Lecture I. Introductory

I HAVE given some lessons on Ethics, or Morals, to a class in the College, which met me on one of the evenings of the week. I have had a Bible class on the Sunday evenings. I propose at this time to give a lecture upon Morals, or Ethics, which shall be drawn from a book in the Bible.

Some of you, I dare say, will wish to ask one or two questions. I have spoken of Morals, or Ethics. First, what do I mean by the word Morals? It is a word derived from the Latin; it signifies Manners. I understand by it the manners and habits which belong to us as human beings. That is the sense I have always given it in my lectures. Do I intend something different by Ethics? No; I intend the same thing. It is a word derived from the Greek. It expresses, I think, a little more delicately and accurately than the other word, that the manners are not outer manners, not mere deportment. It answers more nearly to what we call character. I have, therefore, adopted both expressions; but either will serve our purpose.

If this be the case, then you may ask me, in the second place, why in the programme I have prefixed the adjective Christian to Ethics? Did I not propose to speak of the habits or character of a man? ’Do I mean that a Christian is to be something different from a man? Do I think that he can be anything better than a man? Or do I suppose there is one kind of morals for week-days and another for Sundays, and that the last is to be got from the Bible, the first somewhere else?

You cannot be more anxious to ask these last questions than I am to answer them. I have little hope that we can understand one another till I have quite cleared my meaning about them. And I feel very confident that I shall be able to make you, the members of this College, understand me even if I fail to make other people understand me. I think so because I believe you come to study morals, and every other subject, for the sake of work, for the sake of life. I think so further, because I know that my colleagues; and that all who come by accident to lecture among you, cultivate that disposition in you and try to show you that books only exist to make us acquainted with facts and with laws which God has established for us and for the world. Some of you may have listened to a beautiful lecture, which was so kindly given here last night, upon Natural History, by Mr. Huxley. You will have observed how he proceeded. You will remember that he did not give us a system out of a book; that he did not entertain us with an eloquent panegyric on his study. He took a lobster; he explained to us the different parts of its frame, the uses to which each part was applied, the type upon which the whole was constructed. So he led us by degrees to perceive what the objects of Natural History are, how it interprets one and another portion of the Universe to us, how it may cultivate our own minds. I cannot follow an eminent and accomplished man of science, but I should like at least to catch something of his spirit, above all of his modesty. And I should like you to try me by the same kind of test, severe as it is. If I cannot help you better to understand the facts and laws which most concern yourselves, my words ought to go for nothing.

Perhaps I shall be able to explain the plan which I have endeavoured and am endeavouring to pursue in this College of Working Men, if I tell you a little of my own experience when I was a student in a much older and more august society. From what you have heard of the University of Oxford, and of its being confined till very lately to members of the Church of England, you will perhaps fancy that the book on Ethics, or Morals, which is used there, is a book written by some eminent divine. By no means. It is a book written by an old Pagan philosopher. Out of that I learnt lessons on this great subject. What other books I read there on Ethics, were chiefly for the purpose of illustrating the Ethics of Aristotle. How did this answer? I cannot venture to speak for others; but I will for myself. I owe quite unspeakable gratitude to the University of Oxford, for having put this book into my hands and induced me to read it and think of it. I doubt if I could have received a greater service from any University or any teacher. For I will tell you what this book did for me. First, it assured me that the principles of Morals cannot belong to one time or another, that they must belong to all times. Here was an old Heathen Greek making me aware of things that were passing in me, detecting my laziness and my insincerity, showing how little I was doing the things which I professed to do, forcing me to confess that, with all the advantages which I had, he was better than I was. That was one great thing. Whatever takes down a young man’s conceit must be profitable to him. This book might have done it much more effectually in my case than it did; that was my fault, not the writer’s. Next, I could not but learn from him, for he took immense pains to tell me so, that it is not by reading a book, or learning a set of maxims by heart, one gets to know anything of morality; that it belongs to life, and must be learnt in the daily practice of life. I repeat it, he tells us this very often. English and Christian writers might have told it me also. But I am not sure that their words would have gone as much home to me as Aristotle’s did. I might have thought that it was their business, part of their profession, to utter that maxim; and also, there would have been so much in these books which I did not find in Aristotle, that I might have trusted them more, and not have thought that I wanted some inward experience to expound them. For this is the third good that I got from the old Greek; he did not satisfy me. He told me a number of things which I believed then, and believe now, to be of continual use. He made me see the worth of habits, the worth of acts, the worth of moral purposes. But when I asked him what was to be the standard of my habits and acts and moral purposes, he did not give me any distinct answer. And the more I questioned him, the less could I extract from him what I wanted. He had made me know that it was not a mere book standard I needed, that all the theories and all the laws in the world would not give it me. For that I was infinitely obliged to him. But I positively wanted to learn where it was, since without it I felt I could not practise the things he wished me to practise, I could not be the worthy man he was trying to make me. Nay, I should have been a very unworthy man; for I had reason to think there was such a standard, and I felt strange twinges for having departed from it, which twinges he could not explain to me.

