THE MORAL STANDARD. 3 



that right and wrong have in themselves no inherent quality, but 

 are made so simply by the enactment of an external power. The 

 quality of a line of conduct thus resides not in essentials the in- 

 trinsic tendency of an action and its bearings upon life, but in 

 non-essentials the accidental fact that it is forbidden or enjoined 

 by God. For example, Jehovah lays certain restrictions upon the 

 man and woman in the Garden of Eden ; and disregard of these 

 restrictions is sin. He commands Abraham to commit a horrible 

 crime, and because of his readiness to do so he is paraded before 

 us as the father of the faithful and a model for our own imita- 

 tion. For a direct statement of the position here indicated, ref- 

 erence may be made to No. XIII of the thirty-nine articles of the 

 English Episcopal Church. The unmistakable meaning of this 

 article is that a good deed, such as the gift of a cup of cold water 

 to a thirsty wayfarer, has in itself no inherent quality of good- 

 ness. Performed in a state of grace and from faith in Jesus 

 Christ, it is well-pleasing to God, but only on that account. Let 

 the blessing be offered, not out of faith in Christ, but from spon- 

 taneous sympathy with suffering humanity, and what has official 

 theology to say to the matter ? " We doubt not that it has the 

 nature of sin." 



Implied in all this of course lies the further fact that morality 

 looks Godward and not manward. Sin is sin because it is un- 

 pleasing to God, not because it is injurious to man. How disas- 

 trous the effects of such a conception as this may be, the history 

 and literature of Christendom are at hand to show us. If such an 

 astute thinker as Duns Scotus, insisting on the perfect freedom of 

 the divine will, could declare that if God had prescribed murder 

 and theft, murder and theft would not have been sins ; if a high- 

 minded moralist like Sir Thomas Browne could write, " I give no 

 alms to satisfy the hunger of my brother, but to fulfill and accom- 

 plish the will and command of my God," it may be taken for 

 granted that, in the average of cases, such a view of conduct could 

 not but be degrading to those entertaining it. Out of this view 

 sprang the belief, widespread throughout the middle ages and 

 continuing down to our own day, that a man may clear his con- 

 science of the burden of wrong acts by making his peace with 

 God. Given the point of view, and this conception is strictly 

 logical ; since God is the person offended, and his pardon will 

 make all right again. Formerly, people endeavored to compound 

 for the sins of a lifetime by building churches, endowing monas- 

 teries, or leaving their ill-gotten wealth to the priests. In our own 

 epoch the old belief lingers on in the orthodox doctrine of peni- 

 tence and the forgiveness of sin. 



Beyond all this, it is of the nature of a theological code of 

 conduct to get the important and unimportant in action sadly 



