Morality as a Religion: An exposition of some first principlesSullivan, W. R. Washington (William Robert Washington)
Religion
Morality as a Religion: An exposition of some first principles
Sullivan, W. R. Washington (William Robert Washington)
Conduct of life; Ethics; Religion and ethics
And, now, we may point out what we conceive to be the significance, the
implication of the facts just set forth. If we are to think about the
matter at all, if we are not to adopt a Positivist attitude and
absolutely bar metaphysic as a sterile and unprofitable investigation,
it seems to me that the moral law, like all law, points unmistakably to
reason as its source; and since, as already pointed out, man does not
create the moral order in which he lives any more than he creates the
mathematical or chemical laws which he uses, but simply discovers them
by observation, the moral law must be the expression of a mind other
than man's. When we say "other than man's," we do not mean
specifically, but individually, for we hold the specific oneness of all
mind in all intelligent creatures from first to last. We mean, the
moral law is an expression of the "Mind which is the Whole," the Mind
which is the Infinite, so that, just as Mr. Spencer refers everything
ultimately--and in this he is "not far from the kingdom of God"--to an
"Infinite and Everlasting Power," we refer everything, the moral law
above all, which to us is the highest expression of the Divine known to
this earth, to an Infinite and Everlasting Mind, the Soul of the World,
the Soul of all souls, the inexhaustible Intelligence upon whose
treasury I am drawing now as I think and write, upon whose stores all
creatures are drawing in every intelligent action of their lives.
Law we define as an ordination of reason. From first to last it is so.
From the laws which we daily obey to the everlasting laws holding the
spheres together--can we account of them as other than the expression
of reason? So do we account of the moral law, with this essential
difference, that while the rules of man, the laws of man, may be
arbitrary, the moral law is no arbitrary enactment, but essential
righteousness; it is the Supreme Mind and Will in actual
manifestation--the moral law _is_ God. I mean thereby that it could
not be otherwise. It is beyond the power of omnipotence to dispense
with it. Right recognised as right could never be other than right, it
could never become wrong, any more than two and three could become
interchangeable ideas. One may say now that this definite act is
right, and a century later that it is wrong; but for all that, for all
the imperfection, the limitation, of our intelligence, as much in the
moral as in the mental spheres, one thing is certain, that the right
does exist and is eternally dissevered from the wrong, and that this
"quite infinite distinction" is the instant revelation of Supreme Mind.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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