His Views and Principles
world under a terrorism of blood and fire, there were, in our sense, no morals at all. But in commerce morals are essential, trade could not exist for a day without them, and the great commercial systems which have transformed the world from an armed camp into a peaceful factory would perish, unless sustained by a lofty ethical basis.
The world of to-day, then, is peculiarly and essentially a moral world; there is no doubt that if a Syrian Christian of the first century could revisit this earth, and compare the London and Chicago of to-day with Jerusalem of old he would be astonished at the contrast. And the moral code which governs us is itself peculiar to our age. No doubt it represents through a process of growth and development the ethics of the New Testament, but this identity is not to be discovered on the surface. Nor need this surprise us: the gigantic oak tree bears no resemblance to the acorn, and the splendid blooms in our gardens are very dissimilar from the tiny grains which we entrusted
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