possible, and he is left to be consciously or unconsciously unholy. As a politician, as a competitor in the struggle for wealth, he remains without ethical direction. The ethical ideal of the Gospels requires for its setting the apocalyptic vision. It derives its cogency from the belief that the world is about to perish. Can it serve as a sufficient guide to those who must live in the world, and affirm their ethical personality in dealing with it? In politics, in business, in science, in art, must we not somehow see our way to the conception that these great interests are not alien to the spiritual nature, introducing perchance impure admixtures into it, but rather can be made subservient or instrumental to it? Yes; but instrumental in what way? At this point, not only the Christian system, but every one of the systems of ethics that have arisen since then has failed. And it is, moreover, perfectly evident that the instrumental function of the sex relation or of the pursuit of knowledge or of patriotism cannot be determined unless we first answer the one question which the ethical writers are in the habit of evading—Instrumental to what end? What is the ethical end? Instruments are means to ends—how can the means be rightly appraised without a definite conception of the end? And if the end be the affirmation of our ethical personality, of our spiritual nature, of that holy thing in us without which man loses his worth (and without which the rule of non-violation itself falls to the ground, since where there is nothing inviolable there can be no infringement), it is plain that we must seek a positive definition of the spiritual nature which shall serve as a principle of regulation where the empty concept of purity has manifestly failed. Christian ethics has promoted the moral development of mankind in a thousand ways. It has helped even by its mythological embodiment of a transcendental idea to place the individual more firmly on his feet. It has emphasized the inner springs of conduct; it has given prominence to certain principal virtues of the private life; but, like every product of the mind and aspirations of man, it exhibits the limitations of the time and of the social conditions under which it arose. The conditions have since changed. Society has become infinitely more complex, and in consequence new moral problems have forced themselves upon men’s attention; and with the help of Christianity itself the human race has advanced beyond the point of view for which Christianity stands.[12] Speaking again only for myself I could not assent to the position that finality appertains to the ethical teachings of the Gospel, that they or their Author have spoken the last word in ethics. I could not persuade myself that this is so because I failed to get from these teachings, inestimably precious as they are, an answer to the question that most pressed upon me—Instrumental in what sense, instrumental to what end? FOOTNOTES: