Morality as a Religion | Page 6

true saying, that all good men and
women belong to the same religion. It is to that one true, pure, and
aboriginal religion we wish to get back, in which we discover the best
ally of morality, the all-powerful incentive to a life wholly devoted to
duty and the service of the human brotherhood. The allegory of the Last
Judgment, as it is called, as depicted by Jesus himself in the Gospel
according to Matthew, emphasises this ethical truth in words of great
solemnity. The sheep and the goats are distinguished, not by the

possession or non-possession of miraculous spiritual powers,
professions of belief or Church membership, but by the humble
devotion exhibited to suffering humanity, and steadfast perseverance in
the path of duty. How was it possible, we ask again and again, for such
a religion as that to be transformed into the thing of shreds and patches
of bad philosophy as set forth in the Nicene and Athanasian Creed?
Forget all that, we would fain exhort men, forget all but the words that
made music on the Galilean hills, the life "lived in the loveliness of
perfect deeds," the veritable exemplar of a religion founded on the
moral sentiment. To be touched by the influence of religious emotion is
to approach in greater or less degree to the image and character of
Christ. To live a life of devotion to duty, however humble our station
may be, is to range ourselves, with that great Master of ethics, on the
side of an eternal order of righteousness which can never fail. It is to
work with that soul of reason dominating everything in the animate and
inanimate world, to co-operate with it towards the fulfilment of those
high ends which are predestined for humanity. Every man must make
his choice. Either he will ally himself with all that makes for moral
advancement--his own, that of others, and consequently of the
world--or he will fight for the powers of retrogression and decay. He
will live for the hour and its momentary pleasures, fight for his own
hand alone, forget mercy and pity, seldom think, never reflect, and at
length, sated and yet dissatisfied with all he has experienced, sink
impotently and ignobly into the grave. Immanuel Kant lays it down as
an axiom that the moral law must inevitably be fulfilled one day in
every individual human being. It is the destiny of man to be one day
perfect. What a searching change must sometime pass over those who
have taken the wrong side in this earth-life, who have helped on the
process of disintegration, and contrived to leave the world worse than
they found it! They fight for a losing cause: they lose themselves in
fighting for it.
It has been said, I have heard it said myself, that "ethics are cold".
Possibly to some they are; but at any rate they are grave and solemn
when they hold language such as this to the pleasure-loving, the
light-hearted, and the indifferent. To tell a man to do his duty in spite of

all, to love the good life irrespectively of any reward here or hereafter,
may sound cold after the dithyrambics of the Apocalypse or the Koran,
but of one thing we are assured by the experience of those who have
made the trial of it themselves, that any man who "will do the
doctrine," that is, live the life, shall know at once "whether it be of
God"--that alone is the unspeakable peace, passing all understanding.
But ethics are not alone. As I have endeavoured to point out, religious
emotion which grows out of the moral sentiment is the most powerful
stimulus towards the realisation of the good life, and I consequently
urged the supreme value of true religion, as both satisfying the
emotional side of man's nature and stimulating him towards that
sacrifice of self--that taking up of a "cross," as Jesus put it--which in
some measure is indispensably necessary for the attainment of
character.
But I in no wise concede that ethics are "cold"; I in no wise admit they
are uninspiring. The consciousness that a man possesses of being one
with the great Power of the universe in making for righteousness is
surely an overwhelming thought. If man would but think, he would
come to feel with Emerson "the sublimity of the moral laws," their
awful manifestation of the working of infinite mind and power, and of
man's nearness to, or rather oneness with, that Power, when he obeys
them. He would come to thrill with an indescribable emotion with Kant,
as he thinks of the infinite dignity to which fellowship with those
mysterious laws elevates him. He would realise the truth of the solemn
words:--
Two things fill me with ceaseless awe, The starry heavens, and