The real reason, then, why Christianity seems by contrast to accentuate the gentler graces is not simply as a protest against the spirit of militarism and the worship of physical power, so prevalent in the ancient world--not merely that they were neglected--but because they and they alone, rightly considered, are of the very essence of that perfection of character which God has revealed to man in Christ. What Christianity has done is not to give pre-eminence to one class over another, but _to make human character complete_. Ancient civilisation was one-sided in its moral { 194} development. The pagan conceptions of virtue were merely materialistic, temporal, and self-regarding. Christ showed that without the spirit of love even such excellences as courage, temperance, and justice did not attain to their true meaning or yield their full implication. Paul, as we have seen, did not disparage heroism, but he thought that it was exhibited as much, if not more, in patience and forgiveness as in self-assertion and retaliation. What Christianity really revealed was a new type of manliness, a fresh application of temperance, a fuller development of justice. It showed the might of meekness, the power of gentleness, the heroism of sacrifice.
3. It is thus misleading to say that Christian Ethics differs from ancient morality in the prominence it gives to what have been called 'the passive virtues.' Poverty of spirit, humility, meekness, mercifulness, and peaceableness are indeed the marks of Christ's teaching. But as Christ conceived them they were not passive qualities, but intensely active energies of the soul. It has been well remarked that[14] there was a poverty of spirit in the creed of the cynic centuries before Christianity. There was a meekness in the doctrine of the Stoic long before the advent of Jesus. But these tenets were very far from being anticipations of Christ's morality. Cynic poverty of spirit was but the poor-spiritedness of apathy. Stoic meekness was merely the indifference of oblivion. But the humility and lowliness of heart, the mercifulness and peace-seeking which Christ inculcated were essentially powers of self-restraint, not negative but positive attitudes to life. The motive was not apathy but love. These qualities were based not on the idea that life was so poor and undesirable that it was not worthy of consideration, but upon the conviction that it was so grand and noble, something so far beyond either pleasure or pain, as to demand the devotion of the entire self--the mastery and consecration of all a man's powers in the fulfilment and service of its divine end.