The Relations of Science and Religion: The Morse Lecture, 1880Calderwood, Henry
Religion
The Relations of Science and Religion: The Morse Lecture, 1880
Calderwood, Henry
Religion and science
But the _fixedness_ belonging to various orders of law, subsisting in a
state of interdependence, and involving subordination of lower to
higher, needs some more exact interpretation. The fixedness of law,
physical, intellectual, moral, and spiritual, in no case involves
fixedness of result, but _varying results according to diversity of
conditions_. There is fixedness of physical law, but withal there is
diversity of weather, and seasons, and harvests, and that because a
variety of conditions are harmonized under fixed law. There is fixedness
of intellectual law in accordance with which accuracy of thought is
determined, but diversity of result according to the materials with
which we deal. And so it is with moral and spiritual law, providing for
the regulation of our higher life.
What then needs to be pondered by way of reaching an ampler
interpretation of the formula of "fixed law" is that it does not in any
case imply an iron rigidity of result, an undeviating uniformity of
occurrence. There is no region in which perpetual change can be more
accurately postulated than in the physical world. But there is order and
system in these changes, admirably illustrated in the weather forecasts
of the present advanced stage of physical science, which are attainable
only by continual watching of shifting conditions with application of
fixed law to the appearance of wind and cloud and rain. But there are no
forecasts without these two things, fixed laws and varying conditions
for their application. With the wider generalization which admits of
recognition of fixed law, there is always the narrower, concerned with
variable conditions to which the wider is to be applied. So it is under
moral law, and so under spiritual. So also does it hold when our
observation is directed on interdependence of two orders of law, such as
the moral and physical. This combination we have in human life, as it is
subjected to both. Physical law reigns in human history as illustrated
by the laws of health, which are fixed irrespective of moral law, so
that sewerage gas will be prejudicial to health, apart from the moral
character of a man. Moral law reigns in human life, and truthfulness in
utterance, or justice in action, will maintain a harmony of the inner
life, whether outwardly there be poverty or wealth. These two orders of
law are independent, yet interwoven in their application to the complex
life of man. Immorality will find its accompaniment in physical
disorder; the repentance which has healing power within the mind will
not heal the body, yet may there be advance in moral life by reason of
the weakness and suffering which repentance can not remove. Such is at
once the independence and the interdependence of physical and moral law,
in accordance with the fixedness of law in each case, and the harmony of
both under one government, by means of subordination of the physical to
the moral.
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