(1) The first charge is sufficiently met, we think, by our view of the Christian ideal. We have seen that it is a full rich life which Christ reveals and commends. The kingdom of God finds its realisation, not in a withdrawal from human interests, but in a larger and fuller participation in all that makes for the highest good of humanity. It is a caricature of Christ's whole outlook upon existence to represent Him as teaching that this life is an outlying waste, forsaken of God and unblessed, and that the world is so hopelessly bad that it must be wholly renounced. On the contrary, it is for Him one of the provinces of the divine kingdom, and the most trivial of our occupations and the most transient of our joys and sorrows find their place in the divine order. It is not necessary to endorse Renan's idyllic picture of the Galilean ministry to believe that for Jesus all life, its ordinary engagements and activities, had a worth for the discipline and perfecting of character, and were capable of being consecrated to the highest ends. There are, indeed, not a few passages in which the call to self-denial is emphasised. But neither Christ nor His apostles represent pain and want as in themselves efficacious or meritorious. Renunciation is inculcated not for its own sake, but always as a means to fuller realisation. Jesus, indeed, transcends the common antithesis of life. For Him it is not a question as to whether asceticism or non-asceticism is best. Life is for use. It is at once a trust and a privilege. It may seem to some that He chose 'the primrose path,' but if he did so it was not due to an easy-going good-nature. We dare not forget the terrible issues { 157} He faced without flinching. As Professor Sanday has finely said, 'If we are to draw a lesson in this respect from our Lord's life, it certainly would not be that
"He who lets his feelings run In soft luxurious flow, Shrinks when hard service must be done, And faints at every woe."
It would be rather that the brightest and tenderest human life must have a stern background, must carry with it the possibility of infinite sacrifice, of bearing the cross and the crown of thorns.'[16]
(2) The second charge, the charge of hedonism, though seemingly opposed to the first, comes into line with it in so far as it is alleged that Christianity, while inculcating renunciation in this world, does so for the sake of happiness in the next. It is contended that in regard to purity of motive the Ethics of Christianity falls below the Ethics of philosophy.[17] This statement, so often repeated, requires some examination.