law

• divine law › disastrous results of transgression

2:5.3The Cre­ators are the very first to at­tempt to save man from the dis­as­trous re­sults of his fool­ish trans­gres­sion of the di­vine laws. God’s love is by na­ture a fa­therly af­fec­tion; there­fore does he some­times “chas­ten us for our own profit, that we may be par­tak­ers of his ho­li­ness.” Even dur­ing your fiery tri­als re­mem­ber that “in all our af­flic­tions he is af­flicted with us.”

• divine law › destroys sin

2:6.8God loves the sin­ner and hates the sin: such a state­ment is true phil­o­soph­i­cally, but God is a tran­scen­dent per­son­al­ity, and per­sons can only love and hate other per­sons. Sin is not a per­son. God loves the sin­ner be­cause he is a per­son­al­ity re­al­ity (po­ten­tially eter­nal), while to­wards sin God strikes no per­sonal at­ti­tude, for sin is not a spir­i­tual re­al­ity; it is not per­sonal; there­fore does only the jus­tice of God take cog­nizance of its ex­is­tence. The love of God saves the sin­ner; the law of God de­stroys the sin. This at­ti­tude of the di­vine na­ture would ap­par­ently change if the sin­ner fi­nally iden­ti­fied him­self wholly with sin just as the same mor­tal mind may also fully iden­tify it­self with the in­dwelling spirit Ad­juster. Such a sin-iden­ti­fied mor­tal would then be­come wholly un­spir­i­tual in na­ture (and there­fore per­son­ally un­real) and would ex­pe­ri­ence even­tual ex­tinc­tion of be­ing. Un­re­al­ity, even in­com­plete­ness of crea­ture na­ture, can­not ex­ist for­ever in a pro­gress­ingly real and in­creas­ingly spir­i­tual uni­verse.

• divine law › unchanging reaction, habits, of infinite, perfect, and divine mind

4:2.1Na­ture is in a lim­ited sense the phys­i­cal habit of God. The con­duct, or ac­tion, of God is qual­i­fied and pro­vi­sion­ally mod­i­fied by the ex­per­i­men­tal plans and the evo­lu­tion­ary pat­terns of a lo­cal uni­verse, a con­stel­la­tion, a sys­tem, or a planet. God acts in ac­cor­dance with a well-de­fined, un­chang­ing, im­mutable law through­out the wide-spread­ing mas­ter uni­verse; but he mod­i­fies the pat­terns of his ac­tion so as to con­tribute to the co-or­di­nate and bal­anced con­duct of each uni­verse, con­stel­la­tion, sys­tem, planet, and per­son­al­ity in ac­cor­dance with the lo­cal ob­jects, aims, and plans of the fi­nite projects of evo­lu­tion­ary un­fold­ing.

4:2.2There­fore, na­ture, as mor­tal man un­der­stands it, pre­sents the un­der­ly­ing foun­da­tion and fun­da­men­tal back­ground of a change­less De­ity and his im­mutable laws, mod­i­fied by, fluc­tu­at­ing be­cause of, and ex­pe­ri­enc­ing up­heavals through, the work­ing of the lo­cal plans, pur­poses, pat­terns, and con­di­tions which have been in­au­gu­rated and are be­ing car­ried out by the lo­cal uni­verse, con­stel­la­tion, sys­tem, and plan­e­tary forces and per­son­al­i­ties. For ex­am­ple: As God’s laws have been or­dained in Neb­a­don, they are mod­i­fied by the plans es­tab­lished by the Cre­ator Son and Cre­ative Spirit of this lo­cal uni­verse; and in ad­di­tion to all this the op­er­a­tion of these laws has been fur­ther in­flu­enced by the er­rors, de­faults, and in­sur­rec­tions of cer­tain be­ings res­i­dent upon your planet and be­long­ing to your im­me­di­ate plan­e­tary sys­tem of Sa­ta­nia.

• divine law › unchanging reaction, habits, of infinite, perfect, and divine mind

4:2.3Na­ture is a time-space re­sul­tant of two cos­mic fac­tors: first, the im­mutabil­ity, per­fec­tion, and rec­ti­tude of Par­a­dise De­ity, and sec­ond, the ex­per­i­men­tal plans, ex­ec­u­tive blun­ders, in­sur­rec­tionary er­rors, in­com­plete­ness of de­vel­op­ment, and im­per­fec­tion of wis­dom of the ex­tra-Par­a­dise crea­tures, from the high­est to the low­est. Na­ture there­fore car­ries a uni­form, un­chang­ing, ma­jes­tic, and mar­velous thread of per­fec­tion from the cir­cle of eter­nity; but in each uni­verse, on each planet, and in each in­di­vid­ual life, this na­ture is mod­i­fied, qual­i­fied, and per­chance marred by the acts, the mis­takes, and the dis­loy­al­ties of the crea­tures of the evo­lu­tion­ary sys­tems and uni­verses; and there­fore must na­ture ever be of a chang­ing mood, whim­si­cal withal, though sta­ble un­der­neath, and var­ied in ac­cor­dance with the op­er­at­ing pro­ce­dures of a lo­cal uni­verse.

4:2.4Na­ture is the per­fec­tion of Par­a­dise di­vided by the in­com­ple­tion, evil, and sin of the un­fin­ished uni­verses. This quo­tient is thus ex­pres­sive of both the per­fect and the par­tial, of both the eter­nal and the tem­po­ral. Con­tin­u­ing evo­lu­tion mod­i­fies na­ture by aug­ment­ing the con­tent of Par­a­dise per­fec­tion and by di­min­ish­ing the con­tent of the evil, er­ror, and dishar­mony of rel­a­tive re­al­ity.

