The Relation of Science and Religion.pdf - Online Christian Library

SCIENCE AND DIVINE INTERPOSITZOU. 303and the dreadful misery resulting from it.His belief in the harmony of the universerests on his belief in the fixedness of lawphysical as well as moral, and moral as wellas physical.But the Sxedness belonging to various ordersof law, subsisting in a state of interdependence,and involving subordination oflower to higher, needs some more exact interpretation.The fixedness of law, physical,intellectual, moral, and spiritual, in no caseinvolves fixedness of result, but varying resultsaccording to diversity of conditions. There isfixedness of physical law, but withal there isdiversity of weather, and seasons, and harvests,and that because a variety of conditionsare harmonized under fixed law. Thereis fixedness of intellectual law in accordancewith which accuracy of thought is determined,but diversity of result according to the materialswith which we deal. And so it is withmoral and spiritual law, providing for tfhe regulationof our higher life.What then needs to be pondered by wayof reaching an ampler interpretation of theformula of " fixed law " is that it does not inany case imply an iron rigidity of result, an