The difference between the Christian teaching and what preceded it is this, that the preceding social teaching said: “Live contrary to your nature (meaning only the animal nature), subordinate it to the external law of the family, the society, the state;” but Christianity says: “Live in accordance with your nature (meaning the divine nature), subordinating it to nothing—neither to your own, nor to anybody else’s animal nature—and you will attain what you are striving after by subordinating your external nature to external laws.”
The Christian teaching takes man back to the primitive consciousness of self, not of self—the animal, but of self—God, the divine spark, of self—the son of God, of just such a God as the Father himself, but included in an animal integument. And the recognition of self as this son of God, whose chief quality is love, satisfies also all those demands for the widening of the sphere of love, to which the man of the social conception of life was brought. There, with a greater and ever greater widening of the sphere of love for the salvation of the personality, love was a necessity and was applied to certain objects—self, the family, society, humanity; with the Christian conception of life, love is not a necessity and is not adapted to anything, but is an essential quality of man’s soul. Man does not love because it is advantageous for him to love this man or these men, but because love is the essence of his soul—because he cannot help loving.
The Christian teaching consists in pointing out to man that the essence of his soul is love, that his good is derived not from the fact that he will love this or that man, but from the fact that he will love the beginning of everything, God, whom he recognizes in himself through love, and so will love everybody and everything.
In this does the fundamental difference between the Christian teaching and the teaching of the positivists and of all the theorists of the non-Christian universal brotherhood consist.