The will to set values and the power to make them law are jointly at the bottom of all operative norms. When linked to divine wisdom, this source of moral law is still in safe hands which man can trust.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Good morals lead to good laws.
Law is vulnerable to the winds of intellectual or moral fashion, which it then validates as the commands of our most basic concept.
The moral law commands us to make the highest possible good in a world the final object of all our conduct.
Every society and religion has rules, for both have moral laws. And the essence of morality consists, as in art, of drawing the line somewhere.
All moral laws are merely statements that certain kinds of actions will have good effects.
The law of humanity ought to be composed of the past, the present, and the future, that we bear within us; whoever possesses but one of these terms, has but a fragment of the law of the moral world.
As an instrument for practical action, law is responsive to the wisdom of its time, which may be wrong, but it carries forward, sometimes in opposition to this wisdom or passion, a memory of received values.
This is the law of God by which He makes His way known to man and is paramount to all human control.
If we aim to act in harmony with the laws of Good, we rise above all other laws and become a law unto ourselves; co-workers with God and helpers in nature. Ours is the privilege, ours the loss, if we fail to live up to our highest possibilities.
It is not wisdom but Authority that makes a law.