It is the use of the word "law" as if it
denoted a thing--as if a "law of nature," as science understands it,
were a being endowed with certain powers, in virtue of which the
phenomena expressed by that law are brought about. The preacher asks,
"Might not there be a suspension of a lower law by the intervention of
a higher?" He tells us that every time we lift our arms we defy the
law of gravitation. He asks whether some day certain "royal and
ultimate laws" may not come and "wreck" those laws which are at
present, it would appear, acting as nature's police. It is evident,
from these expressions, that "laws," in the mind of the preacher, are
entities having an objective existence in a graduated hierarchy. And
it would appear that the "royal laws" are by no means to be regarded
as constitutional royalties: at any moment, they may, like Eastern
despots, descend in wrath among the middle-class and plebeian laws,
which have hitherto done the drudgery of the world's work, and, to use
phraseology not unknown in our seats of learning--"make hay" of their
belongings. Or perhaps a still more familiar analogy has suggested
this singular theory; and it is thought that high laws may "suspend"
low laws, as a bishop may suspend a curate.
Far be it from me to controvert these views, if any one likes to hold
them. All I wish to remark is that such a conception of the nature of
"laws" has nothing to do with modern science.
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