The soul which has no correspondence with the spiritual environment is spiritually dead. It may be that it never possessed . . . the spiritual ear, or a heart which throbbed in response to the love of God. If so, having never lived, it cannot be said to have died. But not to have these correspondences is to be in the state of Death. To the spiritual world, to the Divine Environment, it is dead--as a stone which has never lived is dead to the environment of the organic world. Natural Law, p. 177.
Fear and love rise up in antagonism to each other as motives in life, like those two mountains from which respectively the blessings and curses of the old law were pronounced--the Mount of Cursing all barren, stony, without verdure and without water; the Mount of Blessing green and bright with many a flower, and blessed with many a trickling rill. Fear is barren. Love is fruitful. The one is a slave, and its work is little worth. The other is free, and its deeds are great and precious. From the blasted summit of the mountain which gendereth to bondage may be heard the words of the law; but the power to keep all these laws must be sought on the sunny hill where liberty dwells in love and gives energy to obedience. Therefore, if you would use in your own life the highest power that God has given us for our growth in grace, draw your arguments, not from fear, but from love.--_Alex. McLaren._
Karl's version of Parkinson's Law: Work expands to exceed the time alloted it.
The voice of God and the voice of Nature. I cannot be wrong if I listen to them. Sometimes, when uncertain of a voice from its very loudness, we catch the missing syllable in the echo. In God and Nature we have Voice and Echo. When I hear both, I am assured. My sense of hearing does not betray me twice. I recognize the Voice in the Echo, the Echo makes me certain of the Voice; I listen and I know. Natural Law, Eternal Life, p. 238.
Rex nunquam moritur=--The king never dies.
If sin is estrangement from God, this very estrangement is Death. It is a want of correspondence. If sin is selfishness, it is conducted at the expense of life. Its wages are Death--"he that loveth his life," said Christ, "shall lose it." Natural Law, Death, p. 170.
Qui non prohibet quod prohibere potest assentire videtur=--He who does not prevent what he can prevent is held to consent.
Omnia pr?sumuntur rite et solenniter esse acta=--All things are presumed to have been done duly and in the usual manner.
To seize continuously the opportunity of more and more perfect adjustment to better and higher conditions, to balance some inward evil with some purer influence acting from without, in a word to make our Environment at the same time that it is making us--these are the secrets of a well-ordered and successful life. Natural Law, p. 256.
Lex citius tolerare vult privatum damnum quam publicum malum=--The law will sooner tolerate a private loss than a public evil.
It seems a law of society to despise a man who looks discontented because its requirements have compelled him to part with all he values in his life.
If men, through fear, fraud, or mistake, should in terms renounce or give up any essential natural right, the eternal law of reason and the grand end of society would absolutely vacate such renunciation. The right to freedom being the gift of God Almighty, it is not in the power of man to alienate this gift and voluntarily become a slave.
Think only what it was to believe in an order of the world, though it be no more at first than a belief that the sun will never overstep his bounds. It was all the difference between a chaos and a cosmos, between the blind play of chance and an intelligible and therefore an intelligent providence. How many souls, even now when everything else has failed them, when they have parted with the most cherished convictions of their childhood, when their faith in man has been poisoned, and when the apparent triumph of all that is selfish, ignoble, and hideous has made them throw up the cause of truth, of righteousness, and innocence as no longer worth fighting for, at least in this world; how many, I say, have found their last peace and comfort in the contemplation of the order of the world, whether manifested in the unvarying movement of the stars, or revealed in the unvarying number of the petals and stamens and pistils of the smallest forget-me-not. How many have felt that to belong to this cosmos, to this beautiful order of nature, is something at least to rest on, something to trust, something to believe, when everything else has failed. To us, this perception of law and order in the world may seem very little, but to the ancient dwellers on earth, who had little else to support them, it was everything because, if once perceived, if once understood, it could never be taken from them.
The animal world and the plant world are the same world. They are different parts of one environment. And the natural and spiritual are likewise one. Natural Law, Death, p. 157.
The law imposed what it did not bestow; grace bestows that which it imposes.
The imperious claim of a Kingdom upon its members is not peculiar to Christianity. It is the law in all departments of Nature that every organism must live for its Kingdom. And in defining living FOR the higher Kingdom as the condition of living in it, Christ enunciates a principle which all Nature has prepared us to expect. Natural Law, p. 395.
Things are natural or supernatural simply according to where one stands. Man is supernatural to the mineral; God is supernatural to the man. When a mineral is seized upon by the living plant and elevated to the organic kingdom, no trespass against Nature is committed. It merely enters a larger Environment, which before was supernatural to it, but which now is entirely natural. When the heart of a man, again, is seized upon by the quickening Spirit of God, no further violence is done to natural law. It is another case of the inorganic, so to speak, passing into the organic. Natural Law, Eternal Life, p. 232.
