The growth of morality is twofold.  It is partly a growth in content, from negative to positive.  It is partly a growth in extent, from tribal to universal.  And in both of these forms of growth it is accompanied, and as a rule, though my knowledge would not entitle me to say always, it is also conditioned by a parallel development in religious conviction.

We are all aware that early morality is mainly negative; it is the ruling out of certain ways of arriving at the human ideal, however that is to be defined, which have been attempted and have been found failures.  Whatever else may be the way to reach the end, murder is not, theft is not, and so on.  Thus we get the Second Table of the Decalogue, where morality commits itself to prohibitions—­this is not the way, that is not the way; then gradually, under the pressure of experience, there begins to emerge the conception of the end which makes all this prohibition necessary, and which these methods when they were attempted failed to reach.

And so we come at last to “the Kingdom of God as proclaimed by Christ, and the supreme law of ethics, the demonstrably final law of ethics, is laid down—­Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.”

Of course the words come from the Old Testament.  Some critics used to say:  “You will find in the Rabbis almost everything, if not quite everything, which you find in the teaching of Christ.”  “Yes,” added Wellhausen, “and how much else besides.”  It was the singling out of this great principle and laying the whole emphasis upon it that made the difference.

To a man who believes that Christ came to set up the Kingdom of God, clearly neither the Conservative nor Liberal Party can appeal with any compelling force of divinity.  How far the Labour Party may appeal must depend, I should think on the man’s knowledge of economic law.  As Dean Inge says, Christ’s sole contribution to economics is “Beware of covetousness”—­an injunction which the Labour Party has not yet quite taken to its heart.  But Dr. Temple has a right to challenge his clerical critics for Christ’s sanction of the present system, which is certainly founded on covetousness and produces strikingly hideous results.

His theological position may be gathered from the following reply which he made, as a Canon of Westminster, to a representative of the Daily Telegraph nearly two years ago.  I do not think he has greatly changed.  He was asked how far the Church could go in meeting that large body of opinion which cannot accept some of its chief dogmas.  He replied: