on for the person of Christ have as a matter of
fact proved the mightiest of historical motives to noble living.

However imperfectly we may know the person of Jesus, and however
fragmentary may be the record of His teaching, one great truth looms
out of the darkness--the peerlessness of His character and the
incomparableness of His ideal of life. He comes to us with a message
of Good, new to man, based on the great conviction of the Fatherhood of
God. The all-dominating faith that a genuine seeking love is at the
heart of the universe makes Jesus certain that the laws of the world
are the laws of a loving God--laws of life which must be studied,
welcomed, and heartily obeyed.

2. The Christian ideal, though given in Christ, has to be examined,
analysed, and applied by the very same faculties as are employed in
dealing with speculative problems. All science must be furnished with
facts, and its task generally is to shape its materials to definite
ends. The scientist does not invent. He does not create. He simply
_discovers_ what is already there: he only moulds into form what is
given. In like manner, the Christian moralist deals with the
revelation of life which has been granted to him partly in the human
consciousness, and partly through the sacred scriptures. The
scriptures, however, do not offer a systematic presentation of the life
of Christ, or a formal directory of moral conduct. The data are
supplied, but these data require to be interpreted and unified so as to
form a system of Ethics. The authority to which Christian Ethics
appeals is not an external oracle which imposes its dictates in a
mechanical way. It is an authority embodied in intelligible forms, and
appealing to the rational faculties of man. Christian Ethics, though
deduced from scripture, is not a cut and dry code of rules prescribed
by God which man must blindly obey. It has to be thought out, and
intelligently applied to all the circumstances of life. According to
the Protestant view, at least, Ethics is not a stereotyped compendium
of precepts which {34} the Church supplies to its members to save them
from thinking. Slavish imitation is wholly foreign to the genius of
the Gospel. Christ Himself appeals everywhere to the rational nature
of man, and His words are life and spirit only as they are intelligibly
apprehended and become by inner conviction the principles of action.

Authoritative, then, as the scriptures are, and conta