G.
CHRISTIAN MORAL
PRINCIPLES
Seven Sermons preached in Grosvenor
Chapel as a Lenten Course in 1921
BY
CHARLES GORE, D.D., D.C.L., LL.D.
c*
Hon. Fellow ofTrin. Coll. Oxon.
Lecturer In Theology of King s College, London
VJ
REGIS
BIBL. MAJ.
COI.UiGF
A. R. MOWBRAY & CO. LTD.
LONDON : 28 Margaret Street, Oxford Circus, W.i
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MILWAUKEE, U.S.A. : The Morehouse Publishing Co,
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First impression, June, 1921
PREFACE
These sermons were not intended for publi
cation, nor were they written ; and I know
that in my case unwritten sermons are not fit
for publication. But they were very well
taken down by a shorthand reporter, and
I have agreed to their publication, and revised
them in a measure for the purpose, because
I have some reason to hope they may be useful
to others besides those who heard them in
Grosvenor Chapel ; and also for another
reason.
We are told constantly and truly that we
greatly need good books on Moral Theology
which are something more than adaptations
of Roman Catholic books. Now " moral theo
logy" may have different meanings.
1. It may mean the theology or doctrine of
God which is required as a postulate for the
moral principles and practices of the Christian
life. This is a very important subject to which
these sermons only attempt incidentally to
make a slight contribution, especially sermons
iv and v. But it is an important subject of
study to which too little attention has recently
been devoted. And the utterly irrational idea
that Christian morals could maintain them-
iv Preface
selves apart from the creed of the church is
still widely current.
2. It may in its traditional sense mean the
study on a comprehensive scale and in a scien
tific spirit of the moral principles of Christian
living, individual and social.
3. It may mean the application of those
moral principles to particular cases or what is
called casuistry ; and it may include the con
sideration of what is desirable or possible in
the way of public discipline by a Christian
church over its members who overtly offend
against the Christian law. It is impossible to
give any serious study to the life of the Chris
tian society without considering the function
of excommunication in maintaining the moral
standard.
4. It may mean the science of the confes
sional, that is the application of 2 and 3 to the
use of the priest engaged in hearing confes
sions, and required, often under circumstances
of peculiar difficulty, to afford guidance to
troubled souls and determine whether such
and such a person is a fit subject for absolution.
This special application of moral theology is
so urgently required by the clergy that it is apt
to be the first thing undertaken. But my own
strong conviction is that we need a fresh study
of moral theology first of all without any
reference to the confessional, simply as it
appears in Scripture and history, and as a matter
in which priest and laymen are absolutely on
Preface v
the same foundation as disciples of Jesus
Christ. To study Christian morals mainly or
primarily with a view to the uses of the con
fessional inevitably, as it seems to me, distorts
the study, especially in the Roman Church,
where confession is obligatory on all members
of the church ; it has produced on the whole
a quite undue bias towards the consideration
of the lowest minimum of conformity to moral
requirements necessary for absolution. This is
as utterly alien to the spirit of the New Testa
ment as possible. There the Christian ideal is
presented not as an " ideal" in the ordinary
sense, but as a practical rule of life which
Christians must follow. There are special
vocations in Christianity, but not different
moral standards.
I have, then, allowed myself to publish these
sermons as an attempt simply to study moral
theology in the sense (2) described above, tracing
the origin and growth of the moral principles
of Christianity in the Old Testament and seek
ing to interpret them, in their full expression in
the New Testament, as a way of life involving
certain intelligible principles. This needs
doing, however, in a far more thorough and
scientific manner than can be attempted in
seven short sermons. When this has been
done we shall need a book on casuistry, that is
a practical application of principles to present
day practice still primarily in answer to the
question not what is the least that a man can do
vi Preface
consistently with remaining in the communion
of the church, but what ought he to do.
5. But there is also another book we shall
require before the needs of the priest in the
confessional can be properly considered, and
that is a book on the right conception of
ministerial priesthood in relation to the respon
sibility and liberty of the individual, and the
closely allied practical question whether sacra
mental confession is to be worked among us as
frankly and really voluntary, or as something
which, while not absolutely required as a con
dition for Communion, is still so normal to
penitence that one who does not make his
confession to a priest is to be regarded as a
defective and ignorant Christian.
However, of all these needed volumes these
sermons only seek to make suggestions towards
the second.
CHARLES GORE.
6 MARGARET STREET,
LONDON, W.I.
S. John tkt Baptist s Day, 1921.
CONTENTS
Page
PREFACE i"
SERMON I
THE WAY. PRELIMINARIES .... 1
SERMON II
THE TEN COMMANDMENTS -THEIR ORIG
INAL SENSE H
SERMON III
THETENCOMMANDMENTS FOR CHRISTIANS 31
SERMON IV
HUMILITY - 48
SERMON V
CHARITY - 62
SERMON VI
THE USE OF MONEY 80
SERMON VII
THE RIGHT SELF-LOVE 98
APPENDIX
THE TEN COMMANDMENTS IN THE CHRIS
TIAN CHURCH 110
CHRISTIAN MORAL
PRINCIPLES
i
THE WAY. PRELIMINARIES
"For the people shall dwell in Zion at Jerusalem: thou
shalt weep no more : he will be very gracious unto thee at
the voice of thy cry ; when he shall hear it, he will answer
thee. And though the Lord give you the bread of adversity,
and the water of affliction, yet shall not thy teachers be
removed into a corner any more, but thine eyes shall see
thy teachers : and thine ears shall hear a word behind thee,
saying, This is the way, walk ye in it, when ye turn to the
right hand, and when ye turn to the left." Isaiah xxx. 19-21.
1. "This is the way, walk ye in it." The
Bible, Old Testament and New Testament, is
the teaching of "the Way": how men ought
to live. In the Old Testament the Jews had
fallen into the way of their neighbours. They
loved religion ; they loved the ritual and cere
monial feasts with passionate devotion ; but
falling into the way of their neighbours they
had divorced religion from morality the moral
ity of common life, of kindness, justice, and
2 Christian Moral Principles
purity. And the Prophets came to teach them
the Way : that there is no value in religion
except as the expression of the will to live
rightly. Of course this involves a theology :
a doctrine about God. It is true because the
character of God is eternal justice, truth, and
goodness, and there is no possible fellowship
with God except by loving mercy, doing justly,
and walking humbly with our God. That is
the beginning and the end ; that is the Way.
And when again the religion of Israel was
missing the mark, our Lord came, and again
He taught the Way to men ; and the earliest
name for the Church was " The Way." 1 There
is no denying that it was a difficult way ; it put
a great strain upon all the inclinations of men :
upon their habits, upon their loved pleasures,
upon their wandering lusts and desires, upon
their tempestuous bitternesses and animosities.
" Strait is the gate and narrow is the way."
Our Lord seemed to intensify the severity of
God. Nevertheless, so beautiful a thing is
perfect goodness, and so terrible the experi
enced consequences of sin, that our Lord said,
"my yoke is easy and my burden is light":
that is to them who will take it up with a good
1 See Acts ix. 2, R.V., xix. 9, 23, xxiv. 22; cf. H. 28, xvi.
17, S. Luke xx. 21, S. John xiv. 6, 2 S. Pet. ii. 21.
The Way. Preliminaries 3
will, a good heart, a good courage. It is a
great adventure which requires great courage ;
but it justifies itself ; even as the opposite is the
case with the way of lust and self-seeking and
sin. You remember those bitter words of
William Shakespeare at the end of that tre
mendous sonnet (cxxix) on lust :
"All this the world well knows; yet none knows well
To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell."
The greatest mistake the church has ever made
and it has pervaded its history is that of con
cealing from the young, or from men in general,
that Christianity is not an easy thing : it is not
a matter of course, which a man may be sup
posed to accept just because of his position in
Christian society, and from which he will not
fall away except by some scandalous lapse
from the conduct of "a good man and a gentle
man." It is hardly possible to exaggerate how
widespread has been that misrepresentation, for
it lies at the heart of all our evils. No ; the
Christian life is a way of adventure, a difficult
way, a way that requires courage.
Now, in our self-examinations we are apt to
examine ourselves about this or that fault which
we feel to belong to us, or to be struck now and
again with this or that virtue which we see in
some one else and which we desire to emulate ;
4 Christian Moral Principles
but we have got in our minds no clear image of
what the Christian life is in its unity and com
pleteness ; and it is that which I desire during
these Sundays in Lent to put before you. I am,
of course, aiming at being practical ; no one can
preach about "the Way" without being prac
tical. Nevertheless there is a place for theory ;
and we Englishmen are apt to forget that. We
dislike ideas. If you were suddenly asked,
"What is the Christian life? what is Christi
anity?" you would find it difficult to give an
answer. Nevertheless we need to have before
our minds a living picture of that difficult but
glorious thing the Christian life and what it
means individually and socially. That is what
I seek to supply.
2. My second preliminary point is this : the
Bible is a great book of development: it has
taught the world the doctrine of development.
God s ways are gradual ; the Bible is a record
of a gradual education for a universal purpose
or function. God takes this strange people,
Israel, which was to be His chosen instrument
for the propagation of the true religion in the
world : this people so rebellious, so obstinate,
but at the same time so incredibly tenacious
of ideas with which they have once become
identified God takes this people in a very
The Way. Preliminaries 5
early semi-barbarous state, and He trains and
educates them for the perfect life through His
prophets, priests, rulers, kings ; and we have
the record of the actual stages of this educa
tion. It begins in very rudimentary lessons ; it
is rooted in the Ten Commandments, those
short, sharp negatives, "Thou shalt not, thou
shalt not, thou shalt not."
Note then, in the beginning of our considera
tion of the Way the place of the positive and
the negative in moral training. No one can
doubt that a negative morality is a poor
morality. No one can say that the morality
of the Old Testament is on the whole nega
tive ; for if you take the religion of the Psalms,
if you take the glorious visions of the Prophets,
if you take the wisdom of the Books of Proverbs
or of Wisdom, you cannot possibly deny that
there is set before you a great positive ideal.
Nevertheless we must never forget that it
begins with negatives, "Thou shalt not."
And in the Book of Exodus the covenant of
God with Israel is immediately associated with
"the ten words"; it is based upon them. When
the great prophets begin to teach, that is, when
we get upon the solid historical ground where
we know the dates and the circumstances of
the times, their teaching rests on the founda-
6 Christian Moral Principles
tion of the great negatives. They are, as it
were, the rough wall which fences in the plot
of ground which is to be the garden of the
divine and beautiful growth of the perfect life ;
but there must be this wall, this stern initial
exclusion of the things that shall not be.
Psychology is teaching us many things
about education, and it starts with the idea
that true education must be encouraged to
take hold of the natural inclinations and dis
positions of the different ages of those who are
to be educated. Children are to be taught to
love goodness and religion as they would love
the birds and the trees and the flowers and
everything that is beautiful and attractive.
The boy is full of vigour and he is a hero
worshipper, and he is to be taught to see in
Jesus Christ his Master the great Hero, and
to love the attraction and the adventure of
His great enterprise. Quite true ; all educa
tion is a fallacy which is not obviously encour
aging, adventurous, attractive. Nevertheless
you cannot read modern books about education
without seeing that there is a note of disparage
ment of all that is negative and prohibitory. It
is a tiresome feature of human nature that it
will ever go by reactions, and that in making
any advance it is always apt to exclude by
The Way. Preliminaries 7
reaction something that is essential, and so to
fail of its purpose. I am sure it is doing so in
this case. Life the life with God, the perfect
life is based upon the fear of God ; He is
formidable because He is righteous ; and so
it is that there can be no sound education
which has not in it the ring of those tremen
dous prohibitions "Thou shall not." We must
hear the thunder of the voice of God ; we must
feel that everything that is most to be desired is
a garden ground fenced off by those tremendous
walls ; that there are things that must not be,
and to which no toleration ought to be extended.
Thus originally, at the basis of all the great
structure of the spiritual life, stand the Ten
Commandments " Thou shalt not, thou shalt
not."
3. Thirdly among these preliminaries, reli
gion becomes personal to the individual ; but
it was first of all social : the Way was the way
for the nation, the society. Nothing in the
world is so false as the old way of thinking,
which prevailed in the days of individualism,
that men are first of all individuals, and that
they afterwards find it useful to combine in
society. That was a false theory of the origin
of society ; it was also a false theory of the
Christian religion, that it is first of all for the
8 Christian Moral Principles
salvation of the individual soul, and that after
wards these saved individuals were left to
combine in order to form a religious society.
The opposite is the historical fact. There was
at first, as we have now been taught by all our
great historical teachers, hardly any conception
of man as existing individually at all. Mankind
appears in the world as tribes in which the
individual is altogether immersed and lives the
life of his tribe, with almost no assertion of his
individuality. You see that in the Old Testa
ment. God is a God who makes His cove
nant with the nation, and who visits the sins
of the fathers upon the children to the third
and fourth generation of them that hate Him ;
and, in fact, because there is this continuous
social life which we cannot get away from, we
do still to-day inherit the punishment of the
sins of our forefathers. It was only later
that there grew up inside Israel the sense of
individuality. You hear the clear note of
individuality first in Ezekiel, who boldly con
tradicts the commandment and says, "The son
shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither
shall the father bear the iniquity of the son " ;
and he asserts in vivid words, through a whole
chapter of constant reiteration, 1 the exclusive
1 Cap. xviii ; cf. xxxiii. 10-20.
The Way. Preliminaries 9
worth of the individual in the sight of God.
And in the New Testament this sense of indi
viduality is strongly emphasized. To Christi
anity, in fact, we owe the overwhelming sense
of individuality : it exists in the same com
pleteness and energy nowhere else : there is
the fount of the true estimate of the worth of
the individual life. Nevertheless the individual
is not an individual except as a member of a
society, and "the life " is the life of a society.
Even in the New Testament, if you read S.
Paul s ethical teaching those wonderful cata
logues of virtues and descriptions of good
living and begin to look at it with fresh eyes,
you will see how intensely and profoundly it
is a teaching of corporate life. The great
adventure is not the adventure of a solitary
individual ; it is the adventure of a society,
the value of which is that it shows the way
of living the divine life as men can only live it
who are linked to one another in the bonds of
fellowship and brotherhood.
4. And then, fourthly, amongst these pre
liminaries, it is a life to be lived here and now
in this world, a life which is to exercise itself
and find itself to-day. In the Old Testament,
of course, there was hardly any glimpse of a
life beyond. That was part of the discipline
10 Christian Moral Principles
of Israel. The nations round about them were
largely occupied with the thought of the dead
and of the after life : so it was in Egypt, so it
was in Babylon, so it was in the nations round
about they occupied themselves in dealings
with the dead. But Israel was sternly kept off
that ground ; it was to know almost nothing
about another life hereafter : there is hardly
a breath of it till very late in the literature
of the Old Testament. They were to learn
that God is the living God, making His claim
upon them here and now. Only when that
sense was developed to its full force were they
made to feel that the divine righteousness
needed for its exercise a wider world than
this, and they began to get their outlook into
the world beyond. Of course in the New
Testament it is quite different ; everything
there is calculated upon the scale of the life
beyond an immortal life, an eternal life.
Nevertheless, if the true life can find its com
pletion only in that vaster world which is
beyond, yet that vaster life which is beyond
can only crown and complete the life which
is begun here and now. The kingdom of God
is to be found in its fullness only beyond the
great catastrophe which is "the end of the
world " ; but the kingdom of God is to be
The Way. Preliminaries 11
established here and now. What is the
church ? It is the embodiment of this king
dom of God ; it is to be a life lived now
amongst the conditions of human society as
it stands and humanity as it now is. It is here
and now that is its testing ground ; it is here
and now that it is to exhibit among men what
human life can be to let its light shine before
men, that they may "see your good works and
glorify your Father which is in heaven." It is
to be a present living contact of man with man
and man with God ; and the discipline of this
life begins with these Ten Commandments,
which lie in the heart of the great body of
Israel s law.
Great codes of law are very ancient. I hold
in my hand a book which I should like every
one, and especially every student of human
institutions and history, to know. I dare say
some of you do know it. It is called The
Oldest Code of Laws in the World.* There was
discovered just at the end of the last century
by the French at Susa a most interesting stone
dated and inscribed, and for the most part
except where it had been deliberately defaced
legible and intelligible in the cuneiform
1 Promulgated by Hammurabi, King of Babylon, B.C.
2285-2242 ; trans, by C. H. W. Johns (Glarks, Edin. 1903).
