It will be matter of consideration in a future Lecture how our knowledge
of the Eternal Law of the holy, the just, the good, and the right, is
thus purified in the individual and in the race. At present it will be
enough to have indicated the general principle of what may be called the
evolution of the knowledge of morals.

But I now go on from the Moral Law as a duty to the Moral Law as a
faith. For the inner voice is not content with commanding a course of
conduct and requiring obedience of that kind. This is its first
utterance, and the man who hears and obeys unquestionably has within him
the true seed of all religion. But though the first utterance it is not
the last. For the same voice goes on to require us to believe that this
Moral Law which claims obedience from us, equally claims obedience from
all else that exists. It is absolutely supreme or it is nothing.

Its title to our obedience is its supremacy, and it has no other title.
If it depended on promises of reward or threats of punishment addressed
to us, it might be considered as a law for us, but could be no law for
others. It would in that case, indeed, be a mere physical law. Things
are so arranged for you, and as far as you know for you only, that
terrible pain will come to you if you disobey, and wonderful pleasure if
you obey. Such a law as that might proceed from a tyrant possessed of
absolute power over US and the things that concern US, and might be
either good or bad as should happen. But such a law would not be able to
claim our reverence. Nay, rather, as is the case with all merely
physical laws, it might be our duty to disobey it. In claiming our
reverence as well as our obedience, in making its sanction consist in
nothing but the fact of its own inherent majesty, the Moral Law calls on
us to believe in its supremacy. It claims that it is the last and
highest of all laws. The world before us is governed by uniformities as