ABSTRACT
ALL this may be conceded as true of the Biblical view of conduct; but most people will feel that the Biblical view of conduct is very different from that of ordinary ethics. Ethics, as that branch of philosophy which deals with right or proper conduct, has to take into consideration everything about conduct except the one thing which to the Bible is central, namely, God. Now by this we do not necessarily intend anything disrespectful to ethics; ethical investigation, in its universal appeal, is perfectly justified if it can “do without that hypothesis.” And there is this further reason for the neglect of God. In the preceding chapter we have been constantly referring to the Hebrews; ethics as a whole points back rather to the Greeks; it derives its inspiration rather from the Athenian academy than the lake of Galilee; and to Greek thought, as distinct from Greek religion, God was at best a shadowy being, about whom it was as well not to speak with too much confidence or detail.
