Archibald B. D. Alexander

“ We constantly live by faith, and in our common intercourse with our fellows we daily exercise this function. We have an irresistible conviction that we live in a rational world in which effect answers to cause. Faith, it has been said, is the capital of all reasoning. Break down this principle, and logic itself would be bankrupt. Those who have denied the intelligibility of the universe have not been able to dispense with the very organ by which their argument is conducted. Hence faith in its religious sense is of the same kind as faith in common life. ”

“ The three features which stand out most clearly in the Ethics of Christ are, Absoluteness, Inwardness, and Universality. It is an ideal for man as man, for all time, and for all men. The personality of God represents the highest form of existence we know; and the love of God is the sublimest attribute we can conceive. But because God is our Father there is a kinship between the divine and the human; and no higher or grander vision of life is thinkable than to be like God—to share that which is most distinctive of the divine Fatherhood—His love of all mankind. ”

“ The world itself, as a sphere of Work, Temptation, and Suffering, is a school of character. The affections and cares of the home, the duties and tasks incident to one's calling, the claims of one's fellow-men, the trials and temptations of one's lot—these are the universal and common elements in man's moral education. Not to escape from the world's activities and conflicts, but to turn them into conditions of self-mastery, is the duty of each. Men do work, but work makes men. ”

“ Morality is just the gradual unfolding of an eternal purpose whose whole is the perfection of humanity. It has been objected that the idea of life as an evolutionary process, which finds its most imposing embodiment in the system of Hegel, if consistently carried out, destroys all personal motive and self-determining activity, and reduces the history of the world to a soulless mechanism. Hegel himself was aware of this objection, and the whole aim of his philosophy was to show that personality has no meaning if it be not the growing consciousness of the infinite. ”

“ We see it in the literature of the age and especially in the best poetry, beginning already with Coleridge and Wordsworth, and continued in Tennyson and Browning. It is the inner life of man as depicted to us by these master singers, the story of the soul, even more than the delineation of nature which appeals to man's deepest experience and evokes his finest response. We see it in the art of our times, which, not content to be a mere expression of sensuous beauty or lifeless nature, seeks to be instinct with human sympathy and to become the vehicle of the ideas and aims of man. ”

“ Its Ethics is but a glorified egoism. Its dictates never rise above the impulses derived from nature. But not religion only with its kingdom of God, nor morality only with its imperatives, nor art with its power of idealising the world of nature, but even science itself, with its claim to unify and organise facts, proves that man stands apart from, and is higher than, the material world. The very existence of such activities in the invisible realm renders vain every attempt to reduce the spiritual to the natural, and to make truth, goodness and beauty mere outgrowths of nature. ”

“ Man is not a whole in himself. He is only complete in his fellows. As he serves others he serves himself. But men are not the unconscious functions of a mechanical system. They are free, living personalities, united by a sense of human obligation and kindredship. The State is more than a physical organism. It is a community of moral aims and ideals. Even law, which is the soul of the State, is itself the embodiment of a moral principle; and the commonwealth stands for a great ethical idea, to the fulfilment of which all its citizens are called upon to contribute. ”

“ The new 'vitalism' unfolds a living self-evolving universe, a restless, unfinished and never-to-be-finished development—the scope and goal of which cannot be foreseen or explained. An infinite number of possibilities open out; which the soul will follow no one can tell; why it follows this direction rather than that, no one can see. There seems to be no room here for teleology or purposiveness; and though Bergson has not yet worked out the theological and ethical implications of his theory, as far as we can at present say the personality and imminence of a Divine Being are excluded. ”

“ It lay behind Dante's vision of a spiritual monarchy, and has been the inspiring motive of those who, in obedience to Christ, have wrought for the uplifting of the hapless and the down-trodden. It has been the soul of all mighty reformations, and is the source of that conception of a new social order which has begun to mean so much for our generation.
Loyalty to the highest and love for the lowest—love to God and man—these are the marks of the men of all ages who have sought to interpret the mind of Christ. Mutual service is the law of the kingdom. ”

