ABSTRACT
WE have now found that the end of the path on which we were started by ethics is a doctrine of Atonement. In other words, we have found that the commands of ethics imply a personal relation; that conquest over evil can only be secured by reconciliation; and that reconciliation, in its complete form, is only possible through the suffering of one who is distinct from the wrong-doer and yet has identified himself with him. Here, we might think, we have found a way of uniting morals adequately with religion, each being the necessary completion and supplement of the other. Religion without morality is not worth calling religion at all; religion must go to morality constantly for her codes of rules; while without religion, morality is but a voice crying in the wilderness, with no power to compel passers-by to obey or even to listen. Yet, even supposing that the adherents of “mere morality” and of religion will both go with us so far, there is still the ground for the old disagreement which perplexed us at the beginning of our journey. The moralist will still ask “Has anything which has gone before lessened the worth of a good act in itself, apart from the religious profession or belief of the agent, or the absence thereof?” while the champion of religion will rejoin, “whatever we have said, Christ’s words remain, ‘I am the door; no man 267cometh unto the Father but by me.’” It is still true, he will assert, that “without faith, it is impossible to please him.” The problem seems as far from solution as ever.
