Practical Ethics Part 15

In the last chapter we saw that the particular objects and duties which make up our environment and moral life are not so many separate affairs; but all have a common relation to the self, and its realization. We saw that this common relation to the self gives unity to the world of objects, the life of duty, the nature of virtue, and the character which crowns right living.

There is, however, a deeper, more comprehensive unity in the moral world than that which each man constructs for his individual self. The world of objects is included in a universal order. The several duties are parts of a comprehensive righteousness, which includes the acts of all men within its rightful sway. The several virtues are so many aspects of one all-embracing moral ideal. The rewards and penalties which follow virtue and vice are the expression of a const.i.tution of things which makes for righteousness. The Being whose thought includes all objects in one comprehensive universe of reason; whose will is uttered in the voice of duty; whose holiness is revealed in the highest ideal of virtue we can form; and whose authority is declared in those eternal and indissoluble bonds which bind virtue and reward, vice and penalty, together, is G.o.d.

THE DUTY.

+Communion with G.o.d is the safeguard of virtue, the secret of resistance to temptation, the source of moral and spiritual power.+--Our minds are too small to carry consciously and in detail; our wills are too frail to hold in readiness at every moment the principles and motives of moral conduct. G.o.d alone is great enough for this.

We can make him the keeper of our moral precepts and the guardian of our lives. And then when we are in need of guidance, help, and strength, we can go to him, and by devoutly seeking to know and do his will, we can recover the principles and reinforce the motives of right conduct that we have intrusted to his keeping; and ofttimes we get, in addition, larger views of duty and n.o.bler impulses to virtue than we have ever consciously possessed before. Just as the love of father or mother clarifies a child's perception of what is right, and intensifies his will to do it, so the love of G.o.d has power to make us strong to resist temptation, resolute to do our duty, and strenuous in the endeavor to advance the kingdom of righteousness and love.

Into the particular doctrines and inst.i.tutions of religion it is not the purpose of this book to enter. These are matters which each individual learns best from his own father and mother, and from the church in which he has been brought up. Our account of ethics, however, would be seriously incomplete, were we to omit to point out the immense and indispensable strength and help we may gain for the moral life, by approaching it in the religious spirit.

+Ethics and religion each needs the other.+--They are in reality, one the detailed and particular, the other the comprehensive and universal aspect of the same world of duty and virtue. Morality without religion is a cold, dry, dreary, ma.s.s of disconnected rules and requirements.

Religion without morality, is an empty, formal, unsubstantial shadow.

Only when the two are united, only when we bring to the particular duties of ethics the infinite aspiration and inspiration of religion, and give to the universal forms of religion the concrete contents of human and temporal relationships, do we gain a spiritual life which is at the same time clear and strong, elevated and practical, ideal and real.

THE VIRTUE.

+Just as G.o.d includes all objects in his thought, all duties in his will, all virtues in his ideal; so the man who communes with him, and surrenders his will to him in obedience and trust and love, partakes of this same wholeness and holiness.+--Loving G.o.d, he is led to love all that G.o.d loves, to love all good. And holiness is the love of all that is good and the hatred of all that is evil.

Complete holiness is not wrought out in its concrete relations all at once, nor ever in this earthly life, by the religious, any more than by the moral man. Temptations are frequent all along the way, and the falls many and grievous to the last. But from all deliberately cherished identification of his inmost heart and will with evil, the truly religious man is forevermore set free. From the moment one's will is entirely surrendered to G.o.d, and the divine ideal of life and conduct is accepted, a new and holy life begins.

Old temptations may surprise him into unrighteous deeds; old habits may still a.s.sert themselves, old l.u.s.ts may drift back on the returning tides of past a.s.sociations; old vices may continue to crop out.

In reality, however, they are already dead. They are like the leaves that continue to look green upon the branches of a tree that has been cut down; or the momentum of a train after the steam is shut off and the brakes are on.

G.o.d, who is all-wise, sees that in such a man sin is in principle dead; and he judges him accordingly. If penitence for past sins and present falls be genuine; if the desire to do his will be earnest; He takes the will for the deed, penitence for performance, aspiration for attainment.

Such judgment is not merely merciful. It is just. Or rather, it is the blending of mercy and justice in love. It is judgment according to the deeper, internal aspect of a man, instead of judgment according to the superficial, outward aspect. For the will is the center and core of personality. What a man desires and strives for with all his heart, that he is. What he repents of and repudiates with the whole strength of his frail and imperfect nature, that he has ceased to be.

Thus religion, or whole-souled devotion to G.o.d, gives a sense of completeness, and attainment, and security, and peace, which mere ethics, or adjustment to the separate fragmentary objects which const.i.tute our environment, can never give. The moral life is from its very nature partial, fragmentary, and finite. The religious life by penitence and faith and hope and love, rises above the finite with its limitations, and the temporal with its sins and failings, and lays hold on the infinite ideal and the eternal goodness, with its boundless horizon and its perfect peace. The religious life, like the moral, is progressive. But, as Princ.i.p.al Caird remarks, "It is progress, not towards, but within, the infinite." Union with G.o.d in sincere devotion to his holy will, is the "promise and potency" of harmonious relations with that whole ethical and spiritual universe which his thought and will includes.

THE REWARD.

