A CORRECTION by James White

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, Cal. · Feb 17, 1881

A CORRECTION.

By James White

IN an article in the SIGNS of Jan. 20 (No. 3), on Law and Liberty, I quoted from Dr. Guard, and he is there made to say, "There is no pardon where there is no law."

This statement is truth, and important to consider. There is no pardon where there is no sin, and there is no transgression where there is no law. Hence the preaching of the gospel--an offer of pardon--without a basis of law is a nullity. It may please the ear, but it produces no deep conviction; it lacks the power for genuine conversion.

But this was not the truth spoken by Dr. Guard in the speech from which I quoted; and it is foreign to the object of the article. The Doctor's statement was, "There is no freedom where there is no law." And this is also important to consider, and a truth not so readily appreciated as the other, as some in this age of "vain religions" affect to think that law-keeping is synonymous with bondage. The very idea of keeping the law of God seems an outrage to their sense of gospel liberty! To us there appears a plain connection between law-breaking and bondage; and to every man in our penitentiaries this truth is a sad reality. And every honest free man knows that he is free because he obeys the law of the land. Why, then, should any think it strange that James called the law of God the law of liberty? He named two precepts of the Decalogue, and we cannot see how any candid person can think that it is more consistent with gospel liberty to break these precepts than to keep them. To kill and to commit adultery may be pleasing privileges to "the carnal mind" which "is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be." But carnal license is very far from gospel freedom. The former delights in sin; the latter delights in the law of God. See Ps. 1:2; 119:35, 47, 97; Rom. 7:14, 22.

We repeat what we said before, because it cannot be too much impressed upon the minds of the people, that, There can be no liberty without conservation of

rights; but anarchy or lawlessness recognizes no rights, and therefore is inconsistent with liberty. "I will walk at liberty, for I seek thy precepts." Ps. 119:45. This is the Bible method of walking at liberty. They who choose any other will one day be made to realize that they have made an unfortunate choice.

J. H. W.