tuate men in their service of God
and man, can it be legitimately said that the Christian motive is pure
and disinterested? It is {166} somewhat remarkable that two opposite
charges have been brought against Christian Ethics.[15] In one quarter
the reproach has been made that Christianity suppresses every natural
desire for happiness, and inculcates a life of severe renunciation. And
with equally strong insistence there are others who find fault with it
because of its hedonism, because it rests morality upon an appeal to
selfish interests alone.

(1) The first charge is sufficiently met, we think, by our view of the
Christian ideal. We have seen that it is a full rich life which Christ
reveals and commends. The kingdom of God finds its realisation, not in a
withdrawal from human interests, but in a larger and fuller participation
in all that makes for the highest good of humanity. It is a caricature
of Christ's whole outlook upon existence to represent Him as teaching
that this life is an outlying waste, forsaken of God and unblessed, and
that the world is so hopelessly bad that it must be wholly renounced. On
the contrary, it is for Him one of the provinces of the divine kingdom,
and the most trivial of our occupations and the most transient of our
joys and sorrows find their place in the divine order. It is not
necessary to endorse Renan's idyllic picture of the Galilean ministry to
believe that for Jesus all life, its ordinary engagements and activities,
had a worth for the discipline and perfecting of character, and were
capable of being consecrated to the highest ends. There are, indeed, not
a few passages in which the call to self-denial is emphasised. But
neither Christ nor His apostles represent pain and want as in themselves
efficacious or meritorious. Renunciation is inculcated not for its own
sake, but always as a means to fuller realisation. Jesus, indeed,
transcends the common antithesis of life. For Him it is not a question
as to whether asceticism or non-asceticism is best. Life is for use. It
is at once a trust and a privilege. It may seem to some that He chose
'the primrose path,' but if he did so it was not due to an easy-going
good-nature. We dare not forget the terrible issues {157} He faced
without flinching. As Professor Sanday has finely said, 'If we are to
draw a lesson in this respect from our Lord's life, it certainly would
not be that

"He who lets his feelings run
In