4:2.5God is not per­son­ally pres­ent in na­ture or in any of the forces of na­ture, for the phe­nom­e­non of na­ture is the super­im­po­si­tion of the im­per­fec­tions of pro­gres­sive evo­lu­tion and, some­times, the con­se­quences of in­sur­rec­tionary re­bel­lion, upon the Par­a­dise foun­da­tions of God’s uni­ver­sal law. As it ap­pears on such a world as Uran­tia, na­ture can never be the ad­e­quate ex­pres­sion, the true rep­re­sen­ta­tion, the faith­ful por­trayal, of an all-wise and in­fi­nite God.

4:2.6Na­ture, on your world, is a qual­i­fi­ca­tion of the laws of per­fec­tion by the evo­lu­tion­ary plans of the lo­cal uni­verse. What a trav­esty to wor­ship na­ture be­cause it is in a lim­ited, qual­i­fied sense per­vaded by God; be­cause it is a phase of the uni­ver­sal and, there­fore, di­vine power! Na­ture also is a man­i­fes­ta­tion of the un­fin­ished, the in­com­plete, the im­per­fect out­work­ings of the de­vel­op­ment, growth, and prog­ress of a uni­verse ex­per­i­ment in cos­mic evo­lu­tion.

4:2.7The ap­par­ent de­fects of the nat­u­ral world are not in­dica­tive of any such cor­re­spond­ing de­fects in the char­ac­ter of God. Rather are such ob­served im­per­fec­tions merely the in­ev­i­ta­ble stop-mo­ments in the ex­hi­bi­tion of the ever-mov­ing reel of in­fin­ity pic­tur­iza­tion. It is these very de­fect-in­ter­rup­tions of per­fec­tion-con­ti­nu­ity which make it pos­si­ble for the fi­nite mind of ma­te­rial man to catch a fleet­ing glimpse of di­vine re­al­ity in time and space. The ma­te­rial man­i­fes­ta­tions of di­vin­ity ap­pear de­fec­tive to the evo­lu­tion­ary mind of man only be­cause mor­tal man per­sists in view­ing the phe­nom­ena of na­ture through nat­u­ral eyes, hu­man vi­sion un­aided by mor­ontia mota or by rev­e­la­tion, its com­pen­satory sub­sti­tute on the worlds of time.

4:2.8And na­ture is marred, her beau­ti­ful face is scarred, her fea­tures are seared, by the re­bel­lion, the mis­con­duct, the mis­think­ing of the myr­i­ads of crea­tures who are a part of na­ture, but who have con­tributed to her dis­fig­ure­ment in time. No, na­ture is not God. Na­ture is not an ob­ject of wor­ship.

• divine law › man lives in realm of comparative l. and order

4:5.3The peo­ple of Uran­tia con­tinue to suf­fer from the in­flu­ence of prim­i­tive con­cepts of God. The gods who go on a ram­page in the storm; who shake the earth in their wrath and strike down men in their anger; who in­flict their judg­ments of dis­plea­sure in times of famine and flood—these are the gods of prim­i­tive re­li­gion; they are not the Gods who live and rule the uni­verses. Such con­cepts are a relic of the times when men sup­posed that the uni­verse was un­der the guid­ance and dom­i­na­tion of the whims of such imag­i­nary gods. But mor­tal man is be­gin­ning to re­al­ize that he lives in a realm of com­par­a­tive law and or­der as far as con­cerns the ad­min­is­tra­tive poli­cies and con­duct of the Su­preme Cre­ators and the Su­preme Con­trol­lers.

• divine law › Father is l., Eternal Son administers spiritual l., Infinite Spirit reveals l.

10:6.1All law takes ori­gin in the First Source and Cen­ter; he is law. The ad­min­is­tra­tion of spir­i­tual law in­heres in the Sec­ond Source and Cen­ter. The rev­e­la­tion of law, the pro­mul­ga­tion and in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the di­vine statutes, is the func­tion of the Third Source and Cen­ter. The ap­pli­ca­tion of law, jus­tice, falls within the prov­ince of the Par­a­dise Trin­ity and is car­ried out by cer­tain Sons of the Trin­ity.

• divine law › experientially unify divine l. with divine love

10:6.18Jus­tice is the col­lec­tive thought of righ­teous­ness; mercy is its per­sonal ex­pres­sion. Mercy is the at­ti­tude of love; pre­ci­sion char­ac­ter­izes the op­er­a­tion of law; di­vine judg­ment is the soul of fair­ness, ever con­form­ing to the jus­tice of the Trin­ity, ever ful­fill­ing the di­vine love of God. When fully per­ceived and com­pletely un­der­stood, the righ­teous jus­tice of the Trin­ity and the mer­ci­ful love of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther are co­in­ci­dent. But man has no such full un­der­stand­ing of di­vine jus­tice. Thus in the Trin­ity, as man would view it, the per­son­al­i­ties of Fa­ther, Son, and Spirit are ad­justed to co-or­di­nate min­istry of love and law in the ex­pe­ri­en­tial uni­verses of time.

