of apostasy we may believe that God has not ceased to vouchsafe to man many restraining influences in the form of gracious solicitations, as He has certainly not failed repeatedly to warn and rebuke by the visitations of His judgments. In another direction, under the guidance and culture of persistent teaching and training through direct spiritual instrumentalities, there was a development, struggling and imperfect, it may have been, down an historical line of patriarchs, prophets, and the elect nation of Israel, towards the fuller light and power of Christianity, which came to its culmination in its appointed time. The first may be called, in a loose sense of the word,
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an evolution of religious degeneracy, not without divine remonstrances, and with attempts on the part of reformers at various stages in its history to stem the tide of apostasy and reverse to some extent the trend of its debasement. The other was, in the same popular signification of the term, under the special guidance of God, an evolution of theistic doctrine, Messianic culture, moral training, ethical ideals, devout religious experience, and spiritual standards of righteousness, which culminated in the Christian system, with its Incarnation, Atonement, Regeneration, organized institutions, and laws of a righteous life. Christian missions are awakening at the present time all through the world the echoes of that great conflict of
Echoes of the early conflicts of Christianity.early Christianity with surrounding heathenism. The conditions are wonderfully similar, and substantially the same perils are involved in the issue. Let us not forget the lessons of that conflict. The sad story of Christianity's degeneracy into medieval corruption and decay is simply the result of an unhallowed alliance with heathenism with a view to compromise. Let us not forget that Christianity, like its Master and Lord, is "chiefest among ten thousand," and that the holy seed planted in heathen soil must bring forthafter its kindif it is to survive and flourish. God's supremacy can allow of no partnership. God's personality cannot be interpreted in terms of pantheism. His spirituality will tolerate no idolatry. His Incarnation is once for all consummated in Jesus of Nazareth. His Spirit is alone the only possible source of regenerate life. His Atonement can give no place to legalism. His holiness can make no compromise with sin. And so Christianity throughout all its essential features can neither acknowledge the coördinate authority nor share the honors of its prestige with any other religion. If it is true to itself in this respect, there need be no doubt of its sufficiency. It has wrought with unrivalled mastery in the past; it is still achieving its victories, both at home an d abroad, in the present generation. It retains every element of power; it holds every Secret of past success.
Universal mastery the final heritage of Christ and his religion.It is still as fully capable of leadership, and as able to subsidize and transform for its high purposes all the forces of modern times, as it has always been in the past. The wonder, the magic—the divine wisdom, rather— of Christianity is its power of adjusting itself to all human environments and of Christianizing without destroying them. It transcends with its spiritual influence the institutions, laws, and customs of nations, and summons to its service literature, science, art, and inventions. In this respect it reveals its immense superiority to mere
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civilization, which is an outgrowth of its environment, more or less advanced in different ages and localities, and in its spirit is subservient rather than superior to its surroundings. The highest and noblest achievement of Christianity, however, is its power to lead the individual heart out of and above its environment into spiritual contact with God. The transformed and renewed personality — kindly, unselfish, true-hearted, and pure — is the ultimate solution of social evils and the sure promise of a redeemed society, fashioned at last into the likeness of Christ. "All things grow sweet in Him,In Him all things are reconciled.All fierce extremesThat beat along Time's shoreLike chidden waves grow mild,And creep to kiss His feet."LITERATURE AND AUTHORITIES FOR LECTURE IV The bibliography of Lecture I being applicable for the most part to Lecture IV, many books which would otherwise find a place in the following list are omitted, because they are included in the literature of that lecture. The bibliography of Lecture IV should, therefore, be supplemented by that of Lecture I. The literature and authorities on ethnic religions have been placed in the bibliography of Lecture III, to which the reader is referred.
