(Before Dr. Frank Crane became a minister he thought of many other careers. He studied law for a year with a lawyer in Shelbyville, Illinois—not far from where your correspondent grew up—“But two or three visits to the court-room cured me of that…While I loved law as a science or a collection of ideas, I was repelled by the rough-and-tumble of courtrooms” he wrote in an autobiographical essay many years later. But law, universal law, remained part of him and in the wake of the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, we thought of Dr. Crane’s reflection on—)

LAW

I am Law. I am Nature’s way. I am God’s way.

By me comes order, unity. In my hand I hold three gifts: health, happiness, and success.

Those who do not follow me are devoured by the dogs of disease, misery, and failure.

The ignorant fear me; they run from my face; they tremble at my voice; but the wise love me and seek me forever. I am their desired lover.

Fools think to outwit me and that no son of man has ever done.

I am more clever than the cleverest. I am stronger than the strongest. I am old as God. I never sleep. I never err. I am virile as youth. I am accurate as mathematics. I am beautiful as poetry. I am sweet as music.

Without me there could be no art, no harmony of sounds, no cham of landscape or picture, no government, no life.

I am the secret of goodness. I am the horror of sin.

I am the eternal path, and besides me there is none else. Without me men wander in the labyrinth of death.

Heaven is where I am. Hell is where I am not.

I am efficiency in man. I am loveliness in woman.

I am everywhere: in every wrinkle of the infinite waves of water, in the oak, in the brain, in nourishment, in excreta, in disease, in soundness, in the lover’s clasp, in the corps, in the stars, in the storms.

I whirl. I dance. I flame. I freeze, but always mathematically. For I am more intricate than calculus, more accurate than any instrument.

They that live by me find peace.

They that kiss me find love.

They that walk with me come at last to God.

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