• divine law › unchanging reaction, habits, of infinite, perfect, and divine mind

12:7.2In all his deal­ings with all his be­ings it is true that the laws of God are not in­her­ently ar­bi­trary. To you, with your lim­ited vi­sion and fi­nite view­point, the acts of God must of­ten ap­pear to be dic­ta­to­rial and ar­bi­trary. The laws of God are merely the habits of God, his way of re­peat­edly do­ing things; and he ever does all things well. You ob­serve that God does the same thing in the same way, re­peat­edly, sim­ply be­cause that is the best way to do that par­tic­u­lar thing in a given cir­cum­stance; and the best way is the right way, and there­fore does in­fi­nite wis­dom al­ways or­der it done in that pre­cise and per­fect man­ner. You should also re­mem­ber that na­ture is not the ex­clu­sive act of De­ity; other in­flu­ences are pres­ent in those phe­nom­ena which man calls na­ture.

12:7.3It is re­pug­nant to the di­vine na­ture to suf­fer any sort of de­te­ri­o­ra­tion or ever to per­mit the ex­e­cu­tion of any purely per­sonal act in an in­fe­rior way. It should be made clear, how­ever, that, if, in the di­vin­ity of any sit­u­a­tion, in the ex­trem­ity of any cir­cum­stance, in any case where the course of su­preme wis­dom might in­di­cate the de­mand for dif­fer­ent con­duct—if the de­mands of per­fec­tion might for any rea­son dic­tate an­other method of re­ac­tion, a bet­ter one, then and there would the all-wise God func­tion in that bet­ter and more suit­able way. That would be the ex­pres­sion of a higher law, not the re­ver­sal of a lower law.

12:7.4God is not a habit-bound slave to the chronic­ity of the rep­e­ti­tion of his own vol­un­tary acts. There is no con­flict among the laws of the In­fi­nite; they are all per­fec­tions of the in­fal­li­ble na­ture; they are all the un­ques­tioned acts ex­pres­sive of fault­less de­ci­sions. Law is the un­chang­ing re­ac­tion of an in­fi­nite, per­fect, and di­vine mind. The acts of God are all vo­li­tional not­with­stand­ing this ap­par­ent same­ness. In God there “is no vari­able­ness nei­ther shadow of chang­ing.” But all this which can be truly said of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther can­not be said with equal cer­tainty of all his sub­or­di­nate in­tel­li­gences or of his evo­lu­tion­ary crea­tures.

12:7.5Be­cause God is change­less, there­fore can you de­pend, in all or­di­nary cir­cum­stances, on his do­ing the same thing in the same iden­ti­cal and or­di­nary way. God is the as­sur­ance of sta­bil­ity for all cre­ated things and be­ings. He is God; there­fore he changes not.

• morality never advanced by

16:7.9Moral­ity can never be ad­vanced by law or by force. It is a per­sonal and free­will mat­ter and must be dis­sem­i­nated by the con­ta­gion of the con­tact of morally fra­grant per­sons with those who are less morally re­spon­sive, but who are also in some mea­sure de­sirous of do­ing the Fa­ther’s will.

• divine law › reflectivity is mechanism for disseminating decrees

17:3.7The re­flec­tiv­ity or­ga­ni­za­tion is also the news-gath­er­ing and the de­cree-dis­sem­i­nat­ing mech­a­nism of all cre­ation. It is in con­stant op­er­a­tion in con­trast with the pe­ri­odic func­tion­ing of the var­i­ous broad­cast ser­vices.

• divine law › spirit dominant over matter in personality relationships

25:1.4In per­son­al­ity re­la­tion­ships the spir­i­tual is dom­i­nant over the ma­te­rial, even though it does not now so ap­pear on Uran­tia; and in the pro­duc­tion of Ha­vona Servi­tals the law of spirit dom­i­nance pre­vails; the es­tab­lished ra­tio yields three spir­i­tual be­ings to one semi­phys­i­cal.

• divine law › discloses procedures most acceptable to Deity

25:3.83. The Con­stel­la­tion Con­cil­ia­tors. From ser­vice in the sys­tems the con­cil­ia­tors are pro­moted to the ad­ju­di­ca­tion of the prob­lems of a con­stel­la­tion, tak­ing up the mi­nor dif­fi­cul­ties aris­ing be­tween its one hun­dred sys­tems of in­hab­ited worlds. Not many prob­lems de­vel­op­ing on the con­stel­la­tion head­quar­ters fall un­der their ju­ris­dic­tion, but they are kept busy go­ing from sys­tem to sys­tem gath­er­ing ev­i­dence and prepar­ing pre­lim­i­nary state­ments. If the con­tention is hon­est, if the dif­fi­cul­ties arise out of sin­cere dif­fer­ences of opin­ion and hon­est di­ver­sity of view­points, no mat­ter how few per­sons may be in­volved, no mat­ter how ap­par­ently triv­ial the mis­un­der­stand­ing, a con­cil­i­at­ing com­mis­sion can al­ways be had to pass upon the mer­its of the con­tro­versy.

• divine law › unchanging reaction, habits, of infinite, perfect, and divine mind

25:4.19Be­sides coun­sel­ing re­gard­ing le­gal us­ages, Tech­ni­cal Ad­vis­ers are equally de­voted to the ef­fi­cient in­ter­pre­ta­tion of all laws con­cern­ing crea­ture be­ings—phys­i­cal, mindal, and spir­i­tual. They are avail­able to the Uni­ver­sal Con­cil­ia­tors and to all oth­ers who de­sire to know the truth of law; in other words, to know how the Su­prem­acy of De­ity may be de­pended upon to re­act in a given sit­u­a­tion hav­ing fac­tors of an es­tab­lished phys­i­cal, mindal, and spir­i­tual or­der. They even es­say to elu­ci­date the tech­nique of the Ul­ti­mate.

