What is the philosophy of ethics?

Here we may notice that the ethics of philosophy, modern and ancient, cannot find a stable footing. They fail to seize the truth that duties flow from relations, and above all from relationship to God. In this irreparable defect they blindly follow the heathen, who, knowing not God, ignored relations with Him and His Son. Here all was still more guiltily wrong with those nominal Christians who even denied their past faith. This in effect left no ground for His grace in Christ. "If we say that we have not sinned." Oh what complete darkness must have enveloped their souls! Oh how the light that was in them had become darkness! And what darkness can be deeper or more hopeless? So it is still, and in many instances — too many.

This for many is a blessed truth to learn, that our duties flow out of an existing relationship, instead of being done to win it. Our duties do not bring its into the relationship; but the relationship decides the kind of duties which become it and are owing to it. Our near and blessed relationship — and we could have none nearer — flows out of our being now His children. It is a standing fact which nothing can alter, except when one who has professed to be a Christian shows that there was no root of the matter in him, because he has given Christ up; even then it will tell against him in the judgment. But evidently it is a general principle and easily understood by looking at natural duties. Hence the world is always wrong in its ethical notions, because they do not at all base duty upon relationship. On the contrary they make duty to flow from the man's moral power. They suppose that man is able to do his duty if he will; and therefore there is nothing in a man's duty but what he can do if he choose. The sorrowful fact certainly is that man fails in his Godward duties utterly; but philosophers think little of that. The error shows how the system of ethics has no source in revelation but is merely of fallen man. There is neither the truth of God nor the reality of man, as in His sight.

62 Where there is a moral nature, there is a moral relationship according to it. Husband and wife are that. It means a relationship in which the formed tie is to be maintained according to its nature. I quite admit that this is outside logic; but then all duties and right affections, all thoughts and ideas connected with the relationship are outside logic; that is, everything that man is as a moral being. Hence no rationalist has ever found a basis of morality. Conscience, happily, is often better than logic; but one time it is general utility, another following nature, and other things. It is wholly and only living up to the relationships we are placed in. Yet Mill says (p. 8) nearly the whole of human conduct is amenable to the authority of logic. Logic has nothing good or bad to do with it. Nor is it, as he says, the science of evidence. Logic has nothing to do with it. There is no science of evidence. There is observation of human nature, and the motives which govern it, which help to ascertain whether evidence is reliable. But he carefully obscures this word, as he does others. I must say, to seek to defeat truth. Evidence or testimony has on the face of it nothing to do with proof by inference (see note, p. 5), but he obscures this point too. There testimony is spoken of, and as to this it is said (p. 9), logic does not find evidence. Then we have the evidence of consciousness. But is the testimony of another evidence, supposing it proved credible, or thought so? Find it out from Mr. Mill if you can. It would open a door to faith on adequate testimony, without reasoning or inference, and that would be intolerable.

The whole moral world is wholly and absolutely outside their reach. Morality they have - none; they will tell me it is the pursuit of the good of all. And what is that good? and who is to decide it? Their happiness; but for no two men is it the same, if I take man's thoughts. It may be scalping, or opium, for the existence of passions forms no part of their philosophy. Many good people are not aware where philosophy has got to. Kant, in his treatise on morality, - a man not nearly so bad as the fruits of the philosophy he set going - declares in terms that if the will of God, or fear of God, be introduced, there can be none. It is a principle outside man. Morality is the principle of pure reason applied to practical conduct. But he admits at the end that how the principle of pure reason can be so applied it is impossible to say. Mill tells me that justice is the animal desire for vengeance modified by utility to all. Kant's is merely natural conscience with the name changed, and shutting out relationships with God and man, on which all morality is based. Mill, remark, feeling a motive was needed as a rule, makes vengeance the motive. Animal vengeance the sole motive of morality - the rule; one which has been never settled yet, save by Christ.

