Wherever God’s laws are clearly visible, stamped in immutable characters so plain that every human being who is willing to read them can do so, then the wisdom, the happiness--nay, the simple common-sense of the race--lies in obeying them. The first lesson every one of us has to learn profoundly is his subjection to law. There is no escaping this inexorable destiny. Although each one is born with free-will, his type--the plan and pattern of his being--is born with him also. This type is a limitation to the nature, but it is also a guide; it is the finger of Providence showing him the road to follow in the great wilderness of creation; it is the Divine order, according to which each one can freely grow and expand in body and soul to the finest proportions. True freedom consists in the voluntary choice of this type, in the full acceptance of all its conditions, and in the endeavour to unfold its capacities. The will may refuse this type, may deny the laws that govern it, may seek for license in a lawless rejection of Divine order, but it is soon arrested by endless obstacles, and persistence in the unequal struggle will only end in degradation and self-destruction. We recognise a Divine law when we see it existing age after age unchangeably, carrying order and beauty in its fulfilment; penalties, discord, desolation, with infringement. These laws are grand in design, beneficient in their effects--equally so, whether we observe the marvel of parental love, or explore the wonders of the skies; whether we clothe them in warm, human garments, indispensable to the simple, loving heart, or frame them in the clear precision of scientific formulæ, indispensable to the truthful mind. If there be one law that all can clearly recognise in the existence of the material world around us, it is the unvarying method of human development from infancy to old age. A certain plan exists, according to which the infant expands through childhood and youth into manhood, and thence changes through elderly life into old age. This plan never varies in any epoch, or race, or country. It is the same for the lowest savage tribe as for the most cultivated race. No effort of ours can change this unvarying sequence in human life. This is a wonderful fact. It is so common that we hardly notice it. Yet it is wonderful, because it is so common--so common as to be universal. It rises, as we regard it, into the dignity of Law.