Don't try to look at moral law apart from national life. St. Paul did not. Law is seen in national life. A nation is a better expression of God than an individual, because God is three, not simply one. He is a social Being, a Being of relations. And nations will last for ever. Law will always be seen worked out in national life. God has more worlds than one. Each nation is a thought of God worked out in human clay (cf. Jeremiah xviii. 1-6). Human clay lasts for ever ('I believe in the resurrection of the body'). Law will always be worked out thus. We are part of a thought of God--part of an English nation--little fragments of a huge whole. Our immortality depends on the fact that we are parts of a nation, parts of a Divine idea, which lasts for ever. Law is more completely seen in conscious than unconscious life, because God's life is conscious. Law is more completely seen { 67} in family and national than individual life, because in God Himself are seen the archetypes of human relations.
This letter is disjointed, but contains a few thoughts which may prove helpful--thoughts I have been learning from others of late.
The buds 'feeling' after each other--new life and resurrection life--a type, a pledge of fuller resurrection, of Easter life--nay, the same Life--'I am the Resurrection and the Life'--working in trees and flowers and man. What a glorious thing to live in a world which has been united with its Maker--a world of perfect law and order--a world where every infraction of law must and will be punished--a world where Love is Law and Law is Love--a world where a great thought is being realised, and will be realised in and for us! You use 'Theology' loosely--'Theology' is _the_ thing and 'Religion' is not, I think, nearly such a fine word. Theology is the Learning, Knowing, Studying God. I am sorry I have said nothing about Jewish sacrificial law. I meant to. That expresses a great fact. It dimly hints (as sacrificial law in other nations does) at the fact that the ground of the universe is self-sacrifice--that the ground of all human, whether family or national, life is a filial sacrifice. I think other nations besides Jews regarded _all_ law as coming from God; nay, I think all nations did in part at least.