OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Dec 5, 1895

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 21, No. 48.

OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW.

We can not agree with those who say that there is a radical difference between the Old Testament and the New in their ethical standpoints, that of the Old Testament being exterior, the New, interior; the Old Testament dealing with conduct, the New, with character; one prescribing rules, the other principles; the first regulating the life, the second breathing into the soul a new spirit. In these words truth is sacrificed to antithesis. Moses most emphatically declared that obedience to God's law required not only external morality, but also love. “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind;” and the key texts of the poetic books of the Bible are, “Create in me a clean heart, . . . and renew a right spirit within me,” and, “Thou desirest truth in the inward parts.” . . . The Old Testament, as well as the New, continually puts religion into these three words, Love, Trust, and Obey.—Wilbur F. Crafts, in Must the Old Testament Go? pp. 79, 80.