52 To say that duty ought to be followed, is only saying there is duty. But two straight lines enclosing space is somewhat different; it means if two do not approach they do not meet. God knows good and evil, that is, He recognises relationship as it exists. I know good and evil now (that is, my will apart). I recognise these relationships as they exist; but what has this to do with God's nature? His morality, speaking reverently, would be based on the relationship. He is in Himself; but He is in none, as we have seen, unless He pleases to put Himself in one: I am by virtue of my place. He recognises mine, and judges, but is not in it. I deny eternal morality save as an idea; it has no relation to Him at all. Absolute morality is nonsense. God did not create morality, but the relationship without which there could be none. If one supposes only the absolute God, there is no morality. Morality in respect of what? I cannot suppose it but with created responsibility, that is, creatures and consequently relationship.

2 But this right and wrong is connected with obligation, and is measured by relationships. I owe to a father, a husband, my neighbour, what belongs to that relationship: so to God. That is, the unperverted sense of right and wrong puts God in His place, does not judge Him. It is not an idea formed, but a relationship recognised, and hence subjection. Thus Adam lived in peace before the fall. Divine supremacy and authority was there, and owned, and then with knowledge the relationship was transgressed.

But supposing this sense of right and wrong in man, and that it is connected with the relationships in which we stand, I do hold that God loves righteousness and hates iniquity, because I intrinsically know right and wrong, but right and wrong being apprehended in the relationship, God is supreme to my mind; that is the first of rights. He is God, as much as my father is my father, and I own subjection to Him as God. I do say, He must be righteous, for that is the expression of acting on what is right and good in the relationships in which He has placed others, as far as consistent with supremacy and righteousness. But this is not supremacy of conscience, as if I were judge, and my measure of right and wrong, or my discernment of it perfect; but that I do conclude from right and wrong abstractedly to right in God, but at the same time to supremacy and perfection as the point I start from. One must not confound the measure of right and wrong with the sense of it. To speak of the supremacy of conscience, is to assume that its measure is perfect and adequate, not obligation under it. When I judge God or any one, I take a measure to judge by, and may misjudge from the state of my own mind. That is not conscience. Conscience with God recognises authority also over it, and supreme authority, or God is not recognised at all, and that is simply atheism. What these modern infidels claim - is to make their consciences the measure of right and wrong. This is false and grossly pretentious, and destroys the nature of God, and right as regards Him.

341 I do not deny a conscience. I believe that there are obligations flowing unchangeably from relationships in which we are by nature (in that sense ethics are eternal), and from such as redemption places us in. But I deny a pre-existing standard of moral truth possessed by man, and his competency, or his inward powers, to judge God. Where is it? Conscience does recognize evil and good, and it bows, by its very nature, to God, when He speaks to it. I speak of the fact, but the subjection of conscience to judgment is not judging. It does more; nay, it is the opposite. It puts God in His place: judging puts Him out of it. Does His speaking enfeeble man's sense of right and wrong? It adds divine authority as a sanction to it, and enlarges vastly the knowledge of it by new relations of an infinite character. But God has far more fully (nay, only then really) His place; for He speaks in love, and that is what He is. The soul does not want to judge God; it is glad to know Him.

293 I will shew how very much was made of it, but first a few words on moral law and the decalogue. By moral law I understand the duty of maintaining the relationship in which we stand. But they acquire their obligation from their institution by God, and the first relationship of all is relationship with God — hence the first of all moralities — and which casts its light and character on all the rest, because, in whatever God has instituted or commanded, I am bound to obedience; and obedience itself is morality in its highest form. It is maintaining relationship with God. Hence, before sin came in, the test was abstract pure obedience — "thou shalt not eat." Well, man disobeyed and fell — got wholly away from God; but he got a conscience in and by his fall — the knowledge of good and evil, that is, the sense of good and evil in itself without a commandment or law which made it obedience, which would have supposed his being still with God. Such was the wisdom of God. But this natural conscience enforced the obligation of these relationships in which God had placed man. Man's institutions might deface and obscure them: still the internal obligation was there. A wife was owned as a wife, though divorce might come in; parents as parents, though the state might claim rights over that tie; violence and robbery were known to be violence, though they might gloriously plunder enemies, and so on. And the blessed Lord would restore the testimony, "from the beginning it was not so." Thus, though there was no commandment, no law, there was morality, and the Gentile would do by nature the things contained in the law and be a law to himself, an expression which peremptorily excludes the having a law of God which made it obedience, and rests it on conscience acquired in the fall, when man left God and was turned out from Him.

