The World's Law Book by B. W. I.

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Apr 5, 1883

The World's Law Book.

By B. W. I.

IN the general exercises of a village Sunday-school recently, the superintendent read the ten commandments as given on Mount Sinai. The binding of the large Bible used on the occasion was unusual and peculiar. It was that of ordinary law books—smooth sheepskin, with red upper title and dark lower title. This was a trivial matter, but it was suggestive.

The Bible is a book of laws; God's law to the world, every word of it—statements, warnings, threatenings, entreaties, invitations, promises, offers of pardon, mercy, and full salvation. But are not the invitations and proffers of mercy matters of choice to men? Yes; but God commands men to choose them. The Bible "is a book where more is understood than expressed."

The intimation of a wish by the parent is law to a loving and obedient child. So God's will, though made known in the mildest whisper of a suggestion, is law. Disobedience is at the soul's peril. Having disobeyed, salvation is purely of sovereign grace. And this grace men are commanded to seek and accept. Men convicted of sin, and realizing their peril because of their sins, seek deliverance. They seek it, however, in their own way and by methods of their own. God commands them to seek it in his way. They that thus seek, find. This is God's law of grace. Instances have been known among men where criminals have refused the pardon granted, and insisted upon remaining in prison. They have been ejected from the prison and liberty forced upon them. God never forces pardon and salvation on any one. They must accept it or perish.

The divine law is letter and spirit. Acceptable obedience is not that of the letter merely; nor merely of what men may conceive to be the spirit of the law; but the obedience of both letter and spirit as the one interprets the other, an interpretation which sacrifices neither. God's law is obeyed in the spirit of it when with the heart we submit to the letter. A disposition, or a determination, to evade God's law is manifest disobedience. The character of the action is colored by the disposition and desire of the heart. With God, this disposition and intent of the heart is everything. Men evade human laws. No man can successfully evade the divine law. God's "commandments are exceeding broad."

Sophistry and falsehood, when God's law interferes with our wishes and plans, are natural to the human heart. A child being asked if in doing a certain thing he had not broken one of God's commandments, said "he didn't know, but he guessed he had cracked it." Another child, being told that it was wrong to drive horses on Sunday except in such a case as of a physician called to visit the sick, said, "Play this is a doctor's horse," and snapped his whip at his imaginary steed. These were children, but how like men they reasoned. At a church fair, a member desiring to raise some money on the cake which was intended as a gift to the pastor, proposed that chances be sold, and the drawing be so arranged that the prize should come to the pastor.

The late William H. Seward once stirred our nation by asserting the doctrine of a "Higher Law" than man's will. God's law is the highest law in the universe. From it there is no appeal. Nor shall one jot or tittle fail of its full accomplishment. Our law-makers, our various executives, as well as the sovereign people, who are too often law-breakers; should understand this. Chief-Justice Hornblower declared the Bible to be "the standard of righteousness." Daniel Webster, the great expounder of constitutional law, said, "It is the book of all others for lawyers as well as divines."

However God's word may be bound, every one should remember that it is God's law to men, and by it men will be judged in the last great day.—B. W. I., in N. Y. Examiner.