Christianity,' says Edward Caird, 'is not something which was
published in Palestine, and which has been handed down by a dead
tradition ever since; it is a living and growing {246} spirit, and
learns the lessons of history, and is ever manifesting new powers and
leading on to new truths.'

The teaching of Jesus is not merely temporary or local. It is an utter
perversion of the Gospels to make the eschatology present in them the
master-key to their meaning, or to derive the ethical ideal from the
utterances which anticipate an abrupt and immediate end. Jesus spoke
indeed the language of His time and race, and often clothed His
spiritual purpose in the form of national expectation. But to base His
moral maxims on an 'Interim-Ethic' adapted to a transitory world is to
'distort the perspective of His teaching, and to rob it of its unity
and insight.' On the contrary, the Ethics of Jesus are everywhere
characterised by adaptability, universality, and permanence, and in His
attitude to the great problems of life there is a serenity and sympathy
which has nothing in common with the nervous and excited expectation of
sudden catastrophe.

In like manner it is a misinterpretation of the teaching of Jesus to
represent asceticism as the last word of Christian Ethics.
Renunciation and unworldliness are undoubtedly frequently commended in
the New Testament, but they are urged not as ends in themselves but as
means to a fuller self-realisation. Such was not the habitual temper
and tone of Jesus in His relations to the world, nor was the ultimate
purpose of His mission to create a type of manhood whose perfection lay
in withdrawal from the interests and obligations of life. 'To single
out a teaching of non-resistance as the core of the Gospels, to retreat
from social obligations in the name of one who gladly shared them and
was called a friend of wine-bibbers and publicans--all this, however
heroic it may be, is not only an impracticable discipleship but a
historical perversion. It mistakes the occasionalism of the Gospels
for universalism.'[1]

Finally, there are many details of modern social well-being with which
the New Testament does not deal, questions of present-day ethics and
economics which cannot be decided by a direct reference to chapter and
{247} verse, either of the Gospels or Epistles. The problems of life
shift with the shifting years, but the nature of life remains
unchanged, and responds to the life and th