Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II NEW TESTAMENT ETHICS Introduction.—I. The Ethics of Jesus—II. The Ethics of Paul—HI. The Johannine Interpretation—IV. The Ethics of the other Canonical Writers: Hebrews; James; The Revelation to John; The Ecclesiastical Literature. INTRODUCTION The unity of life is a postulate of our faith, but its understanding demands our breaking it up into many elements and viewing it from many standing places. The canonical interpretations of Jesus cannot be forced into any mechanical and absolute harmony, and to rightly weigh the ethical teachings of the canonical books we must reckon with the distinct differences in interest and outlook on the world manifest to the candid student of the New Testament writings. Jesus has become historically the central figure1 in the struggle of humanity upward to the redeemed life. The "Christian Era" has become the important factor in the life-history of India, China, Japan, and the far-off island-continents then unknown.This place in history no theological changes, no readjustment of values can now disturb. Whatever civilizations may come after ours, they can only come on the basis of that which rose on the wrecks of Grecian culture and Roman imperialism. The churchly reconstruction of life, the Christianized barbarism of the north, the entire reinterpretation of the ideals of existence, date from the life, death, and teachings of a lonely figure whose scattered phrases are given us in the pages of the New Testament. What were the ethics of Jesus, is a serious question. In various degrees the interpretations of those teachings drift apart from one another and from the original central instruction. 1 The critical question as to the historical character of Jesus and Paul has produced a large literature. After a survey of its arg...