ructive of, the intrinsic authority of the moral law. If we
supposed with a few theologians in the most degenerate periods of
Theology (with William of Occam, some extreme Calvinists, and a few
eighteenth-century divines like Archdeacon Paley) that actions are
right or wrong merely because willed by God--meaning by God simply a
powerful being without goodness or moral character, then undoubtedly
the Secularists would be right. If a religious Morality implies that
Virtue means merely (in Paley's words) 'the doing good to mankind in
obedience to the will of God and for the sake of everlasting happiness'
(so that if God were to will murder and adultery, those practices would
forthwith become meritorious), then undoubtedly it would be better to
teach Morality without Religion than with it. But that is a caricature
of the true teaching of Christ or of any considerable Christian
theologian. Undoubtedly we must assert what is called the
'independence' of the moral judgement. The judgement 'to love is
better than to hate' has a meaning complete in itself, which contains
no reference whatever to any theological presupposition. It is a
judgement which is, and which can intelligibly be, made by people of
all religions or of none. But {71} we may still raise the question
whether the validity of that judgement can be defended without
theological implications. And I am prepared most distinctly to
maintain that it cannot. These moral judgements claim objective
validity. When we say 'this is right,' we do not mean merely 'I
approve this course of conduct,' 'this conduct gives me a thrill of
satisfaction, a "feeling of approbation," a pleasure of the moral
sense.' If that were all that was meant, it would be perfectly
possible that another person might feel an equally satisfactory glow of
approbation at conduct of a precisely opposite character _without
either of them being wrong_. A bull-fight fills most Spaniards with
feelings of lively approbation, and most Englishmen with feelings of
acute disapprobation. If such moral judgements were mere feelings,
neither of them would be wrong. There could be no question of
objective rightness or wrongness. Mustard is not objectively nice or
objectively nasty: it is simply nice to some people and nasty to
others. The mustard-lover has no right to condemn the mustard-hater,
or the mustard-hater the mustard-lover. If Morality were merely a
matter of feeling or emotion, actions would