H. If you mean civilization, arts, and mental development, and cultivation, and more particularly science, I do not of course deny it; though I think there is a good deal of mistake as to it. Discoveries, by which the knowledge of nature or the power of man over it is advanced, are undoubtedly multiplied. We know more physical facts than our ancestors. Astronomy, geology, on the one hand, and railroads, telegraphs, chemistry, on the other hand, have enlarged, not the domain, but the appropriation of the domain, allotted to man. And with every increase of knowledge there is a reaction. There is more reality and less hypothesis on all these subjects; but I doubt the development of much more than materialism by it. That this is a progress I more than doubt. As regards taste and cultivation, or intellectual powers, I should think also progress more than doubtful. All now is at best imitation. Take Grecian architecture or Gothic styles (whose ideal conceptions are the opposite one of another), or even Italian, all attempted is imitative. In intellectual power, I suppose Grecian or Roman was as developed in itself as any now. Plato, Aristotle, or what was more profound than either, the British triads or Bardic philosophy, present the expression of as powerful thought. And as to language, it is admitted that, as an instrument of thought, the Greek stands, of all commonly known languages, unrivalled. The powers of Sanscrit I am unacquainted with, and but little with the capacities of the daughter which most resembles it, they say, the Irish. In philosophy there is more truth in modern times, so far (not, as there has been progress, but) as revelation has exercised an influence on it, and no farther. So that I do not see great progress even in these earthly things. As to philosophy, all is necessarily false at all times, because it reasons upon the present state of man as a normal one, or else it becomes theology, and thereupon, as its necessary point of departure, upon his relationship to God, and what God is. Hence it is all necessarily false, both as to God, and as to man. It is in vain to say that you must not bring in religion into philosophy, because, unless religion be fable, it is the truth, so that it is only saying that you must not bring in truth. There, I believe, they have told the truth. That man is not fallen is a calumny against God. A God who made this world directly as it is would be a weak or a cruel God. But if man be fallen and in rebellion, and have to say to God in that state; if his whole moral condition be the acquired knowledge of good and evil, far from the source of good, then reasoning upon his relationships to God to prove what they are normally is to reason always against the truth. And that goes far deeper into the whole system than men are generally aware of. It affects every possible relationship of life. It is the reason there are magistrates, the origin of property, of labour, death, inheritances. I take the commonest, every-day, outward things on purpose. Philosophy, since it ceased to be cosmogony, is reasoning on morality, ignorant of the groundwork of the highest obligations, and of the whole state of things on which moral relationships are founded. Nothing can be right or set right, if the world has departed from God (because all its state is wrong — the central obligation is, which was the groundwork of all others, though those others be true) unless we bring in the restoring power of revealed goodness applied to that state, and this is Christianity. Hence it is a necessary consequence, that all philosophy is, and must be, false. There is evidence enough that evil exists. The man who will say that things are morally as they ought to be is a devil, and not a man, take heathens or Christendom. If they are not, there is no sense in not beginning with the truth of this slate and its remedy, if there be one. But this is religious truth.

Conscience tells us this, and makes us feel it; but human intelligence, blinded by Satan, seeks to excuse the evil, and to account for everything by setting God entirely aside. In principle this is morally, in fact, only the repetition of what our first parents did - it is seeking to cover oneself, and hide from God. All these efforts result in weakening the thought of holiness in the soul. Man, when he is only led by his reason, is irrational, and gets further and further from the truth. He is in darkness; but being also blind, he cannot discern between light and darkness. Therefore it is written, "The wicked, through the pride of his countenance, will not seek after God: God is not in all his thoughts." (Ps. 10:4.) And in this respect the philosopher is no better than others. (Rom. 2:1-11.) If the foundation of his reasonings be false, how can the building which he rears upon it abide? Hence the truth of this oft-repeated statement, that there is no morality apart from revelation. Let those who deny God tell us, if they can, what the moral principles are which they pretend to possess, apart from that which God has revealed to us in the Scriptures.