12 Christian Moral Principles
script. It is a code of laws which survived
in practical exercise apparently longer than any
other code of laws has ever survived. It was
written and inscribed some 2,300 years B.C.
by a great king, who is perhaps the same as
is mentioned in the fourteenth chapter of
Genesis under the name of Amraphel, among
that band of kings who carried off Lot. He
is a certain historical character, and we know
a good deal about him. We know how he
extended his empire from the mouths of the
Euphrates and Tigris right across Mesopotamia,
Syria, and Palestine to the Mediterranean Sea,
in the days of Abraham, hundreds of years
before Moses. And on that stone is inscribed,
and still legible in the greater part, his code of
laws which fills the whole of this little book.
It is an extraordinarily elaborate code, and is
very like the Hebrew code in many points.
No doubt the Hebrews felt its influence, be
cause it permeated the whole of the East.
This code, then, was still copied and studied
two thousand years afterwards; and it influenced
vastly the whole of the East, and it exhibits
a very high level of social and legal morality.
It goes into great detail ; we are told the wages
of all the different kinds of workmen five
thousand years ago. But if you compare it
The Way. Preliminaries 13
with the Jewish code it lacks its centre. What
distinguishes the Jewish code, or amalgamation
of codes, as you get it in the Pentateuch is that
it has its centre in these ten short command
ments, these sharp, stern prohibitions. The
Ten Commandments are given us in the
twentieth chapter of Exodus, and in the fifth
chapter of Deuteronomy in slightly different
form : and if we were able to get at the original
form of the Ten Commandments, the form in
which they were laid up in the sacred Ark, it
is probable that we should find that they were
all quite short prohibitions: "Thou shalt have
none other God but me"; "Thou shalt not
make any graven image"; "Thou shalt not
take the name of the Lord thy God in vain " ;
" Remember the sabbath day to keep it holy " ;
"Thou shalt honour thy father and thy mother" ;
" Thou shalt do no murder " ; " Thou shalt not
commit adultery"; "Thou shalt not steal";
" Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy
neighbour"; "Thou shalt not covet thy neigh
bour s goods." These short, sharp sentences
are the fences of the garden of God.
II
THE TEN COMMANDMENTS
" I am the Lord thy God, which brought thce out of the
land of Egypt, from the house of bondage. Thou shah have
none other gods before me." Deuteronomy v. 6 and 7 ; cf.
Exodus xx. 2 and 3.
As we saw last Sunday, these Ten Command
mentsthe ten words these sharp, stern
prohibitions, constituted a garden wall to keep
secure from alien influences the ground on
which the plant of Israel s spiritual and moral
life was to grow.
First of all let us take these Ten Command
ments as they stand and see what their original
meaning was.
(i) " Thou shalt have none other gods before
me": that is "in my presence" or "beside
me." That does not exactly declare that there
exists no other god than Jehovah the God of
Israel : though Israel was to learn that higher
truth in due course. All that it says is that
their worship of Jehovah is to be exclusive :
" For you there is to be none other God in my
presence." The worship of Israel is to be
14
The Ten Commandments 15
exclusive ; it is to make no account of any
other god. And the same principle is carried
out in the second commandment :
(ii) "Thou shalt not make thee any graven
image, or any likeness of anything that is in
heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath,
or that is in the waters beneath the earth :
thou shalt not bow down thyself unto them,
nor serve them : for I the Lord thy God am
a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the
fathers upon the children unto the third and
fourth generation of them that hate me, and
showing mercy unto thousands of them that
love me and keep my commandments." All
the nations round about Israel made images of
their gods, but Israel was to learn high and
spiritual things of God. There was nothing in
heaven or earth or under the earth to which
God can be compared or to which He can be
made like. There must be no kind of simili
tude of their God this Jehovah whom they
worshipped. And there follow those memor
able words about the jealousy of God : " I am
a jealous God." Jealousy we think of as a bad
thing, as an illegitimate claim which one man
or woman makes upon another: a claim of
exclusiveness in which there is no right. But
there is, even among men, a righteous jealousy.
16 Christian Moral Principles
There is a righteous jealousy of husband to
wards wife and of wife towards husband.
And in God there is a righteous jealousy :
there is an exclusive claim which persists even
into the New Testament, as when S. James
says that the spirit which God has made to
dwell in us yearneth to jealousy over us. And
this jealousy of God was to show itself in the
whole national life of Israel in the sequence of
generations : God visits the sins of the fathers
upon the children unto the third and fourth
generations. As I told you last week, the time
came when Israel learned the value of the indi
vidual before God, and the reality of His pene
trating, rectifying justice to the individual: "the
son shall not bear the iniquity of the father,
neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the
son." That is true : we cannot think of the
righteous God unless we think of a discriminat
ing justice as regards the individual. It was
that thought which forced men forward to the
vision of the life beyond death. Nevertheless
the other law remains true. God deals with us
as societies of men ; and in societies there is no
denying the fact that the inexorable righteous
ness of God works through the succession of
generations, and He visits the sins of the
S. J. iv. 5.
The Ten Commandments 17
fathers upon the children, as Israel learned when
they entered the deep waters of the captivity.
So these two first commandments claim an
exclusiveness for the worship of Israel s God :
fencing Israel off from the religions round
about them. Theirs is to be an exclusive
religion : and the reason is plain to see. The
religions round about Israel were nature
worships of all sorts and kinds. And it is
the way with nature worships that they are
non-moral or immoral: for nature seems to
show no moral discrimination, and the moods
of nature seem to be reflected in the morality
of the men who worship nature. So it is that
the nature worships of the world have ever
been quite non-moral, and where the worship
of a tribe or people is the worship of the pro
ductive and reproductive powers of nature,
there its religion has mostly become posi
tively immoral, and intimately associated with
immoral practices. So it was round about
Israel ; so it is in India to-day. Therefore in
order that Israel s spiritual life may grow on
intensely and passionately moral lines they are
to be fenced off absolutely from contact with
the religions of the surrounding nations : the
worship of Jehovah is to be an exclusive
influence.
18 Christian Moral Principles
Ah ! it was not an easy claim to enforce.
You know how utterly the commandment
seemed to fail. You hear the one long cry of
the Prophets, that Israel is abandoned to
idolatry and to fellowship with the worship
of the nations round about them. And at last
God judged them for it. This little people
who imagined that they, as the chosen people
of Jehovah, could never fail to receive His
support, found themselves carried off into
captivity, deported into some remote part of
Mesopotamia, and all the world said " There is
an end of Israel." But the miracle of history
took place. They left their land under that
sharp judgement, but an astonishing change
passed over them. They learnt to hate idolatry
and they were brought back in the providence
of God to their own land. Thus they fulfilled
their destiny, and you can date any document
in the Old Testament by whether it shows
a fear of idolatry. If it speaks of idolatry as
a present danger then it comes from before the
captivity. Because in the deep waters of the
captivity the whole of that inveterate tendency
to idolatry was washed out of them. There
were plenty of dangers left : exclusiveness,
pride, formalism and other evils ; but the
danger of idolatry passed away for ever that
The Ten Commandments 19
is of idolatry in the primary sense. Something
of the same kind happened in England. The
psychological change in the religious temper of
the English people between the middle of the
sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth
centuries was almost as extraordinary. The
contrast between Puritan and Catholic England
in its whole religious disposition is astonishing.
Then next (iii) this exclusiveness of their
religion was to root in the mind of Israel an
awful reverence for the name of their God
Jehovah. No doubt they exhibited that rever
ence in superstitious ways, as by a refusal to
pronounce the name : so that they substituted
the word "Lord" for the word "Jehovah, 1
and the word "Jehovah "(or Jahweh) occurs
in our English translation very rarely. Never
theless they were right in reverencing with an
awe-struck reverence the sacred name. They
might swear by Jehovah, but woe be to them
if they took the name of Jehovah in vain for
a false or wicked purpose. "Thou shalt not
take the name of the Lord thy God in vain :
for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that
taketh his name in vain." So the great com
mandment thundered over them.
Next (iv) they were to learn the consecration
of their life to God, and they were to learn it
20 Christian Moral Principles
from the law of the fourth commandment.
11 Keep the sabbath day to sanctify it, as the
Lord thy God hath commanded thee. Six
days thou shalt labour, and do all thy work :
but the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord
thy God : in it thou shalt not do any work,
thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, nor thy
manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thine ox,
nor thine ass, nor any of thy cattle, nor thy
stranger that is within thy gates ; that thy man
servant and thy maidservant may rest as well
as thou. And remember that thou wast a
servant in the land of Egypt, and that the Lord
thy God brought thee out thence through a
mighty hand and by a stretched out arm :
therefore the Lord thy God commanded thee
to keep the sabbath day." The seventh day or
Sabbath was to be a day of rest. That had the
same sort of purpose as the law of the first-
fruits or the law of the tithes. The giving of
the first-fruits and of the tithes that is the giving
of a small portion of the whole was to teach
them that the whole really belonged to God.
So the special consecration of the seventh day,
in which they were to abstain from all their
work, was to teach them the sacredness of all
days. At first it was a simple abstinence from
work. Then the vacant spaces of the Sabbath
The Ten Commandments 21
were filled up with the holy meetings for
worship, of which we see such rich examples
in the synagogue worship of later days. But
there was to be first of all this simple abstin
ence from work. As you know, the law of the
Christian Sunday proceeds in the opposite
order. It was first of all a day of eucharist,
a day of worship ; and then, in order that men
might have leisure for worship, there was
attached to it an abstinence from work, that
men might be free for worship. The order of
the Jewish Sabbath was the opposite. It was
a day of rest from work which became a day
of worship.
But as you see, this fourth commandment
holds within itself three laws : there is the law
of the Sabbath, the law of abstinence from
work ; there is the law of work for all the
other days, "Six days shalt thou labour,"
which is the root of the Jewish reverence for
labour and their contempt for idleness; and
then thirdly there is the law of fellowship the
equal regard for the manservant and the maid
servant and even the cattle. (We can forgive
Eliphaz the Temanite the false things which
he said because of the one good thing, "For
thou shalt be in league with the stones of the
field : and the beasts of the field shall be at
22 Christian Moral Principles
peace with thee.") The Jews were to be kind
even to their cattle as being fellow creatures of
God with themselves ; and much more to the
people who laboured for them, "thy man
servant and thy maidservant." And, as the
Book of Deuteronomy gives the motive for the
observance of the Sabbath, it was that they
had all been slaves in Egypt and God had
redeemed them ; therefore they must have
a sense of fellowship for all who were enslaved
and poor. This is the comprehensive scope of
the fourth commandment.
Then (v) there follows the fifth of the great
distinctive precepts alone among the Ten
Commandments in being positive and not
negative which is the root of all the deep
Jewish reverence for the home : " Honour thy
father and thy mother, as the Lord thy God
hath commanded thee ; that thy days may be
prolonged, and that it may go well with thee,
in the land which the Lord thy God giveth
thee." Reverence for parents lies deep in the
life of the home. The Jews had a very severe
view of parental discipline : there is no ques
tion about that. Nevertheless, or for that very
reason I suppose, there was no nation amongst
whom the sacredness of the home was devel-
loped in so deep and strong a religious spirit as
The Ten Commandments 23
among the Jews ; and the commandment tells
them that therein was to lie the continuity and
the strength of their nation. In their sense of
the sacredness of marriage, in their veneration
for the procreation of children and their love
of abundant families, and in their insistence
on the stern discipline of the home in these
things was their strength.
And (vi) " Thou shalt do no murder." They
were a fierce people, and there lay deep in
their traditions all the instincts of blood feuds.
But these instincts were to be disciplined. They
were indeed made to learn that "whoso shed-
deth man s blood by man shall his blood be
shed." The sixth commandment was not an
abolition of capital punishment : indeed the
Jewish law recognized capital punishment
abundantly. Nor was it an abolition of war ;
for they were still to fight against the enemies
of Jehovah. It was not a perfect command
ment: but it was a step forward, and it pointed
further still : it put an end to the motive of
private revenge as a justification for taking the
life of a man. There it left them ; but it was
a fence that made room for better things.
(vii) "Neither shalt thou commit adultery."
There again the commandment does not go
very far. It is not a general law of purity,
24 Christian Moral Principles
but a simple stern prohibition which fences
the sacredness of the home by establishing
the exclusive relations of husband and wife.
(viii) " Neither shalt thou steal." As you see
in the character of Jacob, underhand dealings
were very congenial to the Jewish tempera
ment. What Ecclesiasticus called "the sin that
sticks close between buying and selling" was
very much in their disposition. Again, this
commandment does not express anything like
the full principle of morality ; but it is a stern,
sharp prohibition against tampering with other
people s property. It was impressed upon them
by their prophets, and especially in that sense
in which it involves the recognition of the prin
ciple of justice and the rights of the defenceless,
the poor and the weak.
(ix) " Neither shalt thou bear false witness
against thy neighbour." The Jews were a litigious
people, and I suppose perjury came as natural to
them in law cases as, alas ! after all these cen
turies of moral discipline in this so-called Chris
tian country, it appears to come to us. There
fore the need for this sharp word of prohibition.
Then last there stood that very comprehensive
prohibition (x) " Thou shalt not covet thy
neighbour s wife, neither shalt thou desire thy
neighbour s house, his field, or his manservant,
The Ten Commandments 25
or his maidservant, his ox, or his ass, or any
thing that is thy neighbour s." This is a general
prohibition of covetousness ; a stern limitation
upon a man s thirst for more.
So they stand, these "ten words " these
short, sharp prohibitions. They were, as I say,
a fence within which was to flourish the rich
growth of Israel s spiritual and moral life. And
it was a very rich and positive growth. As
they were kept away from the fascination of
foreign religions and concentrated exclusively
upon the worship of their own God, so there
grew up among them, under the teaching of the
prophets, the glorious spiritual religion of the
Psalms that worthy sense of God s holiness,
His goodness, His spirituality: that intense
sense of His protection both of the nation and
of the individual worshipper, that deep feeling
of personal communion with Him, that tender
penitence, that courageous confidence, that
invincible faith in righteousness, that thrill of
exultation at the very sound of the name of
God. Is there in all human literature anything
more intense, more penetrating, more lovely
than the religion of the Psalms? "The Lord
is my shepherd, therefore shall I lack nothing."
Though I walk through the valley of the
shadow of death, I will fear no evil." " When
26 Christian Moral Principles
I awake up after thy likeness, I shall be satis
fied with it." "Thou shalt hide them privily
by thine own presence from the provoking of
all men : thou shalt keep them secretly in thy
tabernacle from the strife of tongues."
The root of idolatry lies in low ideas about
God. All the contempt and ridicule which the
prophets heap upon idolatry has this for its
explanation. So it was that worshipping a God
of whom there could not be in the region of
visible things any similitude, the mind of Israel
was lifted to conceive of Him, in His spiritu
ality, His omnipresence, His holiness and His
love, with an adequacy to which no other
nation on earth made any approach. And as
He had made Jerusalem His home, and its
Temple the scene of His special presence, there
developed itself that unique and passionate
patriotism, centring in the city and the temple,
which was only another aspect of their religion
and their worship.
Again, the penetrating sense of the righteous
ness of God which inspired the prophets of
Israel provided a basis for a positive social
conscience, which far transcended the limits
of the Ten Commandments. Where among
ancient peoples can we find anything like the
sense of truthfulness or the sense of justice
The Ten Commandments 27
which grew in Israel ? " Lord, who shall dwell
in thy tabernacle, and who shall rest upon
thy holy hill ? Even he, that leadeth an uncor-
rupt life : and doeth the thing that is right, and
speaketh the truth from his heart." Where is
to be found elsewhere such a positive loathing
of all cruelty to the weak and all " grinding of
the faces of the poor " as we find in Israel ?
" Now for the comfortless troubles sake of the
needy, and because of the deep sighing of the
poor, I will up, saith the Lord." And not
only in the prophets and psalmists do we find
this strong sense that God is against every
tyrant, but in the sober common sense of the
"wisdom literature" the Books of Proverbs
and Ecclesiasticus. 1 Do not forget, moreover,
their reverence for manual labour 2 and their
contempt for all idleness, luxury, and vice.
Surely the positive religion of Israel, the plant
which grew within the sacred enclosure of the
Ten Commandments and the Law, was a
growth of incomparable glory.
