Page:The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885).djvu/245

in the twenty-fifth chapter of Matthew, the moral force of the story is not expressed by the rewards and punishments described, any more than in Elijah’s vision on Horeb, — the Lord was in the thunder and in the fire. But the moral force of the scene lies in the concluding words that the judge is made to speak to the multitudes of just and unjust. “Inasmuch as ye did it unto the least of these, ye did it unto me.” That is, if we may paraphrase the words of the judge: “I,” he says, “represent all beings. Their good is mine. If they are hungry or naked or sick or imprisoned, so am I. We are brethren; ours is all one universal life. That I sit in this seat, arbiter of heaven and hell, makes me no other than the representative of universal life. Such reverence as ye now bear to me is due, and always was due, to the least of these my brethren.” The infinite sacredness of all conscious life, that is the sense of the story; the rest is the scenic accompaniment, which, whether literally or symbolically true, has no direct moral significance. Now the knowledge such as Job sought, the knowledge that there is in the universe some consciousness that sees and knows all reality, including ourselves, for which therefore all the good and evil of our lives is plain fact, — this knowledge would be a religious support to the moral consciousness. The knowledge that there is a being that is no respecter of persons, that considers all lives as equal, and that estimates our acts according to their true value, — this would be a genuine support to the religious need in us, quite apart from all notions about reward and punishment. A thinking being, a seer of all