Of course many people would have said to me at once, ‘If you want this standard you must turn to the Bible.’ The common religious opinion of my country said so; the University in which I had been studying this Heathen book said so. But I found a difficulty in practically attending to the recommendation. I had got the conviction thoroughly worked into me, that this standard could not be contained in any letters, though they were the most wonderful letters ever written in the world. It did not signify how good they were, how much authority they had. Aristotle’s was an imperfect treatise, a treatise containing plenty of errors. But if there were a perfect treatise, one in which were no errors at all, it would not be the standard that I wanted; still less would it enable me to follow a standard. The standard must be a Life. It must be set forth in a living Person. If it is to do me any good, his life must in some way act upon my life. Aristotle had been, as I said, a blessing to me for making me understand that this was so; he had failed from being unable to show me such a life as this. Neither the authority of my country’s faith nor of my University, though I had reason to reverence them both, could warrant me in practising a self-deception in so important a matter. If the Bible was merely a book, though it might be the best of all books, though it might be a book without a flaw, I could not hope to find in it that which I was seeking.

There was another lesson I had learnt from Aristotle,—had learnt from that which he did tell me and from that which he did not tell me. He believed that there was one Creator of the Universe. He might pay a sort of reverence to the gods whom his country worshipped, but they evidently did not affect his speculations in the least about Nature or about Morals. All his inquiries as to the course of the world and as to man’s life were pursued independently of them. He arrived at the conclusion, that it was most likely there was one Ruler over the whole Universe, by reasonings that were quite independent of any he had received by tradition.

Well, I said to myself, this acknowledgment of a one Ruler in him is very good, I am very glad he was able to make it. But has it anything to do with me? I dwell in this world. Is there any sort of relation between me and the Maker of it? I found from the history of the world that men everywhere had been dreaming that they had something to do with some powers or rulers whom they could not see. I found that these dreams had not been confined to a few people here or there, who might perhaps have leisure for dreaming; that they had affected the condition of all people from the highest to the lowest; that what they thought of their gods, and the worship they had paid to their gods, had influenced their civil life, their opinions about Nature, their notions of what they themselves were to do and to be. It had influenced their conduct to each other, it had influenced their inward characters. Aristotle no doubt had discovered that the honesty of their investigations and the honesty of their practice was very seriously interfered with by the terror with which the gods inspired them, and by the notions they had of the feelings and passions of the gods and of the demands they made upon men. He had little hope that his countrymen would fairly study the facts of nature or the facts of human life, while these confusions about the gods, and their connexion with them, were continually intruding themselves into their minds. So he simply gave all these thoughts the go by. His physical studies and his moral studies were pursued without reference to them.

One could not help admiring Aristotle for taking a course which seemed to him the most honest under his circumstances. It showed him to be a brave man, that he did not profess to understand what he did not understand, and that he tried to make the best of what he did. ‘To those who act thus more will be given in due time. One said so whose words I believe; who never said anything which I do not expect will come to pass. But then I was bound to inquire for my own sake whether this course was a reasonable or a possible one. Certainly the effect of it was to cut off an immense body of facts which had told upon the condition of all generations of men, all tribes of the earth. Certainly the effect of it was to confine the study of the Morality which is for all human beings within a small circle of human beings. But was this all? Could I for myself dispense with thoughts of this kind? No; those twinges of which I spoke, were they not just like what other men had felt in other ages and in other regions of the world? Were they not witnesses to me that I had a common nature with them, that I was not free from their doubts and fears and griefs? Did they not show that I needed what they needed? Could I make up a scheme of morality for myself which should take no notice of these facts in myself? And what did these facts imply? Did not they seem to say, ’There is some connexion between you and a Being who is higher and better than yourself? He is calling you to account for these acts of yours and these thoughts of yours. If you had nothing to do with Him, you might be easier than you are; but you would be more of a mere animal, you would be less of a man.’

