MORALITY AND DOCTRINE.*
THE theme of these sermons, as their title implies, is the in- timate connection between morality and doctrine. It might be thought, prima facie, that this connection was too obvious to need argument or illustration : it seems so plain from the nature of things and from the testimony of history. By " doc- trine" we mean, as Dr. Bright does, theological doctrine. A man's moral conduct is not necessarily affected by any doctrine which he may chance to hold in geology, astronomy, or any other science except theology. A gentleman died a few years age who delivered lectures, wrote books, and founded a society in support of the doctrine that the earth is flat and the stellar system only a thousand miles distant from our planet. There is no reason to suppose that his peculiar doctrine had any influence on this gentleman's character. It is• otherwise with theological doctrine. Man's character is necessarily moulded by that of the Being whom he adores. We have illustrations of this fact in the personal in- fluence of one human being over another. So potent is this influence, and so instantaneous sometimes, that it is hardly an exaggeration to say that no two human beings can pass one short hour in each other's company without both of them being the better or worse for that brief intercourse. And it is evident that where the intercourse is
* Morality in Doctrine. By W. Bright, D.D., Canon of Christ Churoh, Oxford. Regius Professor of Ecolesiaetioal History. London : Longman and Co. 1892.
'constant the reciprocal influence will be much greater. It is also evident that this personal influence is still more deeply impressed upon one whose habitual ethical attitude is that of an inferior looking up to a superior. Now, if this is tree in men's relations towards each other, it must be true in a more intense degree in their relations to the Being to whom they render homage as the supreme arbiter of their destinies. Their opinion of his character must react upon their own. And history proves what reason suggests. Tribes and nations take their characters from that which they attribute to the object of their worship. Men grow insensibly, but inevitably, into the likeness of the Deity they worship. Buddhism, Mahommedanism, and Christianity are instances in point. The cardinal doctrines of each have stamped an ethical brand on their respective votaries. Their several types of morality are the fruits of their several creeds.
Yet plain and obvious as all this is, multitudes of able and excellent persons will not see the futility of any attempt to maintain and propagate Christian morality apart from Christian doctrine. They might as well attempt to retain life in a limb that has been severed from its parent stem. This assertion is not confuted by the fact of men exhibiting in a Christian land a high type of Christian morality while 'disowning the dogmas of Christianity. For the truth is that unbelievers, born and brought up in a Christian land, have imbibed Christianity unconsciously. It is in the air. They breathe it with every inspiration. It is in their blood. Their characters are moulded by it without their knowing it. They speak its language, think its thoughts, obey its laws, are thrilled by its music. In sculpture, painting, architecture, the pagan world is still our master. Music, as exhibited in the works of its great masters, is the creation of Christianity, The ancients had nothing to compare to the masterpieces of modern music. Unbelievers in a Christian land are practically Christian from the pressure of the atmosphere which embraces them and impregnates their whole being with Christian ideas and principles. Their goodness is, therefore, not independent of Christianity, but a consequence of it. The fair test is to compare Christendom as a whole with all that lies outside its borders. Any impartial observer will acknowledge the vast gulf that divides them. Modern civilisation, in the largest sense of that word, is the fruit of Christianity. Christian morality, viewed as a whole, differs in kind, not merely in degree, from pagan morality. The Christian virtues of humility and purity, for example, had no place in the moral systems of heathendom. Aristotle takes no account of them in his treatise on ethics. Dr. Bright is undoubtedly right when he says that "it is the Christ of St. Paul and St. John, the Christ of the Catholic creeds, who has been the true author of all that purity, tenderness, devotedness, which have made Christian morality a new thing in the world." The idea that it is possible to retain the morality of the Gospel—that of the Sermon on the Mount, for example—after discarding the Christian dogmas, is, as Dr. Bright observes, based on two untenable assumptions. The first is, "that if you take away the belief in an infinite moral Being, a living, personal God, who has taken men as moral beings into relations with Himself, you will have to base duty on what is less than in- finite, on large calculations of expediency, personal or social ; and such a basis will, in the hour of moral stress, be like ' a wall daubed with untempered mortar,'—it will not stand the shook of appetite or self-will." Moreover, "this disparagement of theology in the supposed interest of Christian practice takes for granted that all the ex-
, pressly doctrinal parts of the Christian Scriptures, and all those sayings ascribed to Jesus Christ which affirm his own superhuman majesty, or his mysterious relations to his Father, in terms going beyond those which the Sermon -employs, are simply spurious." For if they are not spurious, we have obviously no manner of right to dismiss them as having no connection with the morality which he taught. What he joined together have we any right to sunder P And can we practically sunder them P The far-reaching question, which the Founder of Christianity addressed to the Jews of his day, demands an answer still from those who would separate his morality from all considerations as to his person and mission : " What think ye of Christ P " An answer of some sort cannot be evaded. What is a teacher, expounding the Sermon on the Mount, to say to a pupil who asks him to explain who the preacher of the sermon was P He must either decline to answer, which would probably ruin his in- fluence as a biblical teacher ; or he must affirm, or deny, the dogma of Christ's divinity. He dogmatises in either case.
Dr. Bright's sermons are so closely packed with matter, that it is not easy to abridge the argument of any of them ; nor will we attempt it. Preachers who have not time to work out subjects of sermons for themselves, will find these sermons very helpful in suggesting fresh meanings and practical appli- cations in portions of Scripture which may have previously appeared to them too plain or commonplace to require exegetical treatment. When all the sermons are full of suggestive matter, it is hard to make a selection ; but we may refer to the sermon on "Things Temporal and Eternal" as a fair specimen of Dr. Bright's method of combining eloquent exposition (though the eloquence is severely re- strained) of Scripture with very acute practical directions as to moral conduct. Altogether, the volume is one that deserves high commendation.
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