ut away the evil of your doings from before mine
eyes; cease to do evil: learn to do well; seek judgment, relieve {228}
the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow." [7]

But whichever of these two methods of criticism predominates, it is clear
that they both draw upon bodies of truth which grow independently of
religion. The history of Christianity affords a most remarkable record
of the continual adjustment of religious belief to secular rationality.
The offices of religion have availed no more to justify cruelty,
intolerance, and bigotry than to establish the Ptolemaic astronomy or the
Scriptural account of creation. This is more readily admitted in the
case of natural science than in the case of ethics, but only because
teachers of religion have commonly had a more expert acquaintance with
moral matters than with the orbits of the planets or the natural history
of the earth.

For the principles of conduct, like the principles of nature, must be
derived from a study of the field to which they are applied. They
require nothing more for their establishment than the analysis and
generalization of the moral situation. If two or more persons conduct
themselves with reference to one another and to an external object, their
action either possesses or lacks, in some degree, that specific value
which we call moral goodness. And by the principles of ethics we mean
the principles which truly define and explicate this value. Now neither
the truth nor {229} the falsity of any religion affects these fundamental
and essential conditions. If the teachings of religion be accepted as
true, then certain factors may be added to the concrete practical
situation; but if so, these fall within the field of morality and must be
submitted to ethical principles. Thus, if there be a God whose
personality permits of reciprocal social relations with man, then man
ought, in the moral sense, to be prudent with reference to him, and may
reasonably demand justice or good-will at his hands.

But the mere existence of a God, whatever be his nature, can neither
invalidate nor establish the ethical principles of prudence, justice, and
good-will. Were a God whose existence is proved, to recommend injustice,
this would not affect in the slightest degree the moral obligation to be
just. Moral revelation stands upon precisely the same footing as
revelation in the sphere of theoretical truth: its acceptance can be
justified only throu