246 ASSAYS SCIENTIFIC AND PHILOSOPHICAL. 



that, in its solemn march, Law is ever leaving 

 behind the false or transient settings of eternal 

 truths, that it may attain more perfectly to its 

 ideal, and be to us the earthly counterpart of the 

 Justice of God. Human Law, so far as it is true, 

 is not human but divine, and hence it is that they 

 who interpret that Law to us speak with the 

 authority of Him Whose Law they uphold. " They 

 are God's Ministers," says St. Paul ; therefore they 

 claim our reverence, our obedience. " They are 

 God's Ministers," therefore in His Presence they 

 bow their heads, "remembering the account that 

 they must make." 



But the making of that Law which they ad- 

 minister, with whom does it rest ? It is so easy to 

 settle down in complaisant optimism and imagine 

 that things will go right as a matter of course ; 

 that by a kind of natural selection Law will in- 

 evitably advance, because laws are not made, but 

 grow. Ah ! but growth in the moral world is 

 never independent of moral effort. Does Conscience 

 in the individual always speak as the Vicar of 

 Christ ? Is its hold on truth always firm and 

 clear? Does it always command with the voice 

 of the " categorical imperative?" Has it no life- 

 history, no development which may be checked 

 and retarded and even finally arrested ? Is the 

 "weak" 1 conscience of which St. Paul speaks a 



1 I Cor. viii. 7. 