A person who finds this out is likely to be in great perplexity. For he cannot be satisfied with only talking of a one Creator of the universe. What he is thinking of is of a Being who has something to do with him, who is his Ruler, who is the standard of his life. And yet he cannot help perceiving that men’s opinions about this Being have often led them to strange crimes and cruelties. He cannot wonder that Aristotle, and many men since his time, should think it safer to lay down the plan of their existence without any direct reference to Him. What is to be done? For to stand still in such a state of mind as this is impossible. The world does not stand still. Our own years and days do not stand still. We are swept along, whether along in the right course or in the wrong one.

Then perhaps it may occur to a man to ask, ‘Was I doing justice to the faith of my country, when I supposed that it was merely setting up a book, even a divine book, as the standard of man’s acts, and life, and morality? Is not that Book commonly spoken of as a Revelation of God? Is it not spoken of as the Revelation of One who was the Son of God and the Image of God, and who became Man? Supposing it were this, might it not tell just what Aristotle shows me that I need to be told? Might it not set forth to me a Life? Might it not set forth the Life that is the standard of my life, the standard of the life of all human beings? Might it not explain the dreams there have been in all men about the relation between them and some Being that is above them? Might it not clear those dreams of that which has been so mischievous in them? Might it not place Ethics, or Morals, on a true and universal ground?’

Those of you who have attended my Bible class on Sunday evenings, will know that I have taken some pains to show you that the Bible may be read as a continuous history, and that it is the history of the unveiling of God to the creature whom He has made in His image. I have tried to show you this by taking separate books in the New Testament, and examining them chapter by chapter, verse by verse. I have tried to show it you by beginning at the beginning of the Old Testament, and tracing the course of its narratives. I have tried to show it you by comparing the Old Testament with the New. I have not used any arguments to prove that the book was divine or was worthy of our attention. If it was divine and worthy of our attention, I thought it would make good its claims for itself, though I could not make them good. All I wanted was that we should find out what it is saying to us. I believe if we question it, it will answer more honestly than any book in the world. There may be mistakes in our translation of it which ought to be set right, as all mistakes ought to be set right where they can be, especially when they have to do with the most important matters. But in our way of proceeding with the Old Testament, this was not a very serious matter; for we wanted to find out the upshot of the history, the principle which was involved in it; and that did not depend much upon the interpretation or the construing of particular texts. Whenever I could give you any light that I thought might make a passage clearer, especially in those books which we were examining more carefully, I was bound to do so. But what I chiefly desired was, that I might put myself as little as possible between you and the revelation which I was sure the book contained, and that we should question ourselves and each other to see whether it did reveal any thing to us, whether it did scatter any darkness that was in us before. That was what I aimed at in this course of lessons. I believe the aim was right and the method was right, whether I have succeeded or not.

In the Lectures which were said to be on Ethics, or Morals, I pursued an entirely different method. I had no text-book; I rather carefully avoided text-books; I was afraid you should think I was delivering a system which was contained in them, not making you acquainted with facts which were in you. I was equally afraid that you should think I was working a system out of my own head. I tried to avoid both dangers by speaking to you of what you all knew. When any of us is born into this world, he is surrounded by objects which he is by degrees to get acquainted with through his senses. But he has also human relations—a mother at all events, a father; perhaps brothers and sisters. He sees their faces, he hears their voices, as he sees the curtains of the bed and hears the noise in the streets. But his relation to them must be something different from this. We all are sure that it is. All the seeing and hearing in the world do not fulfil that relation. We speak of affections. Evidently a man’s relation to his fellow-men fails utterly, is not fulfilled, unless he has these affections. They are as necessary to it as seeing and hearing are to his intercourse with any thing that is not human. To these relationships and to these affections, then, we addressed ourselves first of all. The consideration of them gave rise to a number of observations and a number of questions. If we merely confined ourselves to the life of a child, we were met with a variety of serious inquiries as to how its affections were to be directed, as to the distortions to which they were liable, as to the influence of the senses upon them, and their influence upon the senses. We seemed to learn a good deal by examining the words which we use to describe these facts, as well as by comparing our experiences of the facts themselves. What the members of my class said to me, and the difficulties which they raised, were very useful to me and helped me to see many things more clearly. If I did not remove their difficulties, I hope I may have shown some of them a way of removing them for themselves, by doing the duty which they are called to do.

