Page:Calvinism, an address delivered at St. Andrew's, March 17, 1871.djvu/18

 world of human life and society, which insist on being obeyed in all that we do and handle—which we cannot alter, cannot modify—which will go with us, and assist and befriend us, if we recognise and comply with them—which inexorably make themselves felt in failure and disaster if we neglect or attempt to thwart them. Search where we will among created things, far as the microscope will allow the eye to pierce, we find organisation everywhere. Large forms resolve themselves into parts, but these parts are but organised out of other parts, down so far as we can see into infinity. When the plant meets with the conditions which agree with it, it thrives; under unhealthy conditions it is poisoned and disintegrates. It is the same precisely with each one of. ourselves, whether as individuals or as aggregated into associations, into families, into nations, into institutions. The remotest fibre of human action, from the policy of empires to the most insignificant trifle over which we waste an idle hour or moment, either moves in harmony with the true law of our being, or is else at discord with it. A king or a parliament enacts a law, and we imagine we are creating some new regulation, to encounter unprecedented circumstances. The law itself which applied to these circumstances was enacted from eternity. It has its existence independent of us, and will enforce itself either to reward or punish, as the attitude which we assume towards it is wise or unwise. Our human laws are but the copies, more or less imperfect, of the eternal laws so far as we can read them, and either succeed and