Christian morality is based upon the Christian faith that the human race is under the curse of God, and that, to evade the penalty pronounced upon him, man must perform certain duties--these duties being taught as paramount to all we owe to self, to family, to society, and to the world.
But an almost universal disbelief of the Christian dogmas prevails today, and, consequently, a new morality, with man's welfare for its supreme object, is fast supplanting the outworn and valueless performances of Christian duties.
The moral teaching of the New Testament may be the highest and purest of its kind of teaching, but it is not the kind which is needed today. It is a false morality, yea, a dead morality for the most part, which the Christian Church demands of men. The general conviction is that no salvation is needed by man, and that all the virtues advertised as requisite for such safety as the Church is prepared to secure, are spurious virtues.
Those actions which advance man along the way of general prosperity, which make it easier to live and get a living on the earth, which have their value determined by their respect for human beings, are what the world needs.
The generally acknowledged author of Christian morals offers no salient points for criticism, as he can not be regarded as a historical person whose career has been carefully followed and marked by the biographer. He is a mythological man, with a little less of the fabulous and a little more of the real than attaches to the gods and goddesses of ancient Greece and Rome.
The name of Jesus adorns an anatomy of words. It pictures a person, not of flesh and blood, but of faith and fancy. Jesus is a man of the imagination; but mythical as he is, certain men and women believe in him in their own way, and are not over-tolerant of those who are disposed to ask for the proofs of his life and works.
This person has left no more marks of his living upon the earth than have the birds the marks of their flight through the air. The New Testament is no more history than is Bunyan's _Pilgrim's Progress_. We can not make any positive assertions in regard to the life and character of a man when we do not know who was his father, where or when he was born, with whom he lived, nor when he died. The only historical fact connected with Jesus which is not disputed is that Mary was his mother. This is a very important point in his history, but it is not sufficient to constitute a biography.