Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
The sweetness of the Law
The sweetness of the Law
Apr 2, 2025 9:29 PM
menting briefly on Psalm 19, C. S. Lewis observes the description of God’s Law as “sweeter than honey” and “more precious than gold,” the kind of descriptions that occur again and again throughout the Psalter.

Lewis writes,

In so far as this idea of the Law’s beauty, sweetness, or pireciousness, arose from the contrast of the surrounding Paganisms, we may soon find occasion to recover it. Christians increasingly live on a spiritual island; new and rival ways of life surround it in all directions and their e further up the beach every time. None of these new ways is yet so filthy or cruel as some Semitic Paganism. But many of them ignore all individual rights and are already cruel enough. Some give morality a wholly new meaning which we cannot accept, some deny its possibility. Perhaps we shall all learn, sharply enough, to value the clean air and “sweet reasonableness” fo the Christian ethics which in a more Christian age we might have taken for granted. But of course, if we do, we shall then be exposed to the danger of priggery. We e to “thank God that we are not as other men”. This introduces the greatest difficulty which the Psalms have raised in my mind.

Comments
Welcome to mreligion comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
Ignoring the invisible
I have been thinking a lot about all of the invisible things around us, important foundational things that we take for granted. Because they don’t immediately manifest themselves to our attention we can forget about them if we are not careful. There are different layers of “invisible” things or institutions or concepts that make life go on and that undergird our economic, political, and social life. One of the characteristics of these invisible things is that we don’t necessarily need...
Explainer: What does it mean to prorogue Parliament?
Prime Minister Boris Johnson has set up a collision with Parliament over the likelihood of a no-deal Brexit, as he announced that he intends to prorogue Parliament next month. Here are the facts you need to know. What does it mean to “prorogue” Parliament? To prorogue Parliament resets the session, as Members of Parliament take an extended recess. All pending legislation is wiped clean, except for measures MPs voted to carry over. The traditionalQueen’s Speechthen rings in a new session...
Virtue and the Lake Wobegon effect
During the mid-1990s I spent a tour of duty as a Marine recruiter in southwestern Washington State. One of my primary tasks was to give talks at local high schools, but because many of the guidance counselors were not exactly pro-military, I was expected to give generic “motivational” speeches. I soon discovered my idea of what constituted a motivational speech was not widely shared. “Your parents and teachers have not been straight-forward with you,” I told the students in my...
Abba Moses on the Christian vocation
Today in the Orthodox Church memorate St. Moses the Ethiopian, also simply known as St. Moses the Black. His life and teachings have enriched the Christian spiritual tradition for more than 1,600 years, and he has something to teach us about the concept of vocation. Abba Moses was one of the desert fathers, the first Christian monks who lived in the wilderness of ancient Egypt and dedicated their lives to the pursuit of virtue and holiness. According to tradition, he...
Latin America falls behind—again
Economic globalization has brought many economic benefits to the planet, but it’s also true that the benefits have been uneven. One continent which has lagged behind much of the rest of the world is Latin America. As a recent Wall Street Journal article entitled “Latin America Hangs On to Its Economic Gloom” pointed out: This year, once again, Latin America is shaping up as an economic disappointment. Brazil’s economy likely shrank slightly in the year’s first half, and Mexico’s didn’t...
Be fruitful, multiply, and grow the economy
In one of the most memorable mid-1990s episodes of The Simpsons, the curmudgeonly misanthrope Charles Montgomery Burns achieves a lifelong dream: Since the beginning of time, man has yearned to destroy the sun. I shall do the next best thing: block it out. While Mr. Burns had no use for our nearest star, the other residents Springfield were dismayed by the citywide sun-block. They understood, as Steve Martin once said, that “A day without sunshine is like, you know, night.”...
Drucker on the ‘master organization’ and the totalitarian conceit
This is the fourth in a series of essayson Peter Drucker’s early works. It was sometimes said of fascists that they “made the trains run on time.” In The End of Economic Man, Peter Drucker saw that fascists “proved” their fitness through effective organization. Technical details substituted for real social ends. But the real power of fascist organization has to do with its ambition prehensiveness. In effect, the fascist state holds up the political party and insists that all be...
Michael Novak and the ‘crisis of capitalism’
Jordan Ballor recently brought to my attention this remarkable passage from Michael Novak’s The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism, “Our moral and cultural traditions have not kept pace with our economic possibilities. We try to match new demands with a spiritual life not designed for them.” What we think of as ‘democratic capitalism,’ and the economic and political theories which under-gird it, arose out of a tradition of moral and theological reflection on the institutions, ethics, and law of early modern...
The reason America’s poor are richer than most Europeans
The U.S. has diverged from the OECD approach to economic and energy issues that critics called this weekend’s G7 Summit the “G6-plus-one.” However, a new study shows America’s less regulated, less regimented economy has generated such abundance that the poorest 20 percent of Americans are more prosperous than the average European. “If the U.S. ‘poor’ were a nation, it would be one of the world’s richest,” writes Jim Agresti of Just Facts in a new article for the Acton Institute’s...
Acton Line podcast: What is woke capitalism? Daniel J. Mahoney on ‘The Idol of Our Age’
From Gillette to Pepsi, panies are starting to market their products by advocating for social justice issues, signaling to consumers that they are “woke.” Is ‘woke capitalism’ a trend that’s truly new in the market? Is there a place for businesses ment on social issues? Acton’s president and co-founder, Rev. Robert Sirico, explains. Afterwards, Daniel J. Mahoney, professor of political science at Assumption College speaks about his newest book, “The Idol of our Age: How the Religion of Humanity Subverts...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2025 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved