1 D. Swing, Truths for To-Day, i. 34. 8 A. Pearson, Christus Magister, 261.
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language intelligible and impressive to His Galilean hearers. The gospel morality needs no championship ; it only needs to be understood and felt. It has much that is manifestly higher than what human wisdom unenlightened by the gospel has ever sug- gested ; but it also welcomes and justifies and exalts every good idea which has appeared to be independent of it.
TJ By universal consent, if Jesus has any rival it is Buddha ; by common consent also Sir Edwin Arnold is the man who went through all the Indian literature, sifted out the straw and the chaff, gathered up every grain of wheat he could find, and gave it to us in that poem, The Light of Asia. Then a few years later Sir Edwin re-opened his New Testament, and after a year pub- lished The Light of the World. And lo, the disciple of Buddha reverses his judgment! With poetic licence Sir Edwin Arnold represents the Wise Men of the East as Buddhists, who brought their gold and frankincense and offerings to the infant King, and left them, and journeyed back to the Ganges. Then, when two- score years had passed, one of the Wise Men, still living, retraced his steps, fascinated by that memory of the wonderful child. In his travels he meets Mary Magdalene, and hears the tragic story of the life and death of Jesus.
After long brooding upon Christ's words, the aged Indian priest puts the Light of the World over against the Light of Asia. First, Jesus is infinitely superior, because, until Christ spake, " never have we known before wisdom so packed and perfect as the Lord's, giving that Golden Eule with which this earth were heaven." And, second, he finds that Buddha held life was one long sorrow ; but " right joyous, though, is Christ's doctrine, glad 'mid life's sad changes and swift vicissitudes, and death's un- shunned and hard perplexities " ; for over against the despair, the gloom and the pessimism that makes Buddha propose extinction and a dreamless sleep stands the piercing joyousness and out- breaking " gladsomeness of the life of Jesus." And, third, the old Buddhist finds another round in the golden ladder; if Buddha wrapped the universe in darkness and gloomy mystery, " thy teacher doth wrap us round in glorious folds with mighty name of love, and biddeth us believe, not law, not faith, hath moulded what we are, and built the worlds, but living, regnant love," for the fury of unharnessed, natural laws, the ferocity of fate, gives way before the advancing footprints of a Father of life and love. Then comes the priest's final confession. " My teacher bade us toil over dead duties, and brood above slain affections, until we reached Nirvana ; yours, to love one's neighbours as one's self,
1 84 THE GOLDEN RULE
and save his soul by losing heed of it, in needful care that all his doings profit men and help the sorrowful to hope, the weak to stand."
Oh, nearer road, and new ! By heart to see Heaven closest in this earth we walk upon, God plainest in the brother whom we pass, Best solitudes 'midst busy multitudes, Passions o'ercome when Master-passion springs To serve, and love, and succour.1
II.
Its Scope.
1. The rule does not cover all behaviour and all conduct. It has nothing to say of a man's private attitude and relation to God. It has nothing to say of our behaviour when we are alone — in those times when some men and women are conscious of least responsibility, because their thoughts, desires, or actions do not bring them into any sort of contact with other people. It is therefore not in the nature of spiritual discipline ; it is not given to regulate the secret inner life of a man's thoughts and feelings. It applies to a man's dealings with his fellows, the multitudinous occasions when the orbit of his life intersects the orbits of other lives, and these other orbits intersect his ; and thus it clearly con- templates that the life of the Christian will be a life necessarily rich in social duties and responsibilities and opportunities.
Tj Froude, in his Frasimis, relates a curious incident in the life of Ignatius Loyola. Loyola, one day, met with a copy of the New Testament. He took it up, opened it, and began to read it. But after a short time he threw it down, because, he said, "it checked his devotional emotions." Froude thinks it very likely did. He found here a religion taught the supreme expression of which was in absolute righteousness, truth, and charity. " If any man deemeth himself to be religious, and bridleth not his tongue, is not just, fair, honourable, open, merciful, that man's religion is vain." Loyola said this sort of thing checked his devotional emotions ! Well, if so, it was high time they were checked. For they were running to seed, and not growing, under due discipline,
1 N. D. Hillia.
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to flower and fruit. In the religion of Jesus, the ethical, the practical, is the ultimate. To keep the Golden Rule is to fulfil the Law and the prophets.1
2. Like other general precepts, it will not bear to be taken slavishly in the letter. The worth of a precept is rather to suggest a temper or attitude of mind than to determine precisely what in a given case ought to be done. It is a superficial and therefore a bad morality, not merely defective, but unwholesome and misleading, that attempts to prescribe for conduct by precise regulations. Human life is too free and various to be governed by such methods. You may, without any great ingenuity, imagine cases in which it would be undesirable and wrong to carry out literally our Lord's injunction, " All things whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, even so do ye also unto them." Perhaps the most obvious instance is flattery. There are tens of thousands of people who flatter their fellow-men because they like it and expect it themselves. And on the principle that you are simply to do to others what you wish them to do to you, it is unexceptionable. Clearly the criticism is that you ought not to wish for flattery yourself ; in other words, to make the Golden Rule adequate and true, we must have some guarantee that what we wish to receive from others is what we ought so to wish.