NATURE, LAWS OF
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main of apologetics and dogmatics, where natural law requires the creative power of the living God to explain not onl}^ the creation, but also the preservation of the universe. We find it next in the province of morals, where the distinction between the causality of the nat- ural forces and those of the human will, between the necessities of nature and the freedom of man, and, in short, between natural law and moral law, is to be estab- lished. In both instances the laws of nature are op- posed to the effects of freedom ; but in dogmatics it is tlie freedom of the Creator as the absolute master of his creation, while in ethics it is the freedom of man as the niemhrum prcecipuum of the earthly creation.
I. In Dogmatics, the first point which arises is to as- certain whether the laws of nature, inherent in the creat- ure and in the world, admit of or exclude the co-opera- tion of God ; and in the latter case whether, according to the pantheistic idea, nature itself is God ; or whether, according to the deistical theory, God, after creating the universe, left it to the exclusive guidance of natural laws. The answer to these questions settles also that of the admissibility of miracles. It is well known that Schleiermacher, and still more emphatically Strauss, have denied the existence of miracles from the stand- point of natural laws. Schleiermacher (^Der Christl. Glaube, § 46) says that religious consciousness, as a simple feeling of dependence, '• is identical with the knowledge that all which afilicts or influences us is caused by and results from natural causes;" and (§ 47) " that the interests of piety can never give rise to the necessity of so arranging a fact that it should be placed in such immediate dependence from God as to deny its taking its source in the general laws of nature." Every absolute miracle disturbs the whole order of nature, both negatively as regards the past, as the miracle contra- dicts all previous observations, and thus appears to suppress the usual working of nature ; and positively with reference to the future, "in which everything is changed at once from what it would have been had not the miracle occurred, so that every miracle not only disturbs forever the whole connection of the original organization, but every new miracle also annuls the preceding, in so far as they have come to be counted among the working agencies." See Miuacles. It will be sufficient for our present purpose to refer to E. Rothe's answer to the views of Schleiermacher (in the Studien u. Kritiken, 1858, i, 27-40) : " If the course of the universe is an arithmetical sum, the factors of which, including also the free motives, are in themselves inva- riable quantities ; or if the divine government of the world is something like the clock-work of a music-box, in which the melodies to be played were from all eter- nity pinned in the cylinder, then, certainly, there can be no room in the universe for miracles. These have for their basis a positive independence with respect to God, although not interfering with absolute dependence upon him ; there is a real distinction and separation between the divine causality and that of the creature, and also in the operation of freedom in the world. ... I respect the laws of nature, and rejoice at every advance we make in their knowledge. God himself has subjected to them the forces of nature ; but he has not subjected to them his liberty or his almighty will. He has re- tained undisturbed his absolute liberty, and his sov- ereignty in the universe he has created. Miracles prove that the laws of nature, while they are the great- est power in the world, are yet subject to the govern- ment of him who created them, the ever-living God." Thus the laws of nature are the work of the eternal Law-giver and loving Governor.
II. In Ethics we have to consider the connection be- tween inanimate and unreasoning creation and person- alities, or, in other words, the relation between natural and moral law. The distinction is generally drawn by the definition that natural law implies a state of being, moral law a volition. The first belongs to the domain of necessitv, the latter to the province of free-wUl.
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