112 



EEV. F. BAYLIS^ M.A.^ ON 



the aim of producing and leaving behind in Egypt, " a fairly 

 good, strong, and — abo\^e all things — stable government," Lord 

 Cromer pictures the English statesman as confidently expecting 

 to be able " to benefit the mass of the population " ; and, as to his 

 principles, he says he " will in his official capacity discard any 

 attempt to proselytise, he will endeavour to inculcate a dis- 

 tinctly Christian code of morality as the basis for the relations 

 between man and man. He is indeed guided in this direction 

 by the lights, which have been handed down to him by his 

 forefathers, and by the Puritan blood which still circulates in 

 his veins." That is the science of morals applied at its best. It 

 is not Christianity, for the attempt is to keep the highest 

 known morality, which is Christian, without the specific Chris- 

 tian basis. 



So far as it is right to judge of this problem as one of ethics 

 without religion, it will come within the scope of Dean Wace's 

 excellent paper on that subject read before the Victoria Institute 

 on May 21st, 1900 ; a paper dealing it may be remembered with 

 the theories of " the Society of Ethical Propagandists." With 

 characteristic fairness and wisdom the Dean showed, not indeed 

 that the loss of the Christian faith must miean the ruin of all 

 morals, but that the highest morality may well be dependent on 

 the truth of the Christian revelation, and he closed his paper 

 with these words, " If that theology could not be maintained, it 

 would, indeed, be unworthy of human nature to say that all 

 morality must go with it. But it would be true that the 

 highest glory of morality, and its profoundest source would be 

 removed." 



Whether the non- religious Ethics can succeed was interestingly 

 discussed in a chapter of Ecce Homo on the " N'ature of Christ's 

 Society." The following are a few sentences from that chapter. 



" Christianity then, and moral philosophy are totally different 

 things, and yet profess to have the same object, namely, the 

 moral improvement of mankind . . . Each has its function, 

 and philosophy undertakes quite another sort of moral improve- 

 ment than Christianity. The difference may be shortly expressed 

 thus : — Both endeavour to lead men to do what is right, but 

 philosophy undertakes to explain what it is right to do, while 

 Christianity undertakes to make men disposed to do it." 

 . . . " Some machinery is wanted which may evoke the good 

 impulses, cherish them, and make them masters of the bad ones 

 . . . Philosophy has no instruments that it can use for this 

 purpose. There exists no other such instrument but that 

 personal one of which Christ availed Himself." 



