It was peculiarly the teaching of Christ which brought to the
world the idea that the area of moral obligation is co-extensive with
the world itself. There are no racial or national lines which can limit
the extent of our responsibility. The world today needs to learn this
lesson anew, and it is evident that it must acquire this knowledge
through bitter and desperate experiences. We must interpret in this
large sense the great moral dictum of the German philosopher, Kant, that
every one in a particular circumstance should act as he would wish all
men to act if similarly circumstanced and conditioned. This is the
complete universalizing of our moral obligations--stripping our sense of
duty of everything that is particular and local and isolated. The
natural tendency of human nature is to particularize our relations to
God and bound our relations to our fellow-men; to narrow our relations
to God so as to embrace only our direst needs, and to circumscribe our
relations to man so as to include in the field of responsibility only
those who are our kin or our own kind. The time has certainly come for
us to take larger views of the world, of man, and of God.
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