The Churches and Modern Thought An inquiry into the...

Let me say at once that if, after the elimination of all untruths from Christianity, we could build a belief in God and immortality on the residue, we should then have a far more powerful incentive to right conduct than anything that I am about to urge. I fully admit that to tell the ordinary mortal brought up in the Christian faith to do right for right’s sake will often be futile, inspiring though the sentiment may be for some few of us. I admit also the fact that morality always tends to the well-being of the individual and the race. It is the one and only sound argument for the working of any ethical purpose in nature, and, if we can feel that in leading the moral life we are helping to carry out some high purpose in which we are personally concerned, such a belief will certainly be of great ethical value. In the following argument, however, I hope to show that, even without a religious incentive, we have all-sufficient reasons for leading the moral life. At present our morality is bound up with a belief which is false, and which people are beginning to feel and know to be false. Therefore it is more than ever necessary that we should learn more of those reasons for morality which do not depend upon this or that belief.