Laws of the Spiritual Life

This work discusses the spiritual life from the viewpoint of the beatitudes. ONE of the greatest achievements of the human mind in modern times has been the -discovery that underlying and controlling all the apparently disconnected phenomena of nature is Law. For ages the universe presented to men a vast panorama of constant change, each of its phenomena standing alone, some of these changes coming in orderly sequence, many of them apparently capricious. The silent heavens and the storm-swept earth, what had they to say to one another? The seasons marched with steady tread, but often indeed interrupted and held back by violent outbursts that betokened the presence of some angry God. But why the changes followed in regular sequence was known no more than why the sun rose and set, or why the wind blew from north or south. It has been the result of careful and patient study to discover that underlying and causing all the phenomena of Nature and governing all her actions, there is Law. Caprice gives way, the more we know her, to order, and order is the result of Law. We feel so sure of this now that we are certain that her most fitful moods and her most exceptional acts can be reduced to the controlling power of law. Of some of the laws as yet we know little or nothing, but of their existence we have no doubt. Indeed, so great is the change that has passed over the human mind within the last few years that it would baffle the imagination of a man of ordinary education to conceive of any part of the universe, however distant, in which Law did not reign. Through the length and breadth of her vast domain, into the minutest parts of her system, like nerves in the human body, run the forces that rule her alike in the infinitely small or in the infinitely great, and as the nerves convey the commands of the will, so, behind these forces, stands a mighty Will whose rule they represent and carry out.