107

Part Second.

CHRIST'S LEGISLATION.

CHAPTER X.

CHRIST'S LEGISLATION COMPARED WITH PHILOSOPHIC SYSTEMS.

We have thus traced the rise of a monarchy, the purest and the most ideal that has ever existed among men. The most ideal, for in this monarchy alone the obedience of the subject was in no case reluctant or mercenary, but grounded upon a genuine conviction of the immeasurable superiority in goodness, wisdom, and power of the ruler. Such a superiority is always supposed to exist in a king, and to constitute the ground of his authority; but this is in most cases a fiction which deceives no one, and only sustains itself in bombastic titles and hollow liturgies of court etiquette. Where, however, the king has risen in disturbed times from a private station, and has won his sceptre by merit, the theory is no mere constitutional fiction. Such a king is, to many of his subjects, the true master he claims to be to all; there are many who obey him from a voluntary loyalty, who do in their hearts worship his superiority, and who find their freedom in accepting his yoke. But even in this case there are many whose submission is reluctant and sullen, or else mer

cenary and hypocritical. There is always at least a minority whose subjection is secured by force. In Christ's monarchy no force was used, though all power was at command; the obedience of his servants became in the end, though not till after his departure, absolutely unqualified, even when it involved the sacrifice of life; and it was obtained from them by no other means than the natural influence of a natural superiority.

This monarchy was essentially despotic, and might, in spite of the goodness of the sovereign, have had some mischievous consequences, if he had remained too long among his subjects, and if his dictation had descended too much into particulars. But he shunned the details of administration, and assumed only the higher functions of a heroic monarch-those of organisation and legislation. And when these were sufficiently discharged, when his whole mind and will had expressed itself in precept and signed itself for ever in transcendent deeds, he withdrew to a secret post of observation, from whence he visited his people for the future only in refreshing inspirations and great acts of providential justice.

The time has now come for examining the legislation which Christ gave to his Society. It has an important point of likeness and at the same time of unlikeness to the legislation which it superseded. The legislation which Jehovah gave to the Jews was always regarded by them not merely as a rule for their own actions, but as a reflection and revelation of the character of their Invisible King. The faithful Jew in obeying Jehovah became like Him. This inspiring reflection gave life and moral vigour to the Mosaic system. But that system laboured at the same time under the disadvantage that Jehovah was known to His subjects

only through His law. Only in prohibition and penalty was He revealed, only in thunder could His voice be heard. Now the law of Christ was in like manner a reflection of the mind of the lawgiver; but the new Jehovah made his character known not by his code merely, but by a life led in the sight of men, by 'going in and out' among the people. The effect of this novelty was incalculable. It was a moral emancipation; it was freedom succeeding slavery. The experience of daily life may explain this to us. It is a slavish toil to learn any art by text-books merely, without the assistance of a tutor; the written rule is of little use, is scarcely intelligible, until we have seen it reduced to practice by one who can practise it easily and make its justice apparent. The ease and readiness of the master are infectious; the pupil, as he looks on, conceives a new hope, a new self-reliance; he seems already to touch the goal which before appeared removed to a hopeless distance. It is a slavery when soldiers are driven against the enemy by the despotic command of a leader who does not share the danger, but the service becomes free and glorious when the general rides to the front. Such was the revival of spirit which the Jew experienced when he took the oath to Christ, and which he described by saying that he was no longer under the law but under grace. He had gained a tutor instead of a text-book, a leader instead of a master, and when he learned what to do, he learned at the same time how to do it, and received encouragement in attempting it. And the law which Christ gave was not only illustrated, but infinitely enlarged by his deeds. For every deed was itself a precedent to be followed, and therefore to discuss the legislation of Christ is to discuss his character: for

it may be justly said that Christ himself is the Christian law.

We must therefore be careful not to consider Christ's maxims apart from the deeds which were intended to illustrate them. There have been few teachers whose words will less bear to be divorced from their context of occasion and circumstance. But we find in our biographies the report of a long discourse, which, as far as we know, was suggested by no special incidents, and which seems to have been intended as a general exposition of the laws of the new kingdom. This discourse is commonly called the Sermon on the Mount; it is recognised by all as the fundamental document of Christian morality, and by some it is regarded as constituting Christ's principal claim upon the homage of the world. Naturally therefore it first attracts the attention of those who wish to consider him in his character of legislator or moralist.

The style of the Sermon on the Mount is neither purely philosophical nor purely practical. It refers throughout to first principles, but it does not state them. in an abstract form; on the other hand, it enters into special cases and detail, but never so far as to lose sight of first principles. It is equally unlike the early national codes, which simply formularised without method existing customs, and the early moral treatises such as those of Plato and Aristotle, which are purely scientific. Of Jewish writings it resembles most the book of Deuteronomy, in which the Mosaic law was recapitulated in such a manner as to make the principles on which it was founded apparent; of Gentile writings it may be compared with those of Epictetus, Aurelius, and Seneca, in which we see a scientific morality brought to bear upon the struggles

t

and details of actual life. It uses all the philosophical machinery of generalisation and distinction, but its object is not philosophical but practical—that is, not truth but good.

As then this discourse has a philosophic unity, let us try to discover what that unity is. As it propounds to us a scheme of life founded upon a principle, let us try to state the principle. The work of all legislators, reformers, and philosophers is in one respect alike; it is in all cases a protest against a kind of life which, notwithstanding, might seem to have its attractions, which, at any rate, suggests itself very naturally to men, and is not abandoned without reluctance. All reformers call on men to reduce their lives to a rule different from that of immediate selfinterest, to live according to a permanent principle and not, as the poet says, 'at random.' Against the dominion of appetite all the teachers of mankind are at one: all agree in repudiating the doctrine of the savage:

In the time of Christ, when Socrates had been in his grave four hundred years, it was hardly necessary for a philosopher to inveigh in set terms against such naked self-indulgence. The rudimentary lessons of philosophy had now been widely diffused. But as Christ called the poor into his kingdom, and addressed his invitation to those whom no reformer had hoped before to win, he was at the trouble to reason with this grossest egoism.