No doubt it was imperfect. We may note
this in three respects. First, it was on the
whole limited to their own people. The mind
of an Isaiah, and of some others of the prophets,
1 See Ecclus. xxxiv. 20-22 ; xxxv. 12-17.
2 Ibid, xxxviii. 24 ff.
28 Christian Moral Principles
from time to time is visited with the vision of a
world-wide fellowship of all nations in God
a fellowship in which Egypt and Assyria should
be one with Israel but on the whole, even in
the best of the nation, the sense of the loving
purpose of God was limited to Israel, and the
rest of the nations were viewed as the enemies
of Israel and the subjects mainly of the divine
judgement. Secondly, there was a very in
adequate sense very inadequate, that is as
measured by the standard of Christ of what
the redemptive mercy of God can accomplish
in seeking and saving the worst and most aban
doned. Thus they gave over the wicked to the
divine vengeance much too readily, and carried
into their private enmities the eager claim for
the divine chastisement upon those who had
done them personal wrong. The claim of the
maledictory psalms is based no doubt upon a
profound truth, but it falls surely very far short
of the Christian sense of the mind of God
towards even the worst offenders. For this
reason surely Psalm cix had better not be
recited in the public worship of those who have
been taught by Jesus Christ. It requires too
much explanation. 1 Thirdly, though there are
1 I would have the whole Psalter retained for the private
recitation of the clergy, but certain omissions made in its
public recitation in the general congregation.
The Ten Commandments 29
some glorious estimates of womanhood in the
Old Testament, yet here again in the position
assigned to women we are on the whole far
below the level to which our Lord has raised
us. It is of the essence of the Old Testament
to be imperfect. As you wrong the Old Testa-
ment, says S. Augustine, if you deny that it
comes from the same God as the New, so you
wrong the New Testament if you put the Old
on the same level with it.
There is only one word which I will add.
The Bible is of all books the most contemptuous
of majorities. This is true of the Old Testa
ment as of the New. The true religion, the
religion of the prophets and of the Psalms,
appears as the religion of a faithful remnant
who hardly maintain their ground among a
faithless people. This is true especially of the
period before the captivity, but the same esti
mate of the relative moral force of the few and
the many appears also in the later books. Thus
in fact when He came upon whom the hope of
Israel centred, the Christ of God, the vast
majority of the nation rejected Him. The true
Church of God, the true Israel, is found, after
S. Paul s preaching, to be made up mainly of
Gentiles. And this should be our encourage
ment. The struggle of the true prophets and
30 Christian Moral Principles
of the faithful Israelites to maintain what the
mass of the nation regarded as an impossible
standard justified itself in the result. So the
like struggle always justifies itself. It is the
best who keep the world from corruption. It
is when the best men cease trying that the
world sinks back like lead. Let us never lose
heart in maintaining the full moral truth the
fullness of the divine claim. It is the perfect
goodness which men really reverence, even if
they have not the courage to follow it. It is
always worth while to maintain and follow the
best.
Ill
THE TEN COMMANDMENTS FOR
CHRISTIANS
"From that time 1 began Jesus to preach, and to say,
Repent : for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." S. Matthew
iv. 17.
The New Testament is founded upon the
Old, and the link between them is John the
Baptist, the last of the prophets of the old
covenant, who points to the new ; and his
message his Old Testament message is that
the kingdom of God, the kingdom or reign of
God or of heaven, is at hand. This kingdom
or reign of God means that world in which the
will of God has complete sway ; in which the
hearts and wills of men are in agreement with
God ; and in which accordingly all the true
glory of human life, which sin and wilfulness
had effaced, is again manifest, and God comes
into His own. You will recall the heart-
rejoicing descriptions and pictures given in the
Old Testament of that kingdom of peace and
glory. Now then it was at hand ; there was
1 That is, the time when John the Baptist had compulsorily
ended his preaching through being cast into prison.
31
32 Christian Moral Principles
to be no more delay. That was the word of
John ; that was the word which, from the
lips of John, Jesus proclaimed when he said
"Repent ye, for the kingdom of heaven is at
hand."
As the teaching of Jesus developed it ap
peared that this kingdom or reign of God had
a double sense. In its perfection it lies beyond
this world of struggle and conflict ; it belongs
to the time of "the world to come," when God
in the whole universe of things is to come into
His own and there is to be no rebellious will ;
the day when Christ shall come in the glory of
His Father with the holy angels that is the
consummation. But our Lord also manifestly
speaks of the kingdom as something already in
process : growing as the mustard seed, leaven
ing the world like the leaven in the lump.
And it is in this aspect that the kingdom is in
some sense identified with the Church. For
the Church of Jesus is the instrument and
exhibition of the kingdom ; that is its purpose
and mission : it is to exhibit in our world,
which both admires and hates it, a society of
men in which the kingdom of heaven holds
sway, and the true lineaments of the trans
formed human life are made plain. That is
what the church is for : to show the kingdom
The Ten Commandments for Christians 33
of God as already in being among the men of
to-day. Therefore " Repent ye"; because the
requirement of entering into the kingdom here
and now is the same as the requirement for
entering into the kingdom of God and of Christ
in its perfect manifestation hereafter. And the
world as it stands "lieth in the evil one." Its
lust and selfishness and wilfulness cannot come
into the kingdom of God ; it is utterly alien
from it ; therefore there must be a fresh begin
ning. " Repent ye, for the kingdom of heaven
is at hand."
How deep the needful repentance must be
is made evident to us when we notice our
Lord s attitude towards all the different classes
of society. There were the leaders of religion,
the Pharisees, who upheld a high and exacting
standard of religion and conduct in certain
respects ; but they were hard formalists, exclu
sive, unmerciful ; and it is upon them that our
Lord pronounces His most tremendous maledic
tions it is upon the ecclesiastical world, and
the leaders of the ecclesiastical world, of His
day. And there were the Sadducees, the
nominal priests and the real politicians, occu
pied with their worldly politics, upon whom
also He turns His back. And there were the
common people who heard Him gladly, and
34 Christian Moral Principles
gladly received the outpouring of His miracu
lous bounty, but who were occupied with their
nationalist aspirations or their ordinary cares,
so that but few of them listened to the real
meaning of His teaching. So it was but a little
band which would make the great surrender
and enter upon the great adventure, and to
them overheard indeed by others, but for
them in the first instance that He spoke His
Sermon on the Mount.
He begins His sermon with a vivid descrip
tion of the ethical character of the kingdom
in the Beatitudes. Among these there stand
first three great paradoxes. "Men are every
where hunting for money ; but I say blessed
are the poor; if not the poor in fact then at
least in will and heart ; blessed are the de
tached. Again, men are everywhere hunting
for pleasure ; but I say blessed are those who
enter into the sorrows and sufferings of the
world ; blessed are they that mourn. Once
more men are everywhere asserting themselves
and putting themselves first, but I say blessed
are the meek."
But it is not only in negatives that our Lord
describes the character of the kingdom ; and
the positive descriptions of the Christian char
acter which follow attract even those who
The Ten Commandments for Christians 35
are not willing to make that character their
own. There is the hungering and thirsting
after righteousness or the passion for the good
no mere formal righteousness but a positive
passion for the good ; and the mercy and the
purity or singleness of heart, and the love of
peace, and the readiness to suffer. And this
character, so unworldly, so isolated from the
world, but so rich and ennobling in its motives,
is to stand there in the midst of a bewildered
or hostile world distinct in itself, like salt to
keep the mass from corruption ; manifest like
the light shining in the dark place ; raised
evidently aloft like a city set on a hill. Then
our Lord passes on to revise the Ten Com
mandments ; because we are not to think that
in being in one sense free from the letter of the
law, or free from all those manifold enactments
with which the Pharisees burdened the law,
we are to be allowed to rest upon a lower
standard. No ; " except your righteousness
exceed the righteousness of the Scribes and
Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the
kingdom of heaven."
So He takes the sixth commandment, " Thou
shalt not kill," and with a divine authority He
revises it. Henceforth in His kingdom the first
allowed movement of anger, which is the root
36 Christian Moral Principles
of murder, is to hold the same place of
seriousness in human judgement as murder had
hitherto held. And this feeling of antagonism
and hatred when it passes into words of bitter
ness and contempt, because now more delib
erate, is still graver sin and is subject to severer
judgement. You see He presses back the
moral requirement behind the fully accom
plished outward act to the first movement of
the will and the first expression of passion.
Then He takes the sin of adultery: "It was
said to them of old, Thou shalt not commit
adultery ; but I say unto you, that whosoever
looketh upon a woman with the view to lust
after her hath committed adultery with her
already in his heart." Our Lord s meaning is
precisely this, I think ; that the deliberately-
conceived intention of sinning, though it be
restrained from actually taking effect, has all
the sinfulness and the guilt of the outward sin.
It is all a matter of the will. Therefore a man
is to go to the very depth of his being, and
where he finds something in himself that is a
hindrance to true spiritual freedom, or control
over his passions, he is at all costs to exorcise it
and cast it out, even if it be, as it were, a part
of his very being, because a man must be strong
at the centre before he can be free at the cir-
The Ten Commandments for Christians 37
cumference of his being. Thus Jesus said, " It
is better to enter into life halt or maimed rather
than having two hands or two feet to go into
hell."
Once again He takes the third command
ment. "It was said to them of old time,
Thou shall not forswear thyself"; that is, one
could put himself at certain moments into the
presence of God, and swear by Him, and
thereby claim a special sacredness for that par
ticular word. All that was required was that
he should keep this specific oath. But God is
everywhere ; heaven is His throne, the earth
is His footstool, Jerusalem is His city ; there is
nowhere where God is not ; you are always in
His presence. Therefore the sanctity formerly
attending on special oaths is to attend on the
whole of your conversation. "Let your yea
be yea, and your nay nay." That is, truthful
ness, universal and deliberate, is the duty of
one who knows that the presence of God is
everywhere, and that everything said is of the
nature of an oath in the presence of God.
Here, in the opening of the Sermon on the
Mount, we have given us a tremendous rectifi
cation or transformation of the Ten Com
mandments from the outward act to the inward
motive, from the negative to the positive.
38 Christian Moral Principles
Indeed the Christian transformation of the Ten
Commandments is very thorough. 1 It is not
only that the second commandment is trans
formed by the Incarnation, because, God having
manifested Himself in the acts of the human
life of Jesus, we are permitted to exhibit in
picture or symbol these visible incidents of the
life of God in the flesh for our remembrance
and our edification. It is not only that the
fourth commandment is transformed from the
law of the Sabbath to the law of the Lord s
Day. But also the other commandments the
third, the sixth, the seventh, and the others-
are transformed from negative to positive, and
from commandments of the outward act to
commandments of the inmost motive. There
is no wonder, I think, under these circum
stances, that the early church was shy of
erecting the Ten Commandments into a posi
tion of prominence, as if, standing by them
selves, and pronounced in their original form,
they could be the moral law for the Christian.
It is a remarkable thing that until the thirteenth
century the Ten Commandments were never
erected, with the Creed and the Lord s Prayer,
into the class of things which every Christian
1 I have endeavoured to give some detailed account of " the
Ten Commandments for Christiana " in The Strmon on tht
.Wor(John Murray), App. ii.
The Ten Commandments for Christians 39
must learn and know. I am not now attempting
to criticize the position which the Ten Com
mandments have traditionally held in our
services and in our preparation for Confirma
tion. 1 But certainly, if they are to hold such a
position as that assigned to them among us, at
least let us recognize how deep the conversion
which they need, and how disastrous it is if
we take them in the letter and not in the full
richness of their inward spirit.
Well then, this glorious and inspiring, but
tremendous, picture of the true life this law
of the kingdom of God our Lord proceeds in
manifold ways to expound and illustrate, not
only in the Sermon on the Mount. It is
illustrated by His example, and it is expounded
in His parables. And His parables in various
forms bring out this thought, that whatever
faculties of man are seen to be efficient and
powerful in the business of common life all
his watchfulness, forethought, prudence, and
intellectual application are to signalize the
children of the kingdom also. There is to be
nothing left out ; there is to be the fullest
exercise of all human faculties for the supreme
purpose of the kingdom. Later of course the
1 But I am reprinting, as an appendix to these sermons,
such a criticism " The Ten Commandments and the Christian
Churoh " from a volume called Dominant Ideas (Mowbrays).
40 Christian Moral Principles
Christian character is the main theme of the
Epistles of Paul and James and John and
Peter; and indeed there is nothing in the world
more lovely than the descriptions of the Chris
tian character given us by these different but
accordant teachers.
I shall have the opportunity, please God,
on successive Sundays to illustrate different
aspects of this character ; but what I want to
plead for with you to-day is this : that you
should set yourselves this Lent to get before
your minds, as you can do if you read continu
ously the Gospels and the Epistles, a clear
image of what the Christian character is God-
ward, selfward, manward. It is your duty to
God to love the Lord your God with all your
heart and with all your mind with mind as
well as heart: that is, to get and to keep true
ideas about God, for our Lord knows that how
men behave will depend at the bottom on what
they really think about God. God, then, is
love ; not less severe and uncompromising in
His righteousness than the old Prophets pro
claimed Him ; not less severe than the God of
Amos ; but shown to us now in His intense
love. And this love is not merely a quality of
His own internal being, but goes out, energetic
and passionate, to seek and save every one of
The Ten Commandments for Christians 41
the wandering children of men who are lost in
their wilfulness, their malice, or their lust. It
is a love which knows no limits, which extends
over the whole area of human life and from
which no wanderer is outcast. " I came not to
call the righteous, but sinners." Thus those
most contemned by the respectable world the
publicans and harlots may even be in a better
position before God than the proud and the
contemptuous, because they are more open to
the divine appeal. And our Lord made it
quite evident, though He was sent only to the
lost sheep of the House of Israel here and now,
yet He made it quite evident in His dealings
with individuals, as you heard just now in the
Gospel, 1 that it was man as man, quite irrespec
tive of race or class or kind, that the love of
God was ever seeking with infinite self-sacri
fice : for in Jesus Christ it is a self-sacrificing,
suffering God who is evidently set before our
eyes. And now that God s real character and
purpose has thus been made manifest in Jesus
Christ, it is never to cease to be manifest
before men ; for the purpose of His kingdom,
His church, is to make it continually manifest.
And the one object of "the children of the
1 The Gospel for the Second Sunday in Lent the story of
the woman of Canaan.
42 Christian Moral Principles
kingdom " is to be conformed to the heart of
God. That is what the church is for ; it is to
keep alive among men this sense of what God
is, both of His righteousness and of His love ;
and as the child of the kingdom looks out
towards God that is the one concentrated
desire of his heart to be so truly a son of
God as to be conformed to His mind.
This is our duty towards God : and there
from follows our duty towards ourselves. Our
duty towards ourselves is prudence ; it is to
make the best of ourselves ; and to make the
best of myself is to make myself a suitable
citizen of His kingdom and a suitable member
of His household. Therefore I must purge
myself from lust and selfishness and malice,
and see to it that my will has full dominion
over my passions and appetites ; therefore
I must see to it that all my faculties are
exercised, and that I make the best of every
power I have. Because to save my soul
means just this: to make the best of my
faculties, as one called into the fellowship of
an eternal kingdom, from which all that is
morally alien must be perforce excluded.
And my duty towards my neighbour is to
recognize to the full that in God s sight every
man counts for one, and no one counts for
The Ten Commandments for Christians 43
more than one ; that every single human soul
has an absolute and an identical value in the
sight of God ; and that He will tolerate no
contempt or selfishness, no using of other men
as instruments for our own comfort or our
own aggrandisement ; but that the spirit of
brotherhood must pervade our every relation
to our fellow men.
For fellow sharers in the spirit of Jesus that
is the ideal of life : that is its outline. It is
a lovely outline surely, and, though it is a
tremendously severe claim that is laid upon
us, yet at the same time it allures us by its
incomparable glory.
Brethren, is it not true that even at our
worst and most perilous moments we recog
nize in our deepest hearts that there is nothing
in the world for any human being so glorious
as this treasure of Christian character ; nothing
so royal, nothing so priestly, nothing so worthy
to enlist our faculties and our wills? Well then,
I would implore you first of all to set it clearly
before yourselves. That is the first thing-
conversion ; that is the turning of our hearts
deliberately to choose the best: feeling sure
that, whatever the cost, that cost is reasonable ;
determined to follow no other pattern ; resolved
deliberately to make this great purpose ours.
44 Christian Moral Principles
But you may say Strive after this ideal for
myself I certainly will ; but I am afraid really
to put this ideal forward before others ; it is too
high a standard. If I put this before my sons
or daughters, or before the world at large,
I shall only alienate them. Surely there are
two standards: there is the high standard
which a man should entertain in his private
heart, but for the world at large there must be
a much lower standard. I want to tell my
children that they must behave as good and
honest men and women, and keep themselves
from those scandalous sins which are a recog
nized disgrace. Surely we must have this
lower standard the conduct of a gentleman
for use of the world. If I put the high
standard of Christ before people in general
I do nothing but alienate them.