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ABBOTT, Rev. LYMAN, Christianity and Social Problems. B. & N. Y., Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1896. ADAMS, Rev. H. C. An Interpretation of the Social Movements of Our Time. Cambridge, Mass., The Church Social Union, 1895. ADDERLEY, JAMES, Looking Upward: Papers Introductory to the Study of Social Questions from a Religious Point of View. Second edition. L., Wells Gardner, Darton & Co., 1896. Anicent Faith in Modern Light (The). (A series of essays, by T. VINCENT TYMMS, EDWARD MEDLEY, ALFRED CAVE, and others.) E., T. &T. Clark, 1897. BOARDMAN, Rev. GEORGE DANA, The Problem of Jesus. Revised and enlarged edition P., American Baptist Publication Society, 1897. BRACE, CHARLES LORING, Gesta Christi; or, A History of Humane Progress under Christianity. N. Y., A. C. Armstrong & Son; L., Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., 1893. BRUCE, A. B., Apologetics; or, Christianity Defensively Stated. Third edition. E.,T. &T. Clark, 1896. BUSHNELL, Rev. HORACE, Nature and the Supernatural. L., R. D. Dickinson; N. Y., Charles Scribner's Sons, 1880. BUTLER, Bishop JOSEPH, The Works of Joseph Butler. (Edited by the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone.) 2 vols. L., Henry Frowde, 1896. CALDERWOOD, HENRY, Handbook of Moral Philosophy. Fourteenth edition, revisedL. and N. Y., Macmillan & Co., 1895. CALDERWOOD, HENRY, Evolution and Man's Place in Nature. Second edition. L. and N. V., The Macmillan Co., 1896. CANDLISH, JAMES S., The Kingdom of God Biblically and Historically Considered. E., T. & T. Clark, 1884. CARPENTER, W. BOYD, The Witness of the Heart to Christ. L., S. P. C. K., 1878. CAVE, Rev. ALFRED, The Scriptural Doctrine of Sacrifice and Atonement. E., T. & T. Clark, 1890. Christianity and Scepticism. (Boston Lectures, 1870.) B., Congregational Publishing Society, 1870. COATES, D., Christianity the Means of Civilisation. L., Seeley & Co., 1837. CRAUFURD, Rev. A. H., Christian Instincts and Modern Doubt. L., James Clarke & Co., 1897. CRAWFORD, Rev. JOHN HOWARD, The
Brotherhood of Mankind: A Study Towards a Christian Philosophy of History. N. Y., Charles Scribner's Sons, 1896. DAWSON, Sir J. W., Eden Lost and Won: Studies of the Early History and Final Destiny of Man as Taught in Nature and Revelation. L., Hodder & Stoughton, 1895. DOGGETT, Dr. L. L., History of the Young Men's Christian Association.N. Y., The International Committee of Y. M. C. A., 1896. DORCHESTER, Rev. DANIEL, The Problem of Religious Progress. N. Y., Hunt & Eaton, 1895. DORNER, ISAAC A., System of Christian Ethics. (Translated by C. M. Mead and R. T. Cunningham.) E., T. & T. Clark, 1887. DRUMMOND, Professor HENRY, Natural Law in the Spiritual World. L., Hodder & Stoughton, 1883; N. Y., James Pott & Co., 1884.
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DRUMMOND, Professor HENRY, The Lowell Lectiires on the Ascent of Man. L., Hodder & Stoughton; N. Y., James Pott & Co., 1894. DYMOND, JONATHAN, Essays on the Principles of Morality, and on the Private and Political Rights and Obligations of Mankind. Ninth edition. L., Samuel Bagster & Sons; Dublin, Eason & Son; N. Y., James Pott & Co., 1894. EATON, J. R. T., The Permanence of Christianity. L., Rivington, Percival & Co., 1872. ELY, Professor RICHARD T., Social Aspects of Christianity, and Other Essays. N. Y. and B., T. Y. Crowell & Co., 1889. ELY, Professor RICHARD T., The Social Law of Service. N. Y., Eaton & Mains, 1896. EBRARD, J. H. A., Apologetics; or, The Scientific Vindication of Christianity.. (Translated by Rev. William Stuart and Rev. John Macpherson.) 3 vols. E., T. & T. Clark, 1886-87. ESCOTT, T. H. S., Social Transformations of the Victorian Age. L., Seeley & Co., 1897. FAIRBAIRN, Principal A. M., Christ in the Centimes. L., Sampson Low, Marston & Co.; N. Y., E. P. Dutton & Co., 1892. FAIRBAIRN, Principal A.M., Religion in History and in Modern Life. N. Y., A. D. F. Randolph & Co., 1894. FARRAR, Dean, Ephphatha; or, The Amelioration of the World. L. and N. Y., Macmillan & Co., 1880. FINDLAY, GEORGE G., Christian Doctrine and Morals. L., Wesleyan Conference Office, 1894. FRASER, ALEXANDER CAMPBELL, Philosophy of Theism. E. and L., William Blackwood & Sons, 1897. GILLETT, E. H., God in Human Thought; or, Natural Theology Traced in Literature, Ancient and Modern, to the Time of Bishop Butler. 