Duty? What did that mean? That word introduced us to another series of questions which belonged to the second division of these lessons. At some time there arises in the mind of each of us the sense that he is an individual person, not merely related to certain other people. I pointed out this feeling to you as especially characteristic of a boy, as being indicated by certain exhibitions of self-will and independence, and determination to put forth power, such as we had only seen the germs of in the child. I tried to show you that if these feelings are left to themselves, he becomes a savage; but that this is not the state that is intended for any one of us. I urged that all the efforts of schoolmasters, where they had been wise, had tended to awaken a sense of responsibility, to make the boy feel that he is subject to laws which must be executed in punishments if they are not obeyed. This dread of punishment may deter from crimes; but it can never lead any one to do a single right action. Till we understand that there is something due from us, till the sense of duty is awakened, we have no freedom, we are not even in the way to become men. To understand what this sense of duty is, I was driven to speak to you of that mysterious Conscience, which all men in some sort confess, which those who deny it in their theories bear witness of in their acts and in their habitual language. Some of you will remember what pains have been devoted to this inquiry during the last term, and how we were driven at last by facts, and in defiance of the speculations of eminent men, men worthy of all reverence, to think that the conscience is not a power of its own, but is a witness to us of some One speaking to us, commanding us, judging us.

Very deep questions indeed started up unawares while we were engaged with this topic, and suggested the third division of our subject, which concerns especially the full-grown man after he is loosed from the direct restraints of parents or teachers, questions concerning our Will and our Reason: how the one is only free when it is delivered from self-will; how the other is only in its proper state when it is seeking for truth and does not think that it can make truth; how both together are the very signs of what man is as distinguished from the animals; how both together are proofs that we are members of a race and family, and not a mere collection of individuals; how both together demand a perfect Will and a perfect Reason, that they may not miss the object and fail to fulfil the work for which they exist.

I do not go over this ground which some of us have travelled before, from a notion that no one will profit by these Sunday morning Lectures who has not attended my former courses. I refer to it that both the old and new students may see for what purpose I do use, and for what purpose I do not use the Holy Scriptures. I use them because I think they will show us what is the ground of those affections, of that conscience, of that reason and will, which we have to do with because we are human beings, and which we must have to do with supposing there were no Scriptures at all. I do not use them because I look upon them as substitutes for these affections, or conscience, or reason, or will. I use them because I look upon them as God’s revelation to us of ourselves, who are made in His image, and of Himself, who has made us in His image. I do not use them as if they would mean anything to us, or be of any worth to us, supposing we were not made in His image, supposing it were not possible for us to be acquainted with Him. I use them because I conceive they set forth Christ as the Son of God and the Lord of every man. I do not use them because I think they set forth some standard which is good for a set of men called Christians, who are different from other men, and who have not the same God with other men. I use the Scriptures to show us what I believe is the law and the life for all of us, that law and life of which men in the old world had only a partial glimpse. I should not use them if I thought them less universal and more partial than the books of heathens or of later moralists.