What am I to say to this plea? Truly I
believe that the acceptance of the principle of
a double standard has been a disaster which
lies at the heart of all our economic and social
troubles. It is the exact opposite of the method
of Christ. Do not misunderstand me. Our
Lord had a great reverence for what we should
call natural goodness. " Thou art not far from
the kingdom of God " ; He loved to say that.
He noted with gratitude the smallest acts of
The Ten Commandments for Christians 45
kindness and goodness. A cup of cold water
given only in the name of a disciple He said
should by no means lose its reward. A bruised
reed would He not break, and smoking flax
would He not quench. We should never
forget that. The most ignorant attempts to do
good He valued. " He who is not against us
is with us." Jesus really loved and valued
natural goodness. And further towards every
man who was trying to follow Him, like His
apostles, He was full of supreme mercy ; no
number of falls and failures can take us out of
the scope of His forgiving goodness. If our
wills are right, He is always ready to set us
free to begin again ; indeed perseverance is
nothing else but a succession of fresh begin
nings. Jesus is indeed a generous and merciful
Master.
But as regards the standard of the kingdom
that which He could accept and welcome
into His kingdom He would have no com
promise. History it seems would have been
wholly different if He would have accepted
a lower standard as the standard of positive
requirement for His kingdom. It was because
He so uncompromisingly claimed the highest
that He seemed to fail. And yet, mark you,
He is really justified, not only by the supreme
46 Christian Moral Principles
justification of His authority, but also by
experience. For, as He said, what keeps the
world from rotting is the standard of the best.
And the standard of the best, believe me, is
not unattractive. A real Christian is magni
ficently attractive. Only I beseech you, never
let any one for whose education or guidance
you are responsible, think that Christianity is
a matter of course or that a person can be
a Christian just by avoiding scandalous con
duct. Never let your sons and daughters
imagine that they can be Christians without
a tremendous act of choice. The notion of
Christianity is a matter of course, or that
a person can be counted a Christian who
is not guilty of some scandalous violation
of decency, has no sanction in the Gospel.
There are no two standards for the king
dom of heaven ; the only standard for that
kingdom is the one which I have been
trying to describe and which is gloriously
human and divine. It is the standard for all ;
and, believe me, we have at this moment a
great opportunity. There is in the world
to-day a very widespread revolt not only
against the doctrines of theology but against the
Christian standard of life. For instance, you can
see the world rising in open rebellion against
The Ten Commandments for Christians 47
the Christian standard of purity ; or again
against the Christian standard of self-denial, or
of spiritual equality. Man s lusts, man s pas
sions, man s avarice, man s pride are to-day in
very open rebellion. This open rebellion gives
us our opportunity. For the world will inevit
ably find out its mistake. Its selfish passions
will be its destruction. What is wanted in the
midst of the bewildered world is the witness of
the true life visibly being lived by an organized
society of men the witness of The Way.
That is the only effective witness. There
can be no regenerating power in the midst of
our society except through the restoration of
the true standard as Christ proclaimed it so
plainly, with such infinite variety of expression,
with such fullness of human sympathy, and
with such tremendous severity of claim.
IV
HUMILITY
"Yea, all of you gird yourselves with humility, to serve
one another : for God resisteth the proud, and giveth grace to
the humble. Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty
hand of God, that he may exalt you in due time." 1 S. Pet*r
v. 5, 6, R.v.
Let us return to the consideration of the
Christian character somewhat more in detail.
I think that any one who sets himself deliber
ately to contemplate the Christian character in
its completeness and the variety of its linea
ments cannot but receive a profound impression.
Here is something so satisfying to our whole
sense of perfection, and so liberating to all our
faculties and capacities, that we feel that it
must be real, that is, in accordance with the
real nature of things. Thus it seems to us
that the doctrines about God and about man,
which are its inseparable accompaniments or
grounds, are proved to be true by their prac
tical value ; "so that," in Shakespeare s words,
"The art and practic part of life
Must be the mistress to this thcoric."
So I would have you come back to the contem-
48
Humility 49
plation of this "art and practic part of life"
the Christian character as it is to be practised ;
and in particular to-day to that which is one
of its most salient characteristics ; that is, its
glorification of the virtue of humility.
The word or idea of humility was not new ;
but in the Roman Empire, into which Christi
anity came, it was almost, though not quite,
uniformly associated with notions of servility.
It was a servile quality bad, therefore, rather
than good in its associations. But Christianity
lifted it at once into the position of supreme
dignity and supreme importance. "He that
exalteth himself shall be abased, and he that
humbleth himself shall be exalted."
That weird but brilliant modern philosopher
Nietzsche, about whom we used to hear a good
deal at the beginning of the war, revived, as
I daresay you know, the theory that humility
is a servile virtue ; that it is the virtue of weak
and common men, who, having successfully
combined to glorify it, have thus kept down
the superior man, the super-man, who for his
proper elevation and due self-realization needs
to be able to despise the common herd and
treat them with the contempt they merit. Well,
I do not suppose you read Nietzsche, or are
particularly liable to be influenced by him ;
B
Ki:Gr>
.. .
^ COLLEGE
50 Christian Moral Principles
but I fancy, as one looks round on human life,
one seems to see a depreciation of the idea of
humility, as if it were associated with some
thing low and servile, which extends a great
deal more widely than any knowledge of
Nietzsche. Humility does not appear to be
a popular or highly-appreciated virtue to-day.
I think that there are a great many people who
practically appear to think that it is a servile
quality which they had better get rid of. It is
associated with weakness and ineffectiveness.
And yet it is, perhaps, a sufficient argument
against such a position to point to the beginnings
of our religion, and especially to those two
figures who stand upon the threshold of Chris
tianity as the prominent examples of humility,
whom yet no one would call servile. I mean
John the Baptist and Mary, the blessed mother
of our Lord. John the Baptist was essentially
humble. You see his humility in his indignant
protest when flatterers or admirers would have
ascribed to him some excellence or some pre
tension which was not his. Perhaps, they
suggested, he was some supernatural person,
Elijah risen to life again, or the predestined
prophet, perhaps he was even the Christ.
Well, every powerful preacher is surrounded
by flatterers, and you know how John the
Humility 51
Baptist received them ; it was with an indig
nant and reiterated " No, I am not." And
when they turned upon him and asked in what
then lay his right to baptize, he said, "I am
the voice of one crying in the wilderness, Pre
pare ye the way of the Lord." After me
cometh the Greater One. That is humility.
Humility utterly repudiates pretentiousness ;
it bids us love the truth about ourselves ; it
stands upon the solid rock of truth. Therefore
it is at the point furthest removed from servility ;
for what makes people servile is that they care
what other people think about them. If you
live mainly in the light of what other people
think about you, then you will be indeed at
times arrogant and at times servile, according
to the people you happen to be with. But if
you stand simply on the rock of reality, in the
light of what you are in the sight of God, you
can never be servile ; you will .stand as John
the Baptist stood and speak the truth to power
ful and common people alike. You "can no
other."
Or again, think of Mary. She was the very
type of modest retiring womanhood. Would
you call her servile? No. Once she sang
a song, and that Magnificat of Mary reveals
nothing of servility. No one can read that
52 Christian Moral Principles
psalm and fail to see that Mary was royal-
hearted, and entered into the fullness of God s
great purpose for His people, and understood
the dignity and glory of being the instrument
of His purposes. The great S. Bernard, who
speaks much about this virtue, gives us the true
account of it. He was a man of incomparable
force, and wielded great power in Europe. He
was also a man of humility, and knew what it
meant. He advocates it constantly. He says,
" Humility is the truth about ourselves." So it
is, both Godward and manward.
Godward it is the recognition first of all of
our absolute dependence upon God who created
us, so that everything I am and everything I
have at every moment depends upon Him. If at
any moment He were to withdraw from me
the breath I breathe or the life by which I live,
I should sink into the nothingness out of which
I came. Absolute, unqualified dependence is
the truth of my condition, and whatever dif
ference there may be between the greatest
and the lowest among men or among crea
tures, that difference at its utmost is as nothing
to the difference between the creature and the
Creator. Thus I think that humility deserves,
with faith, hope, and charity, to be called a
theological virtue, because it depends upon
Humility 53
that doctrine of the Creator which is distinc
tive of Christianity.
Christianity came into a world which, so far
as its intelligent members were concerned,
believed in the one God as the divine reason
pervading all things, of which the reason in
man is a part. Each man, in his reason at
least, is a part of God so they believed. These
fragments or sparks of God in us are at present
united to the defiling qualities of the material
body, but at last, after whatever defilement and
pollution, they are bound inevitably to return
to the great whole of which they are parts.
This doctrine, which we call the Higher Pan
theism, can never be the basis of a doctrine
of humility. If we are parts of God if God
depends upon these parts of Himself, and upon
me amongst them, as much as we depend upon
God ; if both are necessary the one to the other
as parts of one whole truly we shall never be
humble ; we shall never have in ourselves the
root or ground of humility. Humility depends
upon the doctrine of God the Creator ; that
He made me wholly, and that I am utterly
dependent upon Him and not He in any
respect upon me ; that I am purely His
creature, and not a part of Him. This truth
bows me down to the earth. Pride in an utterly
54 Christian Moral Principles
dependent creature is consummate folly. "Is
not this great Babylon which I have builded ? "
So Nebuchadnezzar said in his folly, forgetting
his utter dependence. "Soul, thou hast much
goods laid up for thee for many years " ; so
said the rich man in his self-satisfaction. And
the answer of the Bible is, "Thou fool." For
what hast thou that thou didst not receive and
that thou dost not hold moment by moment at
the hands of God ? Thus the position of the
greatest of men is in the face of God abject
enough. As a man I lie at the feet of God
absolutely prostrate : I can raise no protest
against Him. "The Lord gave and the Lord
hath taken away ; blessed be the name of the
Lord." "Not my will, but thine be done."
But all this self-prostration is but the other side
of our supreme exaltation ; because God who
made me, made me a reasonable being, made
me to be a son of God, a participator in His
purposes, and vicegerent of His counsels.
He gave me the lordship of will and reason.
He made me to co-operate with Him. Thus
the glory of divine fellowship which lifts me to
the very throne of God, high into the heavenly
places in Jesus Christ, is but the other side of
that prostrate humility which is the recognition
of God who made me.
Humility 55
And so again humility is the truth about our
selves with regard to one another. I dare say
you remember the famous line of Homer in
which the Greek hero describes his ideal for
his son, "Always to be the best and to be
superior to other people." Now of that ideal
the first part is Christian and the second part
is anti-Christian. The first part is Christian
" always to be the best." It is the most solemn
duty of every Christian to make the best of
himself in body, soul, and spirit, because he is
wanted ; God has willed to entrust to him part
of the carrying out of His purpose. That is what
I am here for ; therefore it is my sacred duty to
make the very best of myself in every one of
my various members, qualities, and capacities,
so that I may be as fit an instrument as possible
for doing God s will. We might be every one
of us infinitely more worth having than we are,
if we would eradicate our harmful vices and
incapacities and diligently improve ourselves
as instruments for God. To be the best there
fore the best possible to be satisfied with no
inadequacy which is removable, no limitation
which need not be ours always to be the best,
should be our constant aim.
But " superior to other people " ? No. The
ambition to be better than some one else, to
56 Christian Moral Principles
excel some one else, though it is ingrained
traditionally into our habits of education, is,
I take it, at the root always pagan, wicked,
and misleading. It is suggested to us by these
day-dreams to which we may apply Isaiah s
words, " This shall ye have of my hand; ye
shall lie down in sorrow." 1 Yes, I am apt to
compass myself about with day-dreams when
I am young ; and the essence of these day
dreams, I fear, is always vanity. It is the
hunting field I am thinking about if I walk in
the country, and it is I who am taking the
fences and I who am in at the death. Or it is
the enraptured audience, but it is I who am
singing the song. Or it is the thrilled con
gregation, but it is I who am preaching the
sermon. And this sort of desire to excel other
people the determination to be the first, as
distinguished from the determination to be the
best is always an evil thing to be extirpated.
God loves me and made me because He loved
me, but He has no preferences. He does not
love me better than any one else. He desires
that the community of man should serve Him
with their variety of faculties, and the best
that every one can do is demanded for the full
exhibition of what God would have men be.
Isa. 1. 11.
Humility 57
Therefore I must rejoice in my own gifts and
also in the superior excellencies of other people.
That is what humility means that I have no
desire to pull down others that I may have my
head above them. Humility is totally without
jealousy or envy or greed of others excellencies.
Nay, rather, it marks those words of Peter s
which I read to you for my text, and it goes
back to that scene of the Last Supper where
Jesus girded Himself with the towel like a
servant to wash the feet of Peter and the
others. Yes, Peter, using the very remark
able word "gird yourself with the servant s
apron," bids us serve our brethren, rejoicing
in nothing so much as the opportunity of
ministering to the weakest and the smallest.
Humility is the love of service ; and that
mankind may be the richer, it delights in the
excellencies of others as much as in its own.
It has no desire to depreciate its own capacity,
and still less has it any desire to depreciate
the capacity of other people ; it is the simple
truth about oneself with a joyful regard to the
excellencies of others. Such is humility.
And yet I must go one step further, because
there is a further demand which (for example)
S. Paul makes upon us. He not only bids
us not "think of ourselves more highly than
58 Christian Moral Principles
we ought to think/ but further he says, "Each
esteeming others better than himself," "in
honour preferring one another." And he calls
himself the "chief of sinners." All this is
worthy of our attention ; and it is very char
acteristic of the saints. But we feel at first
sight as if there was something unreal about
such language. We quite understand equality
of consideration, but not this self-depreciation
by comparison with others. Perhaps, after all,
I am better than somebody else in fact, and I
ought to recognize it. There is a good deal of this
feeling lurking within us that the language of
the saints in self-depreciation is unreal.
Now humility would still be the truth about
ourselves if there were no sin in the world and
no sin in us. But I think it is the consciousness
of our sin which makes this language of self-
depreciation natural. No doubt, judged from
any external point of view, S. Paul was not the
" chief of sinners " ; but, on the contrary, one of
the greatest of the saints. But there is also no
doubt that S. Paul spoke the truth about him
self from the point of view of his own feeling,
and that is the particular note of the conscious
ness of sin. I can never estimate other people s
sins, but I can estimate my own. S. Paul could
estimate what it was to have so long perse-
Humility 59
cuted the church of Christ, and it made him
feel that nobody could have been so bad as he
was. And that as a feeling is right and just.
I am able to estimate my own sins, and I know
what they mean. I know how I have thereby
insulted God, injured my fellow men, en
feebled my capacities, and polluted my best
gifts. I know how in myriad instances, which
pass all number, I have defeated the purposes
of God and defiled the very atmosphere of my
life, and harmed others as much as myself.
Thus on some particular occasion in life I may
be unjustly treated, and get less than, as it
seems to me, I deserve to have. But there is
no moment of my life in which I can fail to
recognize that if I were to get my deserts on
the whole, I should be where lost souls are.
Therefore the sinner who knows himself is
always prepared for the lowest place. That
is what all the self-depreciatory language of the
saints means. I cannot estimate other people s
sins, but I can estimate my own, and I know
where they would place me.
There is only one other word I would add.
S. Bernard, whom I have taken as my guide,
is very fond of using sentences of this kind :
" We are all humiliated, but we do not all
become humble."
60 Christian Moral Principles
We are all humiliated. Experience is very
humiliating probably to every single one of us.
Ah ! those day-dreams that I allowed myself
to indulge, kindling a fire and compassing
myself about with the sparks that I had
kindled ! But experience has been very
humiliating. Of all those great plans how
little has been realized ! Of the great things
I intended to do what a little has been actually
accomplished ! Thus it is that life is a very
humiliating retrospect to almost all men. Yes,
we are all humiliated ; but it is a great question
how we take this inevitable humiliation. We
do not all become humble. To a vast number
of people it has the effect of something simply
distressing, discouraging ; turning them into
dispirited and discontented men and women ;
lowering their ideals, leading them not to ex
pect much of themselves or of any one else ;
making them cynical, bitter, discouraging to
young ideals. You know the kind of picture
of a middle-aged man or woman that one could
easily draw. Their cynicism they are pleased
to call wisdom. No ; we do not all learn
humility ; for humility is a joyful, happy thing ;
humility is fellowship with God constantly
renewed in hope. Whatever may have been
my faults and my follies I can always start
Humility 61
afresh. Humility confesses its sins and takes
from the unmerited goodness of God the
fullness of His free forgiveness, and, like a
child, is happy again, ten thousand times over
happy again ; joyful in the sense that God loves
me, joyful in the sense that He gives me over
and over again my fresh opportunity; and how
ever old I am He helps me, though it be but to
walk the last day of my life in the fullness of
my joy and the freshness of my opportunity.
