Cause… Consequence… and Cure

Wherever there is disregard for standards, for law, for morals, there is need to consider causes and consequences. “What am I? And What is?” asked Emerson. “When man says:–I love the Right;…Truth…Virtue…there is a reverence and delight in the presence of divine laws…These laws refuse to be adequately stated… yet we read them hourly in each other’s faces, in each other’s actions, and in our own remorse….They are laws of the soul. These laws execute themselves….Thus, in the soul of man there is a justice that is instant and entire. He who does a good deed is instantly ennobled. He who does a mean deed is by the action itself diminished. He who puts off impurity, thereby puts on purity…. If a man…deceive, he deceives himself….Character is always known. Thefts never enrich; alms never impoverish; murder will speak out of stone walls. The least admixture of a lie…the taint of vanity…will instantly have its effect. But speak the truth, and all nature and all spirits help you…As we are, so we associate. The good…seek the good; the vile…seek the vile. Thus of their own volition souls proceed into heaven, or into hell….Whilst a man seeks good ends, he is strong… In so far as he roves from these ends…he becomes less and less…And so despite those who would say that the moral laws are old-fashioned and ineffective, the plain fact remains that the only cure for sickness of soul is repentance, and this takes us to the basic laws of causes, and the cure, and stop trying to set aside what the ages have proved—both the laws of nature and the commandments that God has given. “Law is sovereign over all.”