250 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY 



on the resources in the personal conviction of the 

 wrong-cloer, gradually brought into action by the 

 discipline of personal experience. 



This novel, unprecedented, and astounding doctrine 

 of a universal moral equality as the aim of all 

 spiritual being, an equality which is to embrace all 

 minds in a complete union v^ith the mind of God, 

 and from which all external authority is to be 

 excluded, Jesus by the plainest implication sets 

 forth as the object and goal of all spiritual effort. 

 All souls are to strive after just that form of life 

 with each other in which none will employ toward 

 another any method of constraint, but will rely 

 upon the moral action of the powers in the others* 

 souls, just as God eternally does. I do not under- 

 stand him to teach that there is no place at 

 all, in the evil part of the spiritual life, for the 

 operation of constraint. Rather, judging by the 

 sayings later recorded as coming from him, he 

 admitted such an office for compulsion.^ But it was 

 only by the way : it was to be viewed as only con- 

 tingent and transient, as belonging only in this world 

 of fleeting shows ; it was the " law," which, as St. 



1 For instance, " I came, not to bring peace, but a sword " ; and, 

 still more to the point, having said, in the Sermon on the Mount, " If 

 any man will . . . take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also," 

 he says, later, " But now, . . . he that hath no sivord, let him sell his 

 garment and buy one." Also, his recognition of the right of external 

 governments, in their sphere : " Pender unto Caesar the things which 

 are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's." 



