. The
doctrines of eternal punishment and vicarious expiatory suffering are
now rejected by some religious bodies and circles as unjust. When they
are maintained, it is on the ground that they are not unjust--the appeal
is to an ethical principle. Apart from the fact of maintenance or
rejection, the tendency is to try all doctrines by moral standards. If
they are rejected and yet stand, or seem to stand, in sacred books, then
either the statements of the books are interpreted in accordance with
the moral standards, or the ethical authority of the books is set aside.

+1165+. The influence of religion on ethics has been in the way not of
modifying codes but of enforcing existing ideas and customs and giving
an impulse to moral life. It has commonly furnished supernatural
sanctions--rewards and punishments in this life or in the other. How far
this conception has been effective in restraining men from actual
ill-doing, in furthering good conduct, and in developing inward loyalty
to the right, may be a question. To answer this question would require
such a collection of facts as has never been made and perhaps cannot be
made. We can see that the belief in divine rewards and punishments has
sometimes been a real power, sometimes seems to have no effect. The
character of the sanctions varies with the growth of refinement,
advancing from the crude savage and later ideas of physical pains and
pleasures to the conception of moral degradation or salvation. The
recognition of rewards and punishments for one's self as incentives to
good living is not regarded as immoral if they are not made the chief
motive--the prevailing view is that it is legitimate to look for results
of action, that, however, devotion to right must always be independent
of results that affect only the actor. Whatever the general effect of
belief in supernatural sanctions, it must be concluded that the
existence of morality in the world is not dependent on this belief. The
common social motives for practicing justice and kindness are so strong
and so persistent that these virtues must always retain a certain
supremacy apart from men's religious creeds. The term 'supernatural' is
used above in the more usual sense of 'opposed to natural,' but,
according to one religious point of view, all things are the direct work
of God, so that there is no difference between 'natural' and
'supernatural,' and the real sanctions of morality are all the
conditions of life, exte