Our  recognition  of  the  authority  of  Christ's
teaching  depends  upon  its  proving  itself  to  be
true  and  profound  to  the  farthest  limits  of
our  insight  and  aspirations.  If  in  the  course
of  history  and  of  our  experience  we  became
convinced  that  it  was  really  superficial  and
local  in  its  character — if  it  could  be  alleged
that  we  have  advanced  beyond  it  and  have
discovered  principles  which  deal  more  effect
ually  with  the  circumstances  of  our  lives,
and  which  commend  themselves  with  more
authority  to  our  hearts  and  consciences  than
those  which  we  have  learnt  from  Christ — it
would  be  necessary  that  his  teaching  should
be  deposed  from  the  rank  which  has  been
claimed  for  it.  But  that — need  I  say  ? — is


ioo  Social  Questions.
not  yet  our  conviction.  Each  time  that  we
turn  to  the  Gospels  we  find  ourselves  awed,
commanded,  moved,  as  by  no  other  morality.
We  know  nothing  deeper,  nothing  more
universal,  nothing  more  practical,  than  the
laws  of  human  conduct  which  our  Lord
clothed  in  language  intelligible  and  impressive
to  his  Galilean  hearers.  The  Gospel  morality
needs  no  championship,  it  only  wants  to  be
understood  and  felt.  It  has  much  that  is
manifestly  higher  than  what  human  wisdom
unenlightened  by  the  Gospel  has  ever  sug
gested  ;  but  it  also  welcomes  and  justifies
and  exalts  every  good  idea  which  has  ap
peared  to  be  independent  of  it.
