Church of England -- Clergy -- Correspondence; Clergy -- England -- Correspondence; Robinson, Forbes, 1867-1904 -- Correspondence
Don't try to look at moral law apart from national life. St. Paul did
not. Law is seen in national life. A nation is a better expression of
God than an individual, because God is three, not simply one. He is a
social Being, a Being of relations. And nations will last for ever.
Law will always be seen worked out in national life. God has more
worlds than one. Each nation is a thought of God worked out in human
clay (cf. Jeremiah xviii. 1-6). Human clay lasts for ever ('I believe
in the resurrection of the body'). Law will always be worked out thus.
We are part of a thought of God--part of an English nation--little
fragments of a huge whole. Our immortality depends on the fact that we
are parts of a nation, parts of a Divine idea, which lasts for ever.
Law is more completely seen in conscious than unconscious life, because
God's life is conscious. Law is more completely seen {67} in family
and national than individual life, because in God Himself are seen the
archetypes of human relations.
This letter is disjointed, but contains a few thoughts which may prove
helpful--thoughts I have been learning from others of late.
We are having lovely weather.
The buds 'feeling' after each other--new life and resurrection life--a
type, a pledge of fuller resurrection, of Easter life--nay, the same
Life--'I am the Resurrection and the Life'--working in trees and
flowers and man. What a glorious thing to live in a world which has
been united with its Maker--a world of perfect law and order--a world
where every infraction of law must and will be punished--a world where
Love is Law and Law is Love--a world where a great thought is being
realised, and will be realised in and for us! You use 'Theology'
loosely--'Theology' is _the_ thing and 'Religion' is not, I think,
nearly such a fine word. Theology is the Learning, Knowing, Studying
God. I am sorry I have said nothing about Jewish sacrificial law. I
meant to. That expresses a great fact. It dimly hints (as sacrificial
law in other nations does) at the fact that the ground of the universe
is self-sacrifice--that the ground of all human, whether family or
national, life is a filial sacrifice. I think other nations besides
Jews regarded _all_ law as coming from God; nay, I think all nations
did in part at least.
{68}
_To E. N. L., on the occasion of the death of his brother, who was
killed by lightning at Cambridge._[1]
June 18, 1892.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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