What then, we may ask, was this moral ideal, or rather, what did it mean to the believers and to those whom they strove to convert? Was the self-sacrificing love, by which we can most nearly express it, a new moral type, perfectly clear to all believers of every age, and set forth so distinctly as that all men could apprehend it? and was it meant to be placed in contrast with all other moral types, and to displace and destroy them as evil? It would be truer to say that in this the saying of Christ holds good, 'I came not to destroy, but to fulfil.' We perceive this the more distinctly the more history and philosophy unfold to us the secret of ancient religions and of individual and national character. But in the early church it was not unrecognized. The Western Fathers, indeed, like Tertullian and Jerome, depreciated all morality but the Christian. But those of the East, especially the earlier Alexandrine teachers, Clement and Origen, placed the great heathen moralists amongst those who had prepared the way of Christ. It is true that when that which is perfect is come, that which is in part must be done away. To linger in an inferior moral state when a higher has been presented becomes sinful. It is true also that the Christian ideal is that before which all others must pale. But it overcomes all other moral systems, not by denying their suitability to the times of comparative ignor

but by outshining and absorbing them. It was noticed by Dr. Chalmers1 that when St. Paul wrote to

truth, varying with the thought of the age, and sometimes, as is shown by the difference between the different groups of St. Paul's Epistles, with the various experiences of the same teacher.

1

1 Commercial Discourses. Disc. I. (Collected Works, vol. vi).

the Philippians that they should, for the completion of their Christian life, think upon whatsoever things were honest and just, lovely and of good report, whatsoever was deemed a virtue and worthy of praise', he was using the common terms of Greek ethics, and urging his converts to assimilate the ideal which was recognized in the society around them.

But, it may be said, the motive at least was new, and the motive really determines the ideal. The Pagan philosophy bade men seek these qualities because they were humanly good, the Christian religion from love to God. This, however, is only in part true; for the love of God was not wholly absent from Paganism. It may further be said that the moral ideal acknowledged by the society of Greece or Rome had at its root a proud independence, while Christian goodness demands a sense of sin and the belief in an atonement. But here again we cannot ignore the sense of sin2 presented by some of the Greek tragedies and their early myths and if we follow the development of Greek thought, we find at its final issue in Neo-Platonism a longing for purity and for the image of God. Even humility, which is often taken as distinctively Christian, may be found in writers like Marcus Aurelius; and self-sacrificing love, at least for country and for friends, has many representatives in the Greek and Roman world. But we may justly say that Christianity laid a stress upon these which had never been felt before. No

1 Phil. iv. 8.

In the assertion of Original Sin the Greek Mythology rose and set.' Coleridge, Aids to Reflexion, p. 211.

one had said with the same emphasis such words as these Blessed are the meek and the pure in heart, for they shall see God;' nor Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God;' nor Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone, but if it die it beareth much fruit; nor God is love.' The self-sacrifice of Greek and Roman times is found in exceptional heroes, that of Christian times is much more widely diffused. The Decii gave up life that Rome might conquer her enemies, Christ and His followers that the hearts of all men might be won to God and to love. It is true also that Christianity brought the moral qualities into their proper harmony, raising into prominence those which are most widely humane, that it made the true motives operative, and that it imparted to men the assurance that ultimate and divine truth had been reached and would prevail. This last gave the Church that unconquerable hope which more than anything else overcame the world.

No student of the moral world in the first centuries of the Christian era can fail to be struck with the fact that moral ideas, both true and false, appear at the same time in very different places and connexions. Similarities may be traced in the language of St. Paul and of Seneca; Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus have much in common with the ideas of the Christians whom they ignored or persecuted. Plutarch's religious and moral principles have a cast which indicates a progress in comparison with Stoics like Brutus or Cato, comparable to that from the Pharisees to the Apostolic fathers,

and in general we may observe that when Christianity is advancing heathenism becomes serious and turns to the unseen world for satisfaction'. It is natural to ask, whether this progress is the direct result of Christian teaching, and its expressions taken from the Gospel2. At a later time it may be asked whether asceticism was imported into the Church from the Eastern religions where it prevailed before. It is no impeachment of the truth of Christianity or of the zeal of its emissaries to observe the manner in which moral ideas spread through the world,-a matter which is seldom rightly conceived. That direct teaching of the primary truths is the most important channel of propagation is true. 'How shall they hear without a preacher?' But influence and example also go for much and again both teacher and taught are subject to forces, partly arising from their circumstances, partly from causes which we cannot trace, and which form what has been called a climate of opinion. Moreover, the phrases and the arguments used on some chance occasion lie as germs in the mind, and spring to life almost unconsciously and are reproduced when circumstances occur fructify them, often in complete forgetfulness of their source. Thus it may happen that the same expressions occur in two writers who have never seen one another; and the influence of different persons and

1 See Merivale's Conversion of the Roman Empire (Boyle Lectures for 1864), especially pp. 86 ff., pp. 111 ff., and the whole of Lecture VI.

2 The problem of the relation of the sentiments of the great Roman Stoics to those of the New Testament is discussed by Bishop Lightfoot in his Essay on St. Paul and Seneca in his book on the Epistle to the Philippians. It seems hardly necessary to attribute to them so much knowledge of the Christian writings as is implied at p. 28 of that volume.

schools may be reciprocal and extensive without their either consciously acknowledging or consciously ignor✔ing their mutual obligation. But he who believes

that the progress of mankind is all one, and springs from one source, and who is content to assert for Christianity not an exclusive position, but a primacy among beliefs and moral systems, will conduct the inquiry into the method of the evolution of truth and goodness without any anxiety: nor will he assume that Christianity stands or falls with the assertion that all good is visibly connected with the teaching of the Church. It is enough that the moral ideal which Christianity enshrines has shown itself capable of either including or assimilating all that is permanently good in human nature.

Yet it is more true that Christianity gives a stimulus to good than that it discloses a moral ideal. Faith rather than the faith, truth rather than the truth, is that to which it incites us. As to the ancients the divine was always surrounded by a cloud, which partly hid partly revealed it, so it is with the divine moral ideal. Indeed, when we speak of God as a moral being, we know that no morality such as exists between man and man can be a full measure of His nature. And so when we speak of the divine moral ideal which is presented in Jesus Christ, though this is more tangible, it has yet a side which is always beyond our grasp. It is in this way that we may understand the ideas of the Buddhists and Quietists, who appear to be at times indifferent to moral good and evil, in their absorption in that which is, as they say, beyond both. To suppose that God is