Inquiry: Christianity and War | 2-6

6. General character of Christianity

It is a remarkable fact that the laws of the Mosaic dispensation, which confessedly was an imperfect system, are laid down clearly and specifically in the form of an express code;

while those of that purer religion which Jesus Christ introduced into the world are only to be found casually and incidentally scattered, as it were, through a volume –

intermixed with other subjects, elicited by unconnected events, delivered at distant periods and for distant purposes, in narratives, in discourses, in conversations, and in letters.

Into the final purpose of such an ordination (for an ordination it must be supposed to be), it is not our present business to inquire.

One important truth, however, results from the fact, as it exists:

that those who would form a general estimate of the moral obligations of Christianity must derive it, not from codes, but from principles;

not from a multiplicity of directions in what manner we are to act, but from instructions respecting the motives and dispositions by which all actions are to be regulated.