The Relations Between Religion and Science: Eight Lectures Preached Before the University of Oxford in the Year 1884 — John Shaqi
The Relations Between Religion and Science: Eight Lectures Preached Before the University of Oxford in the Year 1884Temple, Frederick
Religion
The Relations Between Religion and Science: Eight Lectures Preached Before the University of Oxford in the Year 1884
Temple, Frederick
Religion and science
For the supremacy of the Moral Law must be a moral, not merely a
physical supremacy. In claiming supremacy at all the Moral Law does not
assert that somehow by a happy accident, as it were, all things turn out
at last in accordance with what is in the highest sense moral. The
supremacy of the moral over the physical involves in its very nature an
intention to be supreme. It is not the supremacy of justice, if justice
is done as the blind result of the working of machinery, even if that be
the machinery of the universe. In our very conception of a moral
supremacy is involved the conception of an intended supremacy. And the
Moral Law in its government of the world reveals itself as possessing
the distinctive mark of personality, that is, a purpose and a will. And
thus, as we ponder it, this Eternal Law is shown to be the very Eternal
Himself, the Almighty God. There is a sense in which we cannot ascribe
personality to the Unknown Absolute Being; for our personality is of
necessity compassed with limitations, and from these limitations we find
it impossible to separate our conception of a person. And it will ever
remain true that our highest conceptions of God must fall altogether
short of His true nature. When we speak of Him as infinite, we are but
denying that He is restrained by limits of time and space as we are.
When we speak of Him as absolute, we are but denying that He is subject
to conditions as we are. So when we speak of Him as a person, we cannot
but acknowledge that His personality far transcends our conceptions. But
it still remains the truth that these descriptions of Him are the
nearest that we can get, and that for all the moral purposes of life we
can argue from these as if they were the full truth. If to deny
personality to Him is to assimilate Him to a blind and dead rule, we
cannot but repudiate such denial altogether. If to deny personality to
Him is to assert His incomprehensibility, we are ready at once to
acknowledge our weakness and incapacity. But we dare not let go the
truth that the holiness, the justice, the goodness, the righteousness,
which the Eternal Moral Law imposes on us as a supreme command, are
identical in essential substance in our minds and in His. Indeed, the
more we keep before us the true character of that law, the more clearly
do we see that the Moral Law is not His command but His nature. He does
not make that law. He is that law. Almighty God and the Moral Law are
different aspects of what is in itself one and the same. To hold fast to
this is the fullest form of Faith. To live by duty is in itself
rudimentary religion. To believe that the rule of duty is supreme over
all the universe, is the first stage of Faith. To believe in Almighty
God is the last and highest.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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