Christ in ethics

Contents

PAGE

Prologue 5

I. Ethics Defined 9

Prologue

Ethical writers in common base Christian ethics on the principles of Christ.

This book bases Christian ethics on the principles and person of Christ. The relation of Christ to Christian ethics is not only doctrinal, but also vital, personal. "I am the vine; ye are the branches," expresses this relation.

Apart from Christ Himself real Christian ethics cannot exist : "Without me ye can do nothing" (John 15 :5). Christian ethics apart from the person of Christ is like man's body apart from the personal spirit that animated it.

This subject is discussed under ten heads. Chapter I. defines Christian ethics related to history, to theology, to aesthetics, and to psychology. The eminent philosopher, Hermann Lotze, rightly declares "The true beginning of metaphysics is in ethics."

Chapter II. treats of the moral faculty at once basal and chief in the hierarchy of mental forces. Its primacy is seen in its less likelihood to err, and in pointing obligation to Deity. It lies at the basis of religion and all moral reform.

Chapter III. shows ethics to be inseparable from religion. Religion constitutes and conditions ethics. God in His kingdom of righteousness and retribution (Rom. 1 :16-17) is the stay of Christian ethics.

Chapter IV. traces historic ethics advancing toward Christian ethics. The moral darkness and the atrocities committed in the name of Christianity during the middle ages, seem now incredible.

Yet war, most cruel of crimes against mankind, has been generally approved until late ; but it is rapidly passing out of favor.

Chapter V. views Christ creating man anew, and indwelling and heading a new race styled a "new creation" (2 Cor. 5:17). Christ's consciousness becomes the Christian consciousness (John 17:21-23).

Chapter VI. discusses at length the results of Christ dwelling in the believer, changing his entire being (Rom. 12:1,2), counteracting heredity and shaping offspring. Sexual hygiene secures power of parenthood, infancy, youth, and marital purity, disclosing marital wrongs and crimes menacing the family and the nation.

Chapter VII. deals with diet, dress, and personal habits, respecting the foregoing evils.

Chapter VIII. "Christ in government" begins a new era in politics and business. Capital and labor complement each other. Oneness in all interests unites all mankind in actual brotherhood, and world-leadership is the crown of moral leadership.

Chapter IX. shows the Divine provision enabling business and government to be carried on without sin. By the atonement we participate in God's holiness and sovereignty, "are called into His kingdom and glory" (1 Thess. 2:12). All this is implied in the pre-Pentecostal prayer taught by Christ to His disciples: "Thy kingdom come; they will be done in earth as it is in heaven" (Matt. 6 :10). In heaven all employments and government proceed without sin.

Chapter X. discusses future endless punishment as just retribution upon those who ignore and despise God's rule in time and eternity: "Seeing it is a righteous thing with God to recompense tribulation to them that trouble you . . . When the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with His mighty angels, in flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ : who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of His power" (2 Thess. 1:6-9).

Future endless punishment of the impenitent, persistent wicked is required to vindicate Divine righteousness and to maintain the moral welfare of the universe ; and herein it is a manifestation of Divine love, as this chapter shows.

This book is sent forth to meet a present need. Readers who think the writer extreme on certain points; instance, eugenics and marital purity, also the conducting municipal, state and national government free from wrong, are cordially invited to a careful study of these points as supported by modern scientific research and Holy Writ.

A second careful reading of this book will richly repay the effort.

That it may advance the cause of personal purity and promote the domestic and political welfare, is the prayer of the writer,

S. P. JACOBS,

Bloomdale, O.

CHAPTER I. Ethics Defined

Ethics is a progressive science. It will progress while man progresses. Its terms, as to content, extent, and intent, are not of fixed limit, like those in mathematics. In kind, scope, and depth, ethics advances with man's advancing toward ever higher and higher perfection in self-improvement and in social, civic, and nature-culture ; for nature degraded cy man's fall in Eden, shares with him the restoration (Rom. 8 :19-22). This point will be made clear further on. The moral significance of creation cannot be destroyed.

