The Foundations of Belief : Being Notes Introductory to the Study of Theology

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Excerpt: ... CHAPTER I NATURALISM AND ETHICS The two subjects on which the professors of every creed, theological and anti-theological, seem least anxious to differ, are the general! substance of the Moral Law, and the character of the sentiments with which it should be regarded. That it is worthy of all reverence; that it demands our ungrudging submission; and that we owe it not merely obedience, but love--these are commonplaces which the preachers of all schools vie with each other in proclaiming. And they are certainly right. Morality is more than a bare code of laws, than a catalogue raisonnd of things to be done or left undone. Were it otherwise, we must change something more important than the mere customary language of exhortation. The old ideals of the world would have to be uprooted, and no new ones could spring up and flourish in their stead; the very soil on which they grew would be sterilised, and the phrases in which all that has hitherto been regarded as best and noblest in human life has been expressed, nay, the words 'best' and 'noblest' themselves, would become as foolish and unmeaning as the incantation of a forgotten superstition. This unanimity, familiar though it be, is surely very remarkable. And it is, the more remarkable because the unanimity prevails only as to conclusions, and is accompanied by the widest divergence of opinion with regard to the premises on which these conclusions are supposed to be founded. Nothing but habit could blind us to the strangeness of the fact that the man who believes that morality is based on a priori principles, and the man who believes it to be based on the commands of God, the transcendentalist, the theologian, the mystic, and the evolutionist, should be pretty well at one both as to what... C.S. Lewis Called this one of top 20 most influential books he ever read.