in the end with happiness. Felicity and
holiness shall be ultimately one, he says; and, at the last, virtue shall
be seen 'to be worthy of happiness,' and happiness shall be the crown of
goodness.[19] Thus those philosophers, of whom Kant is typical, who
contend for the purity of the moral motive and the disinterested loyalty
to the good, bring in, at the end, the notion of happiness, which, as a
concomitant or consequence of virtue, cannot fail to be also an active
incentive.

(2) When we turn to Christian Ethics we find that here, not less than in
philosophical Ethics, the motive lies in the object itself. The end and
the motive are really one, and the highest good is to be sought for
itself and not for the sake of some ulterior gain. It is true, indeed,
that Christianity has not always been presented in its purest form; too
often have prudence, fear, other-worldliness been set forth as
inducements to goodness, as if the Gospel cared nothing for the
disposition of a man, and was concerned only with his ultimate happiness.
Even a moralist so acute as Paley bases morality upon no higher ground
than enlightened self-interest. But the most superficial reader of the
Gospels must see at a glance the wide variance between such a view and
that of Christ. Nothing could be further from the spirit of Jesus than
to estimate the {169} excellence of an action by the magnitude or the
utility of its effects rather than the intrinsic good of its motive.
Otherwise He would not have ranked the widow's mite above the gifts of
vanity, nor esteemed the tribute of the penitent, not so much for the
costliness of her offering, as for the sincerity of affection it
revealed. Christ looked upon the heart alone, and the worth of an action
lay essentially for Him in its inner quality. Sin resided not merely in
the overt act, but even more in the secret desire. A man may be
outwardly blameless, and yet not really good. He who remains sober or
honest simply because of the worldly advantages attaching to such conduct
may obtain a certificate of respectability from society; but, judged by
the standard of Christ, he is not truly a moral man. In an age which is
too prone to make outward propriety the gauge of goodness, it cannot be
sufficiently insisted upon that the Ethic of Christianity is an Ethic of
the inner motive and intention, and that, in this respect, it does not
fall a whit behind the demand of the most rigid system of disintereste