conformity with the principles of Jurisprudence. But no one will claim
infallibility for its enactments; the esteem we have for it is chiefly
due to its general accord with the requirements of the higher law.

7. There is, then, a higher law, which all men are bound to obey, even
lawgivers and rulers themselves as well as their humblest subjects, a
law from which no man nor class of men can claim exemption, a law which
the Creator cannot fail to impose upon His rational creatures: although
God was free to create or not to create as He chose, since He did not
need anything to complete His own happiness,--yet, if He did create, He
was bound by His own wisdom to put order into His work; else it would
not be worthy of His supreme wisdom. As the poet has so tersely
expressed it, "Order is Heaven's first law."

How admirably is this order displayed in the material universe! The more
we study the sciences--astronomy, biology, botany, physiology, medicine,
etc.--the more we are lost in admiration at the beautiful order we see
displayed in the tiniest as well as in the vastest portions of the
creation. And shall man alone, the masterpiece of God in this visible
universe, be allowed to be disorderly, to be a failure in the noblest
part of his being, to make himself like to the brute or to a demon of
malice, to waste his choicest gifts in the indulgence of debasing
pleasure? The Creator is bound by His own wisdom to direct men to high
purposes, worthy of their exalted intellectual nature. But how shall He
direct man? He compels material things to move with order to the
accomplishment of their alloted tasks by the physical laws of matter. He
directs brute animals most admirably to run their appointed careers by
the wonderful laws of instinct, which none of them can resist at will.
But man He has made free; He must direct him to do worthy actions by
means suitable to a free being, that is, by the enacting of the moral