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From: "C.V. Compton Shaw" <>
Subject: Re: American Religious Freedom
Date: Tue, 15 Jan 2002 00:51:12 GMT
References: <5B26630DC488D411AB6200D0B7C9FF49685A13@DCSRV09>


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The following is a quote from John Stuart Mill's classic book,
"On Liberty", which quote contains a criticism of Christianity.:
"It may be objected, "But some received principles, especially on the
highest and most vital subjects, are more than half-truths. The
Christian morality, for instance, is the whole truth on that subject,
and if any one teaches a morality which varies from it, he is wholly
in error." As this is of all cases the most important in practice,
none can be fitter to test the general maxim. But before pronouncing
what Christian morality is or is not, it would be desireable to
decide what is meant by Christian morality. If it means the morality
of the New Testament, I wonder that any one who derives his knowledge
of this from the book itself, can suppose that it was announced, or
intended, as a complete doctrine of morals. The Gospel always refers
to a pre-existing morality, and confines its precepts to the
particulars in which that morality was to be corrected, or
superseded by a wider and higher; expressing itself, moreover, in
terms most general, often impossible to be interpreted literally,
and possesing rather the impressiveness of poetry or eloquence than
the precision of legislation. To extract from it a body of ethical
doctrine, has never been possible without eking it out from the Old
Testament, that is, from a system elaborate indeed, but in many
respects barbarous, and intended only for a barbarous people.
St. Paul, a declared enemy to this Judaical mode of interpreting the
doctrine and filling up the scheme of his Master, equally assumes a
preexisting morality, namely that of the Greeks and Romans; and his
advice to Christians is in a great measure a system of accomodation
to that; even to the extent of giving an apparent sanction to slavery.
What is called Christian, but should rather be called theological
morality, was not the work of Christ nor the Apostles, but is of
much later origin, having been gradually built up by the Catholic
church of the first five centuries, and although not implicitly
adopted by moderns and Protestants, has been much less modified
by them than might have been expected. For the most part, indeed, they
have contented themselves with cutting off the additions which had
been made to it in the Middle Ages, each sect supplying the place
by fresh additions, adapted to its own character and tendencies.
That mankind own a great deal to this morality, and to its early
teachers, I should be the last person to deny; but I do not scruple
to say of it that it is, in many important points, incomplete and
one-sided, and that unless ideas and feelings, not sanctioned by it,
had contributed to the formation of the European life and character,
human affairs would have been in worse condition than they now are.
Christian morality (so called) has all of the characters of a
reaction; it is, in great part, a protest against Paganism. Its
ideal is negative rather than positive; passive rather than active;
Innocence rather than Nobleness; Abstinence from Evil, rather than
energetic Pursuit of Good; in its precepts (as has been well said)
"thou shalt not" predominates over " thou shalt." In its horror
of sensuality, it made an idol of asceticism, which has been
gradually compromised away into one of legality. It holds out the
hope of heaven and the threat of hell, as the appointed and
appropriate motives to a virtuous life: in this falling far below
the best of the ancients, and doing what lies in it to give to human
morality an essentially selfish character, by disconnecting each
man's feelings of duty from the interests of his fellow creatures,
except so far as a self-interested inducement is offered to him
for consulting them. It is essentially a doctrine of passive
obedience; it inculcates submission to all authorities found
established; who indeed are not to be actively obeyed when they
command what religion forbids, but who are not to be resisted, far
less rebelled against, for any amount of wrong to ourselves. And while,
in the morality of the best Pagan nations, duty to the State holds
even a disproportionate place, infringing on the just liberty of the
individual; in purely Christian ethics, that grand department of duty
is scarcely noticed or acknowledged. It is in the Koran, not the
New Testament, that we read the maxim-"A ruler who appoints any man
to an office, when there is in his dominions another man better
qualified for it, sins against God and against the State," What
little recognition the idea of obligation to the public obtains
in modern morality is derived from Greek and Roman sources, not
from Christian; as, even in the morality of private life, whatever
exists of magnanimity, highmindedness, personal dignity, even the
sense of honour, is derived from the purely human, not the
religious part of our education, and never could have grown out of a
standard of ethics in which the only worth, professedly recognised,
is that of obedience.
I am as far as any one from pretending that these defects are
necessarily inherent in the Christian ethics in every manner in which
it can be conceived, or that the many requisites of a complete moral
doctrine which it does not contain do not admit of being reconciled
with it. Far less would I insinuate this of the doctrines and precepts
of Christ himself. I believe that the sayings of Christ are all that I
can see any evidence of their having been intended to be; that they
are irreconcilable with nothing which a comprehensive morality
requires; that everything which is excellent in ethics may be
brought within them, with no greater violence to their language than
has been done to it by all who have attempted to deduce from them
any practical system of conduct whatever. But it is quite consistent
with this to believe that they contain, and were meant to contain, only
a part of the truth; that many essential elements of the highest
morality are among the things which are not provided for, and not
intended to be provided for, in the recorded deliverances of the
Founder of Christianiy, and which have been entirely thrown aside
in the system of ethics erected on the basis of those deliverances
by the Christian Church. And this being so, I think it a great error
to persist in attempting to find in the Christian doctrine that
complete rule for our guidance which its author intended it to
sanction and enforce, but only partially to provide. I believe, too,
that this narrow theory is becoming a grave practical evil,
detracting greatly from the moral training and instruction which
so many well-meaning persons are now at length exerting themselves
to promote. I much fear that by attempting to form the mind and
feelings on an exclusively religious type, and discarding those
secular standards (as for want of a better name they may be
called) which heretofore coexisted with and supplemented Christian
ethics, receiving some ot its spirit, and infusing into it some of
theirs, there will result, and is even now resulting, a low, abject,
servile type of character, which, submit itself as it may to what
it deems the Supreme Will, is incapable of rising to or
sympathising in the conception of Supreme Goodness. I believe that
other ethics than any which can be evolved from exclusively Christian
sources, must exist side by side with Christian ethics to produce a
moral regeneration of mankind; and that the Christian system is no
exception to this rule, that in an imperfect state of the human mind
the interests of truth require a diversity of opinions.
It is not necessary that in ceasing to ignore the moral truths not
contained in Christianity men should ignore any of those which it does
contain. such prejudice, or oversight, when it occurs, is altogether
an evil; but it is one from which we cannot hope to be always exempt,
and must be regarded as the price paid for an inestimable good.
The exclusive pretension made by a part of the truth to be the whole,
must and out to be protested against; and if a reactionary impulse
should make the protestors unjust in their turn, this one-sidedness,
like the other, may be lamented, but must be tolerated.
If Christians would teach infidels to be just to Christianity, they
should themselves be just to infidelity. It can do truth no service
to blink the fact, known to all who have the most ordinairy
acquaintance with literary history, that a large portion of the
noblest and most valuable moral teaching has been the work, not only
of men who did not know, but of men who knew and rejected, the
Christian faith."
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