Frederick Denison Maurice - Social morality: twenty-one lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge

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Tolerance is not what I think any Christian ought to crave for himself or of the Society to which he belongs. But looking at the lives of those whom he reverences most as examples of a Christian life, he may ask that they should be allowed to explain what they meant. Such men as Chrysostom, Bernard, Leighton, believed in Christ, not in their Christianity. They complained of their own Christianity and of the Christianity of their times, because they believed in Christ. It seems to me that if I apply this distinction to the case about which I am most interested, I may arrive at a method of treating all opinions which will do greater justice to them and to those who hold them. Mr Lecky claims a right to test Utilitarianism, and all other isms, by their moral effects. At the same time he makes large allowances for the influence of the surrounding atmosphere, and of opinions not included in the ism, in determining the characters of men and their action upon their contemporaries. Unquestionably I 1 think we ought to reverence a man much more than any System which he boasts of as his, and which cuts him off from other men. But he cannot accept the compliment that he is better than his System. He feels that it has taught him that which makes him more a man than he would otherwise be, he feels that he is below the standard which it sets before him. Is it not possible to justify this belief of his; to ask what it is that has made each man's system dear to him, what connects it with his human life, and not with the narrow, selfish tendencies in him, which are inhuman? May not Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius have perceived something much higher than the word Stoicism can expressan actual governing principle for the life, not a congeries of opinions to be main tained against all challengers? May not the Humanity which the Comtist dreams of be much more to him than all his Positivism, than all the volumes which set it forth? Believing that the true centre of Humanity is He whom all Christian teachers and Societies have professed to acknowledge, I must feel their delinquencies more than those of other men, in so far as they have fallen into Inhumanity. In the object of their belief I find the reconciliation of the principles which have been discovered to all the seekers after some maxim for their guidance and the guidance of mankind.

sophic mindthe philosophic mind being I suppose the equitable onewould perhaps be more ready to die for the conviction which they embraced in their childhood than their more passionate allies, because they entertain it as a conviction and because they have learnt to reverence the convictions of their neighbours as well as their own. If I had no youthful recollections which gave me a regard and affection for some of these I should feel simply as a student that I was bound to recognize their contribution as well as that of 'the independent Moralist' to Moral Science and Moral Practice. The watchword ' independent Morality,' though

.\ I recognize its worth, and accept it as an heirloom