The function of Parable in religion is to exhibit "form by form." Law
undertakes the profounder task of comparing "line by line." Thus Natural
Phenomena serve mainly an illustrative function in Religion. Natural
Law, on the other hand, could it be traced in the Spiritual World, would
have an important scientific value--it would offer Religion a new
credential. The effect of the introduction of Law among the scattered
Phenomena of Nature has simply been to make Science, to transform
knowledge into eternal truth. The same crystallizing touch is needed in
Religion. Can it be said that the Phenomena of the Spiritual World are
other than scattered? Can we shut our eyes to the fact that the
religious opinions of mankind are in a state of flux? And when we regard
the uncertainty of current beliefs, the war of creeds, the havoc of
inevitable as well as of idle doubt, the reluctant abandonment of early
faith by those who would cherish it longer if they could, is it not
plain that the one thing thinking men are waiting for is the
introduction of Law among the Phenomena of the Spiritual World? When
that comes we shall offer to such men a truly scientific theology. And
the Reign of Law will transform the whole Spiritual World as it has
already transformed the Natural World.
I confess that even when in the first dim vision, the organizing hand of
Law moved among the unordered truths of my Spiritual World, poor and
scantily-furnished as it was, there seemed to come over it the beauty of
a transfiguration. The change was as great as from the old chaotic world
of Pythagoras to the symmetrical and harmonious universe of Newton. My
Spiritual World before was a chaos of facts; my Theology, a Pythagorean
system trying to make the best of Phenomena apart from the idea of Law.
I make no charge against Theology in general. I speak of my own. And I
say that I saw it to be in many essential respects centuries behind
every department of Science I knew. It was the one region still
unpossessed by Law. I saw then why men of Science distrust Theology; why
those who have learned to look upon Law as Authority grow cold to it--it
was the Great Exception.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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