The pre-eminent debt which we owe to the Hebrew people is that they taught the people of Israel, and, through them, the world that God, the Almighty, the Creator of all that is and the judge of all rational beings, has moral character. He is essentially righteous and good. And inasmuch as man's happiness or blessedness can lie only in correspondence with God, the prophets of Israel are never weary of reiterating that the only religion which has any value with God is righteousness, justice, purity, mercy and truth.

It would not be true to say that, outside Israel there was no recognition of the essentially moral character of God. Such recognition can be found, for instance in the words of the ancient seer Zoroaster and in some of the best teachers of Greece. But there is nothing in the world to be compared to the continuous insistence on this truth, over many centuries, by the prophets of Israel.

If we take a survey of the religions of the world all through history we are compelled to notice that what has the best claim to be called "natural religion" consist for the most part in the observance of rites, ceremonies and practices, by which the favour of some God is supposed to be secured or maintained, but which have no connexion with morality. The God appears to be more or less powerful, but characterless. So it was with the Semitic religions round about Israel, to the level of which Israel was constantly falling. So it was with the religions of the cities of the Roman Empire where Gentile Christianity first established itself, the religions of Antioch, Corinth, Ephesus and the rest. So it is with the mass of non-Christian religions in the world to-day, if we omit Buddhism and Mohammedanism, which was of course deeply influenced by the religion of Israel. To us it seems to obvious a thing to associate religion and morality in an indissoluble fellowship, that we are apt to forget that in the religions of the world they have been habitually dissociated. And it is to the prophets of Israel that we owe their association. It is they who would teach us that the best definition of superstition is religion dissociated from morality.

I need not take up your time by quoting the familiar denunciation by all the prophets of religious ceremonies and practices which do not serve the purposes of social or personal morality. But I am sure the "critical" view of the Old Testament literature has done an immense service to religion in causing us to understand afresh that it is the religion of the prophets which gives to the Old Testament its special value. St. Chrysostom perceived of old, what modern investigation amply confirms, that the rites and ceremonies and sacred objects of Old Testament religion were akin to those of the surrounding nations. "They had," he says, "their origin in pagan grossness." Nevertheless visible rites and institutions are essential to religion. Thus, when after a long and severe struggle, in which the true prophets seem to be constantly defeated, they finally succeeded in bringing Israel to believe in the essential righteousness of God and the uselessness of non-moral observances, the prophetic teaching did not abolish but effectively remodelled the traditional religious institutions; and the religion of the ceremonial and civil law, and the religion of personal devotion, as we have it in the Psalms, and the practical teaching of the Wisdom literature, became all of them simply vehicles of the central dogma of the prophets that God is essentially righteous, and that there is no service of God which is worth anything in his sight which has not for its motive and end the conforming of the human character, individual and social, to the character of God.

The teaching of the prophets, whose writing remain to us, extended over a period of three or four hundred years in more or less unbroken continuity. I do not believe there us any reasonable way of accounting for it, except the way of the Epistle to the Hebrews, that "God in many part and many manner spake in old times unto the fathers by the prophets" or in St. Athanasius' great phrase that the teaching of the prophets was "the sacred school of the knowledge of God and of the spiritual life for all mankind."

Before the coming of Christ, however, Jewish tradition had in many ways tended to obscure the central teaching of the prophets. As our Lord said, they had "made the word of God of none effect by their traditions." But the essential message of the prophets was renewed by the great forerunner of the Christ, John the Baptist. It was reiterated and deepened by our Lord and it became the basis on which the Christian Church was built. Nothing can obscure the insistence of the New Testament that there is only one end in religion, and that is the becoming like God in character and aim. There are essential means which God has "devised" for the accomplishment of this end, such as the establishment of the Church and the Sacraments, the canonizing of the Scriptures and the proclamation in Creeds of the essential facts of God's redemption of man. But those are means: not ends. The end is that man should be, individually and socially, redeemed from sin into the moral likeness of God-that "holiness without which no man shall see the Lord." And this requirement of likeness with God is one which God himself cannot dispense with. There cannot in the rich pharmacopa of heaven, exist any device by which man should attain to God except by becoming actually like God in character.

