350 PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



only be found in some personality exalted enough to 

 force upon human minds the conviction that the supreme 

 moral law, the voice of conscience, was a Divine Eeve- 

 lation, and to give to it such an expression as would, 

 for all times and for all practical purposes, supersede the 

 perplexing speculations or quibbles of contending philo- 

 sophical systems and prevent it from falling to the level 

 of a purely conventional moral code. This higher sanction 

 and deeper expression is to be found in the person of 

 Jesus Christ, and in His teaching that " God is Love," 

 and that the highest moral law is the rule or kingdom 

 of Love, the Divine Order. It may be that a glimpse 

 of this view had already casually been caught by 

 prophets, lawgivers, and thinkers in pre-Christian times ; 

 but it was not proclaimed, as it were, from the house- 

 tops and forced upon the attention and recognition of 

 a large number of persons who lived and worked among 

 n)en of all grades and stations of life and in very differ- 

 ent nationalities. That such has nevertheless been done 

 constitutes a unique fact of history, a fact so important 

 in its results that it has become the point of reference 

 for all subsequent developments, the centre of civilisation 

 ever since. 



To study this remarkable phenomenon forms the task 

 of theology proper which should unfold our knowledge 

 of the Divine, as science unfolds that of the !N"atural 

 Order of Things. It has thus acquired an independent 

 foundation, whereas without it all moral or spiritual 

 teaching must, according to this view, necessarily in the 

 end become merely a doubtful chapter of philosophical 

 speculation, or an equally doubtful and merely tem- 



