Laws of life

“ But apart from that altogether, let me just remind you, in half a dozen sentences, of the various limitations or fences which hedge up our lives on every side. There are the obligations which we owe, and the relations in which we stand, to the outer world, the laws of physical life, and all that touches the external and the material. There are the relations in which we stand, and the obligations which we owe, to ourselves. ”

“ But so surely as we believe the laws of the spiritual life to have been revealed to us, so, not less, surely, though without the same sanctity, have been revealed the laws by which body, mind, and moral nature flourish or decay. ”

“ Each individual will have a saved, moral life here, a life lived in obedience to the laws of nature, and as the laws of nature are the laws of God, in obedience to God. And what danger can the hereafter, if there be such a thing as the hereafter, hold for any one who is so obeying the laws of God?
Get society right and the individual will become right. ”

“ But in order to apply this to the particular exigencies of each individual, it is still necessary to have recourse to reason; whose office it is to discover, as was before observed, what the law of nature directs in every circumstance of life; by considering, what method will tend the most effectually to our own substantial happiness. ”

“ In the life of such a man the lower laws cease to operate, and he now comes under the protection of a higher Law—namely, the Law of Love; and, in accordance with his faithfulness and obedience to this Law, will all that is necessary for his well-being come to him at the time when he requires it. ”

“ RETRIBUTIVE JUSTICE. We know so little of the mysteries of occult, divine law, and yet taking thought of the entire history of the human race, such as we have, and our own personal experience and observation, we must recognize that there are certain fixed principles, certain laws, indicating the undying value of right living. To understand and apply these laws to the all around conduct of life, to the practical affairs of human effort, is in its highest, its spiritual sense the real business of earthly existence. ”

“ He embeds His precepts in a setting of spiritual commentary, keeping ever before the mind of the reader the principle that these laws, no matter the subject with which they deal, serve the manifold purposes of bringing tranquillity to human society, raising the standard of human behaviour, increasing the range of human understanding, and spiritualizing the life of each and all. ”

“ So with moral laws: they are not superadded to life by some divine or other authority. They are simply the fundamental principles in the nature of life itself, which we must obey to grow and be happy. ”

“ For it is but the inflashing upon the conscience with overwhelming force of the nature and origin of the laws by which mankind are governed—laws which exist, whether we acknowledge them or whether we deny them, and will have their way, to our weal or woe, according to the attitude in which we please to place ourselves towards them—inherent, like electricity, in the nature of things, not made by us, not to be altered by us, but to be discerned and obeyed by us at our everlasting peril. ”

“ The natural wants and the organic laws of our corporeal life are at issue with the moral law of the inward feelings—with the exalted requisitions of the soaring thought and the profound desire of the pure spirit. The struggle between these two distinct laws or ordinances of life, the higher and the lower, forms, perhaps, the chief problem which in his moral destination on earth man has to solve. ”

“ The constituted connections and order of life, which involve an ideal standard of right conduct and duty, reveal the divine mind or intention and in it the ultimate authority. The proximate basis, already discovered, in ideal conformity to the moral relations in which the moral agent is placed, therefore represents God, who, as the first cause and eternal ground of the creation with all its adaptations and laws, is the ultimate and unchangeable ground of right and of all moral law. ”

“ It is out of this initial delusion that comes all the train of delusions, with their attendant sufferings. Food and clothing are not the essential things of life; not the causes of happiness. They are non-essentials, effects, and, as such, proceed by a process of natural law from the essentials, the underlying cause.
The essential things in life are the enduring elements in character—integrity, faith, righteousness, self-sacrifice, compassion, love ”

“ Hitherto in this work laws have been referred to, and also spoken of as higher and lower, and this distinction was necessary; but now the Kingdom is reached, we see that all the forces operative in human life are the varied manifestations of the One Supreme Law of Love. It is by virtue of this Law that Humanity suffers, that, by the intensity of its sufferings, it shall become purified and wise, and so relinquish the source of suffering, which is selfishness. ”

“ The laws of spiritual life, of civil life and of moral life, are also delivered in the ten precepts of the decalogue; in the first three, [1] the laws of spiritual life, in the four following, the laws of civil life, and in the last three, the laws of moral life. The merely natural man lives in outward conformity to all these precepts, in the same manner as the spiritual man; for like him he worships the Divine, goes to church, hears sermons, and assumes a devout look; does not kill, nor commit adultery, nor steal, nor bear false witness, nor defraud his neighbors of their goods. ”

“ All living creatures are subject to laws upon obedience to which their well-being depends. The life of man is no exception; it too is subject to a law—a law which is as much higher than that which regulates mere animal existence, as reason and conscience and spiritual aspiration are higher than instinct and sexual impulse. ”

“ Temperance, Christian Fortitude, Christian Wisdom, Christian Justice, God as aim. If we come down to modern times, and catch the spirit of ideals that still dwell among the people, we find that human nature is everywhere the same, and that the experience of human life in all ages discovers through the organization of society the same divine principles—laws to be reverenced and obeyed, to be followed as practical guides to success. ”

“ To those, on the other hand, who have long been wistfully looking for an exposition of the natural laws and sanctions of morality, it will be a word spoken with power, and in many ways a help toward higher life. ”

“ The Wills of Gods, the Conscience, the Catechism, Taboos, Immediate Intuitions, Penal Laws, Public Opinion, Good Form, are all more or less ingenious and efficient devices with the same aim—to secure the uniformity which social life requires. ”

“ Social laws can be respected in the letter but not in the spirit, whereas spiritual laws must be accepted by the individual heart and practiced by the individual will in order to produce any useful result. ”