This principle was expressed in the first name of the church - "the way." The Christian religion is first of all a way of life, and a difficult way at that. During the first three centuries of the Church's life, when it cost men much to become Christians and exposed them to manifold perils and annoyances, even to the risk of life itself, though the Church was very far from perfect, yet the moral standard was on the whole kept at its true level. After the co-called victory of the Church and the establishment of Christianity as the religion of the Empire, we are forced by the facts to acknowledge that the average moral standard sank very rapidly to the level which we are accustomed in nominally Christian countries to-day: and this because it had ceased to cost men anything to become Christians.

It is quite impossible, if one reads Church history, to deny that in spite of all the splendid examples of sanctity which the Church has almost constantly presented for our admiration and encouragement, it has in East and West alike allowed a very wide-spread impression to prevail, both in ages of barbarism and in ages of civilisation, that if men are orthodox in belief, and submissive to a modicum of ecclesiastical observance, and do not outrage the standard of respectability, they can expect to be assured of their salvation, though they make no serious attempt to follow the pattern of life which the Gospels and Epistles undoubtedly present to them as the only way.

I used above the word respectability. Any decent society has a standard of respectability, violation of which makes men social outcasts. there was among the Jews, and especially among the Pharisees, of our Lord's time a very high standard of respectability. But no one can read the Gospels with any attention without perceiving that our Lord insists on treating what one may call respectable sins, i.e., sins which are consistent with social consideration, as being quite as serious as disreputable sins. No one, I say, can read the Gospels and doubt that in his sight pride, contempt, exclusiveness, love of money, uncharitableness, unmercifulness are treated as excluding men from the fellowship of God quite as surely as fornication or violence. "The publicans and harlots" even "go into the Kingdom of Heaven before you." This is the root principle of Christianity. The real character of the eternal God has been revealed in the human character of Jesus Christ, the incarnate Son, and there is no other hope of eternal life, which is the fellowship of God, except by becoming like him. So the message of the prophets is deepened and clarified. Nor is it possible to read the Gospels without feeling that our Lord refused to allow the tremendous moral claim which he made upon men to be lowered, to the point where men in general would be ready to accept it. When one asked him the plain question, "Lord, are they few who are being saved?" He gave no plain answer: but only "Strive to enter in by the narrow door."

I believe that there is no duty which is so pressing upon the Church of Christ at this moment as the duty of re-erecting the ethical standard of Christ-or reasserting the only Way. It is evident to-day that the current rejection of Christianity is not primarily or mainly a rejection of its theology but a rejection of its moral claim. In regard to the sexual appetites the Christian standard, within marriage and without it, is being quite explicitly repudiated over very wide areas of society. This is commonly recognised. But it is at least as true that our industrial and social system have been largely built up on the repudiation of the Christian principles of justice, spiritual equality and brotherhood: and that the current maxims of our commerce, our current attitude towards wealth, our current toleration of selfishness as the normal ideal for the individual, the family and the nation, are direct repudiations of the principles of the prophets and of Christ. At the same time there is a very deep and wide feeling in the best of men, inside and outside the Church, that the Christian Life is rooted in the truth and that there is no alternative to it. And I cannot but acknowledge that it is very largely from outside the church that we have been, of recent years, relearning the moral meaning of Christ. I say that I think the first duty of the Church to-day is again to study and teach the Way, as William Law taught it in the 18th century in his "Serious Call." This demands from the preachers and teachers of the Church very serious study. And it will involve a very serious alteration of emphasis in our preaching. In particular this is true of the Catholic movement in Anglicanism. It has perforce been occupied in recovering forgotten or ignored elements of Catholic doctrine, for instance about the Sacraments. In doing this it has run a great risk. It has distorted the emphasis. it has not made it constantly evident that the sacramental institutions of Christendom are means, not ends; that there is only one end and this is likeness of God: and that we have no authority to substitute any lower standard as sufficient. This is the lesson which we owe in the first instance to the prophets of the Old Testament; but since the very God was manifested in the flesh, the meaning of their root principles has gained a quite new clearness. "I," says Jesus, "am the Way and the Truth and the Life." "God is love; and he that abideth in love"-which is the social principle of brotherhood-he and he only "abideth in God and God abideth in him." And to abide in divine love is to frame one's life in active correspondence with God's purpose. It is not merely negative attitude-to abstain from doing evil. It is the devotion of oneself to promoting the Kingdom of God-which is justice and peace and love-in every department of human affairs.

Project Canterbury