Ethics has been variously defined. This comes from viewing this question from different standpoints. From the standpoint of moral obligation, Noah Webster says, "Ethics is the science of duty." As related to the Divine government, Dr. Wayland calls it "the science of moral law." From the viewpoint of man's free agency, President Mark Hopkins defines it as "The science of man choosing and acting from choice under moral law."

Furthermore, "Ethics is the science of the moral" ( Wuttke) ; "The science which teaches men their duty and the reasons for it" (Paley) ; ''The science which treats of morals, the science of right" (Haven) ; "The systematic application of the ultimate rule of right to all conceptions of moral conduct" (Hiccock) ; "A code of rules for the regulation of conduct among men as they should be" (Herbert Spencer).

The writer would define Christian ethics to be the free concurrence of God and man in all moral relations and activities, according to the New Testament; or having all the mind of Christ (Phil. 2:5; Eph. 4:13) and walking as He walked (Col. 1:10) "in all manner of living" (1 Pet. 1 :15.)

A mental concept, a feeling, a motive, a principle, an act, a character, is moral when right can be declared of it; contrariwise, it is immoral.

Ethics involves kindred sciences. Viewing the sense of the beautiful in character, in nature, and in art, ethics enters the province of aesthetics. Considering the faculties of the mind employed in the moral activities of the human personality, gives to ethics quite a section in psychology. Right, dominating the community, regulating commerce, permeating all business corporations, state legislation and international treaties, introduces ethics into the realm of political economy. To study man at his best as related to God and His law; as related to sin and its guilt, pollution, and penalty; as related to the Divine atonement securing salvation from sin and restoration to God, involving all the moral precepts of the gospel, includes in ethics largely the domain of systematic theology.

Ethics and history are very closely related. In fact, history is concrete ethics, in large part. History is largely the product of ethical forces in mankind. Rightly does Dr. Adolf Wuttke declare: "A real understanding of history is not possible without ethics ; universal history is the realization of the moral — the good and also the evil — within humanity; hence history . . . is an important teacher of morality" (Christian Ethics, Vol. I., p. 17).

High culture gives ethics a wide sweep. It dominates every human activity. Every faculty takes higher rank. It throws new light upon relations to God and to mankind. A chief among foremost philosophers, Hermann Lotze, has well said: "The true beginning of metaphysics is ethics."

CHAPTER II. The Moral Faculty

A faculty is not a member of the mind as the eye or the ear is a member, or organ of the body. "Man is not an organism, but an intelligence acting through an organism" (McCosh).

Noah Webster defines faculty as "the ability to act, to perform, whether inborn or cultivated; the capacity for any of the well-known classes of mental activity."

The entire personality acts in a given way, or is conscious of a given state (Porter) ; hence the moral faculty is the ability, capacity for moral acting and moral feeling.

Unlike the other faculties, as memory, reason, and imagination, the moral faculty, or conscience, has in it the element of authority, producing a feeling of obligation.

Defined more fully, conscience is the perception of right and of wrong in act, feeling, and motive, under a sense of obligation to embrace the right and oppose the wrong. Dr. Charles Hodge rightly declares: "It is admitted that conscience is less liable to err than reason ; and when they come into conflict, real or apparent, our moral nature is the stronger, and will assert its authority in spite of all we can do" (System. Theology, Vol. I., p. 7).

This sense of moral obligation implies a Supreme One to whom we are obligated. As our internal sensations imply, the external world, so our internal sense of moral obligation implies the external Deity to whom we are obligated.

In the latter case the evidence is the stronger; for our external senses may deceive us, whereas our internal self-consciousness is infallible. This is conceded by all philosophers, whatever their religious views.

Sir William Hamilton declares: "That given in consciousness is undoubtedly true." Likewise John Stuart Mill: "Whatever is known by consciousness, is known beyond the possibility of question." The latter illustrates the truth stated by Dr. McCosh: "The greatest skeptics have allowed that we must trust consciousness" (Christianity and Positivism, p. 194).

The idea of God is unavoidable. Conscience in man implies God as truly as wings in the bird imply the open air. Dr. Fisher is right : "Out of man's perception of his own personal attributes arises the belief in a personal God . . . Man's personality denotes God's personality. Together they stand or fall" (Grounds of Theistic and Christie Belief, p. 2).