The well-defined spiritual life is not only the highest life, but it is also the most easily lived. The whole cross is more easily carried than the half. It is the man who tries to make the best of both worlds who makes nothing of either. And he who seeks to serve two masters misses the benediction of both. Natural Law, Mortification, p. 199.
Only regard for law can give us freedom.
Dedimus potestatem=--We have given power.
It is said, on the contrary, that the law shall abide for ever, that the covenant shall be eternal, that sacrifice shall be eternal, that the sceptre shall never depart from among them, because it shall not depart from them till the coming of the eternal King.
A good law is one that holds, whether you recognise it or not; a bad law is one that cannot, however much you ordain it.
The natural liberty of man is to be free from any superior power on Earth, and not to be under the will or legislative authority of man, but only to have the law of nature for his rule.
The best test for Life is just LIVING. And living consists, as we have formerly seen, in corresponding with Environment. Those therefore who find within themselves, and regularly exercise, the faculties for corresponding with the Divine Environment, may be said to live the Spiritual Life. Natural Law, p. 390.
The Immortal Principle was first called water by Thales. Anaximenes called it air. The Pythagoreans called it number and were thus the first to see the Immortal Principle as something nonmaterial. Heraclitus called the Immortal Principle fire and introduced change as part of the Principle. He said the world exists as a conflict and tension of opposites. He said there is a One and there is a Many and the One is the universal law which is immanent in all things. Anaxagoras was the first to identify the One as nous, meaning "mind." Parmenides made it clear for the first time that the Immortal Principle, the One, Truth, God, is separate from appearance and from opinion, and the importance of this separation and its effect upon subsequent history cannot be overstated.
Publicum bonum privato est pr?ferendum=--The public good must be preferred to private.
From time to time the taunt is thrown at Religion, not unseldom from lips which Science ought to have taught more caution, that the Future Life of Christianity is simply a prolonged existence, an eternal monotony, a blind and indefinite continuance of being. The Bible never could commit itself to any such empty platitude; nor could Christianity ever offer to the world a hope so colourless. Not that Eternal Life has nothing to do with everlastingness. That is part of the conception. And it is this aspect of the question that first arrests us in the field of Science. Natural Law, Eternal Life, p. 216.
You can not get anything worthwhile done without raising a sweat.
The flesh-bound volume is the only revelation= (of God) =that is, that was, or that can be. In that is the image of God painted; in that is the law of God written; in that is the promise of God revealed.
Six hours to sleep allot: to law be six addressed; / Pray four: feast two: the Muses claim the rest.= _ On the fly-leaf of an old lawbook from Coke. See_ =Sex horas, &c.= [Greek: skias onar anthropoi]--Men are the dream of a shadow.
Omnis p?na corporalis, quamvis minima, major est omni p?na pecuniaria, quamvis maxima=--The slightest corporal punishment falls more heavily than the largest pecuniary penalty.
Everything in nature goes by law, and not by luck.
Just laws are no restraint upon the freedom of the good, for the good man desires nothing which a just law will interfere with.
Among the natural rights of the colonists are these: first, a right to life; secondly, to liberty; thirdly to property; together with the right to support and defend them in the best manner they can. Those are evident branches of, rather than deductions from, the duty of self-preservation, commonly called the first law of nature. [ The Rights of the Colonists , 1772.]
We must not make a scarecrow of the law.
If we neglect almost any of the domestic animals, they will rapidly revert to wild and worthless forms. Now, the same thing exactly would happen in the case of you or me. Why should man be an exception to any of the laws of nature? Natural Law, Degeneration, p. 99.
Conscience is but a word that cowards use, / Devised at first to keep the strong in awe; / Our strong arms be our conscience, swords our law.
The absence of the true Light means moral Death. The darkness of the natural world to the intellect is not all. What history testifies to is, first the partial, and then the total eclipse of virtue that always follows the abandonment of belief in a personal God. Natural Law, Death, p. 167.
No person shall…be deprived of life, liberty or property, without due process of law; nor shall property be taken for public use, without just compensation. [Article V, December 15, 1791.]
Each man, in the silence of his own soul, must work out this salvation for himself with fear and trembling--with fear, realizing the momentous issues of his task; with trembling, lest, before the tardy work be done, the voice of Death should summon him to stop. Natural Law, Degeneration, p. 118.
Man's spiritual life consists in the number and fulness of his correspondences with God. In order to develop these he may be constrained to insulate them, to enclose them from the other correspondences, to shut himself in with them. In many ways the limitation of the natural life is the necessary condition of the full enjoyment of the spiritual life. Natural Law, Mortification, p. 195.
