et us remind ourselves again, is both Human and Divine.
(i) She consists of human persons, and those persons are attached both
to one another and to the world outside by a perfectly balanced system
of human rights known as the Law of Justice. This Law of Justice, though
coming indeed from God, is, in a sense, natural and human; it exists to
some extent in all societies, as well as being closely defined and
worked out in the Old Law given on Sinai. It is a Law which men could
have worked out, at any rate in its main principles, by the light of
reason only, unaided by Revelation, and it is a Law, further, so
fundamental that no Revelation could conceivably ever outrage or set it
aside.
At the coming of Christ into the world, however, Supernatural Charity
came with Him. The Law of Justice still remained; men still had their
rights on which they might insist, still had their rights which no
Christian may refuse to recognize. But such was the torrent of Divine
generosity which Christ exhibited, so overwhelming was the Vision which
He revealed of the supernatural charity of God towards men, that a set
of ideals sprang into life such as the world had never dreamed of; more,
Charity came with such power that her commands actually overruled in
many instances the feeble claims of Justice, so that she bade men
henceforward to forgive, for example, not merely according to Justice,
but according to her own Divine nature, to _forgive unto seventy times
seven_, to give _good measure, heaped up and running over_, and not the
bare minimum which men had merely earned.
It was from this advent of Charity, then, that all these essentially
Christian virtues of generosity and meekness and self-sacrifice sprang
which Nietsche condemned as hostile to material progress.
For, from henceforth, if _a man take thy coat, let him take thy cloak
also; if he will compel thee to go with him one mile, go two; if he
strike thee on one cheek, turn to him the other also_. The Law of
Natural justice is transcended and the Law of Charity and Sacrifice
reigns instead. _Resist not evil_; do not insist always, that is to say,
on your natural rights; give men more than their due, and be yourself
content with less. _Learn of Me, for I am meek and lowly of heart, and
find rest to your souls. Forgive one another your trespasses_ with the
same generous charity with which God has forgiven and will forgive you
yours. _Judge not and you shall not be judged._ Do no
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