To long for God, is universal. It may be rudely expressed; but man everywhere exhibits it in some form of worship. President McCosh, of Princeton University, truly declared, "Everywhere in all countries, in ancient as in modern times, in civilized as well as in barbarous nations, we find him a worshipper at some altar, be it venerable, degraded or bloodstained" (Divine Government).

It is evident that conscience in man is not accidental — a result of training or of habit. Its germ, like that of memory and of imagination, is inborn in human nature; and, like memory and imagination, it may be cultivated or perverted. The deep Dr. Frantz Delitzsch rightly declares that "Conscience is inseparable from the personal nature of man, and comes into being contemporaneously therewith" (Biblical Psychology, p. 168).

Concurring in this view is Dr. Adolf Wuttke, University of Halle, and among psychologists easily a foremost writer on ethics. He says, "Conscience is a revelation of the moral law as the Divine will ... In its germ it is a primitive and not a derived power . . . Conscience is essentially an integral part in man's God-likeness . . . The conscience, as differing from the enlightening influence of the Holy Spirit (Rom. 9:1), is a power inherent in the essence of man per se, see Rom. 2 :14, 15, in proof : "When the Gentiles who have not the law do by nature the things of the law, these, not having the law, are a law unto themselves; in that they show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness therewith, and their thoughts one with another accusing or else excusing them." R. V. (Christian Ethics, Vol. II., p. 100).

In man's normal state, the idea of God and conscience are inseparable. The dimness of this idea denotes the depth of man's degradation. "Only the fool hath said in his heart, there is no God" (Psa. 53:1). But even this denial proves the presence of the idea of God.

Apart from the regenerating (John 3:5-7) and the transforming (Rom. 12:2) power of divine grace, man seems a creature of two contrary natures. To turn from himself to God or from God to himself, seems to violate the plan of his own being. He actually is a contradiction of himself.

Under increasing light, these two inward contrary forces swell into a tumult — a tempest — of the soul. From this standpoint, Pliny the Elder (23-79 A.D.) bemoans man, "A being full of contradictions; he is the most wretched of creatures, since other creatures have no wants transcending the bounds of their natures. Man is full of desires and wants that can never be satisfied. His nature is a lie, uniting the greatest poverty with the greatest pride. Among these so great evils, the best thing God has bestowed upon man is the power to take his own life" (Neander's Church History).

Contemporaneous with Pliny was that eminent Pharisee — now famous apostle of Christ — as was Pliny a famous naturalist. Paul experienced, like Pliny, this inward combat of contrary moral forces. His portrayal is pathetic : "That which I do, I allow not ; for what I would, that do I not ; but what I hate, that do I . . . For I know that in me, that is, in my flesh (earthly nature) dwelleth no good thing; for to will is present with me, but to do that which is good is not. For the good which I would, I do not; but the evil which I would not that I do ... O, wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" R. V. (Rom. 7:15-24).

Paul and Pliny alike deplore man's wretched moral condition. But Paul facing despair shouts his triumph, "I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord! . . ." The law of the Spirit of Life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death ("warring against the law of my mind." Rom. 7:23). "We know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose . . ." "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or peril, or sword? Nay! in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him that loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature [creation] shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Rom. 8:28, 35-39).

Why Paul's ecstatic triumph in place of Pliny's deep despair? Conscience; nothing but conscience. Pliny fought his conscience; Paul crowned his. Pliny, rejecting the moral teachings of Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero, violated the "law written in the heart." In consequence, he became a God-ignoring "agnostic" [Encyclop. Brittanica] commending suicide as the only hope against despair under the pangs of a guilty conscience.

This "law written in the heart" at man's beginning holds over through the successive dispensations of Divine grace. Before man's fall, it was a perfect image of God's character (Col. 3 :10) and an accurate expression of His will (Rom. 2:15).

By the fall this image was greatly dimmed, but not defaced; for "from [since] the creation of the world the things that are made," clearly reveal the invisible things of God "even His eternal power and God-head; so that they [with no written law] are without excuse" (Rom. 1:20).

