SECTION LXXV.

God is the basis of the moral, (4), in that as holy Lawgiver he reveals his eternal, holy will in time. The totality of created being is, in the design of the creative will, to be in harmony with God and with itself. The idea of this harmony, as active in God under the form of will, is God’s law. Unfree creatures have it as an inner necessity, and must fulfill it; free creatures have it as a moral command, and should fulfill it; for the former it exists as an unconscious instinct or impulse, for the latter it is revealed; as God’s law, it is made known to rational creatures by revelation. The moral law is therefore the revealed will of God as to the rational creature,—namely, that the same should bring its entire life, consciously and with free will, into harmony with God’s purpose.

A law which cannot be derived from God’s will is not a moral law, but at best a civil one. That the moral law is based in the inner essence of the human reason is not controverted by the proposition, that it is God’s will, but it is in 91fact confirmed. Human reason is conditioned by the same divine will which wills the good; and as, among the goods which God himself created, the highest is reason, hence the inner essence of the reason must involve also the moral,—not, however, as something conditioned independently of God, but in fact as God’s will revealed to the reason, in so far as the latter has kept itself unclouded. However, this moral law, as immanent in the reason, is not to be conceived as implying that the rational will gives law unto itself; it is the part of the will to submit itself to the law, but not to give it; the moral law is above the will, above human reason in general; and the latter, in its consciousness of the same, recognizes it in fact as divine, and consequently as absolutely valid and beyond the scope of human determination. As little as man can give to himself reason and its dialectical laws, so little can he give to himself moral law. Freedom of will has to do only with the fulfilling, but not with the conditioning of the law. The morally cognizing reason simply finds revealed within itself the divine law, but does not make it. The Scriptures uniformly present the moral law as being essentially the will of God, without, however, thereby interfering with the idea that the same is the expression of the inner purpose of being itself. “Be ye transformed,” says Paul, [Rom. xii, 2], “by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God;” the “will” of God is here the fundamental; any thing is “good” only because it expresses the will of God which is itself good per se; the “acceptable” is that which is good relatively to the spirit that is contemplating it,—that excites approbation in the rational spirit, and is in harmony therewith,—in a word, that is in harmony with God and his thoughts, and with God-related spirit in general; and the “perfect,” the goal-attaining, is whatever is the realization of the divine and good end. Thus the apostle expresses the essence of the good under all its phases; the good is good both as to its origin, as to the cognizing spirit, and as to its end.