We are all aware that early morality is mainly negative; it is the
ruling out of certain ways of arriving at the human ideal, however
that is to be defined, which have been attempted and have been
found failures. Whatever else may be the way to reach the end,
murder is not, theft is not, and so on. Thus we get the Second
Table of the Decalogue, where morality commits itself to
prohibitions--this is not the way, that is not the way; then
gradually, under the pressure of experience, there begins to emerge
the conception of the end which makes all this prohibition
necessary, and which these methods when they were attempted failed
to reach.
And so we come at last to "the Kingdom of God as proclaimed by Christ,
and the supreme law of ethics, the demonstrably final law of ethics, is
laid down--Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself."
Of course the words come from the Old Testament. Some critics used
to say: "You will find in the Rabbis almost everything, if not
quite everything, which you find in the teaching of Christ." "Yes,"
added Wellhausen, "and how much else besides." It was the singling
out of this great principle and laying the whole emphasis upon it
that made the difference.
To a man who believes that Christ came to set up the Kingdom of God,
clearly neither the Conservative nor Liberal Party can appeal with any
compelling force of divinity.
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