The statute-book does not simply say, like the Decalogue, " Thou shalt not steal " ; it says, " If you do steal, the detective will deliver you to the judge, and the judge to the jailer, and he will cast you into prison, and you shall not get out thence till you have paid the forfeit of your crime." We know that if we rob our neighbour's house, or assault our neighbour's person, or slander our neighbour's good name, or in any other way disturb the peace of society and violate the letter of the law, we must pay the penalty. The fear thus inspired operates like a charm. It pervades the whole mass of society : though unseen it is felt ; and even when scarcely consciously felt, its influence is active, like some of those subtle agencies in the atmosphere that surrounds us, which tell upon our happiness, our health, and our life, though we are altogether unaware of their existence. It makes the thief honest, the slanderer silent, the turbulent peace- ful. We are virtuous by compulsion. We do good because we dare not do evil.
But even in this motive there lies an element of truth. There is at least the recognition of righteousness in the earth. And when we have done evil we recognize the justice of the punish- ment which overtakes us.
Mourner that dost deserve thy mournfulness. Call thyself punished, call the earth thy hell; Say, " God is angry, and I earned it well —
' John Watson, The Mind of the Master, 180.
150 THE CONSTRAINT OF LOVE
I would not have Him smile on wickedness " : Say this, and straightway all thy grief grows less : — "God rules at least, I find as prophets tell, And proves it in this prison ! " — then thy cell Smiles with an unsuspected loveliness.
"A prison — and yet from door and window-bar I catch a thousand breaths of His sweet air ! Even to me His days and nights are fair !
He shows me many a flower and many a star !
And though I mourn and He is very far,
He does not kill the hope that reaches there ! " ^
(2) A higher motive is found in the sense of duty. — There is something in us which recognizes moral obligation, and impels us to take a line of conduct which, perhaps, we have no natural inclination to follow. Now, we can all of us see that, when we come to speak of duty, we have risen into a higher region of thought. And yet the purest motive of life is not conscience. That is what the Puritans built on. There was very little love in the Puritan theology, very little exposition of the love of God, very little manifestation of love in the household (there was love, but it was concealed, not manifested), very little preaching of love in the pulpit. The great power that bound Puritanism together was the power of conscience. That was the power of Judaism. There was love in Judaism, but not much. The real power of Judaism was an awakened conscience. The school of Ethical Culture is a survival of Puritanism, as Puritanism was a survival of Judaism. In them conscience is the key-note. Judaism, Puritanism, and Ethical Culture are incarnate conscience. Chris- tianity is incarnate love. A man may conform to law because it is righteous law ; but he cannot love the law. We cannot love an abstraction. We cannot love a thing. There must be some heart, some power to love in return, in that which we love. We can love only a person. Christianity comes, and it shows in the heart of history this Divine Person, and says to us, " Love for Him — that is to be the constraining power, the motive power, the secret of your life."
^ There is no disguising it that law, fate, destiny, or com- mandment may produce an exceedingly noble form of religion; * George MacDonald, Poetical Works, ii. 248.
2 COR. V. 14, 15 151
that it may make a nation strong in law, and powerful in all things ; but it tends always to produce a character that is hard and cold ; noble, but ungenial, ungracious. Yet the result of a clear understanding of law, and a very clear obedience to it, is never in any way to be accounted cheap. For it is better to be ungracious and obedient than to be gracious without obedience. It is better to be moral and undevout than to be devout and immoral. It is better to have your strength, even though clothed in raggedness as to beauty, than to have a sensuous beauty upon inward deformity and untruth.^
^ In actual practice the theory that lays the emphasis upon duty, as opposed to inclination, contains an important element of truth, which naturalistic theories of the end of action have always tended to overlook. For it is undoubtedly true that at a certain stage in moral development, both in the individual and in the race the negative or ascetic element is the prominent one. All moral progress consists in subordination of lower to higher impulses, and at a certain stage it may be more important to conquer the lower than to give effect to the higher. How far it is possible to effect this conquest without appeal to higher and more positive principles of action — how far, for instance, sensual impulses can be made to yield before the abstract announcements of reason that they are " wrong," without assignment of further reason or without appeal to the higher interests and affections — is a question for the educator. What is certain is that morality begins in self- restraint and self-denial, and that it is impossible to conceive of circumstances in which this negative element will be totally absent from it. Whatever we are to say of the desire to enjoy pleasure, it is certain that readiness to suffer pain is an element in all virtue, and that there is more danger for the individual in indulging the former than in over-cultivating the latter.^