ETHICS 301 



are nof simply moral maxims or a code of laws like the 

 Decalogue. 



It is repeatedly urged by Rationalists that Jesus 

 Christ said nothing new; that all His moral teaching is 

 to be found in that of the past reformers of the world 

 who preceded Him. 



But there is this fundamental difference. No re- 

 formers had previously been able to enfoixe their moral 

 maxims upon the great majority of their contemporaries. 

 They have all died and left no important religious results. 

 It was so, first because they never possessed any suffi- 

 ciently strong motive power wherewith to enforce them. 



Philanthropic maxims, for example, fall unheeded 

 upon the ears of the masses of mankind, because no 

 altruistic spirit is universally present in man. The beauty 

 of virtue and purity may help a noble-minded man, 

 already predisposed to be virtuous, " to keep himself 

 unspotted from the world " ; but it is waste of words to 

 tell this to the selfishly vicious man ; or indeed to the 

 multitude. 



Moreover, it was never Christ's intention to give us 

 moral maxims only ; but Living Principles. In fact, as 

 the author of Ecce Homo so well says : " On the greater 

 number of questions on which men require moral guid- 

 ance, He has left no direction whatever ".^ Seeley, too, 

 has well described the profound difference between 

 Christ's method of moral legislation and that of the 

 philosophers. He says : " Instead of giving laws to His 

 society, He would give to every member of it a power of 

 making laws for himself. ... A man's actions result 

 from the state of his mind ; and if that is healthy they 

 will be right, if not, they will be wrong. Such language 



ip. 135. 



