The Reality of Moral Imperatives in Liberal Religion

Abstract

God has made man with the instinctive love of justice in him,which gradually gets developed in the world …. I do not pretendto understand the moral universe; the arc is a long one, my eyereaches but little ways; I cannot calculate the curve and completethe figure by the experience of sight; I can divine it by conscience.And from what I see I am sure it bends towards justice.Theodore Parker (1853)A strange mystery it is that Nature, omnipotent but blind, in therevolutions of her … hurryings through the abysses of space, hasbrought forth at last a child, subject still to her power, but giftedwith sight, with knowledge of good and evil, with the capacity ofjudging all the works of his unthinking mother. [Gradually, asmorality grows bolder, the claim of the ideal world begins to befelt, [giving rise to the claim] that, in some hidden manner, theworld of fact is really harmonious with the world of ideals. Thusman creates God, all-powerful and all-good, the mystic unity ofwhat is and what should be.