• divine law › enactment by constellation assemblies
• divine law › principal of greatest possible co-ordination with fixed policy not to infringe moral free will
• intellectual foundation of justice

39:3.32. Law Fore­cast­ers. The in­tel­lec­tual foun­da­tion of jus­tice is law, and in a lo­cal uni­verse law orig­i­nates in the leg­isla­tive as­sem­blies of the con­stel­la­tions. These de­lib­er­a­tive bod­ies cod­ify and for­mally pro­mul­gate the ba­sic laws of Neb­a­don, laws de­signed to af­ford the great­est pos­si­ble co-or­di­na­tion of a whole con­stel­la­tion con­sis­tent with the fixed pol­icy of non­in­fringe­ment of the moral free will of per­sonal crea­tures. It is the duty of the sec­ond or­der of super­vi­sor ser­a­phim to place be­fore the con­stel­la­tion law­mak­ers a fore­cast of how any pro­posed en­act­ment would af­fect the lives of free­will crea­tures. This ser­vice they are well qual­i­fied to per­form by virtue of long ex­pe­ri­ence in the lo­cal sys­tems and on the in­hab­ited worlds. These ser­a­phim seek no spe­cial fa­vors for one group or an­other, but they do ap­pear be­fore the ce­les­tial law­mak­ers to speak for those who can­not be pres­ent to speak for them­selves. Even mor­tal man may con­tribute to the evo­lu­tion of uni­verse law, for these very ser­a­phim do faith­fully and fully por­tray, not nec­es­sar­ily man’s tran­sient and con­scious de­sires, but rather the true long­ings of the in­ner man, the evolv­ing mor­ontia soul of the ma­te­rial mor­tal on the worlds of space.

• divine law › nature is modified expression of divine l.

42:11.1In the eval­u­a­tion and rec­og­ni­tion of mind it should be re­mem­bered that the uni­verse is nei­ther me­chan­i­cal nor mag­i­cal; it is a cre­ation of mind and a mech­a­nism of law. But while in prac­ti­cal ap­pli­ca­tion the laws of na­ture op­er­ate in what seems to be the dual realms of the phys­i­cal and the spir­i­tual, in re­al­ity they are one. The First Source and Cen­ter is the pri­mal cause of all ma­te­ri­al­iza­tion and at the same time the first and fi­nal Fa­ther of all spir­its. The Par­a­dise Fa­ther ap­pears per­son­ally in the ex­tra-Ha­vona uni­verses only as pure en­ergy and pure spirit—as the Thought Ad­justers and other sim­i­lar frag­men­ta­tions.

• divine law › enactment by constellation assemblies

43:2.5The con­stel­la­tion leg­isla­tive body is di­vided into three groups. The leg­isla­tive pro­gram of a con­stel­la­tion orig­i­nates in the lower house of as­cend­ers, a group pre­sided over by a fi­nal­i­ter and con­sist­ing of one thou­sand rep­re­sen­ta­tive mor­tals. Each sys­tem nom­i­nates ten mem­bers to sit in this de­lib­er­a­tive as­sem­bly. On Eden­tia this body is not fully re­cruited at the pres­ent time.

43:2.6The mid-cham­ber of leg­is­la­tors is com­posed of the se­raphic hosts and their as­so­ciates, other chil­dren of the lo­cal uni­verse Mother Spirit. This group num­bers one hun­dred and is nom­i­nated by the super­vis­ing per­son­al­i­ties who pre­side over the var­i­ous ac­tiv­i­ties of such be­ings as they func­tion within the con­stel­la­tion.

43:2.7The ad­vi­sory or high­est body of con­stel­la­tion leg­is­la­tors con­sists of the house of peers—the house of the di­vine Sons. This corps is cho­sen by the Most High Fa­thers and num­bers ten. Only Sons of spe­cial ex­pe­ri­ence may serve in this up­per house. This is the fact-find­ing and time­sav­ing group which very ef­fec­tively serves both of the lower di­vi­sions of the leg­isla­tive as­sem­bly.

43:2.8The com­bined coun­cil of leg­is­la­tors con­sists of three mem­bers from each of these sep­a­rate branches of the con­stel­la­tion de­lib­er­a­tive as­sem­bly and is pre­sided over by the reign­ing ju­nior Most High. This group sanc­tions the fi­nal form of all en­act­ments and au­tho­rizes their pro­mul­ga­tion by the broad­cast­ers. The ap­proval of this su­preme com­mis­sion ren­ders leg­isla­tive en­act­ments the law of the realm; their acts are fi­nal. The leg­isla­tive pro­nounce­ments of Eden­tia con­sti­tute the fun­da­men­tal law of all Nor­la­ti­adek.

• divine law › of conservation and dominance of goodness

48:6.7These se­raphic evan­gels are ded­i­cated to the procla­ma­tion of the gospel of eter­nal pro­gres­sion, the tri­umph of per­fec­tion at­tain­ment. On the man­sion worlds they pro­claim the great law of the con­ser­va­tion and dom­i­nance of good­ness: No act of good is ever wholly lost; it may be long thwarted but never wholly an­nulled, and it is eter­nally po­tent in pro­por­tion to the di­vin­ity of its mo­ti­va­tion.

• l. is life itself, not the rules of its conduct

48:6.33Law is life it­self and not the rules of its con­duct. Evil is a trans­gres­sion of law, not a vi­o­la­tion of the rules of con­duct per­tain­ing to life, which is the law. False­hood is not a mat­ter of nar­ra­tion tech­nique but some­thing pre­med­i­tated as a per­ver­sion of truth. The cre­ation of new pic­tures out of old facts, the re­state­ment of pa­ren­tal life in the lives of off­spring—these are the artis­tic tri­umphs of truth. The shadow of a hair’s turn­ing, pre­med­i­tated for an un­true pur­pose, the slight­est twist­ing or per­ver­sion of that which is prin­ci­ple—these con­sti­tute false­ness. But the fe­tish of fac­tu­al­ized truth, fos­silized truth, the iron band of so-called un­chang­ing truth, holds one blindly in a closed cir­cle of cold fact. One can be tech­ni­cally right as to fact and ev­er­last­ingly wrong in the truth.