2 vols.N. Y., Charles Scribner's Sons, 1874. GILMAN, DANIEL C., (Editor), The Organization of Charities: Being a Report of the Sixth Section of the International Congress of Charities, Correction, and Philanthropy, Chicago, June, 1893. Baltimore, Johns Hopkins Press, 1894. GLADDEN, Rev. WASHINGTON, Ruling Ideas of the Present Age. B. and N. Y., Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1895. GLADDEN, Rev. WASHINGTON, Applied Christianity. New edition. B. and N. Y., Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1894. GLADDEN, Rev. WASHINGTON, Burning Questions of the Life that Now Is, and of that which Is to Come. N. Y., Wilbur B. Ketcham, 1895. GULICK, Rev. SIDNEY L., The Growth of the Kingdom of God. L., The Religious Tract Society; N. Y. and C., Fleming H. Revell Co., 1897. HARLESS, G. C. A. VON, System of Christian Ethics. (Translated from the German by Findlay and Morrison. E., T. & T. Clark, 1868. HARRIS, Professor GEORGE, Moral Evolution. B. and N. Y., Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1896. HARRIS, Rev. JOHN, The Great Commission; or, The Christian Church Constituted and Charged to Convey the Gospel to the World. Dayton, O., United Brethren Publishing House, 1893. HARRIS, Rev. SAMUEL, The Self-Revelation of God. Third edition. N. Y., Charles Scribner's Sons, 1893. HELLIER, BENJAMIN, The Universal Mission of the Church of Christ. L., Wesleyan Methodist Bookroom, 1884. HERRON, Professor GEORGE D., The Christian Society. N. Y. and C., Fleming H. Revell Co., 1894. HERRON, Professor GEORGE D., The Christian State. N. Y. and B., T. Y. Crowell & Co., 1895. HODGES, GEORGE, Faith and Social Service. N. Y., Thomas Whittaker, 1897. HUGHES, Rev. HUGH PRICE, The Philanthropy of God. L., Hodder & Stoughton, 1890. HYSLOP, JAMES H., The Elements of Ethics. N. Y., Charles Scribner's Sons, 1895. Is Christianity True? Answers from History, the Monuments, the Bible, Nature, Experience, and Growth of Christianity. By Professor W. GARDEN BLAIKIE, Professor A. H. SAYCE, Rev. EDWIN W. RICE, Sir J. W. DAWSON, and Rev. A. J. GORDON. P., Rice & Hirst, 1897. IVERACH, Professor JAMES, Christianity and Evolution. L., Hodder & Stoughton, 1894. IVERACH, Professor JAMES, The Truth of Christianity. E., T. and T. Clark, n.d.. KELLOGG, Rev. S. H., The Genesis and Growth of Religion. L. and N. Y., Macmillan & Co., 1892. KNIGHT, WILLIAM, Aspects of Theism. L. and N. Y., Macmillan & Co., 1893. LEATHES, Rev. STANLEY, The Gospel its own Witness. L., H. S. King & Co., 1874.
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LELAND, JOHN, The Advantage and Necessity of Christian Revelation Shown from the State of Religion in the Ancient Heathen World. 2 vols.L., 1768; P., 1818. LlGHTFOOT, Bishop J. B., Essays on the Work Entitled "Supernatural Religion". L. and N. Y., Macmillan & Co., 1893. LUTHARDT, C. E., The Moral Truths of Christianitv. Fourth edition. E., T. & T. Clark, 1896. LUTHARDT, C. E., History of Christian Ethics Before the Reformation. (Translated from the German by W. Hastie.) E., T. & T. Clark, 1889. McCoSH, Rev. JAMES, The Religious Aspects of Evolution. N, Y., Charles Scribner's Sons, 1888. McCoSH, Rev. JAMES, The Supernatural in Relation to the Natural. L. and N. Y., Macmillan & Co., 1862. McCoSH, Rev. JAMES, Our Moral Nature. N. Y., Charles Scribner's Sons, 1892. McCURDY, Professor J. F., History, Prophecy, and the Monuments; or, Israel and the Nations. Vols. i. and ii. (Vol. iii. in preparation.)L. and N. Y., The Macmillan Co., 1895-96. MACOREGOR, Rev. JAMES, The Apology of the Christian Religion. E., T. & T. Clark; N. Y., Charles Scribner's Sons, 1891. MACKENZIE, JOHN S., A Manual of Ethics. Second edition. L., W. B. Clive; N. Y., Hinds & Noble, 1894. MACKENZIE, Professor W. DOUGLAS, Christianity and the Progress of Man. N. Y. and C., Fleming H. Revell Co., 1897. MACLAREN, Rev. ALEXANDER, The Secret of Power, and Other Sermons. L. and N. Y., Macmillan & Co., 1882. MAIR, ALEXANDER, Studies in the Christian Evidences. Third edition. E., T. & T. Clark, 1894. MATHESON, Rev. GEORGE, Natural Elements of Revealed Theology. L., James Nisbet & Co., 1881. MATHESON, Rev. GEORGE, Can the Old Faith Live with the Netu ?. E. and L., William Blackwood & Sons, 1897. MOTT, JOHN R., Strategic Points in the World's Conquest: The Universities and Colleges as Related to the Progress of Christianity. N. Y. and C., Fleming H. Revell Co., 1897. MUIRHEAD, J. H., The Elements of Ethics. L., John Murray, 1893. MÜLLER, F. MAX, Chips from a German Workshop. 