loses its value when it is strained too far. We shall see by and by that this is often the case with the metaphor of organisation when it is applied to the structure and life of society; but it is also apt to be misunderstood even in application to individual organisms. In the mere animal and vegetable, indeed, the complete significance of structure may be exhausted by representing the component parts as organs or instruments for the maintenance of the whole. In man, however, this is not the entire significance of physical structure. Not only are the particular organs subservient to the uses of his whole organism, but the whole organism itself is a mere organ― an instrumentality with which he is endowed for working out the destiny of an intelligent moral being. This is the idea which St. Paul has embodied in a different metaphor a metaphor which is singularly noble, and seems to have been a favourite of his. It describes the body as a temple of the Holy Spirit, an abode in which God Himself is pleased to dwell.1 Not only is this conception of the body made the ground of the apostle's appeal against all sensual impurity as being a desecration of God's holy dwelling-place, but he entreats his Roman disciples to offer their bodies a living, holy, acceptable sacrifice to God as being the reasonable worship (Tηv λογικὴν λατρείαν).

The tone thus set by apostolic teaching was sustained throughout the ethical literature of the early Church. An example is found in the Pædagogus of the Alexandrine Clement. This work is very largely taken up with somewhat homely instructions in reference to all the details of external life, and the instructions are repeatedly fortified by pointing to their importance or

11 Cor. iii. 16, 17, vi. 19; 2 Cor. vi. 16; Eph. ii, 21, 22; cf. 1 Pet. ii. 5.

2 Rom. xii. 1.

necessity for bodily health.1 Unfortunately the baneful influence of an irrational asceticism showed itself at an early period; yet the numerous works, which refer to the prevalent sensuality and luxury, naturally dwell also on the physical injury which results from the vices condemned.

The reasonable worship, recommended by Paul, which surrenders the body as an offering to God's service, implies obviously the acquisition of those means of subsistence by which life and health are sustained. These are, therefore, very properly connected with the highest aspirations of the soul. In the Lord's Prayer it may be observed that Christian sentiment descends quite naturally from lofty yearnings after the coming of God's kingdom and the doing of His will upon earth to the very homely petition for daily bread. But daily bread, that is, the means of subsistence, can be produced only by industrial labour; and therefore the prayer for daily bread becomes a real and honest craving of the soul only when the petitioner ceases to expect that the bread, for which he prays, will drop into his lap without any labour on his part, only when he is ready to undertake his fair share of the labour necessary for its production. In our time, when industrial interests are moulding the whole course of social evolution, the necessity of labour for the production of wealth is becoming a commonplace of popular thought as well as of economical science. The effect of this economical truth on the moral consciousness of the world will be noticed later. But meanwhile it may be observed that primitive Christian teaching, founding, indeed, on the teaching of Hebrew Rabbinical schools, is very definitely on the side of the labourers as against the idlers who

1 See especially the second and third Books, and more particularly the first two chapters of the second Book on eating and drinking.

live on the labour of others. In fact it seems emphatically to deny any man a right to the means of subsistence if he does not by his labour contribute, directly or indirectly, to their production. St. Paul gives utterance to the sentiment in what appears to have been a Hebrew proverb: "If any man is unwilling to work, neither shall he eat."1

§ 2. DEVELOPMENT OF CHRISTIAN VIRTUE

In ascending from the physical to the mental conditions of virtue, we come upon a prominent feature of moral life, which perhaps characterises also life in general. It has been already observed that a large part of morality consists in the rational control of those emotional impulses which form the main motives of human nature. As these often thwart, and even baffle, the efforts of rational volition, moral life naturally assumes the appearance of a stuggle. All activity, indeed, implies a resistance overcome, even if it be but the resistance of inertia; and therefore the idea of activity, of exertion or effort, passes over very easily into that of struggle or conflict. Among the ancient Greeks, that brilliant thinker, Herakleitos the Obscure, saw that, as all existence is a ceaseless activity, its essential nature is war, a strife of opposites for the mastery. In the science of our day the favourite theory is that all life is, in its very essence, a struggle for existence. Whatever may be said of this theory, there can be no doubt that life in general, moral life in particular, presents at least the appearance of a struggle. Accordingly, in all literature, moral life is frequently described under this figure, and as a description of Christian life in particular the metaphor is one of the 1 2 Thess. iii. 8-12. The proverb seems to be based on Gen. iii. 19.

common

And he

commonest in Christian literature. Our Lord Himself declares that the kingdom of heaven is won by violent exertion, that it is by men of violent energy that it is captured.1 St. Paul has more than once compared the Christian life to the prize-fights that were among the great games of the ancient world. dwells on the intense reality of the conflict. it is no sham-fight as of one who is merely beating the air. Nor is it any common wrestling against earthly foes, but rather a Titanic battle against the worldpower of wickedness in its highest spheres.3

For him

Here we may find the truth embodied in the wildoats theory of moral youth, which is often illogically applied to confuse ethical thought. The excesses of youth are often condoned, if not even commended at times, on the plea that they are a sowing of wild-oats in the soil of moral life. It is assumed that by this treatment the soil is enriched and rendered capable of yielding a nobler crop in after years. The metaphor seems to point to facts occasionally observed in the earlier developments of moral character; but whatever may be the significance of these facts, they certainly can never be a justification for deliberately sowing wildoats in the hope of reaping a more cultured crop. It is, on the face of it, never allowable to do evil that good may come. But the truth is that the moral manhood, which sometimes follows the sowing of wild-oats in youth, is in no sense the effect of the indulgences described by the metaphor. It is the result rather of the struggle against these. For a steady, unwearied, triumphant battle with the passions of youth will, of course, develop a moral energy which is not so likely to be attained by men whose tamer exposes them to conflicts of the kind.

1 Matt. xi. 12; cf. Luke xvi. 16.

21 Cor. ix. 26.

nature never On the other

3 Eph. vi. 12.

hand, the unresisting indulgence of youthful passion inevitably entails moral enfeeblement. The whole gist of the wild-oats metaphor is expressed with admirable pith in the fifty-third elegy of In Memoriam:

"How many a father have I seen,

A sober man, among his boys,

Whose youth was full of foolish noise,
Who wears his manhood hale and green:
And dare we to this fancy give,

That had the wild-oat not been sown,
The soil left barren, scarce had grown
The grain by which a man may live?
Oh, if we held the doctrine sound

For life outliving heats of youth,
Yet who would preach it as a truth
To those that eddy round and round?

Hold thou the good: define it well:
For fear divine Philosophy

Should push beyond her mark and be
Procuress to the Lords of Hell."

The plea for sowing wild-oats has been not only made general, but urged as if it were particularly applicable to the poetic or artistic temperament. It may, of course, be admitted as an elementary truism, that emotion even of a passionate character is essential to the highest æsthetic achievements. This fact is acknowledged to form a peculiar peril to moral wellbeing; and unhappily, therefore, it is not an unfamiliar tragedy in literary history, that

"The passionate heart of the poet is whirled into folly and vice."

The same truism is recognised in the sphere of moral life itself. The noblest moral achievements call for a certain fervour of enthusiasm, and a fervid sensibility has a perilous tendency to be set on fire with ease by any kind of passionate fuel. But