• historically › earliest l. was survival of fittest

52:1.3Prim­i­tive men are mighty hunters and fierce fight­ers. The law of this age is the phys­i­cal sur­vival of the fittest; the gov­ern­ment of these times is wholly tribal. Dur­ing the early racial strug­gles on many worlds some of the evo­lu­tion­ary races are oblit­er­ated, as oc­curred on Uran­tia. Those who sur­vive are usu­ally sub­se­quently blended with the later im­ported vi­o­let race, the Adamic peo­ples.

52:1.4In the light of sub­se­quent civ­i­liza­tion, this era of prim­i­tive man is a long, dark, and bloody chap­ter. The ethics of the jun­gle and the morals of the primeval forests are not in keep­ing with the stan­dards of later dis­pen­sa­tions of re­vealed re­li­gion and higher spir­i­tual de­vel­op­ment. On nor­mal and non­ex­per­i­men­tal worlds this epoch is very dif­fer­ent from the pro­longed and ex­traor­di­nar­ily bru­tal strug­gles which char­ac­ter­ized this age on Uran­tia. When you have emerged from your first world ex­pe­ri­ence, you will be­gin to see why this long and painful strug­gle on the evo­lu­tion­ary worlds oc­curs, and as you go for­ward in the Par­a­dise path, you will in­creas­ingly un­der­stand the wis­dom of these ap­par­ently strange do­ings. But not­with­stand­ing all the vi­cis­si­tudes of the early ages of hu­man emer­gence, the per­for­mances of prim­i­tive man rep­re­sent a splen­did, even a heroic, chap­ter in the an­nals of an evo­lu­tion­ary world of time and space.

• at first negative and prohibitive, later directive

70:11.2Law is al­ways at first neg­a­tive and pro­hibitive; in ad­vanc­ing civ­i­liza­tions it be­comes in­creas­ingly pos­i­tive and di­rec­tive. Early so­ci­ety op­er­ated neg­a­tively, grant­ing the in­di­vid­ual the right to live by im­pos­ing upon all oth­ers the com­mand, “you shall not kill.” Ev­ery grant of rights or lib­erty to the in­di­vid­ual in­volves cur­tail­ment of the lib­er­ties of all oth­ers, and this is ef­fected by the taboo, prim­i­tive law. The whole idea of the taboo is in­her­ently neg­a­tive, for prim­i­tive so­ci­ety was wholly neg­a­tive in its or­ga­ni­za­tion, and the early ad­min­is­tra­tion of jus­tice con­sisted in the en­force­ment of the taboos. But orig­i­nally these laws ap­plied only to fel­low tribes­men, as is il­lus­trated by the later-day He­brews, who had a dif­fer­ent code of ethics for deal­ing with the gen­tiles.

• codified record of human experience

70:11.6Law is a cod­i­fied rec­ord of long hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence, pub­lic opin­ion crys­tal­lized and le­gal­ized. The mores were the raw ma­te­rial of ac­cu­mu­lated ex­pe­ri­ence out of which later rul­ing minds for­mu­lated the writ­ten laws. The an­cient judge had no laws. When he handed down a de­ci­sion, he sim­ply said, “It is the cus­tom.”

• historically › methods of handling early property disputes

70:11.8Prop­erty dis­putes were han­dled in many ways, such as:

70:11.91. By de­stroy­ing the dis­puted prop­erty.

70:11.102. By force—the con­tes­tants fought it out.

70:11.113. By ar­bi­tra­tion—a third party de­cided.

70:11.124. By ap­peal to the el­ders—later to the courts.

• liberty exists only under reign of

71:2.123. The reign of law. Lib­erty can be en­joyed only when the will and whims of hu­man rulers are re­placed by leg­isla­tive en­act­ments in ac­cor­dance with ac­cepted fun­da­men­tal law.

• ideal state has few laws

71:3.7The laws of the ideal state are few in num­ber, and they have passed out of the neg­a­tivis­tic taboo age into the era of the pos­i­tive prog­ress of in­di­vid­ual lib­erty con­se­quent upon en­hanced self-con­trol. The ex­alted state not only com­pels its cit­i­zens to work but also en­tices them into prof­itable and up­lift­ing uti­liza­tion of the in­creas­ing leisure which re­sults from toil lib­er­a­tion by the ad­vanc­ing ma­chine age. Leisure must pro­duce as well as con­sume.

• historically › of Sumerians

77:4.7And all this ex­plains how the Sume­ri­ans ap­peared so sud­denly and mys­te­ri­ously on the stage of ac­tion in Mes­o­po­ta­mia. In­ves­ti­ga­tors will never be able to trace out and fol­low these tribes back to the be­gin­ning of the Sume­ri­ans, who had their ori­gin two hun­dred thou­sand years ago af­ter the sub­mer­gence of Dala­ma­tia. With­out a trace of ori­gin else­where in the world, these an­cient tribes sud­denly loom upon the hori­zon of civ­i­liza­tion with a full-grown and su­pe­rior cul­ture, em­brac­ing tem­ples, met­al­work, agri­cul­ture, an­i­mals, pot­tery, weav­ing, com­mer­cial law, civil codes, re­li­gious cer­e­mo­nial, and an old sys­tem of writ­ing. At the be­gin­ning of the his­tor­i­cal era they had long since lost the al­pha­bet of Dala­ma­tia, hav­ing adopted the pe­cu­liar writ­ing sys­tem orig­i­nat­ing in Dil­mun. The Sume­rian lan­guage, though vir­tu­ally lost to the world, was not Semitic; it had much in com­mon with the so-called Aryan tongues.

