II. In thus finding the right grounded directly on conformity to the relations given men in the constituted order of life, we have not yet reached the full solution of the great problem. For these relations are only a part of the aggregate moral constitution, and are not the last term of moral authority. They do not stand in their own independent right. Though they do directly create and shape the immediate duties for which they call, they are not the ultimate reality in which moral law has its deep foundations. So we must go back to the source and reason of these relations. The ultimate ground can be found, only in God himself who, in his underived eternal nature, is the absolute ground of the whole created universe, with all its interrelations which develop the reality of moral law.
The true conception of the divine creative action is that in it the thought and moral character of God become transitive and appear in the relations established and the ethical requirements which the relations impose. 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.
This statement of the ultimate ground means more than a resting of right simply on the will of God. A reference of it to his will has often stood for a claim that the moral law stands merely in the option of God or as only a product of his choice. Many have represented it as only an effect whose cause is an act of his will—that will originating or making "the right" rather than observing and declaring it, and the moral law having no basis other than such enactment of will. But this would imply that God himself is without moral character, acting from no norm of essential right, but simply by mere will ordaining what should pass as right among mankind. Our fundamental ethical conception of him, however, is that of a moral being and moral ruler. And to be moral means to love and choose the right as right. We must keep in mind here the relation between moral law and will, or the choices of the will. Moral authority does not exist as will, but as right. The great conception of the right, as witnessed to in universal conscience, is of something that appeals to will and requires the will to bow to its claim. Right is superior and authoritative for will, and cannot, therefore, be simply an effect of it. The right itself is basal for right willing, even with God himself. He wills according to it. Hence the moral law is not to be considered a product of his will, but an expression of his nature. In perfect freedom he wills the good because he is good, being in his eternal nature the absolute and infinite moral Perfection. It is a deep conviction in the moral consciousness of mankind, that God himself is in his very nature righteous and good, a conviction which utters itself evermore in the spontaneous exclamation: "Shall not the judge of all the earth do right!" Out of a non-moral ground the moral could never arise, and only in the very nature of God himself as perfect, infinite and unchangeable righteousness, do we reach the ultimate ground both of the constituted relations of human life and of the sublime and inextinguishable reality of moral law for the ordering of these relations. The profound meaning of the poet's couplet:
"For right is right since God is God,
And right the day must win,"
is to identify God and right as united in the eternal foundation of the moral system. There is thus, for the universe, what has been often designated "an eternal and immutable morality" whose authority and standard rest in the very Ground of the universe itself.
The conclusion thus apparent is vindicated by the very conception of the authority which binds men ethically. Mere "might cannot make right" or be that which has the reverence of the moral nature. Moral sovereignty does not attach to a simple absolutism of power. The ethical will bows to the right only. It would be a great contradiction to think of the power to which the moral submission of the soul is due as itself anything other than an ethical power, the morally good power, the morally good Being.
This ultimate ground of right, thus found, makes plain why ethics, in its full meaning and issue, is so closely allied to religion. Religion, in its spirit and aim, means fellowship with God, accordance of desire, will, and life with him. And ethics, even in the view of its early student Plato, looks to the same goal, "likeness to God." The supreme aim of Christianity is ethical, the transformation and exaltation of human conduct and character into the excellence and happiness of righteousness. That the moral life of man may, out of his broken, corrupt and disabled state of sin, thus become again harmonized with God and the divine constitution of things, redemption comes with its supernatural powers and help for human nature, enabling and accomplishing a realization of the ethical law in human character.