Note 324 — Terminal Essay. (continued 2)

Dr. Theodore Christlieb (“Modern Doubt and Christian Relief,” Edinburgh: Clark, 1874) can even now write;—“So then the ‘full age’ to which humanity is at present supposed to have attained, consists in man’s doing good purely for goodness sake! Who sees not the hollowness of this bombastic talk. That man has yet to be born whose practice will be regulated by this insipid theory (dieser grauen Theorie). What is the idea of goodness per se? * * * The abstract idea of goodness is not an effectual motive for well-doing” (p. 104). My only comment is c’est ignoble! His reverence acts the part of Satan in Holy Writ, “Does Job serve God for naught?” Compare this selfish, irreligious, and immoral view with Philo Judæus (On the Allegory of the Sacred Laws, cap. lviii.), to measure the extent of the fall from Pharisaism to Christianity. And the latter is still infected with the “bribe-and-threat doctrine:” I once immensely scandalised a Consular Chaplain by quoting the noble belief of the ancients, and it was some days before he could recover mental equanimity. The degradation is now inbred.