• liberty exists only under reign of

81:5.7Lib­erty sub­ject to group reg­u­la­tion is the le­git­i­mate goal of so­cial evo­lu­tion. Lib­erty with­out re­stric­tions is the vain and fan­ci­ful dream of un­sta­ble and flighty hu­man minds.

• divine law › unchanging reaction, habits, of infinite, perfect, and divine mind

102:7.2God is the one and only self-caused fact in the uni­verse. He is the se­cret of the or­der, plan, and pur­pose of the whole cre­ation of things and be­ings. The ev­ery­where-chang­ing uni­verse is reg­u­lated and sta­bi­lized by ab­so­lutely un­chang­ing laws, the habits of an un­chang­ing God. The fact of God, the di­vine law, is change­less; the truth of God, his re­la­tion to the uni­verse, is a rel­a­tive rev­e­la­tion which is ever adapt­able to the con­stantly evolv­ing uni­verse.

• divine law › experientially unify divine l. with divine love

104:2.3Through the rec­og­ni­tion of the Trin­ity con­cept the mind of man can hope to grasp some­thing of the in­ter­re­la­tion­ship of love and law in the time-space cre­ations. Through spir­i­tual faith man gains in­sight into the love of God but soon dis­cov­ers that this spir­i­tual faith has no in­flu­ence on the or­dained laws of the ma­te­rial uni­verse. Ir­re­spec­tive of the firm­ness of man’s be­lief in God as his Par­a­dise Fa­ther, ex­pand­ing cos­mic hori­zons de­mand that he also give rec­og­ni­tion to the re­al­ity of Par­a­dise De­ity as uni­ver­sal law, that he rec­og­nize the Trin­ity sov­er­eignty ex­tend­ing out­ward from Par­a­dise and over­shad­ow­ing even the evolv­ing lo­cal uni­verses of the Cre­ator Sons and Cre­ative Daugh­ters of the three eter­nal per­sons whose de­ity union is the fact and re­al­ity and eter­nal in­di­vis­i­bil­ity of the Par­a­dise Trin­ity.

• divine law › experientially unify divine l. with divine love

111:6.6Sci­ence is the source of facts, and mind can­not op­er­ate with­out facts. They are the build­ing blocks in the con­struc­tion of wis­dom which are ce­mented to­gether by life ex­pe­ri­ence. Man can find the love of God with­out facts, and man can dis­cover the laws of God with­out love, but man can never be­gin to ap­pre­ci­ate the in­fi­nite sym­me­try, the su­per­nal har­mony, the ex­qui­site re­plete­ness of the all-in­clu­sive na­ture of the First Source and Cen­ter un­til he has found di­vine law and di­vine love and has ex­pe­ri­en­tially uni­fied these in his own evolv­ing cos­mic phi­los­o­phy.

• historically › Jewish l. viewed as given by Moses

121:7.3The scribes, the Phar­isees, and the priest­hood held the Jews in a ter­ri­ble bond­age of rit­u­al­ism and le­gal­ism, a bond­age far more real than that of the Ro­man po­lit­i­cal rule. The Jews of Je­sus’ time were not only held in sub­ju­ga­tion to the law but were equally bound by the slav­ish de­mands of the tra­di­tions, which in­volved and in­vaded ev­ery do­main of per­sonal and so­cial life. These minute reg­u­la­tions of con­duct pur­sued and dom­i­nated ev­ery loyal Jew, and it is not strange that they promptly re­jected one of their num­ber who pre­sumed to ig­nore their sa­cred tra­di­tions, and who dared to flout their long-hon­ored reg­u­la­tions of so­cial con­duct. They could hardly re­gard with fa­vor the teach­ings of one who did not hes­i­tate to clash with dog­mas which they re­garded as hav­ing been or­dained by Fa­ther Abra­ham him­self. Moses had given them their law and they would not com­pro­mise.

• liberty exists only under reign of

134:6.1If one man craves free­dom—lib­erty—he must re­mem­ber that all other men long for the same free­dom. Groups of such lib­erty-lov­ing mor­tals can­not live to­gether in peace with­out be­com­ing sub­servient to such laws, rules, and reg­u­la­tions as will grant each per­son the same de­gree of free­dom while at the same time safe­guard­ing an equal de­gree of free­dom for all of his fel­low mor­tals. If one man is to be ab­so­lutely free, then an­other must be­come an ab­so­lute slave. And the rel­a­tive na­ture of free­dom is true so­cially, eco­nom­i­cally, and po­lit­i­cally. Free­dom is the gift of civ­i­liza­tion made pos­si­ble by the en­force­ment of LAW.

• spirit as well as letter of

135:6.8John con­ducted classes for his dis­ci­ples, in the course of which he in­structed them in the de­tails of their new life and en­deav­ored to an­swer their many ques­tions. He coun­seled the teach­ers to in­struct in the spirit as well as the let­ter of the law. He in­structed the rich to feed the poor; to the tax gath­er­ers he said: “Ex­tort no more than that which is as­signed you.” To the sol­diers he said: “Do no vi­o­lence and ex­act noth­ing wrong­fully—be con­tent with your wages.” While he coun­seled all: “Make ready for the end of the age—the king­dom of heaven is at hand.”

