point out to him that their commands are not simply theirs. They rest on some more ultimate authority.
They may suggest that the ultimate moral authority is the law of the land. What the law of the land commands is right, and what it forbids is wrong. But this conception of the authority of the moral law is defective; and in two ways. In the first place, the law of the land is not so comprehensive as the moral law. The law of the land places no restriction upon a host of actions which the moral law declares to be wrong. The moral law states that they are wrong, whether they are punishable under the law of the land or not. Further, it is simply not true that the authority of the moral law or duty depends on the law of the land. It is the other way about. The law of the land depends for its authority on the moral law. An action is not wrong because the law of the land says it is wrong. The law of the land says it is wrong because it is wrong, and unless the act is wrong in itself, the law of the land cannot make it so. There is an authority superior to the law of the land.
Does this authority reside in the will of God? Such a code of moral law as the Ten Commandments derives its authority from the will of Jehovah. The moral laws of the Mohammedans are dependent for their authority on the will of Allah as revealed in the Koran. But the moral consciousness soon begins to perceive defects in this formulation of the authority of the moral law. The will of God is revealed in various Holy Books, the Bible, the Koran, and so on. Now the moral laws enshrined in these