Brethren, our experience of life will certainly
be humiliating ; let us be careful that humilia
tion shall teach us humility.
CHARITY
" Beloved, let us love one another : for love is of God ;
and every one that loveth is begotten of God, and knoweth
God. He that loveth not knoweth not God ; for God is
love. Herein was the love of God manifested in us (or
among us ), that God hath sent his only-begotten Son into
the world, that we might live through him. . . . Beloved,
if God so loved ut, we also ought to love one another."
1 S. John iv. 7-11.
If you set yourselves steadily to consider
the Christian Way the principles of Christian
living two virtues or qualities present them
selves as fundamental, pre-eminent, and essen
tial. Humility is the first, and the second is
charity or love the two words being but the
different translations in our familiar English
Bible of the one Greek word " agape," which
was a word, you may almost say, coined or
minted in the Christian church the most dis
tinctively Christian word.
Now, I suppose there have been days when
men found it possible to talk about the
principle that God is love, and the conse
quent duty of loving all men, as a sort of
commonplace. But those days, I think, have
62
Charity 63
gone by. Intellectually we recognize to-day
how difficult it is to believe that the Force
which lies behind, and works throughout,
the development of the universe is pure and
unqualified love. And I fancy that if you talk
to sincere people about the consequent duty
of loving all men, you will find that to most
it presents itself as something that is impractic
able. They know or think they know what
love is. They love some people and not
others: that is, they like some, and they dis
like others. But the root of their mistake is
that they think of love as a matter of emotion
or feeling. Now no doubt we cannot directly
control our feelings ; we like some people and
we dislike others : that is a fact. But we can
learn to love the people we do not like. That
is a large part of Christian duty ; and, as I say,
the root of our common mistake is that we
have thought about love too much as a feeling,
whereas in fact Christian love is a matter first
of all of our will and intelligence.
If you ask me what Christian love is, I would
say it is deliberate correspondence with the
declared purpose and mind of God. That is it.
The root Christian principle, incomparably the
most difficult, and also the most attractive, of
Christian dogmas or doctrines, is the doctrine
64 Christian Moral Principles
that God is love ; which is not an obvious truth
by any means, but is the central point of that
positive self-disclosure of God which the Bible
conveys to us, and the central meaning of the
incarnation of [God in Jesus Christ. The
meaning of the Incarnation is, I say, that the
real character of the being who made and
rules the world has been for us translated out
of that difficult and unintelligible region of
abstract things beyond our sight into the in
telligible lineaments of a human character
which all can understand, the character of
Jesus of Nazareth. I do not deny for a
moment the intellectual difficulty of the doc
trine. It is easy to believe in divine power,
for that is manifested everywhere in nature ;
it is easy again, in a certain sense, to believe
in divine righteousness, for on the whole
that is declared in the human conscience all
the world over, and the threat of its tremen
dous judgements is felt upon us. But love
that the mind of the being who made and
rules the world is absolute love, and His mind
towards every single individual pure goodness
that in this full sense God is love, is some
thing so astonishing and so contrary at first
sight to much of our experience, that we can
only have real or adequate grounds for believ-
Charity 65
ing it, if we believe that in the human char
acter of Jesus Christ we get the real and
express image of God who is His Father.
I am not now going to argue the abstract
principle ; but I would say to any one here who
feels a fundamental doubt on that subject, that
you may, and indeed you must, argue the matter
in your own mind, and you may get some
relief from argument ; but ultimately I believe
you will find that the real settlement of the
question lies only there where you confront
yourself deliberately and steadily with Jesus
Christ and hear His solemn affirmation that
He alone has the right and authority to speak
about the nature of God : "No man knoweth
the Father save the Son, and he to whomso
ever the Son willeth to reveal him." You
cannot fail to note that He continually empha
sises one thing as the supreme and all-essential
truth, and it is that God is the Father of all
alike, which is what S. John expresses in the
phrase that God is love. And I fancy there
are very few of us who can deliberately at the
last resort turn our backs on Jesus Christ and
say frankly " I do not believe you."
But, as I say, I am not here to-day to argue
that abstract question, but only to seek to show
you where lies the significance of the word of
66 Christian Moral Principles
Christ. Because undoubtedly, if this is the
truth if the ultimate law of the universe, the
law of the very being of God who made the
world, is love if that is creation s final law-
then every reasonable person must perceive
that he has one summary duty, which is to
correspond with the purpose of the world or
the summary law of nature. For the ultimate
folly is to be out of harmony with the funda
mental law of being. Every one knows that.
And just as lust or pride puts me out of
harmony with the purpose of the world, so
exactly in the same sense selfishness, class
narrowness, jealousy, malevolence, indifference
these things allowed to become charac
teristic of my life put me utterly out of
harmony with God and with His purposes
for me. Observe, indifference and selfishness
do this quite as much as active jealousy or
active hatred. Our Lord was at pains to
make that emphatic. It was indifference the
ignorant indifference of those who looked at
the suffering of the world and said it was not
their fault, which He so solemnly declared
would exclude men from His kingdom. "Lord,
when saw we thee sick or in prison and did
not minister unto thee?" And the Lord said
"Inasmuch as ye did it not unto one of the
Charity 67
least of these my brethren ye did it not unto
me. Depart ye cursed." Indifference or
selfishness, either the willingness to accept the
sufferings of others as a matter of course
which we can ignore, or the willingness to
treat any other human being as simply an
instrument of my convenience, puts me utterly
out of harmony with God, because the love of
God is not the mere abstinence from doing
mischief; it is an active, positive, and persis
tent quality which can never cease to seek and
save the lost or the miserable. In fact no one
can have any doubt about what the love of
God means if it is expressed in the character of
Jesus Christ, and if that is truly the law of the
world.
Thus the first beginning of real deliberate
Christian living is steadily to contemplate what
God is ; and to resolve that my life is going to
be deliberately so lived as to be in harmony
with God. Is our thought of heaven and hell ?
Well, heaven is communion with God ; and
hell is to be out of fellowship with God ; and
there is no possibility of evading the conclusion
that to suffer a character of selfishness to be
built up within me, or in that most expressive
phrase of Isaiah, to "hide myself from mine
own flesh " to let the natural advantages of
68 Christian Moral Principles
wealth or position screen me from the suffer
ings of the average man that is deliberately
to build up a character out of harmony with
God. Selfishness or indifference is hell self-
made within me. That is the truth ; and it is
a most momentous moment in my life when
I realize it. And on the other hand, the
acceptance of the Christian law of love is the
realization that I must be in harmony with
the law of the universe or the being of God,
and the being of God is love.
Let me go on to emphasize the breadth and
universality of this quality of divine love ;
because, as I said, in a sense we all love ;
we love our friends, our relations, our families;
we all have a natural sympathy with our class ;
there is a sphere within which we respond
easily to the demand of those who are about us.
But the point is that this sort of natural pre
dilection, natural love, is exclusive, it is
narrow ; it has natural sympathies and it has
natural antipathies, and it has almost indomit
able prejudices. There is nothing to choose
between class and class in this respect, or
between nation and nation ; they all have their
loves and they have their hatreds, their sym
pathies, and their suspicions. We talk a great
deal to-day about the conflict of capital and
Charity 69
labour. Who can say that one class is in this
respect any better than another class? Each
class has its natural prejudices. Their sym
pathies are narrow and sectional, like our
personal feelings towards one another there
are people we like and people we dislike ; and
it is this narrowness that distinguishes them
from the quality of divine love which has that
strange and masterful impartiality which will
admit of no restraint. That is the point. In
Jesus Christ there can be neither Jew nor
Gentile, neither male nor female, barbarian,
Scythian, bond nor free, because the principle
of Christ s dealings with men was to refuse
such limitations. That is apparent. The love
of God is impartial and universal ; there is no
single human being whom God created for any
other reason than because He loved him, and
truly wills his good, and proclaims him redeem
able, a possible son of God, made for sonship
and communion with Him. On that basis and
principle the Christian church was built.
I have said it often, and I will say it again :
the Christian church was in the early days
compelled by circumstances to show what it
meant by love and brotherhood in the sphere
of its common social and industrial life. In
those days Christianity was persecuted, dis-
70 Christian Moral Principles
liked, and distrusted ; and the fact that it was
so kept it pure. No one can have become a
Christian who was not prepared to suffer for
it. Thus, as you read in the Book of the
Revelation, they were boycotted by the indus
trial society about them. It was the will of
society that men should not buy or sell with
them. And moreover, they on their side
were compelled to stand apart, because they
found the whole industrial and social world
saturated with forms of idolatry from which
they kept themselves puritanically aloof; thus
they were thrown in upon themselves, and
were compelled to build up a social and indus
trial life of their own. And in spite of mani
fold moral failures they did it so impressively
that the world said with astonishment, "See
how these Christians love one another." For
the first time in human experience men saw
what a great organized brotherhood of men
of all kinds and classes really meant. They
had their maxims or principles of social
organization. First, that every man must be
a worker: " if a man will not work," they said,
"neither let him eat"; secondly, that every
man who would work had his full claim to
maintenance, his full and equal claim to the
conditions of a man s true life. So the Chris-
Charity 71
tian church set itself to find work for all its
members ; and if it could not find a man work,
or if a man was too ill or too old to work, it
found him maintenance. And thirdly, that it
might have means to do this, it laid it down as
the law of justice that no one had any right to
retain for himself more than was necessary for
his own proper support and that of his family ;
so that the rest of his possessions must go for
those who had nothing and who could not
otherwise be provided for. Thus there was
built up a society in which the rich became
poorer, and the poor became richer, and every
member recognized the claim upon him of
every other ; and the world saw the marvel
lous sight and said, " See how these Christians
love one another."
Now we know something of the vicissitudes
through which the church has passed since the
days when it became fashionable to be a Chris
tian and there was no longer any selective
principle to keep it pure. In particular we
know how after the Reformation in England,
when ecclesiastical authority had been almost
destroyed among us that is the authority and
tradition of the whole catholic society there
built itself up in England and in other countries
an industrial system in the making of which
72 Christian Moral Principles
Christian principles had been allowed no say ;
a system which was based confessedly on the
then dominant philosophy of selfishness, that
is upon the principle that man is naturally an
acquisitive animal and that industrial society
must be based upon the principle of selfish
acquisitiveness. It was supposed that you have
only to set free this acquisitive principle in free
competition, and you will build up a society
which will be progressive and (it was supposed)
free, on the basis of free competition. For a
long time we were quite triumphantly pleased
with this ideal, and with its results. Now we
have been disillusioned. You can hardly read
any careful thinker to-day without seeing how
far this disillusionment has gone. You can
hardly speak to a thoughtful business man who
will not tell you that industry cannot go on on
the basis of this everlasting conflict between
competing interests and between capital and
labour organized as natural enemies. Our
statesmen tell us exactly the same thing about
international life that we cannot go on upon
the basis of the irreconcilable conflict between
nations, each pursuing its own selfish end. So
we found our schemes for a new fellowship
among nations, and men dream of a new
industrial society which shall be based on the
Charity 73
fundamental principle of the equal spiritual
value of every single human soul, and upon
the universal duty of work and the service
of the whole community by each of its
members.
But we are also painfully conscious that we
have no means of effecting the difficult transi
tion from the one basis of social organization to
the other. We contemplate the future with
the gravest alarm. Men s heads are failing
them for fear. Our civilization, as we read
almost every day, is in the balance. Can the
desired transition be effected without a revolu
tion, we ask? And if the revolution occurs,
what will it lead to?
I have recalled to your minds these anxious
questionings of to-day only because I want you
to see that the real question is whether men in
sufficient numbers in every land and in every
class will agree to live by the divine law. The
root of all our trouble is that we have sub
stituted for the divine law, "Thou shalt love thy
neighbour as thyself," a quite opposite maxim
or set of maxims as the basis of our industrial
and our international life. The question whether
the structure of our civilization is to totter and
fall seems to me to be at bottom the question
whether men will return to recognize and seek
74 Christian Moral Principles
to obey the law of God, or how many men
in our society which calls itself Christian will
seriously do this. If not, as the prophets and
our Lord tell us, we must fall under judgement.
But of course it is not merely a public ques
tion ; it is a private question also. S. John
would have us test ourselves rigidly in the
matter ; and my sincerity is to be tested not
by my abstract assertion of principles but by
my manner of dealing with individuals in want
or those whom I do not like, or those who have
done me some serious wrong. For observe it
is a matter of act or will and not of feeling.
Love, I say, is of the will or heart. I under
stand that some one has done me a wrong.
But do I take pains to understand what God s
thought and intention is for him, and what God
would have him be? If so, I may have to be
severe, but the severity will be utterly purged
from the motive of revenge or the desire to see
him suffer. It will become simply an expres
sion of the pure goodwill of God. I must think
it out ; I must be quite deliberate. When I
have forgotten myself and fallen into the old
bad failings of temper and spite, I shall think it
out again. And in the long run your feelings
will follow your will. In the long run, although
it may not be until after many years, you will
Charity 75
feel towards a person as you deliberately choose
to act towards him.
And then, lastly, I am to see the principle of
love as it is set before us in Jesus Christ. I see
in His life and teaching that love means active
service according to my opportunities ; that I
must eradicate out of the very foundations of
my being the idea that I am justified in living
to enjoy myself. In the same way I must seek
to eradicate it out of the heart of my family, as
far as I am able to do so. I sin if I allow boys
or girls of mine to grow up with the idea that
to enjoy themselves may naturally be the
governing motive of their lives because they
belong to a privileged or wealthy class. I am
sinning the deadliest sin if I let myself or as
far as lies in me let any other fashion life on
that principle of living for enjoyment. I live
for service. Do you say that that is a gloomy
view of life, because service to Jesus meant
sacrifice, meant suffering ? Well, I fully acknow
ledge that it is a tremendous thing to recognize
that we are to take up our cross and follow
Him. He does not guarantee us against suffer
ing, even the extremest suffering. By this we
are to mark the reality of our service, that we
are ready to suffer even to the death. And
I suppose this sounds less strange now than it
76 Christian Moral Principles
did before the war. We learnt again in that
particular sphere, what war is so powerful
to teach, that service does mean sacrifice.
"Greater love hath no man than this, that a
man lay down his life for his friends." But it
is comparatively easy to learn that in war ; it is
extraordinarily difficult to learn it in peace.
But I entirely refuse to admit that the view
of life as service is a gloomy view : and also,
without depreciating the quality of suffering,
I am quite sure that we think wrongly, if we
allow ourselves in any way to be tinged with
what is a purely pessimistic and not a Christian
doctrine, that there is any value in pain for its
own sake. If you look at the life of Jesus
Christ you will notice the fact that out of the
thirty-three years of his mortal life thirty years
were passed in what I suppose was human
happiness. He lived in a happy, well-to-do
home amidst friends. There is no note of
grave suffering suggested to us with regard to
these thirty years. I know what that great
book of the Imitation of Christ says, that He
was never for one hour without the pangs of
His Passion. But I cannot see the slightest
ground for that statement. I say that, as far as
we have any reason to know, thirty years of
those thirty-three years of His mortal life were
Charity 77
passed in natural simple happiness. Moreover,
He never appears as seeking pain, with perhaps
two slight exceptions. He did fast, it is recorded,
forty days and forty nights. And He did refuse
the drugged wine which was offered to criminals
before their crucifixion, choosing to have all
His human faculties about Him during that
supreme suffering. But with these two excep
tions I think I may defy you to find any sign
in our Lord s life that He sought pain for its
own sake.
The pain of Jesus deepening into anguish,
deepening into the Gross, came solely out of
the double root of obedient service and sym
pathy. He set Himself to obey without com
promise the will of the Father who had sent
Him. He set Himself to service the ser
vice of every one of His brethren, and He set
Himself to sympathy. He spread out all the
broad spaces of His human heart that men
might lay their suffering and needs upon it.
