The allegory of the Last Judgment, as it is called, as
depicted by Jesus himself in the Gospel according to Matthew,
emphasises this ethical truth in words of great solemnity. The sheep
and the goats are distinguished, not by the possession or
non-possession of miraculous spiritual powers, professions of belief or
Church membership, but by the humble devotion exhibited to suffering
humanity, and steadfast perseverance in the path of duty. How was it
possible, we ask again and again, for such a religion as that to be
transformed into the thing of shreds and patches of bad philosophy as
set forth in the Nicene and Athanasian Creed?

Forget all that, we would fain exhort men, forget all but the words
that made music on the Galilean hills, the life "lived in the
loveliness of perfect deeds," the veritable exemplar of a religion
founded on the moral sentiment. To be touched by the influence of
religious emotion is to approach in greater or less degree to the image
and character of Christ. To live a life of devotion to duty, however
humble our station may be, is to range ourselves, with that great
Master of ethics, on the side of an eternal order of righteousness
which can never fail. It is to work with that soul of reason
dominating everything in the animate and inanimate world, to co-operate
with it towards the fulfilment of those high ends which are predestined
for humanity. Every man must make his choice. Either he will ally
himself with all that makes for moral advancement--his own, that of
others, and consequently of the world--or he will fight for the powers
of retrogression and decay. He will live for the hour and its
momentary pleasures, fight for his own hand alone, forget mercy and
pity, seldom think, never reflect, and at length, sated and yet
dissatisfied with all he has experienced, sink impotently and ignobly
into the grave. Immanuel Kant lays it down as an axiom that the moral
law must inevitably be fulfilled one day in every individual human
being. It is the destiny of man to be one day perfect. What a
searching change must sometime pass over those who have taken the wrong
side in this earth-life, who have helped on the process of
disintegration, and contrived to leave the world worse than they found
it! They fight for a losing cause: they lose themselves in fighting
for it.

It has been said, I have heard it said myself, that "ethics are cold".
Possibly to some they are; but at any rate they a