As a separate branch of study Christian Ethics dates only from the Reformation. It was natural, and perhaps inevitable that the first efforts of the Church should be occupied with the formation and elaboration of dogma. With a few notable exceptions, among whom may be mentioned Basil, Clement, Alquin and Thomas Aquinas, the Church fathers and schoolmen paid but scanty attention to the ethical side of religion. It was only after the Reformation that theology, Roman and Protestant alike, was divided into different branches. The Roman Catholic name for what we style Ethics is 'moral philosophy,' which, however, consists mainly of directions for father confessors in their dealing with perplexed souls. Christian Ethics appears for the first time as the name of a treatise by a French theologian of the Calvinistic persuasion--Danaeus, whose work, however, is confined to an exposition of the Decalogue. The first recorded work of the Lutheran church is the _Theologia Moralis_, written in 1634, by George Calixtus. But the modern study of the subject really dates from {3} Schleiermacher (1768-1834), who divides theology into two sections, Dogmatics and Ethics, giving to the latter an independent treatment. Since his time Ethics has been regarded as a separate discipline, and within the last few decades increasing attention has been devoted to it. This strong ethical tendency is one of the most noticeable features of the present age. Everywhere to-day the personal human interest is in evidence. We see it in the literature of the age and especially in the best poetry, beginning already with Coleridge and Wordsworth, and continued in Tennyson and Browning. It is the inner life of man as depicted to us by these master singers, the story of the soul, even more than the delineation of nature which appeals to man's deepest experience and evokes his finest response. We see it in the art of our times, which, not content to be a mere expression of sensuous beauty or lifeless nature, seeks to be instinct with human sympathy and to become the vehicle of the ideas and aims of man. We see it in modern fiction, which is no longer the narration of a simple tale, but the subtle analysis of character, and the intricate study of the passions and ambitions of common life. History to-day is not concerned so much with recording the intrigues of kings and the movements of armies as with scrutinising the motives and estimating the personal forces which have shaped the ages. Even in the domain of theology itself this tendency is visible. Our theologians are not content with discussing abstract doctrines or recounting the decisions of church councils, but are turning to the gospels and seeking to depict the life of Jesus--to probe the secret of His divine humanity and to interpret the meaning for the world of His unique personality.