“ Already the world has been opened up, the nations of the earth are awakening to the greatness of life's possibilities. The danger is that the Oriental peoples should become satisfied with the mere externals of civilisation, and miss that which will assure their complete emancipation. Christianity was born in the East, though it has become the inheritance of the West. It is adapted by its genius to all men. And undoubtedly the West has no better boon to confer on the East than that on which its own life and hope are founded—the religion of Jesus Christ. ”

“ It takes its spring from one source and is dominated by one spirit. In the Christianity of Christ there stand conspicuous two great ideas bound together, indeed, in a higher—love to God the Father. These are personal perfection and the service of mankind—the culture of self and the care of others. 'Be ye perfect' and 'love your neighbour as yourself.' It is the glory of Christianity to have harmonised these seemingly competing aims. ”

“ They saw in that life lived among {169} men, and in that sacrifice upon Calvary, the perfect consummation of the ideal manhood that lived within their own hearts, and of the love, new upon the earth, which made it possible. The cross stood for the symbol of a truth that pierced to the inner core of their souls. 'He bore our sins.' And thus down the centuries, in their hour of shame, and grief, and death, men have lifted their eyes to the Man of Sorrows, and have found in His life and sacrifice, apart from all theories of atonement, their peace and triumph. ”

“ When we turn to Christian Ethics we find that here, not less than in philosophical Ethics, the motive lies in the object itself. The end and the motive are really one, and the highest good is to be sought for itself and not for the sake of some ulterior gain. It is true, indeed, that Christianity has not always been presented in its purest form; too often have prudence, fear, other-worldliness been set forth as inducements to goodness, as if the Gospel cared nothing for the disposition of a man, and was concerned only with his ultimate happiness. ”

“ Justice is a demand not for bread alone; it is a claim of humanity to life, and all that life ought to mean. Christianity affirms the spirit of human brotherhood—a brotherhood in which every child will have a chance to grow to a noble manhood, and every man and woman will have opportunity and encouragement to live a free, wholesome, and useful life. That is the Christian ideal, and to help towards its realisation is the duty laid upon every citizen of the commonwealth. ”

“ Truth, in other words, presupposes a rational universe which we, as rational beings, must assume in all our thought and effort. To set up faith against reason, or intuition against intelligence is to set the mind against itself. We cannot set up an order of facts, as Professor James would have us do, outside the intellectual realm; for what does not fall within our experience can have for us no meaning, and what for us has no meaning cannot be an object of faith. An ineradicable belief in the rationality of the world is the ultimate basis of all art, morality and religion. ”

“ But there is a danger that culture may not advance with emancipation, and while the masses demand their rights they may not at the same time discern their duties. For rights involve duties, and emancipation, as we have seen, is not liberty. The appeal of the socialistic party is to the equality of all who bear human features. It sounds plausible. But there never has been, nor never can be, such equality. Nature and experience alike reveal a pronounced and insuperable inequality among men. The law of diversity strikes deep down into the very origin and constitution of mankind. ”

“ What is it that makes the life of the Christian worth living? The answer can only be—The hope of becoming what Christ has set before man as desirable, of growing up to the stature of perfect manhood, of attaining to the likeness of Jesus Christ Himself. But so far from this being a selfish aim, not to seek one's life in God—to be indifferent to all the inherent blessings and joys involved—would be not the mark of pure disinterestedness, but the evidence, rather, of a lack of appreciation of what life really means. ”

“ This idea, which has found expression, not only in all the creeds of Christendom, but also in the higher literature and poetry of modern times, has given a new motive to action, has founded a new type of heroism, and nerved common men and women to the discharge of tasks from which nature recoils. The assurance that death does not end existence, but that 'man has forever,' has not only exalted and transfigured the common virtues of humanity; but, held in conjunction with the belief in the divine Fatherhood and human brotherhood, given to life itself a new solemnity and pathos. ”

“ The keynote of the past has been the exploitation of man by man in the three forms of slavery, serfdom, and wage-labour. The keynote of the future must be the exploitation of the earth by man associated to man. The practical aim of Socialism is that industry is to be carried on by associated labourers jointly owning the means of production. Here, again, the all-pervading ideal is—the general good of society—the happiness of the greatest number. ”

“ The ideal of life, the highest imperative of conscience. Here the nobility of life, as a whole, the supreme life-purpose, gives meaning and incentive to each and every action. The ideal of life is not, however, something static and completed, given once and for all. It grows with the enlightenment of the individual and the development of humanity. The consciousness of every age comprehends it in certain laws and ends of life. The highest form of the ideal finds its embodiment in what are called noble characters. ”

“ Repentance, Faith, and Obedience are thus the human factors of the new life. They are the moral counterparts of Grace. God gives and man appropriates. By repentance we turn from sin and self to the true home of our soul in the Fatherhood of God. By faith we behold in Christ the vision of the ideal self. By obedience and the daily surrender of ourselves to the divine will we transform the vision into the reality. They are all manifestations of love, the responsive notes of the human heart to the appeal of divine love. ”

“ If the soul's function is purely formal how can we attain to a self-contained life? Moreover, if the freedom which Kant assigns to man is really to achieve a higher ideal and bring forth a new world, must there not be some spiritual power or energy, some dynamic force, which, while it is within man, is also without, and independent of, him? 'Duty for duty's sake' lacks lifting power, and is the essence of legalism. Love, after all, is the fulfilling of the law. ”

“ But it may be further argued that, if the mechanical conception of life, which reduces the spiritual to the natural, were consistently carried out it would lead not merely to the destruction of the moral life, but to the destruction of science itself. If man is merely a part of nature, subject entirely to nature's law, then the realities of the higher life—love, self-sacrifice, devotion to ends beyond ourselves—must be radically re-interpreted or regarded simply as illusions. But it is also true that from this standpoint science itself is an illusion. ”

“ Without it Faith is an empty profession; {197} Knowledge, a mere parade of learning; Courage, a boastful confidence; Self-denial, a useless asceticism. Love is the fruitful source of all else that is beautiful and noble in life. It not only embraces but produces all the other graces. It creates fortitude; it begets wisdom; it prompts self-restraint and temperance; it tempers justice. It manifests itself in humility, meekness, and forgiveness:
'As every hue is light,
So every grace is love.'
Love is, however, closely associated with faith and hope. ”

“ It was Socrates, however, who, as it was said, first called philosophy from heaven to the sphere of this earth, and diverted men's minds from the consideration of natural things to the affairs of human life. He was indeed the first moral philosopher, inasmuch as that, while the Sophists merely talked at large about justice and virtue, he asked what these terms really meant. Living in an age when the old guides of life—law and custom—were losing their hold upon men, he was compelled to find a substitute for them by reflection upon the meaning and object of existence. ”

“ While righteousness is the distinctive note of the Pauline conception, it is also fundamental in the Ethics of Jesus. It is the ruling thought in the Sermon on the Mount. To be righteous for Jesus simply means to be right and true—to be as one ought to be. But human standards are insufficient. A man must order his life by the divine standard. Jesus is as emphatic as any Old Testament prophet in insisting upon the need of absolute righteousness. That, for all who would share in the kingdom of the good, is to be their ideal—the object of their hunger and thirst. ”

“ But even could we conceive of a human being kept from infancy in isolation, he would not fulfil the true idea of virtue, but would simply develop into a negative creature, a mutilated being bereft of all that constitutes our notion of humanity. Such experiences as are possible only in society—all forms of goodness as suggested by such words as 'love,' 'sympathy,' 'service'—would never emerge at all. The native instincts of man are simply potencies or capacities for morality; they must have a life of opportunity for their evolution and exercise. ”