1. The aim of Christ was not to conform the outward actions of men to the letter of the moral law, but rather to transform them by the awakening of a loftier and truer inward spirit. Accordingly He did not lay down specific rules for conduct, which might be inapplicable under certain circumstances; He stated principles which would be applicable in all circumstances.
Every lawyer knows the difference between constitutional law and statutory enactment. Strictly speaking, a constitution should be nothing but the statement of general fundamental principles. The statute law is an attempt to apply these principles under specific conditions to specific cases. It is impossible to enact any law that is valid at all times and under all conditions. It is possible so to analyze the principle of justice as to arrive at a fundamental legal doctrine which is universally valid and which the judgment and practical sense of every generation must apply for itself.
2. Accordingly, when we turn to Christ’s Sermon to gather from it directions how to behave in regard to various ethical questions, we discover that in this respect it is profoundly unsatisfying. Not only are very many questions wholly unnoticed, but the treatment of those which are touched is so paradoxical and apparently so inapplicable to human life, that we find ourselves, to our dismay, not spared the trouble of thinking, but powerfully stimulated to think. To get anything of guidance for conduct out of these verses, we have to notice metaphors and get below the outward form of words, and decide how far the parabolic cast of phraseology may be pressed; we have to settle why we abandon the literal fulfilment of the precepts, and whether we are to take much account of Oriental forms of speech and of Jewish modes of life prevailing in the first century of our era. And when we have done all this and more besides, we notice that there are whole tracts of human life on which apparently no ray of light falls from Christ’s words.
We are at our wits’ end to know what to do about such matters as the treatment of bodily appetites of all sorts—recreation, its character and amount, friendships, comfort and luxury, matrimony and celibacy, war, sport and the treatment of animals, gambling and all kinds of betting, and competition. People clamour loudly at “the churches” for not laying down precise directions about these things, but “the churches” in refraining from doing so are only following the example of Christ, who apparently thought that in giving us a rule, parabolically stated, of distrusting appetites and inclinations, He was giving all that was good for us. For in spite of the copiousness and power with which He enforces the commands of the Decalogue, the obligation of love to God and to man, it is true that throughout His teaching generally there is a silence, to us surprising, on such questions as those enumerated, leaving His followers to trust to personal spiritual guidance, and sharply discouraging them from looking for mechanical rules.
The result is that any sincere follower of the Saviour is often in dire perplexity for a time. He has to wrestle with conflicting claims and divergent duties, but he feels that in so wrestling he is gaining something very precious which would have been lost to him if he had relied on definite precepts, because the difficulties of decision throw him into closer contact with the divine Spirit, and in that contact he feels that his true life consists.
Neither our Lord nor any of His Apostles ever sat down to write a text-book, like the law of Moses, or the Koran of Mohammed. There exists no apostolic “Treatise on Christian Duty.” We may be thankful that it is so, for the written word remains unchangeable, whereas the spirit is adaptable to every need. A fixed detailed code either would have been neglected by this time as obsolete, and so have discredited our whole faith, or it would have acted as an intolerable drag on conscience. Probably both evils would have occurred here or there. There are many great blanks in our system of conduct still, so that a code of Christian morality issued even at this enlightened date would hereafter become obsolete. We are still too comfortable about the existence of poverty, we have hardly moralised our empire and the exploitation of natives, and we still permit great suffering among animals. [Note: J. W. Graham, War from a Quaker Point of View, 13.]
3. The Sermon on the Mount is the unalterable standard, not of Christian practice, but of the Christian spirit. As long as Christianity lasts the heroic ideal as set forth in this Sermon must be the standard of all human life. But the Christian spirit is a free spirit. The Sermon on the Mount is not to be regarded as some civil statute, where in section, subsection, and schedule you may expect to find all ethical difficulties codified and ticketed with their appropriate fines and punishments. Jesus Christ did not come, as some people seem to suppose, to give to man a new system of morality, whose maxims and precepts should be sufficient to solve the difficulties of ethical action for all time. He did not come to teach man how to be good, how to distinguish right from wrong in any new way. What He did come to give men was a new motive to be good, to do right, to avoid wrong in the old way. The abstract principles which Christ inculcated remain still intact; but the concrete shape into which He was obliged to throw those principles has changed with changed conditions. It would be only a stupid literalism which would mistake the outward form for the essential spirit. What we have to do is to go to the New Testament not as to a code of maxims and dicta, but as to a wellspring of spiritual influence; not to insist on taking the doctrines of Christ according to the letter, but to imbue ourselves “with the same mind that was in Christ,” and let our behaviour afterwards flow freely from it.
I have often wondered why the Bible does not condemn war in so many words, but I think I have seen the reason very clearly during these awful months. It is simply because it would be no good to. . What the Bible does is a much greater thing than that. It condemns the bad passions that lead to war—pride, arrogance, selfishness, envy, malice, hatred, uncharitableness, self-seeking. War is only the fruit of these things, and, as long as they are, war will be. It is these that have to be done away, and that can only be by the love of God in Jesus Christ. So that the Gospel is the only thing that can possibly put the world right; and the Gospel is shaped in such a way to make it impossible for those who receive it to glory in themselves before God. When we utterly cease from self-praise, and only glory in the suffering love, the Cross of Jesus Christ, then war will cease and not before. [Note: L. Bartlett, The Spirit of Christ and War, 9.]
4. When we look closely at those sayings of Jesus which seem to inculcate the doctrine of non-resistance, we find that they are in reality nothing more than illustrations of His fundamental principles of love and service.
When these principles are applied to the differences which inevitably arise between men in everyday life, Jesus interpreted them as carrying with them three things; first, a demand that all men should recognize the rights and necessities of others, preferring to sacrifice themselves rather than to cause others to suffer; second, the spirit of the utmost forbearance, patience, and self-control in dealing with those who would inflict wrong upon us; third, the utter absence of the spirit of revenge in our attitude towards those who have wronged us. The disciple is to forgive unto seventy times seven. We are bidden to love our enemies, to return good for evil, to overcome evil with good.
In these three principles is summed up the entire ethical philosophy of Jesus as it relates to the natural conflict of rights which inevitably takes place in an imperfectly developed social order, as well as to the more serious disorders which arise from the presence of evil and perverse men.