This inward law, or moral faculty, surviving the fall is proof that it is, like memory and reason, essentially inherent. Dr. F. Delitzsch well says : "The heathen doing by nature what the revealed law claims, they bear witness to the fact that a knowledge of what is right before God, is established in the creatively ordained constitution of man" (Biblical Psychology, p. 163).

Although this inward law was greatly obscured by the fall, yet it becomes a potent factor in man's restoration through Christ. Without this inward law authorizing the written law with its institutions, restoration to God's character and will would not be possible.

It has the sacredness and the sovereignty of the written law: "For as many as have sinned without law [written] shall also perish without law [written] ; and as many as have sinned in the law [written] shall be judged by the law [written]" Rom. 2 :12.

In the light of this "law written in the heart," excuse for sin is out of the question ; hence the Scriptures require holiness under the different successive dispensations of the Divine government (Gen. 17:1,9-14; Lev. 19:2, 18, 34; Deut. 30:6; 1 Pet. 1:14-16; I Thess. 5:23, 24).

Not only man is destined to reflect the image of God, but nature as well in its order (Rom. 1 :19-20) : "The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth His handiwork. Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night showeth knowledge" etc. (Psa. 19:1.) But because of dullness of hearing and dimness of sight, incurred by the fall, the language of the physical universe is but little understood. Unrenewed man discerns but dimly the spiritual significance of creation.

The spiritual significance of man and of subordinate creation is regained again through the vicarious death of Christ (Eph. 4:20-24; Col. 3:10; Heb. 10:16; John 10:14,15; 17:21-23). Further on, this point will be made plainer.

Only of late the moral faculty begins to receive the consideration it merits. With us, Christian ethics is yet in its infancy. Psychologists have discussed the human mind as constituted of intellect, sensibilities, and will. His moral faculty — the most important thing in him — has received on part of psychologists, but little consideration. Only a few decades ago President W. F. Warren, Boston University, declared. "The science of Christian ethics is with us almost unknown" (Wuttke's Chr. Eth., Preface VII). With this as with Christianity itself, our views have been very, very superficial. But now moral scientists not only, but all real philosophers, are seeing man's moral nature, or moral faculty, to be an original element in man's constitution, and the basis of religion the most important thing concerning him.

The moral faculty as inborn and as cultivated is receiving fuller consideration in late years on part of some leading German psychologists.

As inborn it is more a feeling than an inference or even perception. It is a tendency. This tendency to the right, to feel after God (Acts 17:2T), is aptly expressed by the German ahnimg, as used by the foremost philosophers, Lotze and Ulrici, in discussing this subject. The term ahnung is from ahnen, "to have a presentiment of, to have a dim feeling or inkling after" (Whitney).

This tendency, presentiment, or dim feeling, is the initial manifestation of the moral faculty designed to be developed into a clear God-consciousness in Christianity. Any seemingly exceptionable cases can be referred to heredity or abnormal conditions of mind and body. Without a right conception of the moral faculty, man is not understood.

Akin to the moral faculty — conscience, is the spiritual function — believing. In the scale of forces — mechanical, chemical, vital, intellectual and moral, the moral faculty is chief ; just so is believing among the human functions chief. Psychology affirms that, as the senses reveal the physical world just so faith reveals the spiritual and greater world which rules it, and can not be known by the senses or the mental activities themselves : "The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God . . . Neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned" (1 Cor. 2:14). Therefore, "we have received the Spirit of God, that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God" (1 Cor. 2:12) ; "that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith" (Gal. 3:14), who reveals the Son and the Father (John 14:21-23); "That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith . . . unto all the fullness of God" (Eph. 3:17-19).

The believer is thus God-held (John 10:28, 29), mutually God-knowing (John 10:14,15), and mutually God-centred (John 17:21-23). And faith by virtue of its supreme rank over "all things" (Mark 9:23) and its sovereign scope (Rom. 8:38, 39) is the efficient instrument actualizing Christ in ethics.

CHAPTER III. Ethics and Religion

We have seen already that ethics and religion are very closely related. And by religion is not now meant the Christian religion, but religion in general, whether monotheistic or polytheistic.

