THE MORAL IDEAL.—II.

Among the many difficulties of such an attempt, one (which, however, we think has been exaggerated) springs from the fact that the twilight of the one ideal, as in northern latitudes, mingles with the dawn of the other. And this blending of the.two, having been illustrated by the imagination of a great genius, and the doctrines of a small, but important sect, has come to seem more than it is. The shadow of the Cross will not long rest on the heart from which the image of him who gave it meaning has faded. But there is a moment in which the main conception of Christianity appears to emerge into greater originality and vigour by being severed from its historic framework. The name of Jesus is associated with exhortation and precept that the critic must often pronounce trite and tasteless. The thoughts of Jesus, set in a new dramatic framework, will often appear to attain for the first time their full distinctness of meaning. The sunlight never attracts our attention as much as it does just after the sun is below the horizon. The moral ideal of Christianity will survive Christianity only as the evening glow survives daylight. Apart from all sense of truth, the sense of fitnese is hurt by an attempt to put the new wine into the old bottles. It shocks our sense of sobriety when we hear of an opponent of • Christianity" desiring to take up his cross and follow the true Christ,—Humanity." He who bade his followers take up the Cross claimed a kind of devotion which the mere naturalist is false to his own faith if he does not regard as immoral It is true that no such devotion could be paid to the abstraction Humanity. But then why borrow those words to describe it ? This is not a question of words, it is a question of the most im- portant realities. The Cross, as it was named by the speaker whom Professor Clifford is quoting, did not suggest an ornament for which no gems are too precious. It meant an instrument of torture, of ignominy, and of death. And whatever be the spiritual act which he meant by taking it up, it was something utterly different from the aim of a modern man of science, who is anxious to spread correct notions among his fellow-men, and willing to incur obloquy from a few persons he despises in doing so.

The ideal of self-sacrifice is as much part of a supernatural world as any miracle is. We are far from thinking that the whole of morality is supernatural. Gratitude, kindliness, and truth are surely natural, in a very important sense, not in the sense that every one feels them, or even a majority of the human race ; still it is natural to be grateful for benefits, it is natural to be kind and true, where kindness and truth entail no sacrifice, as they often do not. But we have all known occasions for other virtues than these. You were quite ready to be grateful for my benefits, but suppose I have given you nothing but wrongs to forgive. You would have gone on for ever adding to my happiness by the numerous daily acts of kindness that cost nothing, but there came a time when the question was which of us was to be sacrificed. On the rational scheme, we have to ask which of us is of most importance to the rest of the world. To decide, would be a more difficult task for each, we should imagine, than a great deal of self-sacrifice. To stand back from the crowd that presses from the wreck to the lifeboat appears tons a less arduous effort, than to decide whether our own life, or that of another person, is best worth saving. But the more difficult duty has an intellectual element which removes it out of the reach of most people, and the substitute, surely, is to act on that motive which is perfectly clear, and do the best for oneself. This is the natura/ impulse. Christianity, or lot us exchange an abstraction for a person, and speak of him in whose life Christianity has its root—Christ--simply inverts this natural impulse. What we should do indeed must remain a matter for the judgment to decide, but there is no question as to what we should desire. It may conceivably be my duty to take the place of safety, of comfort, and of honour, and exclude my neighbour, but in no conceivable case is it per- mitted to me to wish for this, whatever he is, and whatever I am. It is not so much that the temptation must be resisted, as that the temptation must be inverted. We would emphasise this paradox, for it is the very core of the distinction we are pointing out. An eminent representative of the non-Christian scheme (Mr. Herbert Spencer) treats it as an absurdity that self-sacrifice should be itself an aim. It can only be an aim for a minority, he urges, in order that the majority should be relieved from all necessity for undergoing it. Some may be willing to sacrifice themselves, that others may be relieved from the need of self-sacrifice. A truism on the one side, this asser- tion is met by a fiat denial from the other. The morality that finds its justification not in the predominance of "pleasurable experience," but in the character of an actual person which it endeavours to approach, is a morality for all. If the career that led to the Cross was the best life, they are to be pitied who know nothing of the experience which the Cross has typified for nearly two thousand years.

Surely there can be no question that this is a supernatural standard. The natural impulse is to love safety, honour, ease. The natural morality bids me beware that my love for ray own ease and safety should not interfere with yours. The Christian morality demands that if sacrifice there must be, I should wish it to be mine and not 'yours. The word " supernatural " seems to lose all its moaning, if this is not supernatural.

