Law and Gospel by Uriah Smith

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Sep 16, 1875

Law and Gospel.

By Uriah Smith

N. C. Mallory of the First Baptist Church, Detroit, Michigan, preached a sermon on the Beecher trial, July 25, 1875, in which he made some good admissions touching the relation of the law and the gospel. Let all such declarations be treasured up; for in proportion as the claims of God's law, unrepealed and unchanged, are urged upon the people, these utterances are becoming scarce in the land. Mr. M. said:—

“He preached but one side of the gospel. He omitted the basal attributes of justice and holiness. This one-sided view of God is not in any sense biblical, and the Lord will not stand such a misrepresentation of his character very long. Even in Eden we hear the threatenings affixing the fearful penalty to sin. Adam and Eve failed to stand the test, and we see them fleeing before the avenging angel. A flood of water wastes the world because of sin; and Jerusalem lies in ruins because of wickedness. ‘He that believeth. . . . shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned,’ said the lips that uttered the beatitudes. ‘Behold therefore,’ said the apostle, ‘the goodness and the severity of God.’

“These two views of the Deity are absolutely essential to a conception of God. They make a perfect sphere. The sin of Mr. Beecher consists in dividing the sphere in his preaching, or he has rather held it in a fixed position. God's love has been pictured with almost superhuman pathos; his hatred of sin has been ignored. The law and the gospel have not been equally honored by this preacher. The law is the true setting of the gospel; hell is the counterpart of Heaven. Fear is essential or it would not exist. Man's fears and affections must be both appealed to. The double aspect of the Deity just fits the double capacity of man. Mr. Beecher has tried to hush the fears of sinners, but, we grant, unintentionally. He has done it by methods and to a degree he is scarcely conscious of. But he is responsible for the fact that his congregation and the world, so far as he has influenced it, have gained an irreverence for sound doctrine and religious ordinances, and rigid and discriminating morality.”

U. S.