Obedience to Divine law is the highest wisdom of the human race.
Wherever God’s laws are clearly visible, stamped in immutable characters so plain that every human being who is willing to read them can do so, then the wisdom, the happiness—nay, the simple common-sense of the race—lies in obeying them. The first lesson every one of us has to learn profoundly is his subjection to law. There is no escaping this inexorable destiny. Although each one is born with free-will, his type—the plan and pattern of his being—is born with him also. This type is a limitation to the nature, but it is also a guide; it is the finger of Providence showing him the road to follow in the great wilderness of creation; it is the Divine order, according to which each one can freely grow and expand in body and soul to the finest proportions. True freedom consists in the voluntary choice of this type, in the full acceptance of all its conditions, and in the endeavour to unfold its capacities. The will may refuse this type, may deny the laws that govern it, may seek for license in a lawless rejection of Divine order, but it is soon arrested by endless obstacles, and persistence in the unequal struggle will only end in degradation and self-destruction.
We recognise a Divine law when we see it existing age after age unchangeably, carrying order and beauty in its fulfilment; penalties, discord, desolation, with infringement. These laws are grand in design, beneficient in their effects—equally so, whether we observe the marvel of parental love, or explore the wonders of the skies; whether we clothe them in warm, human garments, indispensable to the simple, loving heart, or frame them in the clear precision of scientific formulæ, indispensable to the truthful mind.
If there be one law that all can clearly recognise in the existence of the material world around us, it is the unvarying method of human development from infancy to old age. A certain plan exists, according to which the infant expands through childhood and youth into manhood, and thence changes through elderly life into old age.
This plan never varies in any epoch, or race, or country. It is the same for the lowest savage tribe as for the most cultivated race. No effort of ours can change this unvarying sequence in human life.
This is a wonderful fact. It is so common that we hardly notice it. Yet it is wonderful, because it is so common—so common as to be universal. It rises, as we regard it, into the dignity of Law.
Reverence for this unity of life increases the more carefully this strange fact, called the human body, is studied, the more fully we understand what it is that thus remains unchanged age after age. We speak of the body as if it were a single, simple thing, to be used as a tool and then laid aside; but its complicated structure is a little world in itself. As a machine, it is such a model of compactness and ingenuity that no human skill can approach its perfection. It possesses a twofold life—a life for itself as well as a life for our use. In its own proper life it carries on a thousand curious operations necessary for its growth and maintenance, quite independent of our volition or consciousness. It contains extensive manufactories full of complicated and delicate machinery for the production of sugar, milk, acids, alkalies, salts; it has storehouses of iron, lime, and other chemical substances; there are magazines where it lays up supplies against a time of scarcity; it has its refiners and scavengers; apparatus for warming and ventilating; it has pumps and propellers constantly at work, and a more perfect electrical apparatus than has ever been invented. All these remarkable operations are directed by intelligence, working according to a plan, and combining these manifold energies for one purpose—viz., the maintenance, during a certain period, of a healthy human body. Besides this independent existence of its own, the body possesses a life of relation, by means of which it is fitted to the uses of individual and social existence. Its powers of locomotion, its active senses, its faculty of feeling, its wonderful human hand, and its still more wonderful human brain, all belong to this other use of the body as an instrument for the expression of intelligence and emotion.
Equally remarkable is the system of general unvarying laws by which this living structure is governed. The first law we notice in human growth is the precedence of physical over mental growth. We observe that physical development, though never separate from mental development, is always in advance of it. This is shown by the wonder and delight with which the parent receives the first sign of awakening intelligence in the young infant, the first smile, the first indication of observation. It is the awakening mind. But every physical function essential to life has been perfectly performed from the first moment of birth as perfectly, according to its wants, as it will ever be performed throughout life. This precedence of physical life continues throughout the whole period of growth, though it strikes us less as the years roll on, and the mind gradually assumes that mastery over the body which should be the condition of adult life. The brain is the last part of the body to cease growth. Every other organ is perfectly formed, every bone consolidated, the physical organization complete, while the mind, with its necessary organ of expression, is still growing. I place this important fact first amongst the rules which govern the human economy because it strikes the key-note of education; and it is only through a thorough appreciation of this principle that we shall beneficially change our present systems of education.
Each age has its own special method of existence; thus there are laws for growth, for maturity, for decay. There are the great facts of growth by exercise or use; the necessity of maintaining a just distribution of force amongst the various parts, lest one grow at the expense of another; the alternations of action and rest required in every part of the economy; the varied life of different functions which give to each its individuality and special rule; the varieties of race, of temperament, of individual peculiarities—these will slightly indicate the extent and variety of these unchanging laws by which our human nature is moulded. Their importance may be realized more fully by dwelling for a moment on one or two of them.
What may be termed the balance of power or just distribution of force in the various parts of our physical and mental nature—according to each individual type—is essential to the perfection of the organization—it is, indeed, the measure of health. It is attained and preserved by the due exercise of all the functions of our nature. In ascertaining what is this due exercise, we observe that the different functions of the human being are subject to varying laws of constant or occasional action. The higher the object of a function, the wider is its scope, the longer are the intervals of rest required, and the more direct is its subjection to reason; it is taken from under the control of the automatic vegetative life of the body and placed under the direction of the central authority—Reason—Conscience. Thus, we see the lungs, whose sole object is the physical life of the individual, breathing day and night unceasingly, with alternate rest and action every moment. The digestive apparatus, with longer intervals of rest and a wider range of objects, connected with the preparation and enjoyment of food. The senses, with their great use both to the individual and to society, locked in slumber every night. Thus, step by step, the plan rises to the highest functions of human nature—those which concern the race—which, above all others, are under the dominion of reason, and not subject to that law of constant action which controls the lower functions.