The differentiation of the moral from the religious is often difficult
to trace. For the religious has often been the agency through which
certain of the characteristics of the moral have been brought about. The
inward and voluntary aspect of the moral, as compared with the verdicts
of law or public opinion, has been emphasized. But this is often
developed by the religious conceptions of an all-seeing God, an all-wise
judge. "Man looketh on the outer appearance, but the Lord looketh upon
the heart" has its literary parallels in Xenophon and Plato and
Shakspere. The distinction between higher and lower values has received
its most impressive symbol in the conception of "another world," in
which there is neither pain nor sin, but eternal blessedness and eternal
life. Ideals of character, when embodied in divine persons, command
love, reverence, and devotion in supreme degree. A society in which love
and justice are the law of life has seemed more possible, more potent to
inspire sacrifice and enthusiasm, when envisaged as the Kingdom of God.
But in all these illustrations we have, not the religious as distinct
from the moral, but the religious as modified by the moral and embodying
the moral in concrete examples and imagery. We can see the two possible
types of development, however, in the concrete instances of the Hebrews
and the Greeks. In Israel religion was able to take up the moral ideals
and become itself more completely ethical. The prophets of religion were
at the same time the moral reformers. But in Greece, in spite of the
efforts of some of the great poets, the religious conceptions for the
most part remained set and hence became superstition, or emotional orgy,
or ecstasy, while the moral found a distinct path of its own. Religion
at present is confronting the problem of whether it will be able to take
up into itself the newer ethical values--the scientific spirit which
seeks truth, the enhanced value of human worth which demands higher
types of social justice.
* * * * *
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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