It may be thought that we are enormously exaggerating the influence of Christ's character, in speaking of resemblance to it as a goal of general desire. We speak of an aim which we can sometimes—not by any means always—trace in the conduct of the holiest of mankind, as if it were accountable in some degree for the general standard of right and wrong with average men and women. And such, indeed, is our meaning. To all attempts to estimate the influence of an ideal by its trace in the actions of individuals, we must answer, in the words of Jean Paul,— " Take a cup of water out of the sea, and where is the blue ?"

'To judge of that which men have thought best, we must look not at this or that individual, but at the development of moral 'life in nations. From this point of view, the influence of the ideal set forth in the teaching and life of Christ is discernible even in the morality of worldly men. Why cannot a public man of our day plead, as Cicero did in declining the embassy to Antony, that his life is too valuable for him to undertake a post of danger ? It may be true, it may be in the highest degree necessary that some one should say it. What makes it impos- sible that the person principally concerned should say it P The still lingering tradition of chivalry renders such a pleading im- possible to a modern, and chivalry is the direct offspring of Vhristiamity,—of Christianity, it is true, in alliance with some of the fiercest and earthliest impulses of our nature, still it was to its Christian parentage that their common offspring owed snore than half its strength. The medireval ascetieism, again, is an emphatic tribute to the power of what would seem weakest in this ideal. Self-denial is hard enough when a man has to choose between suffering himself or making others suffer, but the student of history has to recognise the fact that it was once practised on a large scale without this alternative. We can easily understand the self-tormenting ideal of the middle-ages being re- garded as an evil influence ; but surely there are no two opinions us to its being an important one. This is an unquestionable tribute to that part of Christianity which is most difficult and most paradoxical.. And though whatever may be traced of its influence, now lies in a very different direction, it is still dis- cernible to one whn knows how to seek it. If the Christian standard has 4.- • to make men what it calls upon them to become, it has largely influenced what they wish to appear, and -what, therefore, they actually are, in some respects.

The virtue of the Christian ideal was love, the virtue of the scientific ideal will be truth. Not that the new morality sanc- tions hatred, any more than the old morality sanctions false- hood. But the emphasis is shifted from the duty of love to the duty of truth, and with this change of emphasis the words themselves take a different meaning. The meaning of love is changed by being subordinated to truth. We are all thrown at times with those who hurt our taste, and jar on our feeling of moral symmetry. Begin by looking upon it as your first duty to be true, and you will infallibly make these unfortunates aware of their unsatisfactoriness. We do not see, indeed, 'how you can wish to avoid it. Under this ideal, we believe that the bonds of natural affection and gratified taste may be very strong, even stronger from the damming-up of waters into these channels. But we suspect that the regions left a desert will be -wide.

Again, the meaning of truth is changed by its being made a positive instead of a negative duty. When we say that it is right to tell the truth, we mean, ordinarily, that it is wrong to tell a lie. Truth, abstractedly considered, is not a goal at which we must arrive, but a fence we must not cross. When to give the truth and when to withhold it, is a matter for the judgment to decide, not the conscience. There are, in- deed, occasions when silence is the worst form of false- hood ; but surely there are also occasions when frank- ness is the worst form of cruelty. And the mere negative precept—be either sincere or silent—does not bear any stress of • emphasis. "Truth is a thing to be shouted from the house- top," says Professor Clifford. No one could say that, who meant only that under no possible circumstances must we tell a lie. Indeed, the speaker does not mean BO much as this, for he has just instanced a case in which we may toll a lie, and the contiguity of the two statements seem to us very

'instructive. Who are the people who are to shout the truth from the housetops P Manifestly, the leaders of thought. What

have the small shopkeepers in some back street to do with such a duty P To be honest, to keep from the practical lies about light weights and adulterated wares,—here, indeed, lies the sorest test of their goodness ; but with truth in Professor Clifford's sense they have almost as little to do as with the higher mathe-

matics. Truth is the virtue of the intellectual world. The truth that can be "shouted from the housetop" is a truth

about things. No truth which belongs to the personal world

could be so imparted. Try to set your grounds for revering some great man before one of his opponents, and you will find that as

often as not you have added fuel to his dislike or contempt. "Think of his fervent indignation against all wrong." "Yes, I know him to be a prejudiced bigot." "Remember his warm sym- pathy with suffering." "His is the weakly emotional nature that spends plenty of energy in sentiment" "Consider this and that sacrifice, which at least prove him to be nobly disinterested." "They prove only his want of sense." You would gain nothing by growing more emphatic. Perhaps it may be thought that we are straining a phrase ; we gain nothing by being emphatic in asserting that the Bull is larger than the moon, if our auditor is not prepared to listen to the evidence. But in such a case, every auditor who listens to the evidence is prepared to receive it. When we are trying to impart truth about things, all we need in our listener is attention. In mat- ters of debate referring to the human world, on the other hand, it will often be found that just in proportion to the attention of the listener is his increased divergence from the speaker. When we are speaking of things, you may be certain that truth on your lips will be truth in my oars. It is otherwise when we are speaking of persons. Most of all is it otherwise when we are speaking of that which belongs wholly to the unseen world, as personal truth does only in part. "The earth moves round the sun" is an assertion that just as much de- mands disentanglement from the mere impressions of sense, as does the assertion, "Blessed are they that mourn." The first impression of an intelligent but uninstructed observer would be equally adverse to both. But only listen to the speaker in the first case, and you will believe him. Bow much • more than attention you need to believe the last

