The Natural Law
I. "Who showeth us good things? The light of Thy countenance, O Lord, is signed upon us: Thou hast given gladness in my heart"
(Ps. iv. 6, 7). The Eternal Law which exists in God is in the first instance promulgated to men, not by outward revelation and the imposing of formal statutes, but inwardly in their consciousness. Every rational creature has a certain light from God that is totally deficient in the lower animals, a certain apprehension of good and evil in the intellect, and a certain impulsion towards moral goodness and aversion from evil. This apprehension is spontaneous, and is antecedent to the knowledge that comes from special revelation, or instruction, or human law and custom, although concurrent with them. It comes to us in the course of nature; its object is to guide us in our natural course, so that we may lead a higher life than the animals, who are guided solely by sense; it is therefore known as the natural moral law. Conscience is clearly allied with the natural law; it takes cognizance, however, of more than the natural law; it forms its conclusions from every form of divine law that is manifested to it, and it reduces this law to practice, and makes the application of it to particular cases as they arise. St. Paul describes the universality of the natural law. "The Gentiles, who have not the law, do by nature those things which are of the law . . . who show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness to them, and their thoughts within themselves accusing them or else defending them" (Rom. ii. 14, 15). Thank the good Providence of God for thus making spiritual provision for all mankind.
II. The natural moral law as known to men is a participation in the Eternal Law as in God, and has its authority and force from Him. There is then a certain absolute standard of morality which is always and everywhere identical. It is not the creation of human legislation by kings or parliaments, it does not depend on custom and popular opinion. No human power, however broad its influence, can turn wrong into right or right into wrong. The conscience of mankind has on the whole a true instinct that prevails in the long run against perversions of the moral code. The moral sense may indeed become generally depraved in certain times and places, there may be current fashions of wickedness, the sense of shame in evil doing may be suppressed. "They are corrupt and abominable in their ways: there is none that doth good, no not one." But "shall not all they know that work iniquity?" (Ps. xiii. 1, 4). A prevailing moral code may be at variance with the divine code of moral law; but it does not become right because it is prevalent, nor will it exempt transgressors from punishment here and hereafter. Men are not ignorant of true principles though they choose to ignore them. The evidence of results will always aid the conscience sufficiently to distinguish the true from the false moral code.
III. The full moral code does not exist in each individual perfectly, apart from those extraneous aids which God has given. The mind has only a limited participation in the Eternal Law of God, its view is obscured by habit and the example of others. Men may disagree as to secondary principles of morality, and as to their application to different cases. There is an evolution in the apprehension of moral principles as in everything else; the revelation of God is progressive under every form; and simpler ages have acted on cruder notions of morality that were accordant with their low stage of development, but not with our fuller knowledge and cultivated conscience, and God's demands from us. You have a duty in the world to promote the knowledge of the divine law, to help in the evolution of moral ideas, to cultivate the sense of fitness, uprightness, truth, honor and religion.
