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LAW AND LIBERTY

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Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jan 20, 1881

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 7, No. 3.

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LAW AND LIBERTY.

In this age of antinomian blindness we often hear men talking about "the bondage of the law." They think it is not only a denial of Christ but a forfeiting of our Christian privileges to keep the law of God. When the Scriptures plainly say that the essence of the law is found in "the golden rule;" that the law is founded on love, and is fulfilled only in love, it is passing strange that any reader of the Bible should advance the idea that obedience to the law is a sacrifice of Christian liberty! The obedience of love to God inconsistent with gospel freedom in Christ! Outside of "theology" such an inconsistency is rarely found.
The psalmist said, "I will walk at liberty, for I seek thy precepts." Ps.119:4, 5. And the apostle calls the law of God "the law of liberty." Jas. 2:12. Why should this seem mysterious to any? Is there any necessary conflict between law and liberty? We think there is a necessary disagreement between law-breaking and liberty. Sin brings bondage; obedience ensures liberty.
Dr. Guard, late of California, now of Baltimore, recently lectured in the course of the "Boston Monday Lectures," on which occasion he said:—
"Christianity appreciates fully, and sympathizes with, and has ever been the generator and defender of, free thought; but let me understand what the meaning of this word 'freedom' is. There is no pardon where there is no law. Let that be accepted. License requires no law; but freedom does."
This is plain, simple truth; but weighty and powerful truth. There can be no liberty without conservation of rights; but anarchy, or lawlessness, recognizes no rights, and therefore will not regard liberty.
It is a proposition which cannot be controverted, that only lawless spirits oppose law. The spirit of obedience will always "delight in the law of God after the inward man." "They that forsake the law praise the wicked; but such as keep the law contend with them." Prov. 28:4.
J. H. W.