+The reward of communion with G.o.d and comprehensive righteousness of conduct is spiritual life.+--The righteous man, the man who walks with G.o.d, is in principle and purpose identified with every just cause, with every step of human progress, with every sphere of man's well-being. To him property is a sacred trust, time a golden opportunity, truth a divine revelation, Nature the visible garment of G.o.d, humanity a holy brotherhood, the family, society, and the state are G.o.d-ordained inst.i.tutions, with G.o.d-given laws. Through the one fundamental devotion of his heart and will to G.o.d, the religious man is made a partaker in all these spheres of life in which the creative will of G.o.d is progressively revealed. All that is G.o.d's belong to the religious man.

For he is G.o.d's child. And all these things are his inheritance.

To the religious man, therefore, there is open a boundless career for service, sacrifice, devotion and appropriation. Every power, every affection, every aspiration within him has its counterpart in the outward universe. The universe is his Father's house; and therefore his own home. All that it contains are so many opportunities for the development and realization of his G.o.d-given nature.

To dwell in active, friendly, loving relation to all that is without; to be

wedded to this goodly universe In love and holy pa.s.sion,

to be heirs with G.o.d of the spiritual riches it contains: this is life indeed. "The gift of G.o.d is eternal life."

+Religion is the crown and consummation of ethics.+--Religion gathers up into their unity the scattered fragments of duty and virtue which it has been the aim of our ethical studies to discern apart. Religion presents as the will of the all-wise, all-loving Father, those duties and virtues which ethics presents as the conditions of our own self-realization.

Religion is the perfect circle of which the moral virtues are the const.i.tuent arcs. Fullness of life is the reward of righteousness, the gift of G.o.d, the one comprehensive good, of which the several rewards which follow the practice of particular duties and virtues are the const.i.tuent elements.

THE TEMPTATION.

+The universal will of G.o.d, working in conformity with impartial law, and seeking the equal good of all, often seems to be in sharp conflict with the interests of the individual self.+--If his working is irresistible we are tempted to repine and rebel. If his will is simply declared, and left for us to carry out by the free obedience of our wills, then we are tempted to sacrifice the universal good to which the divine will points, and to a.s.sert instead some selfish interest of our own. Self-will is, from the religious point of view, the form of all temptation. The ends at which G.o.d aims when he bids us sacrifice our immediate private interests are so remote that they seem to us unreal; and often they are so vast that we fail to comprehend them at all. In such crises faith alone can save us--faith to believe that G.o.d is wiser than we are, faith to believe that his universal laws are better than any private exceptions we can make in our own interest, faith to believe that the universal good is of more consequence than our individual gain. Such faith is hard to grasp and difficult to maintain; and consequently the temptation of self-will is exceedingly seductive, and is never far from any one of us.

THE VICE OF DEFECT.

+Sin is short-coming, missing the mark of our true being, which is to be found only in union with G.o.d.+--Sin is the attempt to live apart from G.o.d, or as if there were no G.o.d. It is transgression of his laws. It is the attempt to make a world of our own, from which in whole or in part we try to exclude G.o.d, and escape the jurisdiction of his laws. All wrong-doing, all vice, all neglect of duty, is in reality a violation of the divine will. But not until the individual comes to recognize the divine will, and in spite of this recognition that all duty is divine, deliberately turns aside from G.o.d and duty together, does vice become sin.

THE VICE OF EXCESS.

+Devotion to G.o.d as distinct from or in opposition to devotion to those concrete duties and human relationship wherein the divine will is expressed, is hypocrisy.+--"If a man say I love G.o.d and hateth his brother he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, cannot love G.o.d whom he hath not seen."

Pure religion begins in faith and ends in works. It draws from G.o.d the inspiration to serve in righteousness and love our fellow-men. If faith stop short of G.o.d, and rest in church, or creed, or priest; if work stop short of actual service of our fellow-men, and rest in splendor of ritual or glow of pious feeling, or orthodoxy of belief; then our religion becomes a vain and hollow thing, and we become Pharisees and hypocrites.

THE PENALTY.

+The wages of sin is death.+--The penalty of each particular vice we have seen to be the dwarfing, stunting, decay, and deadening of that particular side of our nature that is effected by it. Intemperance brings disease; wastefulness brings want; cruelty brings brutality; ugliness brings coa.r.s.eness; exclusiveness brings isolation; treason brings anarchy. Just in so far as one cuts himself off from the moral order which is the expression of G.o.d's will; just in so far as there is sin, there is privation, deadening, and decay. As long as we live in this world it is impossible to live an utterly vicious life; to cut ourselves off completely from G.o.d and his order and his laws. To do that would be instant death. The man who should embody all the vices and none of the virtues, would be intolerable to others, unendurable even to himself. The penalty of an all-round life of vice and sin would be greater than man could endure and live. This fearful end is seldom reached in this life. Some redeeming virtues save even the worst of men from this full and final penalty of sin. The man, however, who deliberately rejects G.o.d as his friend and guide to righteous living; the man who deliberately makes self-will and sin the ruling principle of his life, is started on a road, which, if followed to the end, leads inevitably to death. He is excluding himself from that sphere of good, that career of service and devotion, wherein alone true life is to be found. He is banishing himself to that outer darkness which is our figurative expression for the absence of all those rewards of virtue and the presence of all those penalties of vice which our previous studies have brought to our attention. "Sin, when it is full-grown, bringeth forth death." "The wages of sin is death."

THE END.