The suffering that came upon Him came purely,
simply, and inevitably out of that obedience
and service and sympathy in the world as He
found it. And that is the law that I would set
before every child the desire of service, the
willingness to serve, the self-equipment for ser
vice. But there are none of us too old to learn
78 Christian Moral Principles
it. Granted the resolute will of obedience, the
resolute self-equipment for service, granted a
large-heartedness of sympathy which refuses to
be bound by the limits of family or class, then,
I say, there will be abundant joy in life. Indeed
a well of fresh-springing joy has been opened,
and it will be in the providence of God to settle
how much of suffering and how great acuteness
of suffering shall come upon us. That there
will be suffering there is no doubt. The mark
of suffering is the mark of Christ ; and yet
what we seek is not suffering, it is service ;
but when the suffering comes we shall be
ready for it.
The point from which I began and at which
1 end is the challenge that Christ offers to you
that you should organize your life to co-operate
with the wide love of God, and not let it drift.
Let it drift, and it will drift upon the lines of
selfishness and class narrowness, tempered no
doubt with wider emotions, but always domi
nated by the old narrow current. Organize
your life then on the basis on which every
reasonable man must desire to organize it
that is the basis of the mind of God ; and you
know what God is, as you see Him in the
face of Jesus Christ. The mind of God, the
mind of Him who made and rules the world,
Charity 79
is the mind of love that is universal and with
out qualifications ; and in this and no other
way shall all men know that we are children
of God and Christ s disciples, if we have love
one to another.
VI
THE USE OF MONEY
"And Jesus looked round about, and saith unto his dis
ciples, How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the
kingdom of God ! And the disciples were amazed at his
words. But Je-us answereth again, and saith unto thcm
Children, how hard is it [for them that trust in riches] 1 to
enter into the kingdom of God ! It is easier for a camel to go
through a needle s eye, than for a rich man to enter into the
kingdom of God. And they were astonished exceedingly,
saying unto him, Then who can be saved? Jesus looking
upon them saith, With men it is impossible, but not with
God : for all things are possible with God. Peter began to
say unto him, Lo, we have left all, and have followed thce.
Jesus said, Verily I say unto you, There is no man that hath
left house, or brethren, or sisters, or mother, or father, or
children, or lands, for my sake, and for the gospel s sake, but
he shall receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses, and
brethren, and sisters, and mothers, and children, and lands,
with persecutions ; and in the world to come eternal life.
But many that are first shall be last ; and the last first." -
S. Mark x. 23-31.
The Christian use of money is a difficult
subject. I am not going to talk to you about
political measures or schemes of industrial or
social reconstruction. 1 am going to try and
speak to you solely about the attitude of the
Christian soul towards money. And what I
1 The words in brackets arc doubtful.
80
The Use of Money 81
desire of you as you listen and think is purely
and simply this as unprejudiced and detached
an attitude as possible ; that is the disposition
of people who honestly desire above all things
to be real and faithful disciples of Jesus Christ.
We cannot read the Bible, Old Testament or
New Testament, honestly without becoming
conscious that there is therein a tremendous
suspicion of being rich ; a tremendous suspicion
of riches as such ; though the Old Testament
and the New Testament are different. There is
a great deal of truth in the saying that prosperity
is the blessing of the Old Testament and adver
sity of the New. In the Old Testament there is
at least one strand which takes prosperity and
wealth, national and personal, to be the mark
of the divine blessing. And you have in the
Old Testament plenty of good rich men with
the blessing of God on them. Abraham, Boaz
the landowner, Job at the beginning of his
story and at the end : for the author insists on
making him rich again at the end. And there
is that wonderful picture of the rich woman
householder in the last chapter of the Book
of Proverbs, "who openeth her mouth with
wisdom, and the law of kindness is on her
tongue, who looketh well to the ways of her
household, and eateth not the bread of idle-
G
82 Christian Moral Principles
ness." Nevertheless there is another strand ;
there is in the prophets a profound suspicion
of wealth and its effects. So in the social law
which is contained in the Pentateuch you find
the main object of great groups of regulations
is to protect the poor from the rapacity of the
rich. That, you may say, is stamped upon the
social law of Israel among its main objects.
Thus you find laid down the obligation of the
Sabbatical year, that is every seventh year,
when the fields were to lie fallow and their
natural produce was to be free for the poor,
and when debts were to be remitted. And you
have the jubilee year every fiftieth year when
almost all property was to return to its original
owners.
It is very difficult to say how far these laws
were actually enforced or obeyed ; plainly over
long periods they were quite ignored ; so that
you get in the Prophets and Psalms page after
page of terrible denunciation of the rich of
the people who desire to enlarge their proper
ties at all cost, to "add house to house and
field to field," who "hide themselves from their
own flesh," that is, seek to be exempt from the
ordinary sufferings of their fellow men ; and
their greediness, their oppressiveness, their
grinding of the faces of the poor, and their
The Use of Money 83
luxury are denounced, as you know, scathingly
and mercilessly, and they are held up as the
main objects of divine judgement, remorseless
and terrible.
Further when you come to the New Testa
ment and ask about the teaching of our Lord,
you find this same suspicion of wealth as such.
Our Lord chose His disciples, or apostles,
among the poor ; and He looked round on
them and said " Blessed are ye poor ; woe unto
the rich." We must not misunderstand His
words. He had chosen His disciples among
what we should call well-to-do workers. There
was nothing sordid or servile about their con
dition. They were independent fishermen,
many of them, of the Lake of Galilee, owning
their own boats, some of them having their own
hired servants, living a hard-working life of
manual labour, but reaping the produce of their
own labour ; leading lives without any element
in them of servility or dependence on any one
else, in frugal comfort, as we should suppose,
without fear or favour of superiors anything
but a servile condition of poverty. And then
they had made what was the great abandon
ment. They had given up all they had to
become the disciples of Christ, and they moved
about with Him, but still in no servile or sordid
84 Christian Moral Principles
position. They had now no property ; they
lived upon what people gave them those to
whom they preached the kingdom or what
was brought by that little band of women who
accompanied them and ministered to them of
their resources. If you go to India you would
still find that an almost normal phenomenon
is that of the teacher, a religious man moving
about among the people, without property or
supplies, and gladly and willingly supported
by those among whom he moves. There was
nothing servile, then, about their condition.
But certainly our Lord had a suspicion
of wealth ; He had a suspicion of whatever
allowed people to feel themselves a privileged
class, or conduced to their regarding them
selves as exceptional people who counted
in God s sight for more than their fellows.
So he had a suspicion of the learned class ;
but it expressed itself more often concerning
the rich class. They would be the people
who would instinctively feel that they were
a privileged class, and that other people were
to work for them ; and it is upon that kind
of feeling that He pours His tremendous
irony. There are no two utterances of our
Lord more tremendous than the parable of the
Rich Fool and the parable of the Rich Man
The Use of Money 85
and Lazarus. There is nothing nearer to
contempt to be found in our Lord s words. I
wonder how many of you have read the famous
sermon preached in All Saints , Margaret
Street, not far from here, by Dr. Pusey about
fifty-six years ago on "Why did Dives lose
his soul?" There was no more startling ser
mon preached in the process of the Tractarian
Revival, and it ought not to be allowed to
perish. It spoke nothing but the truth. So
it was that our Lord welcomed continually
manifest and open surrenders of wealth.
That is what He suggested to the rich young
man, who went away saddened thereby and
reluctant. He proposed to him that he should
give up all that he had and follow Him ; and,
short of that, you remember how the rich man
Zaccheus, who held the obnoxious position of
publican or farmer of the Roman taxes, when
he was converted and subdued by his nearness
to our Lord, stood out and made public pro
fession of what he was going to do in the future.
"Behold, Lord, from henceforth I give half of
all I make to the poor ; and if I can find in the
past any wrong that I have done to any man,
I hereby declare my intention to restore it four
fold." And this hearty act of renunciation
Jesus met with His emphatic benediction. He
86 Christian Moral Principles
loved these acts of renunciation, and He re
quired the like act of renunciation from those
who were to be His apostles. So when you
move forward out of the Gospels into the Acts
still you find these constant acts of renunciation.
It is the habitual atmosphere. So great is the
spirit of brotherhood that they had all things in
common. There was no legislation to that
effect ; it was entirely voluntary. But these
acts by which people sold their property and
brought the produce and laid it at the apostles
feet for general distribution were common.
You go on and you think about the teaching
of S. Paul. S. Paul is not at all a communist ;
he knows how to abound as well as how to
lack. It is very difficult to resist the impression
that S. Paul was well off in the latter part of his
life, as we should use the words well off. But
yet he is very severe concerning wealth. He
says quite at the end of his life that " godliness
with contentment is great gain, for we brought
nothing into the world, neither can we carry
anything out." What does it matter, then,
whether we lose it or keep it ? What we
want is the spirit of being content with little
really content and satisfied. "Having food
and covering we shall be therewith content.
But they that desire to be rich fall into a
The Use of Money 87
temptation and a snare and into many foolish
and hurtful lusts, such as drown men in per
dition. For the love of money is a root of all
kinds of evil . . . therefore charge men that are
rich in this world that they be not high-minded
nor have their hope set on the uncertainty of
riches, but on God, who giveth us all things
richly to enjoy . . . that they be ready to dis
tribute, willing to communicate."
If you go forward again out of New Testa
ment times into the times that followed, and
study the atmosphere of the early Christian
Fathers which I sought to describe to you
last Sunday, you will find a tremendous claim
laid on wealth. There is a recognition of the
law of private property as a necessary condi
tion in the world necessary in its fallen
condition, necessary in a world of sin. But
this law of private property is to be over
shadowed by the law and principle of justice ;
and the law and principle of justice is that
every man has a duty and right to work and
to receive support adequate to his need ; " from
each according to his capacity to each according
to his need." And the people who have more
than they need, and hold it back from those who
have less than they need who refuse to dis
tribute are not merely uncharitable, but they
88 Christian Moral Principles
fail to follow the law of justice, and the Fathers
do not scruple to say that they steal what they
selfishly withhold. That is the spirit of the
Fathers.
Now let us pass over the whole intermediate
time and think of our condition as we know it
to-day. In the early days they were quite full
of the principle that covetousness and the
Greek word means simply the love of getting,
the mere desire to get more, the desire to be
rich covetousness is idolatry ; it has taken the
place, that is, of the old desire to worship
idols. There was substituted for that literal
idolatry the worship of mammon ; the placing
of wealth in that position in the heart where
God, His will, His love, and His justice ought
to reign alone. Govetousness is idolatry. But
now think of our tradition. This desire to be
rich, (Is it not the plain truth ?) instead of being
in our minds as one of the chiefest of sins, has
come to be regarded as one of the most natural
and legitimate of all desires, and the becoming
rich up to the limit of his powers and oppor
tunity as the normal ambition of every man ?
I do not think I can be said to be exaggerating.
We have consecrated the very thing which is
denounced in the first days. It is honour,
instead of pity and contempt, with which we
The Use of Money 89
have surrounded the ambition to get rich.
I do not think it is possible to deny this ; and it
is a tremendous ethical change.
Or again, if you look at our law the law
which was built up during the period which is
generally called the great industrial epoch, and
which still more or less holds its ground you
are struck by one thing : that it enormously
accentuates the law of private property,
making it as unrestricted as possible, as against
the protection of persons, which is much less
carefully guarded. It is remarkably the op
posite of the law of the Jews in that respect ;
its main motive is the protection of property
rather than the protection of persons. If you
think it out, I fancy you will find that this is
indisputable. And the result has been a condi
tion of society in which is presented a vast gulf
between the rich and the poor. And in the
condition of the poor, mark you, the main
cause of misery and disaster has been, not so
much the actual amount of wages received, as
the sense of dependence upon others, and the
consequent insecurity and continual dread of
unemployment. If you know anything about
those whom we call "the workers" you will
always find that at the heart of their discon
tent, and their reasonable discontent, is that
90 Christian Moral Principles
profound sense of insecurity. And everybody
is agreed that the condition of things as we
have it now, and the consequent spirit of
hostility in which the different classes face
one another to-day, is so profoundly disastrous
as to threaten the very basis of our civilization.
Well now, I do not want to leave this matter
without practical suggestions. As I say, I am
not going to talk about laws or methods of
industrial reconstruction ; but what I want to
ask for from you is a certain disposition or
deliberate attitude of mind on this subject of
wealth, and to ask it in the name of Christ.
1. First, I would ask that it should be frankly
recognized that to live and to enjoy one s self
in idleness on the toil of others is a totally
illegitimate position. Of course I recognize
to the full that there are many different kinds
of labour, and that the owner of property who
really manages his property is labouring ; and
a man who thinks and studies and writes is
labouring quite as truly as any one else and
quite as hard ; and a woman who manages
a household or brings up a family is doing
the noblest kind of work. By all means let
us broaden our sense of what work means.
Nevertheless, "if a man will not work neither
let him eat." No man or woman grown to
The Use of Money 91
maturity has a right to eat his dinner or her
dinner unless he or she earns it ; unless he or
she feels honestly "I have done the work
which deserves this dinner ; I am a worker
who is receiving my necessary sustenance."
Now I believe it would be an immense trans
formation of our society if the children of
what we call the upper classes had this truth
ingrained into them. I do not so much mean
by particular lessons given to the young
though such lessons might well be given as
by the whole assumption of society ; because
as I look back upon my own school days, I
feel that any such assumption was infinitely
remote. We had, most of us, no doubt at all
that we were a class for whom other people
were to work and who were to enjoy ourselves
to the best of our opportunities. We too
might have to work : nevertheless there was
no doubt that we were going out into life to get
as much enjoyment as we could, and that, as
a matter of course, other people were to work
for us. And I do not think that spirit is at all
dead, and it requires very fundamental eradica
tion. Every boy and girl must be taught that
he must justify his existence by labour profit
able to society, and any one who fails to do this
should be made ashamed of himself.
Christian Moral Principles
2. Then, secondly, I am sure that we need
to make a great effort of detachment from
wealth, and to learn again the old Christian
fear of being rich. We must revive the belief
that if we have got what is necessary for our
maintenance as far as we are concerned food
and covering, and the necessities of healthy
life we have got all that we can reasonably
claim. " Having food and covering let us be
therewith content." There may be more laid
upon us. We may have larger responsibilities ;
we may have riches ; but we must cut our
selves free from the desire to be rich. And
there would follow, no doubt, from that new
attitude towards wealth what our society
greatly needs that is public instances of the
voluntary abandonment of possessions. There
are perhaps more instances amongst us to-day
of such abandonment of wealth and property,
where it can legitimately be renounced, than
people are aware of; but there is no public
opinion that welcomes them and rejoices in
them. That is what we need; then they would
be both more abundant and would produce
more spiritual effect. Of course there will
remain many people who have the responsi
bilities of property and wealth, and who cannot
renounce them. Nevertheless it would be
The Use of Money 93
a great thing if we were detached. Our
Lord said, "Blessed are ye poor"; that is
those who really and voluntarily have nothing
of their own ; but besides that He said,
"Blessed are the poor in spirit"; that is
those who are detached from money and the
desire for money.
3. And then, thirdly, we need to think
fundamentally about the meaning of justice
and about the relation of justice to the rights of
property. Justice is a divine thing ; it means
a certain equality among men : not equality of
faculty or equality of position or status, but
a fundamental equality none the less. It
means the equal right of every single man
and woman to have the opportunity to make
the best of himself or herself. That is a very
radical proposition ; yet I am sure that the
great Christian church has been right in its
best days, in finding here the real principle
of justice in the sight of God, before whom
certainly every man counts for one and no
one counts for more than one. This principle
is no enemy to the rights of property in a
certain sense. Christianity is not communistic.
I cannot conceive a healthy society without
private property for use ; that indeed seems to
me to be involved in the independence and
94 Christian Moral Principles
nobility of the individual life. But an almost
unrestricted right of property is a very different
thing ; and I do claim that our almost un
restricted right of property is hostile to a
very fundamental Christian principle. I used,
thirty years ago, to have more to do than I
have now with certain attempts to reform or
rebuild slum property. The unrestricted right
of a man to keep property which was injurious
and simply a source of widespread degradation
seemed to me then and still seems to me to
be an intolerable evil. And yet not only was
that right practically unrestricted, but you
could not even find out who the people were
who owned the property in the various stages
of ownership. They could effectually conceal
themselves. Again, that what is confessedly a
dangerous trade, like the trade in intoxicating
drinks, should be allowed to pursue its way
with so little regard to what is obviously the
public interest, but simply for private profit
that I think is a fundamental and disastrous
betrayal of the welfare of society.
We need to reconstruct our whole concep
tion of the right of private property so as to see
that it ought confessedly to be restricted and
limited by the general interest. Perhaps we
have improved in this matter of late years,
The Use of Money 95
but there is a great deal of room for im
provement still. We need to feel again, with
a quite fresh vividness, that the welfare and
dignity of persons, the value of every single
human life, ought to be a prior object in the
eye of the law as compared with the right of
property. Money, in fact, is a trust and a re
sponsibility before God for the general good.
