need to pray : "Cleanse Thou me from secret faults." 1 But sometimes we may be unjust. Morbid introspection or introversion is a real danger to some. The appeal must always be to One who is greater than our hearts and knoweth all things." The Christian is not a Pythagorean, devoting himself assiduously to self-scrutiny, nor a psychoanalyst, relegating conscience to a subordinate place in favour of blind, subconscious instincts. "He that judgeth me is the Lord." :

The

But, though man's chief end is to glorify God and not to develop himself, Jesus showed in many ways and particularly by that sacrifice of Himself through which He has perfected for ever them that are sanctified, that the perfecting of each was the will of the Father. training of the disciples was not simply a preparation for work to be done, but an expression of the Father's love for them. He watches with more than parental interest the growth and development of each one of His children.

This training involved among other things the giving of lessons; and Jesus spoke as other teachers had already spoken, and yet with a quite new authority and finality, on such subjects as the regulation of thought and speech, the use and abuse of riches, time, and other talents or opportunities, the claims of Cæsar, the significance and duties of marriage, the duties of forgiveness, prudence, truthfulness, watchfulness, a holy violence, non-resistance of evil, and so on. And all the time He was preparing His disciples for those coming events, which by altering their attitude to God would lift them into a world of clearer vision and infinite resources. The most distinctive things in Christianity only came within their ken, and can only become visible to us also, through the Holy Spirit whom He hath sent.

As the result of the connection of the whole of the moral life with the will of God and with the facts of the 2 1 John iii. 20.

1 Ps. xix. 12.

3 I Cor. iv. 4.

Gospel, the Christian character comes to possess its distinctive characteristics. These are (1) its greater depth or inwardness, as shown by the emphasis on thought, desire, and intention; (2) its greater breadth or sympathy, as illustrated specially in the prominence given to the passive virtues as pity, peace, purity, patience, meekness, gentleness, forgiveness; and (3) its more positive and aggressive character. Other types of morality possess one or other of these marks; but it is the contention of the Christian moralist that nowhere else can they be found so fully developed, or so perfectly combined, as in characters moulded by the Gospel.

When Plato wished to describe the character proper to man, he turned to the Greek State, and saw there" the individual writ large." And we might turn to the constitution of the Christian community as given in the Book of the Revelation to discover the ideal Christian character. The character of the individual is a miniature copy of that City. It is symbolised by the perfect cube. The length and breadth and depth of it are equal. Energy, sympathy, and depth or elevation are the three dimensions of the perfect character.

Or with other Greek moralists we might turn to the "wise man," that is for us the perfect man, the man Christ Jesus, for our concrete representation. Deeply lodged in the human heart is the conviction that only man can say what man should be. The ppóvμos of Aristotle, the wise man of the Stoics, the autonomous ethics of Kant, the martyr-hero of J. G. Fichte, confronted by "the image of his fame in after times" and encouraged by "the suffrages of the race" to do the rational thing and die, are sufficient illustrations. The conviction is satisfied by Him who called Himself the Son of Man. The highest thoughts of men in the past and the final verdict of the race, so the Christian believes, are revealed in Him.

Revealed in Him, and made possible for us, according to our faith, through the Gospel of His death and

resurrection. The dignity and elevation of Anselm, the gentleness and sympathy of Francis of Assisi, the courage and untiring energy of Martin Luther, are all the fruit of that Gospel. "Live," said Luther, though Christ died yesterday, rose to-day, and were coming to-morrow.'

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CHAPTER VIII

THE GOSPEL ETHIC IN THE PATRISTIC AGE

N the last five chapters an attempt has been made to bring out some of the salient features of the Ethics of the Gospel, as contained in the New Testament. It is there presented as a Way of Life very different from anything the world had yet received, or the mind of man was afterwards to evolve. We can find nothing like it in any of the literatures of the world. None of the four main currents of ethical thought in Greece, and none of the four paths by which the Indian mind has tried to express the way of life, presents more than a superficial resemblance. In the Ethics of the Gospel we have a view of the moral universe deeper and more comprehensive than that of Greece or of India. It is characterised by fullness of life, and in it personality first comes to its own.

It was not to be expected that each part of this philosophy of life would have been fully appropriated by all who received it as a heritage from the Apostolic Age. In that creative period under a special illumination of the Holy Spirit men attained to a view of reality too large and too concrete for the average person. The common mind is analytical, splits up the universe into sections, and thinks in particulars. The Apostles saw everything in Christ, interpreting all things in relation to a personality in which the powers of the heavenly world transfigured the earthly, and the Divine and the human became inseparably one. The Kingdom of God with all that it implies of unity and order and power, of grace and truth and fellowship, is the highest conception of the moral universe to which the mind of man has attained.

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The subapostolic writers were keenly conscious of their inferiority to the Apostles. Clement of Rome feels that he cannot write with the authority of an Apostle, and refers the Corinthians to the Epistle of the blessed Apostle Paul, which he wrote to them "in the beginning of the Gospel."

1

Ignatius hoped that, when he had attained to God, he might be found at the feet of Paul. Polycarp said: "Neither I nor any other such as I, can attain to the wisdom of the blessed and glorified Paul."

Within the next generation or two a canon of New Testament books was being formed, which placed certain inspired writings definitely in a class by themselves, thus giving formal recognition to the common judgment of Christian men that these books were unique in value. Many of the subsequent Christian writers were men of force. Some of them had the advantages of the best education that the Roman Empire could provide, and might easily have won a reputation in literature or philosophy equal to that of their contemporaries. As it was, even the literary hope of the future was surely with men who were not writing to win the applause of fashionable cliques, but because they had a message to deliver.” • No serious critic, however, would think of putting Justin and Clement and Origen, Minucius Felix, Tertullian and Cyprian in the same class as the Apostolic writers, and certainly they would not have dreamed of doing so themselves. Clement of Alexandria had philosophical tastes and wide acquaintance with Greek literature, but could not find there anything comparable with the "truly royal teaching " of the Scriptures. The teaching of philosophers and poets was in no case supplementary, but only preparatory to the Gospel. The teaching which is according to the Saviour is complete in itself, and Hellenic philosophy does not make the truth more powerful. The varied and unfading Scriptures are the oracles of God, 1 Ep., ch. 47 and ch. I. 2 Eph., 3; Trallians, iii. 3 Ep., 3.

Gwatkin, Early Church History, I. 176.