Now, then, I have answered the questions with which I began. I am most anxious that you should not think of Christian Ethics, that is to say, of the Christian character, as different from human Ethics, that is to say, from the proper human character. I am anxious that you should not think of Sunday Ethics as different from week-day Ethics. But I am also anxious that you should think of the Ethics which are set forth to us in the Christian Scriptures as being the Ethics for men, of our Sunday lessons as interpreting the experience of the week. That is my reason for wishing to meet you here on these mornings. We form a Working Men’s College; that is to say, a college of men not distinguished from other men by any advantages; who want only to be men and to do the work of men. Sunday, the day of rest, is, I believe, given us especially for this end. Work has its ground in rest and its termination in rest. Man is made to work and to rest. In his hours of rest he is preparing for work; in his hours of work he is preparing for rest. One great preparation is to learn what the blessing of rest is, in whom he may rest, that we may learn also what the blessing of work is, and under whose guidance he may work. If the Sunday gives us that wisdom, I believe it does more for us than if it gives us merely animal rest; though I am far from undervaluing that either. At any rate, it is my business to do what I can that those who desire it may obtain the former gift. It is my duty to consider how I may help them most to attain it. And after much consideration, I can find no way in which I can aid them better than by trying to work out with them the meaning of this Epistle of St. John.

As I have told you, generally, why I think the Bible may be our best teacher in Ethics, I will tell you now why I select this book of the Bible as serving that purpose more perfectly than any other. I have been endeavouring, as I said just now, in my evening Lectures, to show you in what sense I regard the Scriptures as a history. I should not give them that name if I did not discover in them a gradual unveiling of the divine purpose and divine life to man, a gradual education of men to understand, through their own wants, and weaknesses, and sins, what this purpose and this life is, and how they may be the better for it. Through all the patriarchal period of the Jewish history, through all the legal, through all the prophetical, I trace, and I wish you to trace, this revelation and this education. But if the revelation and the education are good for anything, they must be leading to some result.

I find this result expressed in these words:—’ That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life (for the life was manifested, and we have seen it, and bear witness, and shew unto you that eternal life, which was with the Father, and was manifested to us;) that which we have seen and heard declare we unto you, that ye also may have fellowship with us: and truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ.’

Do not suppose that I expect you to take in the meaning of these sentences all at once. If I did, I should not have thought it necessary to examine carefully into this letter. I hope, next Sunday, to go with you into the meaning of the principal words in these sentences, and to consider them in their connexion. But I think you can hardly hear them read to you without feeling that they have something to do with those questions which I said that a Heathen had taught me I must engage in, and those in which I have endeavoured to interest you by recalling to you different portions of your own experience. The very language which perhaps puzzles some persons on first taking up the book, about the Life and the manifestation of the Life, fits in with our previous thoughts and difficulties. Something like this is what we were asking for. The writer clearly means to tell us of a Person whom he has seen and handled, in whom he believes a divine and perfect life was shown forth, with which life, he says, he himself and those to whom he is writing, may have fellowship. I do not care who holds out to me this kind of promise. It so exactly answers to what I am looking for, that I must perforce give heed, I must beg the speaker to tell me what he means; I must look further into the account he gives of this matter, to see whether it is consistent with itself, whether it only seems to meet the demands of my spirit, or does actually meet them. Let the writer be who he will, I have a right to examine his words, not for his sake, but for my own. And if he brings a message to me from God Himself, I believe God will make it evident to me that he does.

I am glad, however, to hear anything I can hear about the speaker and about those to whom he spoke. If he were, as we in England believe him to have been, a fisherman who once mended his nets by the Lake of Galilee, and who was now dwelling, a grey-haired man, in the commercial city of Ephesus, it may be strange that he has anything to tell us who live in this far country of the west—anything to tell refined men and scholars, as well as working men, whose customs and whose language are altogether different from his, who belong to a world which is eighteen hundred years older than it was in his day. But if we shall find that what he spoke to the fathers and young men and children in Ephesus, who had been worshippers of the goddess Diana, or worshippers in the Jewish synagogue, and who had come to think that there was a Person who bound Jews and Gentiles into one; if, I say, we should find that what he told them has some deep interest for us—does make known to us secrets which we need to be acquainted with—we, at least, shall not care less for him because he was a fisherman or a Jewish fisherman. We shall hope that he will not, at all events, speak of accidents that belong to rich and comfortable people, when we want to know of principles which are for all equally. We shall hope that, as he was a Jew, he may be able to explain to us what the law and history of his own people had to do with mankind, and how he himself, being born a Jew, had been led to seek fellowship with men of other tribes. We shall hope that he may tell us how we are bound to our forefathers, and how we shall be bound to those who may dwell upon the earth when we have left it. We shall hope that he may have proved us and our children to be of the same family with the Ephesians to whom he wrote,—not to have a different Father from them or from him.