m no meaning. And between these extremes there are so
many varieties of opinion that one can take nothing as generally accepted
by men and women.

I want, therefore, to leave aside the ordinary conventions--not because
they are necessarily bad, but because they are not to my purpose, which
is to discover whether there is a real morality which we can justify
to ourselves without appeal to any authority however great, or to any
tradition however highly esteemed: a morality which is based on the real
needs, the real aspirations of humanity itself.

And I begin by calling your attention to the morality of Jesus of Nazareth,
not because He is divine, but because He was a great master of the human
heart, and more than others "knew what was in man."

You will notice at once the height of His morality--the depth of His mercy.
He demands such purity of spirit, such loyalty of heart, that the most
loyal of His disciples shrank appalled: "Whosoever shall look upon a woman
to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart."
... "Whosoever shall put away his wife and marry another, committeth
adultery against her." From such a standard Christ's disciples shrank--"If
the case of the man be so with his wife, it is not good to marry." And
one evangelist almost certainly inserted in this absolute prohibition the
exception--"Saving for the cause of fornication"--feeling that the Master
_could_ not have meant anything else. But, in fact, there is little doubt
that Jesus did both say and mean that marriage demanded lifelong fidelity
on either side; just as He really taught that a lustful thought was
adultery in the sight of God.

But if Christendom has been staggered at the austerity of Christ's morality
not less has it been shocked at the quality of His mercy. His gentleness to
the sensual sinner has been compared, with amazement, to the sternness of
His attitude to the sins of the spirit. Not the profligate or the harlot
but the Pharisee and the scribe were those who provoked His sternest
rebukes. And perhaps the most characteristic of all His dealings with such
matters was that incident of the woman taken in adultery, when He at once
reaffirmed the need of absolute chastity for men--demand undreamed of by
the woman's accusers--and put aside the right to condemn which in all that
assembly He alone could claim--"Neither do I condemn thee; go, and sin no
more."

Having then in mind this most lofty and compassionat