seed of all religion. But though the first utterance it is not
the last. For the same voice goes on to require us to believe that this
Moral Law which claims obedience from us, equally claims obedience from
all else that exists. It is absolutely supreme or it is nothing.

Its title to our obedience is its supremacy, and it has no other title.
If it depended on promises of reward or threats of punishment addressed
to us, it might be considered as a law for us, but could be no law for
others. It would in that case, indeed, be a mere physical law. Things
are so arranged for you, and as far as you know for you only, that
terrible pain will come to you if you disobey, and wonderful pleasure if
you obey. Such a law as that might proceed from a tyrant possessed of
absolute power over US and the things that concern US, and might be
either good or bad as should happen. But such a law would not be able to
claim our reverence. Nay, rather, as is the case with all merely
physical laws, it might be our duty to disobey it. In claiming our
reverence as well as our obedience, in making its sanction consist in
nothing but the fact of its own inherent majesty, the Moral Law calls on
us to believe in its supremacy. It claims that it is the last and
highest of all laws. The world before us is governed by uniformities as
far as we can judge, but above and behind all these uniformities is the
supreme uniformity, the eternal law of right and wrong, and all other
laws, of whatever kind, must ultimately be harmonised by it alone. The
Moral Law would be itself unjust if it bade us disregard all physical
laws, and yet was itself subordinate to those physical laws. It has a
right to require us to disregard everything but itself, if it be itself
supreme; if not, its claim would be unjust. We see here in things around
us no demonstrative proof that it is supreme, except what may be summed
up in saying that there is a power that makes for righteousness.
Enlightened by the Moral Law we can see strongly marked traces of its
working in all things. The beauty, the order, the general tendency of
all creation accords with the supremacy of the Moral Law over it all.
But that is by no means all. We see, and we know that we see, but an
infinitesimal fraction of the whole. And the result of this partial
vision is that, while there is much in things around us which asserts,
there is also much which seems to deny altogether any supremacy
whatever in the Moral La