Christian Character; Being Some Lectures on the Elements of Christian Ethics

Book may have numerous typos, missing text, images, or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1912. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER X CHRISTIAN LIFE SUPERNATURAL The Christian life and character, as above described, is often called supernatural; and as this use of the term is sometimes misunderstood, it may be well to conclude with a consideration of its meaning. Aristotle drew a clear distinction, in the early days of philosophy, between two senses in which we use the word nature ($vew). In one sense, he says, we apply the term 'nature' to the elementary material of things which possess a capacity for development; and in another sense to their ideal end --the thing, that is to say, which they are destined to become. And among other illustrations of this distinction, he instances the family and the state. The primitive family is a natural institution in the former sense, as being the first expression of man's social instinct, the raw material, as it were, out of which society is made; while the civilised state is equally natural in the latter sense, as being the rational end, in which the social instinct finds its ultimate realisation. For, he adds, whatever a thing is, when the process of its development has been completed, that we call the nature of the thing, whether it be a man, or a horse, or a house. And so, at a later period, the Stoics identified life according to nature with life according to right reason, or the immanent purpose of nature. This is the very converse of the theory with which Rousseau and his followers confused the intellect of the eighteenth century, when contrasting the artificiality of civilisation with the state of nature. For in their indignation at what they regarded as the perverse lines on which man had conducted his development, they failed to see that in one way or another he must inevitably develop; and hence identified his natural state wi...