It is then good to obey laws and customs because they are laws, but we ought to know that there is neither truth nor justice to introduce into them, that we know nothing about these, and can therefore only follow what is recognised, and thus we should never transgress them. But most men cannot receive this doctrine, and since they believe that truth can be found, and that it resides in law and custom, they believe these laws, and take their antiquity as a proof of their truth, and not merely of their authority apart from truth. Thus they obey the laws, but are liable to revolt when these are shown to be of no value; and this may be proved of all of them, looked at from a certain point of view.
Justice and reverence are the everlasting central law of this universe.
Keep thy father's commandment, and forsake not the law of thy mother.
H?c prima lex in amicitia sanciatur, ut neque rogemus res turpes, nec faciamus rogati=--Be this the first law established in friendship, that we neither ask of others what is dishonourable, nor ourselves do it when asked.
Is man in correspondence with the whole environment or is he not? . . . He is not. Of men generally it cannot be said that they are in living contact with that part of the environment which is called the spiritual world. Natural Law, Death, p. 156.
Remember this: that your conscience is not a law--no; God and reason made the law, and has placed conscience within you to determine.
Fruit-bearing without Christ is not an improbability, but an impossibility. As well expect the natural fruit to flourish without air and heat, without soil and sunshine. How thoroughly also Paul grasped this truth is apparent from a hundred pregnant passages in which he echoes his Master's teaching. To him life was hid with Christ in God. And that he embraced this, not as a theory but as an experimental truth, we gather from his constant confession, "When I am weak, then am I strong." Natural Law, p. 271.
One thing only is needful: the knowledge of the simple and clear truth which finds place in every soul that is not stupefied by religious and scientific superstitions — the truth that for our life one law is valid — the law of love, which brings the highest happiness to every individual as well as to all mankind. Free your minds from those overgrown, mountainous imbecilities which hinder your recognition of it, and at once the truth will emerge from amid the pseudo-religious nonsense that has been smothering it: the indubitable, eternal truth inherent in man, which is one and the same in all the great religions of the world. It will in due time emerge and make its way to general recognition, and the nonsense that has obscured it will disappear of itself, and with it will go the evil from which humanity now suffers.
To find a new Environment again and cultivate relation with it is to find a new Life. To live is to correspond, and to correspond is to live. So much is true in Science. But it is also true in Religion. And it is of great importance to observe that to Religion also the conception of Life is a correspondence. No truth of Christianity has been more ignorantly or wilfully travestied than the doctrine of Immortality. The popular idea, in spite of a hundred protests, is that Eternal Life is to live forever. . . . We are told that Life Eternal is not to live. This is Life Eternal--TO KNOW. Natural Law, Eternal Life, p. 216.
Jus regium=--Royal right, or right of the Crown.
Fatetur facinus is qui judicium fugit=--He who shuns a trial confesses his guilt.
_Predictions._--It was foretold that in the time of Messiah he would come and establish a new covenant, such as should make them forget the coming out from Egypt, Jer. xxiii. 5, Is. xliii. 16, that he would put his Law not in externals, but in the heart, that Jesus Christ would put his fear, which had been only from without, in the midst of the heart. Who does not see the Christian law in all this?
Poeta nascitur, non fit=--A poet is born, not made.
The law is open.
The distinctions drawn between men are commonly based on the outward appearance of goodness or badness, on the ground of moral beauty or moral deformity--is this classification scientific? Or is there a deeper distinction between the Christian and the not-a-Christian as fundamental as that between the organic and the inorganic? Natural Law, p. 374.
Commune periculum concordiam parit=--A common danger tends to concord.
Seven hours to law, to soothing slumber seven, Ten to the world allot, and all to heaven. Thou hast no sorrow in thy song, No winter in thy year.
SUBMISSION is a great Christian law, but we find it early in Genesis, early in the history of mankind, and angel-given.--_Selected._
Expressio unius est exclusio alterius=--The naming of one man is the exclusion of another.
It is impossible to believe that the amazing successions of revelations in the domain of Nature, during the last few centuries, at which the world has all but grown tired wondering, are to yield nothing for the higher life. Natural Law, Introduction, p. 32.
At first one omits writing for a little while; and then one stays a little while to consider of excuses; and at last it grows desperate, and one does not write at all.= _Swift._ [Greek: Athanatous men prota theous, nomo hos diakeitai Tima]--Reverence, first of all, the immortal gods, as prescribed by law.
The cardinal error in the religious life is to attempt to live without an Environment. Spiritual experience occupies itself, not too much, but too exclusively, with one factor--the soul. We delight in dissecting this much-tortured faculty, from time to time, in search of a certain something which we call our faith--forgetting that faith is but an attitude, an empty hand for grasping an environing Presence. Natural Law, Environment, p 265.
Consensus facit legem=--Consent makes the law.
