PR<;>FIT
PROGRESS
425
fess me before men, him will I also confess before my Father Avhieh is in heaven' (Mt 10^-').
J. Dick Fleming. PROFIT.—
Two Gr. words are so rendered : (1) j,i0.iii, to furt/Ltr, help, ■ofit : RV 'profit,' Mt 15-' ( = Mk TH) !(>» ( = Mk s*. Lk 9^3
Tw( pront
AV 'advantage'), Jn 6"^: 'prevail,' Mt ^T'^*, Jn 1^19; 'be bettered,' Mk 5"-* ; (2) czucs-p:^, to hear or bring together ; 'be profitable,' Mt 5-»-3« 1&6 ; be expedient,' Mt 19W (AV 'good'), Jn 11^ isi-i 167.
The address of Jesus is, for the most part, to the highest in human nature ; but sometimes a less heroic note is struck, and there is direct ap- peal to the instinctive impulses of self-regard and self-preservation, and to the instincts of gain and the anxieties of the balance-sheet. The analogy of prohtable trading gives force to the parables of the Talents and the Pounds (Mt 2o-''^-, Lk 19'-*), but in one great saying the appeal to what maj" be termed the business instincts is direct : ' What shall a man be profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and forfeit his life ': or what >hall a man give in exchange for his life?' Mt 16-'* ( = Mk 8*\ Lk 9^'). Here the terms of commerce are used, and the ' lialance-sheet of the soul " (Morison) is struck. With this we may compare Plato's words : ' What will anyone be profited if under tlie influence of honour or money or power, aye, or under the excitement of poetrv, he neglect justice and virtue ? ' (see Jowett's Plato, iii. 505).
This weighing of advantages and gain finds its full force in Christ's doctrine of tlie supreme good of the Kingdom of God, the one secure treasure of unspeakable value, for the possession of which all other treasures maj- well be given in exchanire (Mt 13«-*). W. H. Dvsox."
PROGRESS.— Christ and the essential truth of His teaching as preserved in the Gospels are en- tirely identified with the fact of human progress. Man's progress is a fact, a fact and not an idea, a fact, however, in which ideas are embedded and come to manifestation. This, moreover, is the gTeatest and most complex fact in the histon" of the individual and social life of humanity. It is of the highest importance, therefore, that Christ and His teaching should be set in tlie light of this fact ; that not only His teaching, but Christ Him- self should be examined and tested in this light. He and His teaching have nothing to lose, but everything to gain thereby.
1. In order to understand Christ and His teach- ing from the standpoint of progi-ess, there are several historical facts as to the latter which require to be noted and kept in mind. (1) Man's historj' has been upon the whole a history of pro- gress ever since he entered upon the course of his civilization. (2) But this fact does not imply that the idea of his progress in the path leading to\\ ards his destiny has been familiar to man ever since he began his career of advancement. The truth is that even at so late a date in history as tiie time of Christ's advent in it, the mind of pagan antiquity had nowhere been awakened to the clear con- sciousness that man had been pursuing, and that he had still for unknown ages to continue pursuing, a progressive destiny. The only liistorical instance slightly, not entirely, at variance Avith this general statement is the Zoroastrian theory as to the ex- istence of good and evil, their hostile relations to each other, and the eventual subjugation and ex- tinction of evil liy the triumph of gootl. (31 Further, it is only within recent times that the general mind of the more advanced civilized races of mankind has become possessed by the idea and moved by the sentiment of the progre>sive destiny to which man is called in this world, and those men constitute a small minority who have begun
in any true sense to realize the momentous im- portance of the meaning with which the fact of human progress is charged. (-1) Again, it is of consequence to state expressly Avhat is implied in the general truth just indicated, that neither the fact nor the importance of the fact of human progress, in any true sense of the word, was admitted for many centuries to a place of recog- nition in the ecclesiastical and theological develop- ments of traditional Christianity ; and this remark is true even of Augustine's Civiins Dei.
These facts, then, seem to encourage the conclu- sion, which is too often, but most unfairlj-, adopted, that Christ concerned Himself very little, if at all, with the fact of human progress on the earth, and tliat His teaching sheds little or no light upon this subject, which in reality is — as the modern mind has begun to see — a subject of urgent importance for every man and for the whole human race. But this conclusion is groundless. For in the Gospels there is abundance of evidence not only to show that the fact of man's progressive destiny had due recognition paid to it by Christ Himself and in His teaciiing, but also to make it manifest that in Himself and in His teaching there is a revelation of all the essential principles of human progi"ess, and also an adequate provision of the moral conditions necessary to bring these principles to realization in the individual and social life and destiny of humanity.