Christian morality, therefore, cannot but appear regardless of truth to one who approaches it from the outside. It is con- versant with truth that cannot be conveyed from one mind to another, like a parcel, while to all truth which can be thus conveyed, its attitude is one of indifference. Insincerity is condemned here, as elsewhere, but that is all. It is impossible that the thing considered of small importance relatively to the aim of humanity should not appear to the mere intellectual man to be truth itself. And it is undeniable that between treating accurate knowledge of a particular region of truth as insignificant, and habits of insincerity and equivocation in sup- porting false views of that region, there is only that distance which must always lie between an ideal and the ordinary prac- tice of those who desire to attain it. The Christian ideal would admit of utter indifference to an accurate view of the process by which the world was made fit for the habitation of man. The Christian practice, we fear, admits of a very uncandid pleading for certain views of this process, the surrender of which is demanded by intellectual honesty. On this matter, our standard condemns falsehood as sternly as that of our opponents. But it cannot be said that on this matter it enjoins truth.

The divergence of Christian practice from the Christian standard, we incline to think, may be more conspicuous, and perhaps to some extent really greater, than that from the oppo- site code. Christian life approaches its centre as the spiral, not the radius, for ever drawing nearer but not attaining it. And we believe that this is true, more or less, of all ideals. But we do not think it will be as conspicuously true of any other ideal as of Christianity. The duty which every one, we suppose, regards as characteristically Christian is that of forgiveness. It is not easy to put into other words what we mean when we say that one person forgives another; we more easily describe what it is not than what it is. It is not forgetting the ac- tion in question; that may remain perfectly distinct in the for- giving mind. It is not coming to think it less wrong, that change might do away with any space for forgiveness. Lastly, it is not the remission of any penalty, that may be exacted by perfect forgiveness, or remitted by absolute resentment. Yet with all this, under average circumstances people do not make mistakes about this matter. A selfish, worldly man recognises the unforgiving spirit in another person just as distinctly as the saintliest of human beings does. The corresponding failure on the scheme of non-Christian ethics, on the other hand, is by no means so evident. The duty there, we presume, is an exact observance of proportion between the offence and the displeasure it excites,—a duty infinitely harder than that of forgiveness, but then it is harder to judge as well as to do. So that in those two cases we have to compare a duty in which failure is obvious, with a duty in which failure is extremely obscure. No wonder the failures are more glaring in the first case than in the last.

Perhaps, too, they are really greater. The standard which requires forgiveness requires it absolutely. The work of time, effacing alike, in certain minds, the memory of injury and benefit, and wearing out all keenness of feeling on either side, affords no substitute for the forgiveness "from the heart," which is accepted as the great test of Christianity. On the contrary, this great claim rather tends to prevent or delay this work. Two men are almost equally removed from the oblivion of wrong,—he who is struggling to revenge it, and he who is struggling to forgive it. The mere worldly man, who thinks of nothing but forgetting it, is probably much nearer oblivion than either. And of course, he far more nearly comes up to the standard of tho un-Christian moralist than the imperfect Christian does to his. The duty of giving a proportional place in one's mind to offence against oneself is merely negative ; all that is demanded by such a standard is that the place given to the offence shall not be excessive ; and you cannot say -that a man gives excessive importance to any- thing he has forgotten. If this be true, and. it seems to us un- deniable, though a just estimate of wrong be, in reality, far more difficult than perfect forgiveness of wrong, yet the standard which demands it, but accepts in its stead oblivion of wrong, is more easily satisfied than that which is absolute. Therefore we incline to believe that the morality of the world will be less violently, as well as less conspicuously, outraged by its votaries than is the morality of Christ.

This will not be felt a great concession by one who has entered into the spirit of the ideal of Christianity. A long life of failure, resulting in a thirst for rightness is a better thing, from that point of view, than a prosperous and beneficent career that ends in self-satisfaction. Eternity remains, to fulfil all aspiration formed here. If none is formed, the whole purpose of life has yet to be approached.