Untitled article by J. O. JOHNSTON

Pacific Press Publishing Company · New York · June 2, 1892

FromThe American Sentinel, Vol. 7, No. 22

No Righteousness by Law.

By J. O. JOHNSTON

THOSE who are now working so hard in this country for laws to enforce Sabbath observance claim, that unless compelled by law, men will fail to do their duty to God.

Mr. Crafts asks the question in his work, “Sabbath for Man,” page 447: “What can the churches, as such, do for the improvement of the Sabbath?” His answer is: “Let church conferences and assemblies continue to rebuke the Sabbath desecration of their own people, and call upon the national and State governments persistently for better laws and better enforcement.”

The keeping of a Sabbath is purely a religious duty, and Mr. Crafts knows it; for he says, “A weekly day of rest has never been permanently secured in any land except on the basis of religious obligation. Take the religion out and you take the rest out.” It is the duty of every one to keep the Sabbath, and to keep it holy, too. Thus it is a moral duty, one we owe to God. Then when Mr. Crafts “calls upon the national and State governments persistently for better laws and better enforcement” of those laws to force people to keep the Sabbath, he is simply trying to force people by law to do their duty to God. Our duty to God is to do righteousness.

Our first duty to God is to seek righteousness. Therefore to compel men to do their duty to God by law, is to compel them to do righteousness by law. If men can be made good by law, then all we

need is a perfect law to make men perfectly good.

The Psalmist says, “The law of the Lord is perfect.” Then why not, as Mr. Gault, a district secretary of the National Reform Association, says, “Set up the moral law and recognize God’s authority behind it,” and enforce this perfect law, and make everybody perfectly good? Ah! Paul in his epistle to the Galatians tells us why. “If righteousness [goodness] come by the law then Christ is dead in vain,” “for if there had been a law given that could have given life, then righteousness would have been by the law.” “But that no man is justified [made righteous] by the law in the sight of God, is evident, for, the just shall live by faith,” and the law is not of faith. Here we are told positively that even the holy law of God, much less the laws of men, cannot make men good, or compel them to do their duty to God. Paul says, “I do not frustrate the grace of God; for if righteousness come by the law then Christ is dead in vain.” Therefore it is evident that these men who are trying to make men do their duty to God by law, are attempting to “frustrate the grace of God.” And even if the Rev. M. A. Gault should succeed in his attempt to “set up the moral law, and recognize God’s authority behind it,” it would only be to “frustrate the grace of God.” Righteousness does not come by law, but by Jesus Christ.

J. O. JOHNSTON.