Where morality is unknown or
disregarded, friction inevitably arises, disharmony and pain result; for
Nature is a settled Order in the mental and moral worlds as much as in
the physical, and only by knowledge of that Order and by obedience to
it can harmony, health and happiness be secured."
The religious man sees in the laws of Nature the manifestation of the
Divine Nature, and in obedience to and co-operation with them, he sees
obedience to and co-operation with the Will of God. The non-religious
man sees them as sequences he cannot alter, on harmony with which his
happiness, his comfort, depends. In either case they have a binding
force. The man belonging to any exoteric religion will modify by them
the precepts of his Scriptures, realising that morality rises as
Evolution proceeds. He does thus modify scriptural precepts by practical
obedience or disregard, whether he do it by theory or not. But it is
better that theory and practice should correspond. The intuitionist
will understand that conscience, accumulated experience, has developed
by experience within these laws. The utilitarian will see that the
happiness of all, not only of the greatest number, must be ensured by a
true morality, and will understand why Happiness is the result thereof.
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