THAT famous Austro-Jewish philosopher, Dr. Max Nordau, who has been likened to Job and Hosea, has been preaching, once more, the necessity for the state to accept and conform to the morality of the citizen. To the question put to him, in Paris, by an interviewer from the staff of the London Observer, as to whether he perceived any moral advance amongst the nations, he returned an unhesitating negative. "There will not be," he said, "until morals mean the same thing for nations as they do for individuals. A man steals a gold watch, and he is put into prison. A nation steals a gold-field. Who is there to put it into prison—unless the League of Nations lives? In the one case the world calls it theft, in the other conquest. In the one case ownership decides the morality of the act; in the other only power. Might is right. And all the nations are tarred with the same brush."
Now, there is nothing new in this: indeed, every one knows it to be entirely true. Whatever difference there may be between nations, and there is some, is totally one of degrees. What is amazing is that it should be possible to say this after almost twenty centuries of professed Christianity. The fact is, it proves that, at heart, the western world is not Christian but pagan. Christianity has placed a demand upon it, it has not yet been able to meet. This is why so much is heard of the failure of Christianity. But the cry no more proves Christianity to be a failure than the ignoring of the multiplication table by professing mathematicians would make mathematics a failure. Again, and again, and again, Christ Jesus insisted on the fact that in order to be a Christian it was imperative to obey the law; and the law he stated quite emphatically for the individual rather than for the nation. The whole of the Fourth Gospel is a sort of first century Blackstone, in which the necessity of the obedience to divine law is persistently set before men.
Over the nation Jesus did not particularly trouble: he left that to Caiaphas. He knew that the nation must be just what its individual units were, and therefore that their conversion constituted the conversion of the nation. If, then, the individual had accepted the law for himself, the law would be reflected in the conduct of the nation. But the fact is that the individual has done nothing of the sort. What he has done is to accept certain restraints which he has convinced himself are necessary to the stability of the social state. If he can free himself from the pressure of these restraints, within the law, as an individual, he quite commonly does. And all this means that he is not applying the law rigorously to himself. Max Nordau says, "A man steals a gold watch, and he is put into prison." But may not the judge and the jury have stolen many gold watches that morning by means of a legal transaction on the stock exchange or in a land office? Christ Jesus, with a wisdom transcending human wisdom, said, "Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery; but I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart."
