^ Perfect love does, indeed, cast out fear ; for if we loved God perfectly, we should love Him always, and sin would never tempt us. And, therefore, it is in the love of God that the formula of harmony must be sought. Even when conscious of our own sin, conscious of our self-alienation from God, and the discord that it * J. E. Carpenter and P. H. Wicksteed, Studies in Theology, 165.
ECCLESIASTES xii. 13 437
has waked in our being, we must seek to feel the harmony above and below ; that the sense of opportunity, of privilege, of glory, of God, may still rise above the sense of failure, of exclusion, of shame, of self ; that fear may be nought but an under-agent of love, the sense of sin nought but an undertone in the sense of salvation.^
II.
A Eight Thought towaeds God.
The fear of God is that coincidence with His good pleasure, and that compliance with His revealed will which is called here keeping His commandments. He is our Creator, and, whether we will or not, we must be His creatures. But He is also the King of the universe, and we ought to be His loyal subjects. Almighty and all-wise, we should devoutly adore Him. Our righteous Euler, we should with cheerful submission acquiesce in His disposal, and with strenuous activity should fulfil His commands.
1. Now, to obey God's commandments we must know in what they consist. We must have a right thought towards God, a knowledge of His will. The commandments of God are many and very broad. He reveals His will in the natural universe and the laws which govern it — laws which, as we are part of the universe, we need to know and to obey. He reveals His will in the social and political forces which govern the history and development of the various races of mankind, which therefore meet and affect us at every turn. He reveals His will in the ethical intuitions and codes which govern the formation of character, which enter into and give shape to all in us that is most spiritual, profound, and enduring. To keep all the com- mandments revealed in these immense fields of Divine activity with an intelligent and invariable obedience is simply impossible to us ; it is the perfection which flows around our imperfection, and towards which it is our one great task to be ever reaching forth.
^ Carlyle desired to tell the modern world that, destitute as it and its affairs appeared to be of Divine guidance, God or justice ^ J. E. Carpenter and P. H. Wicksteed, Studies in Theology, 166,
438 THE WHOLE DUTY OF MAN
was still in the middle of it, sternly inexorable as ever; that modern nations were as entirely governed by God's law as the Israelites had been in Palestine — laws self-acting and inflicting their own penalties, if man neglected or defied them. And these laws were substantially the same as those on the Tables delivered in thunder on Mount Sinai. You shall reverence your Almighty Maker. You shall speak truth. You shall do justice to your fellow-man. If you set truth aside for conventional and con- venient lies ; if you prefer your own pleasure, your own will, your own ambition, to purity and manliness and justice, and submission * to your Maker's commands, then are whirlwinds still provided in I the constitution of things which will blow you to atoms.^
2. Throughout this whole Book there is not a single technical allusion, no allusion to the Temple, to the feasts, to the sacriiices, rites, ceremonies of the Law ; and therefore we can hardly take this reference to the "commandments" as an allusion to the Mosaic table. By the rules of fair interpretation we are bound to take these commandments as previously defined by the Preacher himself, to understand him as once more enforcing the virtues which, for him, comprised the whole duty of man. And these virtues are : To love our neighbour, to discharge the present duty whatever rain may fall and whatever storm may blow, to carry a bright hopeful spirit through all our toils and charities; to do this in the fear of God, as in His Presence, because He is judging and will judge us.
II Modern moralists prefer to ask, not " What is man's chief end," but " What is man's duty ; what is the supreme law of his life ? " Man's good presents itself to him as an ideal, which he may or may not realize in practice ; this is what distinguishes the moral from the natural life. The law of man's life is not, like Nature's, inevitable — it may be broken as well as kept ; this is why we call it a moral law. While a physical law, or a law of nature, is simply a statement of what always happens, a moral law is that which ought to be, but never strictly is. The ancients were inclined to regard the end as something to be acquired or got, rather than as an ideal to be attained — as something to be possessed rather than as something to become. The moral ideal is an ideal of character. The claims of righteousness become paramount: do the right though the heavens fall. The end of life is thus an ideal of character, to be realized by the individual, » J. A. Froude, Thomas CarlyU, 18S4~1SS1, i. 89.