Thus I am quite sure that no Christian ought
to be able to invest his money in any concern,
without a very bad conscience, unless he has
done his best to assure himself that that in
which he proposes to invest it is for the public
good. Nor can his responsibility end there.
His conscience ought not to allow him to
retain money in investments without, up to
the limits of his power, ascertaining from time
to time that his money is being rightly used,
and taking what measures he can to protest,
if he have reason to believe that it is not
being used for the common good. I have in
my own small experience found out that even
insignificant shareholders can do something by
protest, though they represent but a small
body of opinion. The point is that we cannot
make or retain an investment without respon
sibility for the use, as regards the general
welfare, that it is being put to.
96 Christian Moral Principles
What a tremendous injunction it is that our
Lord lays upon us in that parable of the
Unrighteous Steward, where He studies the
wisdom of the unscrupulous world, and bids the
children of light to imitate it for their own
purposes. " Make to yourselves friends out of
the mammon of unrighteousness " that is out
of money which is generally being used for bad
ends, " that when it fail, they may receive you
into the eternal tabernacles." Use your money
in such a spirit as to make to yourself friends in
eternity who shall welcome you into everlasting
tabernacles ! That is an astonishingly searching
maxim for the use of money.
I ask you, then, to think of those three
points : the absolute and peremptory duty of
every one to work for his living, in some
line of profitable labour bodily, mental, or
spiritual ; the duty of detachment from the
love of wealth and contentment with the neces
saries of life ; and the realization of the law of
justice as overshadowing the rights of private
property and directing our responsibility for
the use of our wealth.
Looking out over the surface of society to
day we all recognize the extraordinary peril
with which our civilization is threatened,
and that through the pursuit and use and
The Use of Money 97
distribution of wealth, unregulated by the
motives which Christ, our Master, would
make effective. It is in His presence we
get and spend. It is to His searching judge
ment that we are subjected. And I am sure
that we can best serve as well the interests
of our society as the welfare of our own souls
by a very diligent exercise of our steward-
ship as in His sight.
H
VII
THE RIGHT SELF-LOVE
"Or are ye ignorant that all we who were baptized into
Christ Jesus were baptized into his death ? . . . For the
death that he died, he died unto sin once: but the life that he
liveth, he liveth unto God. Even so reckon ye yourselves to
be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God in Christ Jesus.
Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye
should obey the lusts thereof." Romans vi. 3, and 10-12.
It is the fashion at the present moment to
disparage the religious anxiety to save our own
souls. The hope of heaven and the fear of hell
are by our modern prophets widely decried or
disparaged as selfish and unworthy motives.
But this is really neither scriptural nor sen
sible, because after all there is a right kind of
self-love. I never like the modern substitution
of " selflessness " for unselfishness. For the self
is a divine reality, and we are bound to preserve
it. The golden rule is "thou shalt love thy
neighbour" not instead of thyself but "as
thyself." In fact the instinct of self-preserva
tion is not a sin or a defect, but a fundamental
and God-given instinct, inherent in everything
that has life, and most of all in that which
98
The right Self-love 99
has the highest kind of life in the soul or
self of man. And if it be possible, as our
Lord so solemnly and repeatedly warns us
that it is if it be possible by wilfulness, care
lessness and sin fundamentally to ruin our
very selves, our very fundamental being, and
if hell means the state of those who have
thus finally and fundamentally ruined them
selves, there must come over any one who
chooses to think a shivering horror at the
awful possibility which lies before him a
horror which must, by the very constitution
of human nature, become a motive for avoiding
with all deliberate care the kinds of action
which lead to self-ruin. Moreover, all experi
ence shows us that it is only this care for our
own souls which can enable us to fulfil our
function in society. How many public careers,
which might in greater or smaller degree have
been careers of public usefulness, have been
destroyed by private sins ! How many under
takings, which might serve a useful purpose,
are baffled and sometimes rendered impossible
by the private jealousies, obstinacies, uncharit-
ablenesses, ambitions of this or that individual !
S. Paul was quite right, when he was exalting
the glorious privilege of being a fellow worker
with God, to go on at once to speak of being
100 Christian Moral Principles
studious to avoid private sins, of giving dili
gence that his ministry be not blamed, lest his
service of God be thwarted by obstacles inter
posed by his own defects. From every point
of view we need the most diligent care of our
own souls, for truly our own soul is a trust.
Do you remember those poignant verses of
John Henry Newman, at the head of which
he inscribes "the zeal of Jehu"?
" Thou to wax fierce in the cause of the Lord,
To threat and to pierce with the heavenly sword ;
Anger and zeal and the joy of the brave,
Who bade thee to feel, sin s slave?
The altar s pure flame consumes as it soars ;
Faith meetly may blame, for it serves and adores.
Thou warnest and smitest ! yet Christ must atone
For a soul that thou slightest thine own." 1
It is very hard to be a good Christian. We
inherit, so the Christian doctrine tells us, a
fallen nature. I will not enlarge upon that,
save by saying that all experience seems to
verify the doctrine. It is not only progress
we need but redemption ; and our redemption
was purchased for us at a tremendous price.
Not with corruptible things such as silver and
gold were we redeemed, but by something of
inconceivable value, even by the precious blood
1 Lyra Aftostolica, Ixvi. This volume seems to me to let us
into the secret of the Tractarians more fully than any other.
The right Self-love 101
of Him who sacrificed Himself that we might
live. How can we then take our salvation
lightly? Surely we must, as S. Peter says,
"pass the time of our sojourning here in
fear."
I am now going to speak of this zealous care
for our own souls from one point of view : a
point of view which in any series of sermons
which professes to deal with Christian moral
principles cannot be avoided ; I mean the sexual
appetites of mankind. I daresay if we knew
each other better we should know that we are
all equally tempted in one respect or in another,
taking all temptations into view. But certainly
with regard to this particular temptation we
are not all tempted equally. Nevertheless the
average man and woman in all classes of society
is warned by many experiences that these sexual
appetites, which in the providence of God
belong to our nature and are His appointed
means for the propagation of our race these
appetites are a tremendously unruly element in
our being as it stands. And to-day we cannot
read a newspaper without perceiving that there
is a widespread rebellion in all classes of society
against the Christian standard of sexual purity.
The old-fashioned ignoring of the subject was
a very poor substitute for innocency. It is a
102 Christian Moral Principles
poor thing, which contrasts very strangely with
the open-eyed recognition of facts which we
find in the Bible or in Shakespeare. It is
indeed perilous to seek to ignore what every
grown person knows to be actually going on
behind whatever veils of respectability we may
throw over it. But at the present day such
silence, such ignoring, is no longer anywhere
possible. Like a treacherous crust on the
surface of a volcano it has broken and let us
through. No one can read the newspapers
without his eyes finding themselves face to face
with widespread rebellion against the Christian
standard of what we commonly call morality. 1
Let me name quite simply three points.
S. Paul, when he wrote his epistle to the Cor
inthians, was writing to people who inhabited
what was, I dare say, the most notoriously
sensual of the cities of the world. In the place
1 I notice that Lord Mersey, sitting in the Divorce Court,
has recently been exposing the claim of "the innocent party"
to be called by such a name in the great majority of cases.
"I have a strong opinion that these men have nearly all mis
conducted themselves." And he declared that " it is not in
human nature " for men to keep straight, when they are
separated from their wives. On this the Evening News
remarks, "Such a view as that expressed by Lord Mersey
will afford small help indeed to a man who may be hesitating
on the verge of what not only the Churches but civilized
society regards as sin. It would be well did all such remem
ber that their record will come before a greater Judge than
the ex-President of the Divorce Court."
The right Self-love 103
whence he came to Corinth, that is, the famous
city of Athens, he found himself in a city
wholly given to idolatry ; but when he came
to Corinth he found himself in a city wholly
given to lust. And you remember how he
writes to them about the almost universal sin
of fornication. He refers to it as a thing which
every one who names the name of Christ must
regard as a fundamental outrage upon Him to
whom he belongs. Now I ask you to contrast
with this horror of S. Paul the ordinary assump
tions in any class of our society to-day as
reflected in common talk or in popular litera
ture, and you will not think I am exaggerating
when I speak of a widespread revolt amongst
us against the Christian standard of purity, and
acknowledge a widespread denial of the very
possibility of that which S. Paul affirms to be
a primary necessity for any one who bears the
name of Christian.
Or take the law of marriage. S. Paul is our
earliest witness of what our Lord taught with
regard to marriage, and he surely is quite
explicit. It admits in certain extreme cases of
separation ; but not of remarriage while both
partners live. So S. Mark, so S. Luke, record
our Lord s teaching. I am aware, of course,
of the apparent exception introduced into the
104 Christian Moral Principles
text of the Gospel of S. Matthew, and though
I cannot doubt that our Lord taught the indis-
solubility of marriage without exception, yet I
cannot deny that what seems to be the reason
able interpretation of S. Matthew justifies any
national church in adopting the allowance of
that single exception. But it does not in any
way satisfy the demands of our contemporary
society; it does not satisfy even our present
civil law. I am not now concerned with what
may be possible in any civil society which is
not really anxious to maintain its Christian
loyalty. I am speaking only of the law for
Christians. I say, then, that the law of indis
soluble marriage is proclaimed by our earliest
witnesses in the New Testament ; it was the
law of the primitive church ; it has been the
law of the Western church throughout ; it is
still the law of our own part of the church,
unrepealed and unmistakable, and the pre
sumption of our marriage service. And yet
you know how widespread is the rebellion
against this severe law in contemporary society.
One other point I must mention. The Bible,
reflecting the healthy instincts of mankind,
glorifies and rejoices in the large family. The
current view of such a family as an intolerable
burden is not a healthy view. I think history
The right Self-love 105
bears witness that the ridicule of fertile parent
hood so prevalent to-day is a sign of national
declension and decadence. 1 We cannot doubt
what would have been the mind and language
of S. Paul, nay, may I not say with reverence ?
what would have been the mind and language
of our Lord, if they had been face to face with
that misuse of science which to-day provides
men and women with artificial preventives of
what the Bible, and indeed the healthy instinct
of humanity at large, proclaims to be among
God s greatest blessings. I know, of course,
that the complexities of modern society have
introduced great difficulties into the following
out of the Christian law of pure living both by
hindering marriage and supplying motives for
the restriction of the family. I cannot now
dwell further upon the subject ; but I should
like to ask you to make yourselves acquainted
with the solemn and sane words which were
spoken by the Lambeth Conference of Bishops
last year in that part of their report which deals
with this particular subject. 2 I would have you
read both the report of the Committee which
1 The recent census in France shows that the population
has so decreased that the present Chamber of Deputies
should be reduced by ninety members, i.e. on the basis
of one member for every 75,000 inhabitants.
2 The Report, published by S.P.G.K., has had, I believe,
on enormous sale.
106 Christian Moral Principles
dealt with marriage and sexual problems and
the resolutions passed by the whole body of
assembled bishops, resolutions eminently worthy
of their high office.
I have spoken of the control of our sexual
appetites which the service of our Lord requires
of us because it is a manifest difficulty, never
felt more acutely than to-day. But our Lord
will not let us think that sensuality is worse
than uncharitableness or pride or jealousy,
which are to be ranked, like sensual sins, among
the works of the flesh which we are bound to
mortify. To live a really Christian life, what
ever be the particular nature of our own per
sonal temptations, is undoubtedly a difficult
thing. But, after all, the hardship and difficulty
of the Way is not the prevalent thought of the
New Testament. The sense of hardship is
swallowed up in the sense of joy and power and
courage of which the New Testament is full.
The characteristic of the Christian life is
liberty. " If the Son maketh you free, ye shall
be free indeed." "Where the spirit is Lord,
there is liberty." 1 And, as almost all serious
moralists have told us, liberty means something
much more than the absence of external con-
1 2 Cor. iii. 17. I believe, with Hort and Chase, that this
translation probably represents the original text.
The right Self-love 107
straint, and something quite different from
doing what we please. To do what we please
is to surrender ourselves to our appetites : and
that leads not to liberty, but, as common lan
guage warns us, to slavery to our lower nature.
That man is certainly not free whose higher
nature his will and reason is dragged at the
chariot wheels of his lusts and passions. Free
dom means the power to realize our true being
the power to be what we ought, which is
what the Bible means by saving our souls. This
is the liberty with which Christ has made us
free. In the power of His Spirit I can be what
I ought. And the more habitually I remember
God ; the more habitually I think of Christ who
died for me and gives Himself wholly to me in
His holy sacrament to renew me, flesh and
spirit alike, after His likeness ; the more habitu
ally I think of His Spirit dwelling in me
the easier it will be to overcome temptation.
Indeed there is no moment of temptation, how
ever acute, when, if I will deliberately turn
to God in Christ, and invoke His Spirit who
makes my body His temple crying out in my
heart " Holy Spirit, help me " I shall not find
that Holy Spirit s help given me to control my
wrong impulses and pour into my heart the
sense of redeeming power.
108 Christian Moral Principles
The fact is, so many men live habitually with
out the sense of God, and are then full of
complaints that the Christian standard is impos
sibly high. It is high but possible ; but it is
possible only if we will steadily face the fact
that we can live to the true only by deliberately
dying to the false.
Christ died to sin, S. Paul says. He deliber
ately refused it and turned His back upon it.
That is why the world of sin put Him to death.
His death upon the Cross was a death to sin.
But thus dying to sin He lives to God. And
that law of living through dying living in the
true life by dying to the false is the law for
Christians, as it was the law of Christ s own
life. The only way to live the life that is life
indeed is to die to the life which disfigures, dis
honours, and corrupts our manhood. Even
Goethe, though I fear his life was apt to belie
his words, yet, intellectually at least, perceived
the necessary law.
" Stirb und werde !
Gar, so lang du das nicht hast,
Bist du nur ein triibe Gast
Auf der dunkeln Erdc."
" Die to live ! for so long as thou hast not that,
thou art but a troubled stranger upon the
gloomy earth."
The~right Self-love 109
In this Holy Week you are looking to the
Cross. There you see the figure of your great
example in whose steps you would walk ; there
you see the sinfulness of sin which crucified
Him ; there you see the perfect sacrifice which
has won for us the forgiveness of our sins, that
is the constant opportunity for a fresh start,
free from all the taint and burden of the past ;
and there also you see, as S. Paul teaches you,
the law of your new life. Die to live. And
the more deliberately you accept that law, the
more resolutely you turn your back upon false
ideals of life and welcome with all your soul
the "life which is life indeed," the more you
will feel the power of the Spirit of Jesus to give
you liberty.
APPENDIX
THE TEN COMMANDMENTS IN THE
CHRISTIAN CHURCH 1
In the Prayer Book the Decalogue holds a
position of singular importance. It is to be
learnt by heart by every baptized person ; it
is interpreted in the Catechism ; it is pro
pounded as the constant standard for self-
examination ; and, above all, it is recited at
every celebration of Holy Communion. Some
such position for the Ten Commandments,
side by side with the Creed and the Lord s
Prayer, is commonly supposed to be primitive
and necessary. Thus (in an excellent book)
the late Bishop of Manchester writes: "This
(the co-ordination of Creed, Lord s Prayer, and
Ten Commandments) is the tradition which
has come down to us from the early Church.
On these lines Cyril of Jerusalem based his
Catechetical Lectures " ; 2 and (it is implied)
on these lines S. Augustine founded his Manual
or Enchiridion. But this is quite a mistake.
S. Cyril s Catechetical Lectures 3 and S. Augus-
1 Reprinted from the author s Dominant Ideas and Corrective
Principles. (Mowbrays.)
2 Dr. Knox, Pastors and Teachers, p. 82. (Longmans, 1902.)
3 Catecheses vi-xviii are on the Creed. Then the sacra
ments (mysteries) are explained, and the Lord s Prayer is
interpreted in Cat. Myst. v. 11-18.
110
Appendix 111
tine s Manual and Teaching for Catechumens
are based solely on the Greed and the Lord s
Prayer. There is no allusion to the Decalogue
at all in the former, and in the latter only the
briefest. 2 The Greed and the Lord s Prayer
were also the only formulas used in the prepara
tion of candidates for baptism. 3 The fact is
that till the thirteenth century the Decalogue
was not co-ordinated with the Lord s Prayer
and the Greed as the summary of moral instruc
tion to be known by all men ; nor was it ever
used in the Liturgy, nor in the preparation for
baptism. The Greed and the Lord s Prayer
stood alone in the patristic period. At various
dates in the mediaeval period there were added
to them, as to be known of all men, the seven
deadly sins, the seven principal virtues, the
seven sacraments, the angelic salutation. But
not till the thirteenth century can I find an
instance of the collocation with these of the
Ten Gommandments.