• historically › Jesus always observant of

140:8.92. Po­lit­i­cal at­ti­tude. He cau­tioned his apos­tles to be dis­creet in their re­marks con­cern­ing the strained re­la­tions then ex­ist­ing be­tween the Jew­ish peo­ple and the Ro­man gov­ern­ment; he for­bade them to be­come in any way em­broiled in these dif­fi­cul­ties. He was al­ways care­ful to avoid the po­lit­i­cal snares of his en­e­mies, ever mak­ing re­ply, “Ren­der to Cae­sar the things which are Cae­sar’s and to God the things which are God’s.” He re­fused to have his at­ten­tion di­verted from his mis­sion of es­tab­lish­ing a new way of sal­va­tion; he would not per­mit him­self to be con­cerned about any­thing else. In his per­sonal life he was al­ways duly ob­ser­vant of all civil laws and reg­u­la­tions; in all his pub­lic teach­ings he ig­nored the civic, so­cial, and eco­nomic realms. He told the three apos­tles that he was con­cerned only with the prin­ci­ples of man’s in­ner and per­sonal spir­i­tual life.

• l. of living is love for father and mutual love among children

142:7.4He next ex­plained that the “king­dom idea” was not the best way to il­lus­trate man’s re­la­tion to God; that he em­ployed such fig­ures of speech be­cause the Jew­ish peo­ple were ex­pect­ing the king­dom, and be­cause John had preached in terms of the com­ing king­dom. Je­sus said: “The peo­ple of an­other age will bet­ter un­der­stand the gospel of the king­dom when it is pre­sented in terms ex­pres­sive of the fam­ily re­la­tion­ship—when man un­der­stands re­li­gion as the teach­ing of the fa­ther­hood of God and the broth­er­hood of man, son­ship with God.” Then the Mas­ter dis­coursed at some length on the earthly fam­ily as an il­lus­tra­tion of the heav­enly fam­ily, re­stat­ing the two fun­da­men­tal laws of liv­ing: the first com­mand­ment of love for the fa­ther, the head of the fam­ily, and the sec­ond com­mand­ment of mu­tual love among the chil­dren, to love your brother as your­self. And then he ex­plained that such a qual­ity of broth­erly af­fec­tion would in­vari­ably man­i­fest it­self in un­selfish and lov­ing so­cial ser­vice.

• divine law › written on hearts

145:2.5“But even this is not a new idea. Many of the spir­i­tu­ally minded among you have known this truth, inas­much as some of the proph­ets have so in­structed you. Have you not read in the Scrip­tures where the Prophet Jeremiah says: ‘In those days they shall no more say, the fa­thers have eaten sour grapes and the chil­dren’s teeth are set on edge. Ev­ery man shall die for his own in­iq­uity; ev­ery man who eats sour grapes, his teeth shall be set on edge. Be­hold, the days shall come when I will make a new covenant with my peo­ple, not ac­cord­ing to the covenant which I made with their fa­thers when I brought them out of the land of Egypt, but ac­cord­ing to the new way. I will even write my law in their hearts. I will be their God, and they shall be my peo­ple. In that day they shall not say, one man to his neigh­bor, do you know the Lord? Nay! For they shall all know me per­son­ally, from the least to the great­est.’

• divine law › must be obeyed

146:2.32. That prayer which is in­con­sis­tent with the known and es­tab­lished laws of God is an abom­i­na­tion to the Par­a­dise De­i­ties. If man will not lis­ten to the Gods as they speak to their cre­ation in the laws of spirit, mind, and mat­ter, the very act of such de­lib­er­ate and con­scious dis­dain by the crea­ture turns the ears of spirit per­son­al­i­ties away from hear­ing the per­sonal pe­ti­tions of such law­less and dis­obe­di­ent mor­tals. Je­sus quoted to his apos­tles from the Prophet Zechariah: “But they re­fused to hear­ken and pulled away the shoul­der and stopped their ears that they should not hear. Yes, they made their hearts adamant like a stone, lest they should hear my law and the words which I sent by my spirit through the proph­ets; there­fore did the re­sults of their evil think­ing come as a great wrath upon their guilty heads. And so it came to pass that they cried for mercy, but there was no ear open to hear.” And then Je­sus quoted the proverb of the wise man who said: “He who turns away his ear from hear­ing the di­vine law, even his prayer shall be an abom­i­na­tion.”

• divine law › ignorance of l. unfortunate

147:6.6Je­sus’ an­tag­o­nism to the Jew­ish tra­di­tions and slav­ish cer­e­mo­ni­als was al­ways pos­i­tive. It con­sisted in what he did and in what he af­firmed. The Mas­ter spent lit­tle time in neg­a­tive de­nun­ci­a­tions. He taught that those who know God can en­joy the lib­erty of liv­ing with­out de­ceiv­ing them­selves by the li­censes of sin­ning. Said Je­sus to the apos­tles: “Men, if you are en­light­ened by the truth and re­ally know what you are do­ing, you are blessed; but if you know not the di­vine way, you are un­for­tu­nate and al­ready break­ers of the law.”