He must master or be mastered; while to show mercy was a weakness. Mercy did not exist in the primordial lite. It was misunderstood for fear, and such misunderstandings made for death. Kill or be killed, eat or be eaten, was the law; and this mandate, down out of the depths of times he obeyed.
[T]he movement of the progressive societies has hitherto been a movement from Status to Contract. [ Ancient Law (1864) 163-165.]
The relation between the spiritual man and his Environment is, in theological language, a filial relation. With the new Spirit, the filial correspondence, he knows the Father--and this is Life Eternal. Natural Law, Eternal Life, p. 229.
I am not the law, but I represent justice so far as my feeble powers go.
Libertas est potestas faciendi id quod jure licet=--Liberty consists in the power of doing what the law permits.
Nature knows no equality; her sovereign law is subordination and dependence.
Men will still experiment "by works of righteousness which they have done" to earn the Ideal life. The doctrine of Human Inability, as the Church calls it, has always been objectionable to men who do not know themselves. Natural Law, p. 309.
Reason is the life of the law; nay, the common law itself is nothing else but reason. . . . The law, which is perfection of reason.
There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.
As soon as men live entirely in accord with the law of love natural to their hearts and now revealed to them, which excludes all resistance by violence, and therefore hold aloof from all participation in violence — as soon as this happens, not only will hundreds be unable to enslave millions, but not even millions will be able to enslave a single individual.
(_Works: Spedding and Ellis_). I hold every man a debtor to his profession; from the which as men of course do seek to receive countenance and profit, so ought they of duty to endeavour themselves by way of amends to be a help and ornament thereunto.
Non liquet=--It is not clear.
He sees that this great roundabout The world, with all its motley rout, Church, army, physic, law, Its customs and its businesses, Is no concern at all of his, And says--what says he?--Caw.
Caveat emptor=--Let the buyer be on his guard.
The relative freedom which we enjoy depends of public opinion. The law is no protection. Governments make laws, but whether they are carried out, and how the police behave, depends on the general temper in the country. If large numbers of people are interested in freedom of speech, there will be freedom of speech, even if the law forbids it; if public opinion is sluggish, inconvenient minorities will be persecuted, even if laws exist to protect them.
It is a common law of Nature, which no time will ever change, that superiors shall rule their inferiors.
Nemo debet bis puniri pro uno delicto=--No man shall be twice punished for the same offence.
In specifications, Murphy's Law supersedes Ohm's.
He who abandons the personal search for truth, under whatever pretext, abandons truth. The very word truth, by becoming the limited possession of a guild, ceases to have any meaning; and faith, which can only be founded on truth, gives way to credulity, resting on mere opinion. Natural Law, p. 352.
The end of law is not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom. For in all the states of created beings, capable of laws, where there is no law there is no freedom. For liberty is to be free from restraint and violence from others, which cannot be where there is no law. [ Second Essay Concerning Civil Government . p. 37, para. 57.]
Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the Capitalist System was to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. By this method they not only confiscate, but they confiscate arbitrarily ; and, while the process impoverishes many, it actually enriches some. The sight of this arbitrary rearrangement of riches strikes not only a security, but at confidence in the equity of the existing distribution of wealth. Those to whom the system brings windfalls, beyond their deserts and even beyond their expectations or desires, become “profiteers,” who are the object of the hatred of the bourgeoisie, whom the inflationism has impoverished, not less than of the proletariat. As the inflation proceeds and the real value of the currency fluctuate wildly from month to month, all permanent relations between debtors and creditors, which form the ultimate foundation of capitalism, become so utterly disordered as to be almost meaningless; and the process of wealth-getting degenerates into a gamble and a lottery. Lenin was certainly right. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose. [“Europe After the Treaty,” The Economic Consequences of the Peace , 1919.]
The world is not thy friend, nor the world's law.
The Jews shall be scattered abroad. Is. xxvii. 6. A new law. Jer. xxxi. 31.
: These are the precepts of the law: to live honestly, to harm no one, to render each his due. ( Iuris pr?cepta sunt h?c: honeste vivere, alterum non l?dere, suum cuique tribuere. ) [ Corpus Iuris Civilis AD 533—Law Code of Justinian.]
Ad qu?stionem legis respondent judices, ad qu?stionem facti respondent juratores=--It is the judge's business to answer to the question of law, the jury's to answer to the question of fact.
In her tongue is the law of kindness.
The finer the nature, the more flaws it will show through the clearness of it; and it is a law of this universe that the best things shall be seldomest seen in their best form.
De medietate lingu?=--Of a moiety of languages,
Descend, descend, Urania, speak To men in their own tongue! Leave not the breaking heart to break Because thine own is strong. This is the law, in dream and deed, That heaven must walk on earth! O, shine upon the humble creed That holds the heavenly birth.
True liberty is a positive force, regulated by law; false liberty is a negative force, a release from restraint.