Leading Articles ix the Reviews. 



21 



RELIGION AND MENTAL SCIENCE. 



A JEW'S ESTIMATE OF JESUS. 



In the Hibbert Journal for July Mr. C. G. Montefiore 

 treats of the significance of Jesus for His own age. 

 This significance was shortly that He brought about 

 the diffusion and universalisation of some fundamental 

 tenets of Judaism ; — ■ 



My point, as against a frequent Christian view, is that the im- 

 provements niiJe by the historic Jesus upon Judaism (as a 

 whole) are small in comparison with the agreeminls. My 

 point, as against a frequent Jewish view, is that in comparison 

 with both agreements an.i improvements (taken as a vvhol "' the 

 cctrogressions are small likewise. 



FOUR DISTINCTIVE ELEMENTS. 



By certain elements in His teaching and by certain 

 qualities in His personality, Jesus enabled these 

 Ijarriers of law and nationality to be overcome and 

 broken down. What were these qualities or teachings ? 

 First and most important, " the lovableness of Jesus, 

 or the greatness of His personality." He was a man 

 who loved God exceedingly, and greatly loved others. 

 " It was the historic Jesus, the real, living, and loving 

 man, who suggested and made possible the immortal 

 ivords, ' Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of these my 

 brethren, even these least, ye did it unto me.' " 

 Second. He laid little religious stress upon blood, and 

 ■was uninterested in the political fortunes of His nation. 

 Herein He ditTered from the prophets, who were 

 more interested in the people as such, the national 

 future, the national glory, than He. Third, He paved 

 the way for breaking down the separating and 

 nationalist trammels of the priestly and ceremonial 

 law. Qu;dities that from the Jewish angle of vision 

 led to retrogressions in His church were His Messianic 

 <onsciousness and Messianic claim. " The new 

 limitation of love — an orthodox belief in the person 

 of Christ — is not without its ultimate basis in his own 

 teaching, his own claims, his own faith." The worship 

 of Jesus is partly due to Himself. Mr. Jfontefiorc 

 iuins up :— 



To Jesus we owe the diffusion of Judaism — with modifi- 

 cations for good and for evil — throughout the world, lie 

 brought about this diffusion not only because he was great and 

 };c>o<l, an en'.liUsia.siic lover of God and of man, but because he 

 fhowed a c.rlain imliffcrence lo the political st.itus and national 

 glory of his people, because he rebuked the pride of r.icc, 

 •lisplayeil now and .Tgqin friendliness to Gentiles, and on 

 occaiiion predicted the inclusion of many of them in the King- 

 dom of God, and U^lly because, under different ami difficult 

 circumstance*, he spoke depreciatingly, like one of the older 

 prophets though without a theory .ind without theoretic con- 

 irisCency, about this and that detail and ordinance of Ihe 

 ceremonial law. Herein I find his special significance, but I 

 find it also in the new note of authority, in his peculiar and 

 messianic self-consciousnens, which, while leading on lo his 

 worship antl his ilcilic.ition, was also in itself one of the very 

 leasons which caused the survival and <liiru>iiin of his leaching. 

 Kor it w.as not merely the Ic.iching of a passing prophet : it was 

 ihe teaching of a tielove 1 ami conmianding personality. There 

 was, indeeil, ns the generations passed, a shifting of emphasis, 

 Imt this very sliiftin^ is, in the last resort, due to Jesus hinisell. 



MORAL AND RELIGIOUS VALUES. 

 Professor Willi.mi Brown contributes to the 

 Sociological Revirtc for July an interesting paper on 

 emotions and morals. He considers morals as the 

 valuation of conduct. " not by some special faculty of 

 the mind, whether reason, or moral sense, or conscience, 

 but by the entire personality, in so far as it is developed 

 and systematised." He traces the application of value 

 to moral judgment : — 



The notion of value is of economic origin, and first occurs in 

 explicit form in .Vdam .Smith's "Wealth of Nations," where it is 

 identified with the satisfaction of man's needs and desires ; but 

 only recently has it been made the subject of specialised study. 

 The chief names deserving of mention in this regard, after 

 Nietzsche, are those of Ehrenfels, Kreibig, Meinong, Eisler, 

 Colin and Witasek in Germany, Tarde and Kibot in France, 

 and .Miinsterberg and Urban in ."Vmcrica. 



" Value is always in intimate relation to desire," and again, 

 " In morals, the essential is the value ; there, all value is feel- 

 ing, and inversely all feeling is value." In ihe judgment of 

 value it is probable that the feeling determines the judgment. 

 Nevertheless, some psychologists and philosophers hold the 

 contrary view. Meinong, for e-xample, contends that the 

 pleasure which constitutes a value, being only recognised assuch 

 by a judgment, is secondary to that judgment which is the 

 necessary condition of its existence. 



He emphasises the distinction between existential 

 judgments (ordinary judgments of objective fact) on 

 the one hand, and judgments of value on the other. 

 These latter judgments are an integral part of the 

 subject-matter of psychology. Principles of duty may 

 be summed up in the words. Seek always the highest 

 good. The value experiences of the race prove that 

 discipline, enlightenment, renunciation, are necessary 

 for the individual. 



Passing to religious experience, Profe.ssor William 

 James is described as probably the most skilful intro- 

 spectionist that the world has ever produced. But 

 nevertheless : — 



Before the results of the anthropologists can be interpreted 

 at all satisfactorily, we need the fullest account of the developed 

 religious consciousness that introspective psychology can give 

 us. (.)f this, the experience of value i- undoubtedly the essence, 

 and therefore, instead of saying with lb tiding that religion is 

 the satisfaction of the need felt by some people to assure the 

 conservation of their values — physical, mental, moral, and 

 a;slhelic — a religious person would contend that it is the whole 

 system of values in so far as these values are ihought of and felt 

 as .1 heirarchy dependent upon an immanent cause transcending 

 not only our own personality but also those of all the other 

 finite indiviiluals of the I'niverse. 



One essential constituent of religious emotion seems to me to 

 be gratitude — gratitude not only for the values which we do not 

 ourselves make, but also for our own limited power of making 

 values for ourselves in certain cases. 



Points of conlai l l)il\vien ('hristianil\' and Islam, 

 as indicated by Principal Garvie in the Moslem World 

 for July, arc also points ol conflict — monotheism, belief 

 in revelation, acknowledgment ol Jesus as a prophet, 

 and common elements of piet\- .ind moralit\-. 