In general, "religion is the outward act, or form, by which men indicate their recognition of the existence of a god or of gods having power over their destiny, to whom obedience, service, and honor are due ; a system of faith and worship ; a manifestation of piety, as ethical religions, monotheistic religions, etc." (Webster).

Religion, like ethics, is grounded in man's moral nature. And in germ it is as clearly attested as any fact in his physical being. Professor Tyndal very justly declares "The facts of religious feeling are to me as certain as the facts of physics."

While ethics concerns the outworking into active life, of the moral "law written in the heart" [Chapter II.], religion is the upward action of that law linking man to God, whereby is secured the development and the perpetuity of ethics. Religion and ethics of necessity correlate. When religion declines, ethics must decay.

Ancient Greece is a strong example of this. Greece reached its maximum of power under Pericles (469-429 B. C). Their religion for centuries had been theocentric. The supreme Deity and his subordinates ruled the seen and the unseen.

Freemen [the population was mostly slave] revered divine authority, and obeyed law in the light of present reward and of future retribution.

Aeschylus (525-450 B. C.) very forcibly declares their constructive faith : "Death is no escape to the wicked from their sins or the consequences of them. Their crimes will follow them into another world. . . . In Hades also there is a tribunal which the wicked cannot escape, and a faithful record of their lives; and a just Judge will certainly bring them to judgment and punishment according to their deeds" (Lost Forever, p. 303).

Likewise, a hundred years later, Plato (429-327 B. C.) : "We ought always to believe those ancient and sacred words which declare to us that the soul is immortal, that judges are appointed; and that they pass the highest sentence of condemnation when the spirit leaves the body" (Lost Forever, p. 303).

It was under this wholesome teaching that ancient Greece rose to peerless primacy in culture, and eclipsed all ancient civilizations in glory.

But a change came. "Philosophy passed its meridian in Plato and Aristole" (Encyclopaedia Brittanica). Through Aristotle religion began to become anthropo-centric, exalting the human in place of the divine. This appears in his teachings as set forth by Dr. Adolf Wuttke : "Freeborn man is by nature thoroughly good, hence has in his own reason the pure fountain of moral knowledge."

"In Aristotle morality is entirely rooted in the soil of the subject [man] ; it appears less as the holy will of God to man, than as the absolutely normal essence of the spiritual life as called forth by the rational human spirit itself."

"In Plato the goal of moral striving lies in God-likeness and in the pleasure of God in man; in Aristotle the subjective character comes decidedly into the foreground, namely, in the thought that this goal is the personal well-being of the moral subject" (Christian Ethics, Vol. I., p. 94).

Furthermore : "In Plato the highest and truest is, and remains, an object of the yon-side [next world] ; in Aristotle ... all that is true becomes a quality of the this-side [present world], and that, too, not as brought into reality from without, but as wrought out from within (ditto Vol. L, pp. 94, 95).

This rationalistic trend in Aristotle is affirmed also by the eminent cyclopaedists, McClintock and Strong: As to Plato, "The end of all his teaching is to show, in opposition to the Sophists, that the mind of man is not its own standard ; the tendency of Aristotle's teaching is to show that it is" (Biblic. Theolog. Eccl. Cyclop., Vol. I., p. 397).

Divorcing ethics from religion divorces religion from God, degrading both ethics and religion in consequence; and human reason displacing divine authority becomes darkened, and dooms its subject to blinding skepticism and final destruction. Such was the course pursued by ancient Greece. The same is true of all other fallen nations of the past.

Subordinating ethics to religion recognizing the sovereignty of Deity and the certainty of future retribution, is not an optional speculation of philosophy. It is a fundamental principle in the divine government and also in organized human society. This is well-stated by the eminent French philosopher, Baron de Montesquieu : "The idea of a place of future rewards necessarily implies a place of future punishments; and where the people hope for the one without a fear of the other, civil laws have no force." (Spirit of Law, p. 246.)

