From the connection of Morality with Causation, it may be inferred that the moral Law has its ultimate existence in a Supreme Personality—a just and sovereign God. This conclusion is verified. Human life and Human death read us the same lesson.
Corollary.—If the conclusion just drawn be accepted, and to know God be Life Eternal, we may also infer an à priori probability of some Supernatural assistances, intended to strengthen our human weaknesses and diminish our ignorance. This latter purpose would seem likely to include a better aid to happiness, and a more complete code of Moral Maxims.
Analysis.—As a social fact, Responsibility is universal, and accounted inalienable by any individual man. Responsibility involves Causation in the highest sense, together with Moral Sensibility.
Attempts to refine away ethical Rightness. An appeal to consciousness proposed:—Distinctness of moral feeling;—and its Permanence. Antithesis of Right and Wrong an irreconcileable Antagonism. Contrasted with correlation of Power and Function; this antithesis never fluent, but rigorous, immutable, imperishable, absolute. Ultimate coincidence of Happiness with Virtue is a necessary result of Independent Morality.
Moral Law exists conceivably in and by a Will alone; as—
1. Its cause and spring of movement.
2. Its source of expression and practical authority.
Being supreme, it exists in and by a Supreme Moral Will or Personality. That is to say, in and by God.
This conception verified. World inexplicable without Man. Man inexplicable without God; Whom to know is Life Eternal.