1 A. Maude, The Life of Tolstoy : Later Years, 36. 3 John Brown Paton (1914), 507.
2ECHARIAH iv. 6 437
the former rather than the latter would be a madman rather than a rational human being. All the same, however, there is no truth in a sort of vague, traditional feeling that material poverty is necessarily synonymous with spiritual wealth, or that material wealth is synonymous with spiritual poverty. That this not unfrequently is true does not in the least argue that it is necessarily so, or that it is an ideal state of affairs. Still, when wealth is gained by a man giving himself over, body and soul, to material accumulation ; when it is gained by grinding down the wages of employes, by the oppression and selfishness of all competitive industry, why, then, to amass financial wealth is at the fearful price of spiritual development.1
(3) Another thing much worshipped in these days is physical courage. But a man may be physically brave yet morally a coward — as bold as a lion in one part of his nature and timid as a hare in others. A man may even lead a regiment into battle in face of the most fearful fire as stiff and unflinching as if he were made of steel; and yet when one talks to him one may find him timid in his opinions, always asking what others think and afraid to take any firm moral stand. To face danger boldly, to keep cool in trying circumstances may be the result of possessing a frame so truly strong that no nerve is exposed or sensitive. Physical courage, the mere meeting of pain or peril without quivering, by no means implies a similar endowment of moral courage.
TJ The Greek virtue of courage, confined almost entirely to valour in battle, has but little correspondence to anything that is supremely important in modern life. The kind of fortitude which is required for valour in battle is, even in its most inward aspect, somewhat different from that fortitude which sustains the modern man of science, politician, scholar, or philanthropist. Hence this side of ethical study is one which each generation of writers requires almost to reconsider for itself. However instructive the great work of Aristotle may still remain on this point (and there is perhaps nothing more instructive in the whole range of ethical literature), it is yet not quite directly applicable to the conditions of modern life.2
Tf We are not entitled to say that the Aristotelian ideal of fortitude has been either more or less pure than that which has been operative in Christendom; but there is no doubt that the
1 Lilian "Whiting, The World Beautiful, 172. 9 J. S. Mackenzie, A Manual of Ethics, 353.
438 THE SUPREMACY OF THE SPIRITUAL
latter has become far more comprehensive, and it has become so in correspondence with an enhanced fulness in our conception of the ends of living. Faculties, dispositions, occupations, persons, of which a Greek citizen would have taken no account, or taken account only to despise, are now recognized as having their place in the realization of the powers of the human soul, in the due evolution of the spiritual from the animal man. It is in conse- quence of this recognition that the will to endure even unto death for a worthy end has come to find worthy ends where the Greek saw nothing but ugliness and meanness, and to express itself in obscure labours of love as well as in the splendid heroism at which a world might wonder.1
II.
1. Physical force, then, will not do the work that has to be done. Money will not do it. Courage will not do it. But if these are away, what is there left ? If we tell men of the world that our desire cannot be accomplished by these things, they will reply, " Then you simply cannot do it at all." And they are right. We cannot. But God can, and God will. " Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the Lord of hosts." Over against our weakness is set the almighty power of Jehovah. If we ask, " Who is sufficient for these things ? " we have the answer, " Our sufficiency is of God." We speak the truth when we say that without Christ we can do nothing ; but not the whole truth until we add, " I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me." Even earthen vessels may hold a treasure. Even in weak- ness strength may be made perfect.
U It is by the operation of the Holy Spirit that the Church of Christ, and the Christian world in obedience to her authority, has condemned infanticide, slavery, cruelty, injustice, intemperance, impurity, and all the long catalogue of social evils in the world. The men and women who have fought these evils in Christ's name have one and all professed that it was not they who won the victory of themselves — not they, but a power within them, stronger than themselves, inspiring and energizing them, and rendering them capable of achievements beyond their natural scope. That Power, as they knew, had been no other than the Spirit of God. " Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit,
1 T. H. Green, Prolegomena to Ethics, 280.