, and these only, are the means to that peace. The disciple's life
is to consist in bearing the cross, and bearing it cheerfully; in
returning good for evil, and love for indifference and even for hatred;
in detaching his affections from all the pleasures to be obtained from
external things; in fixing his trust and his love on his Eternal Father.
Taken as a whole, this is quite unlike all moral teaching that preceded
it, and there is no indication that any philosophy could ever have
evolved it. It has fastened on the human conscience from the day that
it was uttered; and whatever moral teaching since has not been inspired
from this source has soon passed out of power and been forgotten. We
find when we examine that it exactly agrees with the fundamental
teaching of the spiritual faculty when that teaching is applied to such
creatures as we are, and to such a God as the New Testament sets before
us. But we find it impossible to assert that by any working of human
thought this morality could have been obtained by the spiritual faculty
unaided. On the contrary, it seems more near the truth to say that we
could never have obtained so clear a conception of the great Moral Law,
if the teaching of the New Testament had not enlightened and purified
the spiritual faculty itself. And to this is to be added that the moral
teaching of the New Testament recognises what we may now almost consider
a proved necessity of our nature, or at least a sure characteristic of
the government of the world, that perpetual progress without which
nothing human seems to keep sweet and wholesome. Perfect as the New
Testament morality is in spirit, it is nevertheless imperfect in actual
precepts. It leaves questions to be solved some of which have not been
solved yet. It left slavery untouched, though assuredly doomed. It said
nothing of patriotism. It gave no clear command concerning the right use
of wealth. It laid down no principles for the government of states,
though such principles must have a moral basis. There has been a
perpetual growth in the understanding and in the application of this
perfect teaching, and there will yet be a growth. Of no philosophical
system of morals is it possible to say the same.

But in the second place, the New Testament contains not only a new
morality, it contains also a new account of human nature. The mystery of
that discord which makes the noblest and best of human souls a scene of
perpetual internal conflict is