There is a revolution here in the realm of the spirit. We may describe it briefly by saying that whereas men once felt they were living under the eye of an all-powerful spectator, to-day they are watched only by their neighbors [p134] and their own consciences. A few, perhaps, act as if posterity were aware of them; the great number feel themselves accountable only to their own consciences or to the opinion of the society in which they live. Once men believed that they would be judged at the throne of God. They believed that he saw not only their deeds but their motives; there was no hole deep enough into which a man could crawl to hide himself from the sight of God; there was no mood, however fleeting, which escaped his notice. The moral problem for each man, therefore, was to make his will conform to the will of God. There were differences of opinion as to how this could be done. There were differing conceptions of the nature of God, and of what he most desired. But there was no difference of opinion on the main point that it was imperative to obey him. Whether they thought they could serve God best by burnt offerings or a contrite heart, by slaying the infidel or by loving their neighbors, by vows of poverty or by the magnificence of their altars, they never doubted that the chief duty of man, and his ultimate chance of happiness, was to discover and then to cultivate a right relationship to a supreme being. This was the major premise upon which all human choices hinged. There followed from it certain necessary conclusions. In determining what was a right relationship to God, the test of rightness lay in a revelation of the putative experience of God and not in the actual experience of His creatures. It was God alone, therefore, who really understood the reasons for righteousness and its nature. “The procedure of Divine Justice,” said [p135] Calvin, “is too high to be scanned by human measure or comprehended by the feebleness of human intellect.” That was good which man understood was good in the eyes of God, regardless of how it seemed to men. Thus the distinction between good and evil, including not only all rules of personal conduct but the whole arrangement of rights and duties in society, were laws established not by the consent of the governed, but by a king in heaven. They were his commandments. By obedience men could obtain happiness. But they obtained it not because virtue is the cause of happiness but because God rewarded with happiness those who obeyed his commandments. Men did not really know why God preferred certain kinds of conduct; they merely professed to know what kind of conduct he preferred. They could not really ask themselves what the difference was between good and evil. That was a secret locked in the nature of a being whose choices were ultimately inscrutable. The only question was what he willed. Even Job had to be content without fathoming his reasons.