Lay Morals | Page 3

to man; or, let us
say, it is a monstrous and impassable mountain, one side of which, and
a few near slopes and foothills, we can dimly study with these mortal
eyes. But what any man can say of it, even in his highest utterance,
must have relation to this little and plain corner, which is no less visible
to us than to him. We are looking on the same map; it will go hard if
we cannot follow the demonstration. The longest and most abstruse
flight of a philosopher becomes clear and shallow, in the flash of a
moment, when we suddenly perceive the aspect and drift of his
intention. The longest argument is but a finger pointed; once we get our

own finger rightly parallel, and we see what the man meant, whether it
be a new star or an old street-lamp. And briefly, if a saying is hard to
understand, it is because we are thinking of something else.
But to be a true disciple is to think of the same things as our prophet,
and to think of different things in the same order. To be of the same
mind with another is to see all things in the same perspective; it is not
to agree in a few indifferent matters near at hand and not much debated;
it is to follow him in his farthest flights, to see the force of his
hyperboles, to stand so exactly in the centre of his vision that whatever
he may express, your eyes will light at once on the original, that
whatever he may see to declare, your mind will at once accept. You do
not belong to the school of any philosopher, because you agree with
him that theft is, on the whole, objectionable, or that the sun is
overhead at noon. It is by the hard sayings that discipleship is tested.
We are all agreed about the middling and indifferent parts of
knowledge and morality; even the most soaring spirits too often take
them tamely upon trust. But the man, the philosopher or the moralist,
does not stand upon these chance adhesions; and the purpose of any
system looks towards those extreme points where it steps valiantly
beyond tradition and returns with some covert hint of things outside.
Then only can you be certain that the words are not words of course,
nor mere echoes of the past; then only are you sure that if he be
indicating anything at all, it is a star and not a street-lamp; then only do
you touch the heart of the mystery, since it was for these that the author
wrote his book.
Now, every now and then, and indeed surprisingly often, Christ finds a
word that transcends all common-place morality; every now and then
he quits the beaten track to pioneer the unexpressed, and throws out a
pregnant and magnanimous hyperbole; for it is only by some bold
poetry of thought that men can be strung up above the level of everyday
conceptions to take a broader look upon experience or accept some
higher principle of conduct. To a man who is of the same mind that was
in Christ, who stands at some centre not too far from his, and looks at
the world and conduct from some not dissimilar or, at least, not
opposing attitude--or, shortly, to a man who is of Christ's
philosophy--every such saying should come home with a thrill of joy
and corroboration; he should feel each one below his feet as another

sure foundation in the flux of time and chance; each should be another
proof that in the torrent of the years and generations, where doctrines
and great armaments and empires are swept away and swallowed, he
stands immovable, holding by the eternal stars. But alas! at this
juncture of the ages it is not so with us; on each and every such
occasion our whole fellowship of Christians falls back in disapproving
wonder and implicitly denies the saying. Christians! the farce is
impudently broad. Let us stand up in the sight of heaven and confess.
The ethics that we hold are those of Benjamin Franklin. HONESTY IS
THE BEST POLICY, is perhaps a hard saying; it is certainly one by
which a wise man of these days will not too curiously direct his steps;
but I think it shows a glimmer of meaning to even our most dimmed
intelligences; I think we perceive a principle behind it; I think, without
hyperbole, we are of the same mind that was in Benjamin Franklin.

CHAPTER II

But, I may be told, we teach the ten commandments, where a world of
morals lies condensed, the very pith and epitome of all ethics and
religion; and a young man with these precepts engraved upon