men's
lives, after some seventy years of probation in this world, pass under
divine judgement, only to enter into new and eternal conditions where
they will inevitably reap the fruits of their previous careers. {175}
It must make a vital difference whether he believes that the world is
the expression of blind force or of the will of a living, loving, God;
whether or no he believes that God personally cares for each
individual: whether or no he believes that God's interest in the world
was such as to move Him to redeem it, by the sacrifice of Himself, from
the tyranny of sin: whether he believes in divine forgiveness and God's
indwelling by His Spirit: whether he believes in a divine brotherhood
and divine means of grace in a household of God in the world. In fact,
if the practical ethics of India and China, or the Turkish Empire and
Morocco, are considered side by side with those of Christian Europe, it
is impossible to resist the conviction that men's behaviour depends in
the long run on what they believe about God.

This obvious conclusion is, in part, veiled from our eyes by two facts.
One is that logic works slowly in human life. Take a transverse
section of humanity at any particular moment, and it appears a mass of
inconsistencies. It might almost suggest that there is no connexion at
all between belief and practice. But the same appearance is not
presented by human life in its long reaches. There you see how, in the
{176} slow result, an alteration of belief involves an alteration of
practice. Thus to take an example: at present our social conscience
about the obligations of marriage, or about personal purity, or about
suicide, unsatisfactory as it may appear to be to an earnest Christian,
is still saturated with Christian sentiment which is the result of a
prolonged impression left by Christian doctrine. If the doctrine were
to pass out of the minds of Englishmen in general, after a generation
or two there would be a weakening or destruction of the corresponding
sentiment, and an abolition of what is at present an obstacle to the
reign of sensual or selfish desires. But it takes some generations for
the effect of any weakening of belief to make itself felt.

There is another fact which veils from the eyes of people in general
the real connexion between morals and doctrine. It is that it is
largely mediate or indirect. The moral standard of the 'average man'
is, unconsciously, kept up by the morals o