Of course, from the first it was recognized, as
indeed S. Paul and our Lord Himself require
it to be recognized, that the Christian moral
law is built upon the "Ten Words," and that
they have divine authority. This is excellently
expressed by Irenaeus : "It was to prepare
1 Enchiridion, c. 2.
2 Ch. 32 that the Decalogue is summed up in the twofold
law of love, cp. de Catech. Rudibus, c. 41.
3 The "instruments of the holy law," which at Rome were
solemnly made known to the candidate (as well as the Greed
and Lord s Prayer) were the four Gospels, not the Decalogue.
112 Christian Moral Principles
men for the life (of friendship with Himself
and concord with their fellows) that the Lord
Himself, without any intermediary, spoke the
words of the Decalogue to all alike ; and there
fore likewise they remain in force amongst us,
receiving extension and addition, but not dis
solution, through His coming in the flesh."
But, in spite of this universal recognition of
the divine authority of the Ten Commandments,
very little was said about them. It is true that,
amidst the jumble of moral precepts which
occupy the first six chapters of The Didache,
which were intended for the instruction of
catechumens, six of the Ten Commandments
are found ; and they occur sporadically in the
Patristic writers as was inevitable, often with
the remark that they have received their
fulfilment in the twofold law of love. But
there was not the same need experienced for
a formula of morality as for a formula of faith.
There was, in fact, no attempt to provide such
a formula ; and when Origen and Ambrose
first attempted a systematic treatment of Chris
tian morals they found a basis for it not in the
Ten Commandments, but in the four cardinal
virtues recognized in the heathen world
prudence (or wisdom), temperance (or self-
control), justice and fortitude (or courage). 2
C. haer.lv. 16, 3, 4.
- For Origcn, see the account given by Gregory Thauma-
turgus, his pupil, of his method in ethics, Or. Pan., c. ix.
For Ambrose, see his famous dt Officiis, and see also S. Augus
tine de Moribus Eccl. Cath. xv. 25.
Appendix 113
There is thus curiously little about the Ten
Commandments in the fathers. Origen and
Augustine both indeed discuss the proper
method of dividing and distributing the Ten
Words. Origen further gives an interest
ing interpretation of the first two Command
ments, 1 and S. Augustine a " spiritual" inter
pretation of the fourth: "It is not with thee
(a Christian) as with the Jews. ... To thee
it is said that thou shouldest observe the
Sabbath spiritually by learning the true rest
(in God) in hope of the future eternal rest.
Rest that thou mayest labour, and labour that
thou mayest rest." 2 Later (in the eighth cen
tury) in connection with the Iconoclastic con
troversy, the Second Commandment comes
prominently into controversy, and John of
Damascus enunciates the principle that the
Incarnation by which God has manifested
Himself visibly, to be seen and touched has
made all the difference in its interpretation.
"We make images not of the invisible God
head, but of the visible flesh." For those who
cannot read, these images are their reminders
their books. 3 Something, then, there is in the
fathers about the Decalogue ; but, on the
whole, in the patristic period we hear notice
ably little of it.
But at least from the time of S. Augustine
1 Origen, in Exod. Horn. viii.
2 Quaestt, in Heptateuch, ii. 71.
3 S. John Damas., de Imag. Or. i. 4-17.
114 Christian Moral Principles
in the West the idea prevailed that the Deca
logue was the republication of the natural law
written in men s hearts, which the prevalence
of sin had obliterated, and which, therefore,
needed reassertion with divine authority as
a foundation on which the work of divine
redemption might be based. 1 This idea falls
in with S. Paul s conception of the function of
the Law ; and gives it its signal importance as
a moral foundation, its prohibitory aspect being
explained and justified as a clearing of the
ground of the human heart preparatory to
its proper normal cultivation. 2
On this principle the mediaeval scholastics
gave greater prominence to the Ten Com
mandments ; 3 and, though they interpreted
them very freely in a Christian sense, they
insisted on them as a foundation to be known
of all men. So it is that they became associated
with the Creed and the Lord s Prayer as the
formula of moral duty which all must know.
1 See S. Aug., Enarr. in Ps. hit. 1 and in Ps. cxviii. Serm. xxv.
4. See also Pseud. Aug. Quaest. in Vel. Test. 4 (Migne, P.L.
xxxv, 2219): "Lex formata in litteris dari non debuit quia
in natura ipsa quodam modo inserta cst ... at ubi naturalis
lex evanuit, oppressa consuetudine dclinquendi, tune oppor
tuit legcm manifestari, ut in Judaeis omnes homines audirent."
Gf. Eucherius of Lyons (fifth cent.), P.L. 1.780; Alcuin, P.L.,
c. 518; Hildebert, P.L. clxxi. 1148: " Lex data ut repararet
Icgem naturalem." Hugo of S. Victor, P.L. clxxvi. 420, etc.
" See Rupert of Deutz, P.L. clxvii. 680 : " Hie ininitio non
iam charitas imperatur, sed quac contraria sunt charitati
prohibentur, ut in illis exstirpatis turn demum ipsa charitas
radix omnium bonorum substituatur."
3 S. Thomas Aquinas Summa Theol. 2 a , 2 ae , qu. c.
Appendix 115
So it is that for the first time (as far as I can
discern) in the constitution of Bishop de
Kirkham of Durham (1255) and the Synodal
Statutes of Norwich (1257) the following
injunction appears. 1 Therefore, because
without the observance of the Decalogue there
can be no salvation of souls, we exhort and
enjoin in the Lord that every pastor of souls
and every parish priest should know the
Decalogue, that is the ten precepts of the
Mosaic law, and should frequently preach
and explain the same to the people who are
under his control. Let him know also the
seven heads of wrong-doing (septem criminalia),
and preach to the people the avoidance of the
same. Let him know in like manner the seven
sacraments of the Church, and let those who
are priests know particularly the things
necessary for the sacrament of true confession
and penance, and let them frequently teach
the laity in the common tongue the form of
baptizing. Let each of them have also a
simple knowledge of the Faith as it is contained
in the Greeds, both the greater (Nicene) and
the lesser (Apostles ) and in the tract which
is called Quicunque Vult, which is sung daily at
Prime." Kirkham adds to the requirements
of elementary religious instruction the Lord s
Prayer and the angelic salutation of Mary
and the knowledge of how to make the sign
1 See Wilkins s Concilia i. 704, 731. There are only
minor differences.
116 Christian Moral Principles
of the cross. More explicitly and fully Arch
bishop Peckham in 1281, in his constitution,
" Ignorantia Sacerdotum," l ordains " that every
parish priest four times a year, that is once
every quarter, on one or more days of solemn
observance, shall expound to the people in
the vulgar tongue, without the fantastic con
cealment of any kind of subtlety, the fourteen 2
Articles of Faith, the Ten Commandments of
the Decalogue, the two precepts of the Gospel,
that is the double law of love, the seven works
of mercy, the seven capital sins with their
offspring, the seven principal virtues, and the
seven sacraments of grace." And to take
away all excuse of ignorance from the clergy,
he enumerates all those necessary rudiments
of spiritual knowledge and gives a Christian
explanation of the Ten Commandments, to
help the clergy in explaining them. I think
it is worth while to translate it without any
criticism.
"Of the Ten Commandments of the Old
Testament three refer to God, which are
called the commandments of the first table,
and seven to our neighbours, which are
called the commandments of the second
table. In the first (i.e. our i and ii) is pro
hibited all idolatry, where it is said Thou shalt
have no other gods in My presence. Therein
1 Wilkins, ii. 54. This constitution was repeated in the
Province of York, finally by Cardinal Wolsey, in 1518.
Wilkins iii, 662, 664 f.
2 The Articles of the Greeds \v;;re so reckoned.
Appendix 117
implicitly are prohibited all divinations and
charms with the superstitious observance of
marks and such figments. In the second,
where it is said Thou shalt not take the Name
of the Lord thy God in vain, is prohibited prin
cipally heresy of all kinds, and secondarily
all blasphemy and irreverent use of the Name
of God, especially in false swearing. In the
third commandment, where it is said Remember
to keep the Sabbath holy, there is enjoined wor
ship according to the Christian religion
( cultus religionis Ghristianae ), to which
clergy and laity alike are bound. Where
fore it should be known that the obligation
to observe the legal Sabbath, according to the
form of the Old Testament, ceased altogether
with the other ceremonies of the law, and
there succeeded to it under the New Testa
ment the mode of abstaining from work for
the purpose of divine worship ( vacandi cultui
divino ) on the Lord s Day and other solemn
days appointed for this purpose by the
authority of the Church : on such days the
manner of abstaining from work is not to be
taken from the Jewish superstitions but from
the canonical injunctions.
* The first commandment of the second
table is Honour thy father and thy mother, in
which it is explicitly commanded to honour
parents temporally and spiritually ; but
implicitly and secondarily every man, accord
ing to what his position requires, is to be
honoured in accordance with the same com
mandment. And in the commandment father
and mother are to be understood not only
according to the flesh but also spiritually, so
118 Christian Moral Principles
that the father is any officer of the Church,
mediate or immediate; and the mother is
the Church whose sons all Catholics are.
The second is Thou shalt not kill, in which is
explicitly forbidden any unpermitted destruc
tion of a person by consent or act or word or
favour ; and implicitly is here forbidden
every unjust harming of any person. So
they murder in the spiritual sense who do
not sustain the needy ; they murder in the
civil sense who destroy the character of
others ( qui detrahunt ), or who oppress and
confound the innocent. The third com
mandment is Thou shalt not commit adultery,
in which explicitly adultery is forbidden, but
implicitly fornication, which is explicitly for
bidden in Deuteronomy xxii. In the same
commandment is forbidden all sexual con
nection not covered by marriage, and all
kinds of voluntary pollution. The fourth
commandment is Thou shalt not steal, in which
is explicitly forbidden all secret dealing with
another s goods against his will ; implicitly
all injurious treatment of another s goods,
whether by fraud or usury or violence or
terrorism. The fifth commandment is Thou
shalt not bear false witness, wherein is expressly
forbidden false witness intended to hurt
another : implicitly false witness intended to
promote an unworthy person contrary to his
deserts. In this commandment all lying,
especially to another s hurt, is forbidden.
The sixth commandment is Thou shalt not
covet thy neighbour s house : supply to his
injury : in which is explicitly forbidden the
1 Or " cause to stumble " (" offendant ").
Appendix 119
coveting of all immovable property, especially
what belongs to any Catholic. The seventh
commandment is Thou shalt not desire thy
neighbour s wife or manservant or maid
servant or ox or ass or anything that is his,
in all of which the coveting of any movable
property is forbidden."
It then goes on to expound the twofold law
of love which the Gospel has "added " to the
Ten Commandments bidding men, amongst
other things, to love each and every man more
than all temporal wealth (" affluentiam ") and
the seven works of mercy and the seven prin
cipal virtues faith, hope, charity, prudence,
justice, temperance, fortitude and the seven
sacraments. Let this suffice as a specimen of
rudimentary moral instruction from the heart
of the middle age.
Thus in the thirteenth century the Decalogue
came to be conjoined with the Creed, the
Lord s Prayer, and the seven sacraments as
constituting the necessary rudiments for every
Christian man. Thus, in 1566, the Catechism
of the Council of Trent 1 is able to say that
"our ancestors most wisely distributed the
whole sum and substance of Christian doctrine
under those four heads the Apostles Creed,
the Sacraments, the Decalogue, the Lord s
Prayer." And when the Reformation came,
though the teaching about the sacraments was
1 Proem, xii. The statement would be true of the three
previous centuries, not of the earlier period.
120 Christian Moral Principles
modified and their number was reduced to two,
still the Reformers retained the Decalogue with
the Greed, the Lord s Prayer and the Sacra
ments as the constituent elements in the Cate
chisms which contained the necessary doctrine
for all Christians. So it was in Luther s two
Catechisms of 1530 and 1539, and in Calvin s
Catechism of 1535, and in the Heidelberg
Catechism of 1563, and substantially (though
the Creed is not mentioned) in the Shorter
Catechismof the Westminster Assembly (1647). 1
So it was in our English Institution of a Christian
Man (1537) and A necessary Doctrine and Erudi
tion for any Christian Man (1543), with some sub
sidiary topics added. So of course it is in our
Prayer Book Catechism. 2 As for the recitation
of the Commandments in the service of Holy
Communion, precedent for this was found in
the practice which followed upon the injunc
tions of Archbishop Peckham, and the like
practice in other countries. There are also
closer precedents of the Reformation period
which have been suggested. But this is hardly
the place to discuss the question further. 3 It is
obvious that when once the Ten Command
ments have been accepted as a summary state-
1 Many of these Catechisms are to be found in the Appen
dix to Knox a Pastors and Teachers.
1 In its first form the Catechism was perhaps unique among
the manuals of the period in containing no treatment of the
sacraments. Brightman, English Rite (Rivingtons), p. cxxii.
3 It is discussed by Brightman, 7 he English Rite, pp. clviif.,
1039 f. ; also by Scudamore, Notitia Eucharistica, pp. 224 f.
Appendix 121
ment of our moral obligations, just as the Creed
is for our Gredenda, the recital of the one is as
natural as the recital of the other in the service
of the altar, and the Commandments form a
natural basis for a penitential preparation.
At the same time I cannot feel that we can
acquiesce in our present use of the Decalogue
in the preparatory portion of our liturgy as
satisfactory.
The fact that the Decalogue represents an
early stage of the divine law, and that before
it can reach the level of Christ s teaching
it needs to be profoundly spiritualized and
interpreted, seems to make it questionable
whether it should be so constantly and nakedly
propounded as the summary of the moral law
to Christian people. If we are to have the
divine prohibitions constantly thundered over
us, it would seem as if we should have them
in the form in which they apply to ourselves
rather than in the form in which they were
given to the people of Israel at a very early
stage of its education.
No doubt the reiterated "Thou shalt not"
has been very impressive. But what are the
things which in the Decalogue are explicitly
prohibited ? The Second Commandment pro
hibits the making of any image or representation
of God, and as it stands it ignores the difference
which has been made by the Incarnation. The
Fourth Commandment in its literal sense, so
far as concerns the observance of the Sabbath,
122 Christian Moral Principles
has been abrogated, and is valid only in a
" mystical" sense. 1 The Third Commandment
requires very fundamental deepening before
(as our Lord seems to teach us) we get down
through it to the universal duty of truthfulness.
The Sixth and Seventh Commandments pro
hibit only murder and adultery, and require
an interpretation which is not always present
to the mind before they can be taken to
prohibit all unkindness and lawless sensual
indulgence of all kinds.
Thus the constant recitation of the Com
mandments without note or comment has,
I cannot but feel, created in part a false
conscience amongst our people, and in part
condoned much too slack a conscience. No
doubt these Ten Commandments have been
interpreted in the statements of our duty to
God and our duty to our neighbour in the
Catechism, but the interpretation is not much
in the mind of the people, and it is not by
them connected with the particular Command
ments. Moreover, it can hardly be denied
that the insistence in the "Duty towards my
neighbour," upon obedience to superiors and
humility and reverence to "betters" (which
word certainly means those above us in social
station) is not sufficiently balanced by an equal
insistence upon the duties of the stronger
towards the weaker and the true principles
1 The Scottish Office, 1637 : " According to the mystical
meaning of the said commandment."
Appendix 123
of Christian equality and brotherliness. I
cannot but think that the kind of criticism
which is commonly heard of the "Duty
towards my neighbour," as tending "to keep
the people down," and as being "in favour
of the upper classes," though it is often ac
companied with a misquotation ("that state
of life unto which it has pleased God to call
me," instead of "that state of life unto which
it shall please God to call me ") has yet a good
deal of justification.
Thus (1) I would have the Church cease
from the constant recitation of the Command
ments at the beginning of the service of Holy
Communion. (2) I would have them occasion
ally recited, as Archbishop Peckham enjoined,
with an interpretation like his, in the full
Christian spirit. (3) I would have the inter
pretation in the Catechism so modified as to be
more impartial and to express more adequately
the true principle of the equal worth of every
soul in God s sight. It is obvious that any
Christian interpretation of the Commandments
drawn up by authority would, because it was
Christian, be more positive and less negative
than the Decalogue as it stands.
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