THE AIM OF CHRISTIANITY.* AMONG important contemporary works on Christian
ideals this must take a high place. It is true that its fundamental concept is not so original as at times its author appears to suggest. In that most interesting and noble treatise, Fichte's Way to the Blessed Life, substantially the same ideas were given to the world generations ago. But Mr. Askwith has clothed the ideas in new forms, and while we cannot say that he has met every difficulty or dealt adequately with every phase of his subject, yet he has presented us with a well- reasoned and a really noble view of the essential purpose of the Christian revelation which should have the double effect of aiding in the renewal of Christian life itself and of showing to those outside the pale of professed Christianity a meaning in Christianity which they never really grasped.
The first portion of this work is taken up with a psycho- logical and ethical discussion regarding moral duty, virtue, right and good, conscience and reason, and happiness and the good. This is intended as a preliminary to the real purpose of the general argument, and is useful for that end, though some of it appears to us superfluous. Mr. Askwith attaches
that undue importance to Paley which, so long as the Uni- versity of Cambridge makes Paley's Evidences an integral part of its curriculum, we suppose we must expect from a Cambridge man. As a matter of fact, Paley's conceptions are to-day dead, and are hardly worth serious philosophic dis- cussion. To have rescued Christianity from Paleyisin has been one of the notable achievements of our time. In this first part of his work Mr. Askwith tries, very successfully in our judgment, to divide rightly the word of truth, to set forth the essential nature of God as progressively unfolded to man, and to show the true moral content of human nature. Of God it is said:—" God, then, must be conceived of as Good acting always rightly, so that of no act of His can it be said that it is a denial of His Goodness." And in regard to the human summum barium the important distinction between Christian and Eastern thought is made clear. The Orient, lacking positive content in its conception of Deity, presents to man a passive rather than an active goodness. Christianity, on the other hand, while retaining the note of passivity, conceives of God as also active perpetual benevolence, and seeks in that particular to assimilate the human nature to the divine. " As when we speak of a man as a ' good man,' we mean that in him the qualities which make our ideal man are conspicuous, and that these qualities are displayed in action, so when we speak of the supreme good' of human life we must include in this term a perfect human activity. But reason demands that this should be in a state of perfect happiness." To secure for man perfect happiness with perfect and constant rectitude and beneficence is the great aim of Christianity.
But in actual life as we know it man's activity is by no means purely beneficent, nor does any high or universal happiness result from it. We live in a world in which, as has been said, "men sit and hear each other groan," and whose history has been described by a great historian as a record of follies and crimes." How reconcile the beneficent purpose of God towards man with the actual history of human life and the vanitas vanitatura pronounced on it by so many of the wisest of men ? The problem is, of course, as )ld as the everlasting hills, but it is apt to present itself in new aspects as the world-drama unfolds itself and as the successive chapters in the book of Nature are unrolled. Mr. Askwith rightly holds that the idea of evolution has greatly modified the religious problem, and we might almost say that the groundwork of his thought is identical with that noted suggestion of Huxley that the spiritual progress of man only opens when he has begun to disentangle himself from the mere cosmic process. In the cosmic order, he suggests, each being lives for itself primarily, seeks to perpetuate its own existence, and endeavours to destroy any other that stands in its way. In the cosmic plan no spiritual purpose appears, contest and egoistic instincts predominate, life is swept remorselessly away. If the mere cosmic order were its own end, if it embodied the final purpose of Creation, we could only take refuge in pessimism, for such a world would be the worst conceivable to our nature ; nor could we possibly solve
• The (Aviation Conception of Holiness. By E. H. Askwitb, MA., Chaplain of Trinity College, Cambridge. London Macmillan and Co. [es.]
the problem how we came to be possessed of such a nature. We are left in the blank gloom of moral and intellectual bewilderment.
But Christian philosophy solves the intellectual problem while the Christian spirit is operating on the heart. For the purpose of Christian philosophy is to reveal the nature and purpose of God. The nature of God is reflected in the person of Christ. What we know Christ to have been that God wills us all to be, and He sees formed in us already that ideal which we are destined somewhere and some- when to attain,—the intellectual statement of the doc- trine of justification. The evolution doctrine helps us to understand the necessity of passing through this cosmic stage; life, we may presume, could not have been evolved in any other way, and the misery (actual to us) attending the crises of our lives is none other than the birth-pangs of a higher life. That higher life is attained through an emergence from the cosmic to the spiritual, and is effected through the Incarnation, whereby God Himself enters into and spiritualises the cosmic order. Hence the contest, immortalised in the famous Pauline words, between the spiritual and the carnal man, the one ever seeking to emancipate himself from the dominion of the other. But how is this cosmic process spiritualised ? By the truth about God's nature being known ; and that truth is that God is Love, and has no thought of a selfish kind. Christian holiness is identical with this absolute love, which, as has been said, is perfect benevo- lence in constant action. Such may be said to be, in a word, the Christian Gospel as conceived and set forth by our author in this volume. The kingdom of heaven, then, is the reign of absolute love, of the complete conquest of the spirit of self-assertion derived from the cosmic process, of death to the Old Man with his affections and lusts, and of the birth and growth of the New Man ; while the Church is the fraternal society through whose agency this growth is made easier,— though Mr. Askwith acknowledges that the earthly leaven of the cosmic process has worked only too fatally in the actual Church. The State is a mere cosmic growth, and is therefore only imperfectly fitted to be an organ of the renewal of man's nature, but it is capable of being slowly modified through Christian influences.
Such, in brief, are the leading ideas of this very admirable work, which, it may be said, is permeated by a deep religious feeling and insight. Mr. Askwith's position, it will be seen, is one of a relative dualism, though he probably would merge it into one of spiritual monism as an ultimate statement. He has not cleared up that most difficult of all problems, nor did he set out to do so. Christianity has furnished, and will furnish, hints to philosophy, but its primary object is not to explain the universe, but to reveal the will and nature of God, and to bring paradise into the soul of man There is an interesting chapter on the Pauline theology, in which the point is made that while the Johannine teaching dwells on the nature of God, the Pauline teaching concerns itself mainly with the divine economy. The doctrines of the Fall and the Atonement are also reviewed in the light of the central idea, but not quite adequately. A concluding chapter on the Holy Catholic Church sketches a noble Church ideal. We hope that Mr. Askwith's work will be widely read.
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