Now I want to talk a little about law and its penalty. We want to consider the invariable laws of Nature. Let us look at it in the way in which we became acquainted with it—through experience.
To the child, law is an educator; he plays with fire and is burned. Law and its penalty have done their work. A burnt child dreads the fire. On that point his education is complete. He cuts himself with a knife; again the law works. Do not play with edged tools is the lesson. And so, whenever he comes in contact with external objects, he learns something very definite from them; and if he has any sense, he soon conforms to the order which he sees in force all around him. He does what he can to act in such a way as not to run counter to Nature's laws; or, at least, Nature teaches him to do so by repeated suffering when he acts otherwise. The law thus far is all in favor of life, and is teaching the child to preserve it. He must eat not to starve; he must be clothed not to freeze; he must not be burned, or cut, or crushed. In one word, he must take care of himself, and be careful of external objects, or he must be hurt.
But his education has another connection with law. If he has proper parents he learns that he can not lie, or steal, or do many other things without suffering a penalty. If he has no home education in this matter, the reform-school and the jail step in and take up the lesson.
And so the law teaches him that his actions must be of a certain quality, both with respect to external Nature and his fellowmen, or that he must pay a penalty.
Thus he comes to man's estate, and law has been to him an educator and a good one. He has learned that Nature's law means punishment every time it is violated, and that man's law, whatever it may attain to, aims at the same object as Nature's law.
But neither his education nor his contact with law ends with his youth. Hitherto he has obeyed blindly for fear of the penalty. He now obeys intelligently, and connected with the penalty to be incurred by disobedience is the reward to be obtained through obedience. He finds that every act, every thought, of his brings him in direct contact with law. He can not elude it by standing still, for no man can stand still. He must go forward, or backward. This is an inexorable law; with progress, improvement; without progress, what? Rest? Repose? No! Deterioration. No man can stand still in this universe for a day without losing something. The man who means to do anything in life must go forward; if he falters, another goes ahead; and then he learns that the penalty of faltering is failure.
Nature works no special miracles in any one's favor. Nature works no miracles, anyway. The sun and the moon did not stand still at Joshua's command!