“ For as God, when he created matter, and endued it with a principle of mobility, established certain rules for the perpetual direction of that motion; so, when he created man, and endued him with freewill to conduct himself in all parts of life, he laid down cer-40-tain immutable laws of human nature, whereby that freewill is in some degree regulated and restrained, and gave him also the faculty of reason to discover the purport of those laws. ”

“ Moral laws and their practical application are progressively revealed by the relations of men in society. We may believe the laws are there in the nature of things, but that our discovery of them is gradual, as is the discovery of the unchanging laws of physics. ”

“ I see that the virtue of human life depends on the due regulation of three wants or desires. The first is the desire of meat, the second of drink; these begin with birth, and make us disobedient to any voice other than that of pleasure. The third and fiercest and greatest need is felt latest; this is love, which is a madness setting men's whole nature on fire. ”

“ There is an external necessity for obeying social laws which must be respected, or society would go to pieces; and there is just as great an internal necessity for obeying spiritual laws to gain our proper self-control and power for use ”

“ By injustice I mean the dominion of anger and fear, pleasure and pain, envy and desire, in the soul, whether doing harm or not: by justice I mean the rule of the opinion of the best, whether in states or individuals, extending to the whole of life; although actions done in error are often thought to be involuntary injustice. No controversy need be raised about names at present; we are only desirous of fixing in our memories the heads of error. And the pain which is called fear and anger is our first head of error; the second is the class of pleasures and desires ”

“ And in all great changes for good and evil which are produced either by the will of the soul or the influence of others, there is a change of place. The good soul, which has intercourse with the divine nature, passes into a holier and better place; and the evil soul, as she grows worse, changes her place for the worse. This,—as we declare to the youth who fancies that he is neglected of the Gods,—is the law of divine justice—the worse to the worse, the better to the better, like to like, in life and in death. And from this law no man will ever boast that he has escaped. ”

“ And what songs shall he sing? 'At Crete and Lacedaemon we only know choral songs.' Yes; that is because your way of life is military. Your young men are like wild colts feeding in a herd together; no one takes the individual colt and trains him apart, and tries to give him the qualities of a statesman as well as of a soldier. He who was thus trained would be a greater warrior than those of whom Tyrtaeus speaks, for he would be courageous, and yet he would know that courage was only fourth in the scale of virtue. ”

“ We have seen him also in his decline, when the wings of his imagination have begun to droop, but his experience of life remains, and he turns away from the contemplation of the eternal to take a last sad look at human affairs. ”

“ We are to reflect, in the first place, that all rules of succession to estates are creatures of the civil polity, and juris positivi merely. The right of property, which is gained by occupancy, extends naturally no farther than the life of the present possessor; after which the land by the law of nature would again become common, and liable to be seised by the next occupant: but society, to prevent the mischiefs that might ensue from a doctrine so productive of contention, has established conveyances, wills, and successions ”

“ For in truth, to have sight, and hearing, and the use of the senses, or to live at all without justice and virtue, even though a man be rich in all the so-called goods of fortune, is the greatest of evils, if life be immortal; but not so great, if the bad man lives only a very short time. These are the truths which, if I am not mistaken, you will persuade or compel your poets to utter with suitable accompaniments of harmony and rhythm, and in these they must train up your youth. ”

“ This harmony of the soul, taken as a whole, is virtue; but the particular training in respect of pleasure and pain, which leads you always to hate what you ought to hate, and love what you ought to love from the beginning of life to the end, may be separated off; and, in my view, will be rightly called education. ”

“ What was the Law of Duty to the Moral Man, is to him the inward movement of the One Life directly revealed as Life; what is the Law of Nature to others is to him the unfolding of the outward and apparently dead substratum of that One Life. ”

“ Or, in other words, if in this world only we have hope, let us seize upon any and every opportunity presented to us and enjoy life, mingle with and join in the giddy strife of the world, and glide along with the stream, for our days are but a span, as a shadow they pass away and we are no more. ”

“ In the same manner many elderly people retain the ideas they had learned early in life, but find great difficulty in acquiring new trains of memory; insomuch that in extreme old age we frequently see a forgetfulness of the business of yesterday, and at the same time a circumstantial remembrance of the amusements of their youth; till at length the ideas of recollection and activity of the body gradually cease together,—such is the condition of humanity!—and nothing remains but the vital motions and sensations. ”

“ The Law had said, ‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength;’ and could men have lived by law, ‘which is the strength of sin,’ verily righteousness and life would have been by that law. ”

“ As we are, so we do; and as we do, so is it done to us; we are the builders of our fortunes; cant and lying and the attempt to secure a good which does not belong to us, are, once for all, balked and vain. But, in the human mind, this tie of fate is made alive. The law is the basis of the human mind. In us, it is inspiration; out there in Nature, we see its fatal strength. We call it the moral sentiment. ”

“ The duty to serve the divine cause of humanity in its entirety, that of my people in particular, was the law of my life,—the supreme law, whose voice stilled my passions, my desires, in short, my weaknesses.... ”

“ Did all the moral lawgivers who have reformed the world break the law of thought, when, going behind the phenomena of human conduct, with their relations pointing to one idea of right and wrong, they conceived the idea of a new and a better rule of life? ”

“ Looking upon ourselves as eternal beings, connected with heaven as well as earth, with eternity as well as time, what difference is it to us what our lot may be, whether we abound in wealth, or whether we have to struggle with grim poverty; whether we possess the good things of this world, or have to crawl around like Lazarus did, and be glad to eat of the crumbs that fell from the rich man's table? It will soon be with the rich as if they were not rich, and with the poor as if they had not to struggle—all will find a level in the grave.
What are our views pertaining to the future? ”