There Ought to Be a Law Against That!

In protest of something we disapprove, we often hear the comment: “There ought to be a law against that!” As a matter of fact, somewhere or other in the world, there is a law against almost everything. But multiplicity of law does not make men good or society safe. The ten commandments have us a pretty good start, except that no one seems to be able to enforce them or to induce any great number of people or observe them. And so, when you can’t enforce a few laws, the popular thing to do, it seems, is to make many, with the result that we have more laws than the world has ever known and, in some ways, also more lawlessness! Perhaps there is a correlation between these two facts. From the man whose offenses involves nothing worse than keeping a book too long out of the library, right down to the man who devastates and steals another man’s country, who destroys another’s way of life, we are observing a worldwide siege of lawlessness. Fortunately, however, it is impossible for any man to disregard all law, because there are high laws that are always operative which cannot be set aside. And, in fact, whenever a man thinks he is breaking a law and getting away with it, he is in reality merely setting in motion other laws, which exact full satisfaction in some form or other, sometimes without immediate apparent effect, but always with certain consequences. And so operates the law which brings penalty where it is deserved and reward where it is earned. Call it what you will the law of cause and effect, the law of retribution, the law of compensation it is all these and more it is eternal law, the law of God, which assures us that all things in life have their consequences, now and evermore.