• divine law › innocent or deliberate transgression of l. causes affliction

148:5.4“Na­than­iel, it is our mis­sion to help men solve their spir­i­tual prob­lems and in this way to quicken their minds so that they may be the bet­ter pre­pared and in­spired to go about solv­ing their man­i­fold ma­te­rial prob­lems. I know of your con­fu­sion as you have read the Scrip­tures. All too of­ten there has pre­vailed a ten­dency to as­cribe to God the re­spon­si­bil­ity for ev­ery­thing which ig­no­rant man fails to un­der­stand. The Fa­ther is not per­son­ally re­spon­si­ble for all you may fail to com­pre­hend. Do not doubt the love of the Fa­ther just be­cause some just and wise law of his or­dain­ing chances to af­flict you be­cause you have in­no­cently or de­lib­er­ately trans­gressed such a di­vine or­di­nance.

• divine law › innocent or deliberate transgression of l. causes affliction

148:6.3“Al­though trans­gres­sion of di­vine law is sooner or later fol­lowed by the har­vest of pun­ish­ment, while men cer­tainly even­tu­ally do reap what they sow, still you should know that hu­man suf­fer­ing is not al­ways a pun­ish­ment for an­te­ced­ent sin. Both Job and his friends failed to find the true an­swer for their per­plex­i­ties. And with the light you now en­joy you would hardly as­sign to ei­ther Sa­tan or God the parts they play in this unique para­ble. While Job did not, through suf­fer­ing, find the res­o­lu­tion of his in­tel­lec­tual trou­bles or the so­lu­tion of his phil­o­soph­i­cal dif­fi­cul­ties, he did achieve great vic­to­ries; even in the very face of the break­down of his the­o­log­i­cal de­fenses he as­cended to those spir­i­tual heights where he could sin­cerely say, ‘I ab­hor my­self’; then was there granted him the sal­va­tion of a vi­sion of God. So even through mis­un­der­stood suf­fer­ing, Job as­cended to the super­hu­man plane of moral un­der­stand­ing and spir­i­tual in­sight. When the suf­fer­ing ser­vant ob­tains a vi­sion of God, there fol­lows a soul peace which passes all hu­man un­der­stand­ing.

• morality never advanced by

178:1.3There is noth­ing in­com­pat­i­ble be­tween son­ship in the spir­i­tual king­dom and cit­i­zen­ship in the sec­u­lar or civil gov­ern­ment. It is the be­liever’s duty to ren­der to Cae­sar the things which are Cae­sar’s and to God the things which are God’s. There can­not be any dis­agree­ment be­tween these two re­quire­ments, the one be­ing ma­te­rial and the other spir­i­tual, un­less it should de­velop that a Cae­sar pre­sumes to usurp the pre­rog­a­tives of God and de­mand that spir­i­tual homage and su­preme wor­ship be ren­dered to him. In such a case you shall wor­ship only God while you seek to en­lighten such mis­guided earthly rulers and in this way lead them also to the rec­og­ni­tion of the Fa­ther in heaven. You shall not ren­der spir­i­tual wor­ship to earthly rulers; nei­ther should you em­ploy the phys­i­cal forces of earthly gov­ern­ments, whose rulers may some­time be­come be­liev­ers, in the work of fur­ther­ing the mis­sion of the spir­i­tual king­dom.

• morality never advanced by

178:1.6You may not wor­ship your tem­po­ral rulers, and you should not em­ploy tem­po­ral power in the fur­ther­ance of the spir­i­tual king­dom; but you should man­i­fest the righ­teous min­istry of lov­ing ser­vice to be­liev­ers and un­be­liev­ers alike. In the gospel of the king­dom there re­sides the mighty Spirit of Truth, and pres­ently I will pour out this same spirit upon all flesh. The fruits of the spirit, your sin­cere and lov­ing ser­vice, are the mighty so­cial lever to up­lift the races of dark­ness, and this Spirit of Truth will be­come your power-mul­ti­ply­ing ful­crum.

• morality never advanced by

178:1.12You must not seek to pro­mul­gate truth nor to es­tab­lish righ­teous­ness by the power of civil gov­ern­ments or by the en­ac­tion of sec­u­lar laws. You may al­ways la­bor to per­suade men’s minds, but you must never dare to com­pel them. You must not for­get the great law of hu­man fair­ness which I have taught you in pos­i­tive form: What­so­ever you would that men should do to you, do even so to them.

• but one law to obey – proclaim gospel

192:2.11Af­ter this the Mas­ter talked with Mat­thew and Philip. To Philip he said, “Philip, do you obey me?” Philip an­swered, “Yes, Lord, I will obey you even with my life.” Then said Je­sus: “If you would obey me, go then into the lands of the gen­tiles and pro­claim this gospel. The proph­ets have told you that to obey is bet­ter than to sac­ri­fice. By faith have you be­come a God-know­ing king­dom son. There is but one law to obey—that is the com­mand to go forth pro­claim­ing the gospel of the king­dom. Cease to fear men; be un­afraid to preach the good news of eter­nal life to your fel­lows who lan­guish in dark­ness and hunger for the light of truth. No more, Philip, shall you busy your­self with money and goods. You now are free to preach the glad tid­ings just as are your breth­ren. And I will go be­fore you and be with you even to the end.”

• historically › Greek, Roman, and oriental l.

195:2.3Ori­en­tal law was stern and ar­bi­trary; Greek law was fluid and artis­tic; Ro­man law was dig­ni­fied and re­spect-breed­ing. Ro­man ed­u­ca­tion bred an un­heard-of and stolid loy­alty. The early Ro­mans were po­lit­i­cally de­voted and sub­limely con­se­crated in­di­vid­u­als. They were hon­est, zeal­ous, and ded­i­cated to their ide­als, but with­out a re­li­gion wor­thy of the name. Small won­der that their Greek teach­ers were able to per­suade them to ac­cept Paul’s Chris­tian­ity.