4 vols. L. and N. Y., Longmans, Green & Co., 1880. ORR, Rev. JAMES, The Christian View of God and the World as Centring in the Incarnation. N. Y., A. D. F. Randolph & Co., 1893. Philanthropy and Social Progress. (Seven essays, by Miss JANE ADDAMS, ROBERT A. WOODS, Father J. O. S. HUNTINGTON, Professor FRANKLIN H. GIDDINGS, and BERNARD BOSANQUET, delivered before the School of Applied Ethics, at Plymouth, Mass., 1892.) N. Y. and B., T. Y. Crowell & Co., 1893. PORTER, Rev. NOAH, Christianity as History, Doctrine, and Life. (Present-Day Tracts Series.)L.,The Religious Tract Society, n. d. RAWLINSON, Canon GEORGE, The Early Prevalence of Monotheistic Beliefs. (Present-Day Tracts Series.) L., The Religious Tract Society, n. d. Report of the Centenary Conference on the Protestant Missions of the World, London, 1888. 2 vols. (Edited by the Rev. JAMES JOHNSTON.) N. Y. and C., Fleming H. Revell Co., n. d. REYNOLDS, J. W., The Supernatural in Nature: A Verification by the Free Use of Science. L., Kegan Paul, Trench, & Co., 1878. ROGERS, HENRY, The Supernatural Origin of the Bible Inferred from Itself. New edition. L., Hodder & Stough-ton, 1877; N. Y., Charles Scribner's Sons, 1874. SALLMON, W. H. (Compiler), The Culture of Christian Manhood: Sunday Mornings in Battell Chapel, Yale University. N. Y. and C., Fleming H. Revell Co., 1897. SATTERLEE, Rev. HENRY Y., A Creedless Gospel and the Gospel Creed. N. Y., Charles Scribner's Sons, 1895. SCHURMAN, President J. G., The Ethical Import of Darwinism. N. Y., Charles Scribner's Sons; L., Williams & Norgate, 1887. SCHURMAN, President J. G., Agnosticism and Religion. N. Y., Charles Scribner's Sons, 1896. SETH, ANDREW, Man's Place in the Cosmos, and Other Essays. N. Y., Charles Scribner's Sons; E. and L., William Blackwood & Sons, 1897. SETH, JAMES, A Study of Ethical Principles. E. and L., William Blackwood & Sons; N. Y., Charles Scribner's Sons, 1894. SLATER, Rev. T. E., The Influence of the Christian Religion in History. (Present-Day Tracts Series.) L.,The Religious Tract Society, n. d.
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SMITH, Rev. HENRY B., Faith and Philosophy. N. Y., Charles Scribner's Sons, 1877. SMITH, Rev. ISAAC GREGORY, Characteristics of Christian Morality. Second edition. L., Parker & Co., 1876. STEARNS, Rev. LEWIS FRENCH, The Evidences of Christian Experience. N. Y., Charles Scribner's Sons, 1890. STORRS, Rev. R. S., The Divine Origin of Christianity Indicated by its Historical Effects. L., Hodder & Stoughtou; N. Y., A. D. F. Randolph & Co., 1884. STRONG, Professor A. H., Systematic Theology. N. Y., A. C. Armstrong & Son, 1892. STRONG, Rev. JOSIAH, The New Era; or, The Coming Kingdom. N. Y., The Baker & Taylor Co., 1893. STUBBS, Dean, Christus Imperator. (A series of lecture sermons on the universal empire of Christianity.) L. and N. Y., Macmillan & Co., 1894. Supernatural in Christianity (The). (With special reference to statements
in the recent Gifford Lectures. By Principal RAINY, Professor ORR, and ProfessorDoDS.) E., T. & T. Clark, 1894. TRENCH, Archbishop R. C., The Fitness of Holy Scripture for Unfolding the Spiritual Life of Man. Fifth edition. L. and N. Y., Macmillan & Co., 1880. TYLER, CHARLES MELLEN, Bases of Religious Belief. N. Y., G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1897. VAN DYKE, Rev. HENRY, The Gospel for an Age of Doubt. N. Y., The Macmillan Co., 1896. VAUGHAN, Dean C. J., Christ Satisfying the Instincts of Humanity. New edition. L. and N. Y., Macmillan & Co., 1873. WACE, Rev. HENRY, The Foundations of Faith. L., William Pickering, 1880. WACE, Rev. HENRY, Christianity and Agnosticism. E. and L., William Blackwood & Sons, 1897. WOOLSEY, President THEODORE D., The Religion of the Present and the Future. N. Y., Charles Scribner's Sons, 1872. WORDSWORTH, Bishop JOHN, The One Religion. Second edition. L., Parker & Co.; N. Y., James Pott & Co., 1882. |