ETERNAL VERITIES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 3 June 1940, Page 9

ETERNAL VERITIES

BRITISH IDEAS OF LAW. “For our British ideas of law we owe a great deal to the Roman Empire and especially to the Stoic teachers of whom Cicero was one of the most distinguished,” said Dr N. Micklem, in a recent address. “ ’True Law.’ said Cicero, ‘is right reason, congruent with nature, universally diffused, constant and eternal, which summons to duty by commanding and restrains from wrong by forbidding . . . From this Law nothing may be taken away, nor indeed can senate or people free us from this Law .... But all peoples at every time Law —one, eternal, immutable—shall constrain, and One shall be as it were Master and Emperor or all. even God.' This the Stoics called ‘the law of nature.’ The Stoics meant very much what St Paid meant when he spoke of a law of God written on the hearts of all men. For instance, that a man should keep his word, that he should not oppress the poor, that he should respect his parents and care for his family, that he should do justly and love mercy—such commandments have not to be taught men; they arc written in the common conscience of mankind. No law of the State can make it right for you to oppress the poor or neglect your children; it would be ’against human nature,’ against the! law of God.”