The Law of God by Roswell Fenner Cottrell

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jan 11, 1883

The Law of God.

By Roswell Fenner Cottrell

BY ELD. R. F. COTTRELL.

One of the greatest of the wonders of human depravity is the idea that the moral law of God is subject to abolition or change. To suppose that that law, which was distinguished from all typical, ceremonial laws that owe their existence to the fact that sin had entered into the world, being given by the Almighty in person, by his own voice, and in his own handwriting, was only designed for a section of our race, and was subject to change or abolition, is one of the most marvelous absurdities that ever disgraced the human intellect. There is disloyalty—treason against High Heaven—in the very thought. All would know this, if they would stop to think upon it. But an eagerness for self-justification in following the customs of the world and the corruptions of apostate Christianity, blinds the mind and perverts the judgment; and the result is that we hear from the desk consecrated to the proclamation of the everlasting gospel, and from the lips of those sworn to be faithful ministers of Jesus Christ, that the holy law, the transgression of which made it necessary for the Son of God to die in order to the redemption of the transgressor, has been in part, or wholly abolished? Yes, many are the professed friends of God, who are engaged in the work of undermining and overthrowing his holy law, the only moral code he ever gave to man, and of which Jesus said that one jot or tittle should not pass from it till heaven and earth pass.

The difficulty is, they blindly work for the support of creeds and custom, not looking at the fundamental principles, nor giving a thought to the character of God, the nature of his law, and the probabilities or improbabilities of a change of the moral code of Him who has said, "I change not," and of which law the Holy Spirit testified by David that it was "perfect." Ps. 19:7. They go to work to pervert and prostitute the utterances of the New Testament which relate to the law of types and shadows that all know have been abolished, applying them to that law which is declared to be holy, just, good, spiritual, and by which is the knowledge of sin, and which is declared to be perfect and the truth itself. Rom. 7:12, 14; 3:20; Jas. 1:25; Ps. 19:7, and 119:142. They do not stop to consider how that which is perfect can be improved by a change, or what effect it must necessarily have upon the truth of God to change it.

But why all this blind antagonism to the law of God? The whole strife is concentrated upon a single point—the Sabbath of the Lord our God. But for the Sabbath, and the fact that the church, as well as the world, are trampling it under their feet, there would be no open controversy in respect to the perpetuity and immutability of the decalogue. And why should the Sabbath be singled out as unfit to have a place in the moral law, and consequently as something that must be abolished? No other answer can be given but that men have abolished the Sabbath of the Lord and substituted one of their own.

We first find the Sabbath in Eden, before sin entered the world, Gen. 2:2, 3; we trace it through the Scriptures from Genesis to Revelation, and find it one and the same thing. No other weekly Sabbath is once named in all the Book of God. And as we look to the promises of the world to come, we find the Sabbath still in existence, and all the redeemed and holy inhabitants of that bright world keeping it. Isa. 66:22, 23 Ah! if men could see the value of a part in that world, they would be willing to bear the cross of unpopular truth here. They would leave their strivings against self-evident truth, and choose the blessedness of those who keep the commandments of God, "that they may have right to the tree of life." Rev. 22:14. "If thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments." Matt. 19:17.