This principle is so obvious that even infidels admit it. Lord Bolingbroke : "The doctrine of future rewards and punishments has a great tendency to enforce laws and restrain the vices of men." (Shedd. Hist. Christ. Doctrine, Vol. I., p. 201.) Likewise Mr. Hume: "Disbelief in futurity loosens the ties of morality, and may be supposed to be pernicious to civil society/' (Bates, Cyclop, of Laws, p. 483.)

This doctrine of divine government with its present providence and future retribution has enabled China and Japan to achieve their great prosperity and marvelous perpetuity for thousands of years.

The Chinese Dragon denotes absolute divine justice bringing certain punishment upon every transgression. This has preserved a keen sense of sin, and given high ideals and strong support to morals. The Chinese Emperor, Buo, three thousand years ago, punished drunkenness with the death-penalty.

His system, modified, was introduced into Japan, and was operated nearly a thousand years. In fact, its influence is still manifest. Recently, under the administration of Japan's eminent Premier, Prince Ito, a soldier of Japan at Ping Hang, Korea, "ran amuck" — with bayonet chasing one through the American Methodist Mission. Prince Ito ordered a penalty of two months at hard labor; and the colonel, major, captains and lieutenants of the regiment were disciplined by confinement from three to seven days. In China the criminal and his near-friends receive like punishment. Early Hebrew civilization affords analogous cases — Korah, Numb. 16:23-34; Achan, Josh. 7:20-26.

This high regard for Heaven's authority and a keen sense of sin must be regarded as the secret of the stability of China and of Japan during the past several thousand years.

The ethics of China and of Japan merits further consideration. As to China, moral character strong enough to overcome the invasion of Gengis Khan in the Thirteenth Century and strong enough to survive the subjugation by the Manchu dynasty in the Seventeenth Century and yet retain their own language, government and religion, and, above all, to absorb and assimilate their conquerors, evinces force of character without a parallel.

Such flexibility and power of endurance must be the product. of their religion; for "Religon is the most powerful social force known to man ; beyond anything else it has shaped, and is shaping, the world's history." (Dr. R. T. Ely, Social Law of Service, p. 20.) Religion is the summit of power in a man or a nation.

The religion of China has been Theo-centric — God-centred, in start and aim. The emperor styled The Son of Heaven, has been sole high priest at the "altar of Heaven" in Peking — a worship wholly distinct from the state-religion of Confucianism.

Annually, at the time of the Winter solstice, the emperor, with fasting and contemplation, prostrates himself before Heaven, offering bullocks in sacrifice for himself and for the nation.

In his daily living he observes this principle : "He that complies with Heaven is preserved ; he that rebels against Heaven is ruined." (Book of Changes.) This worship of the patriarchal age is the golden link uniting China to Heaven. Herein is the secret and the source of China's transcendent perpetuity.

Still further: A nation's literature indicates its moral rank. In this, China outranks all other nations, Christian as well as Pagan. There is nothing to offend woman's finer sensibilities. Mr. Thomas Taylor Meadows, long a chief resident in China, makes this remarkable statement: "No people, whether of ancient or modern times, has possessed a sacred literature so completely exempt as the Chinese from licentious descriptions and from every offensive expression. There is not a single sentence in the whole of their sacred books and their annotations that may not, when translated word for word, be read in any family in England" (Trumbull White, War in East, p. 140).

Likewise, "in their painting and sculpture, scrupulous care is taken to avoid all indecent and immoral associations and suggestions" (White).

What a contrast, this, with ancient Greece and Rome, and with modern Europe and America! ! Much of our stage, illustrated press, popular romance, advertising methods, and billboard practice is openly immoral.

Further still : China showed her superior rank in ethics when, being urged by the representatives of Christian England to legalize the opium trade and make it a source of revenue, the emperor replied that he would "not use as a means of revenue that which brought suffering and misery upon his people" (War in East, p. 139).

This incident verifies the remarkable statement of Mr. Brinkley that "No other" nation has reached a moral and national elevation so high above contemporaneous states" (Japan and China).

That China will hold high rank as a world-power in the progress of the future, is assured by the following: "Tai Hung Chi and Viceroy Tuan Fong, as Imperial Commissioners, came to the United States in 1906; and in his address February 1st,