Love and Law by Dudley Marvin Canright

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Sep 9, 1875

Love and Law.

By Dudley Marvin Canright

THE religious tendency of this age is to belittle the law as a stiff, galling yoke of bondage, fit only for the childhood of the race; but to exalt love as infinitely above law, to make it the measure and rule of everything. The result is a sickly sentimentalism, a lowering down of morals which is terrible to contemplate. It is, therefore, refreshing to hear from so high a source such sound words as the following. I find the article in the Examiner and Chronicle:—

“The Baccalaureate Sermon of President McCosh at Princeton College, June 27, was a timely discourse on ‘The Royal Law of Love; or Love in relation to Law and God.’ The texts were: ‘Love is the fulfilling of the law’ (Rom. 13:10); ‘If ye fulfill the royal law according to the scripture, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself, ye do well’ (James 2:8). In these passages, said he, there is reference to three things—to love, to law, and a king. I see before me an arch set upon earth, and spanning the heavens; the one side is law, the other side is love, and the keystone binding and crowning the whole is God. Our theme is the royal law of love. Let us first contemplate love and law separately, and then in their combination in God.

THE LAW.

“Of law, he said:—

“Law is in the nature of God from all eternity, and is the instrument of his government; it was inscribed on the nature of man when he was created; it was graven by God’s own finger on the granite blocks of Sinai; it was spoken in gentle and attractive tones by our Lord in the sermon on the mount, and it is written by God’s own Spirit as a new commandment on the hearts of God’s people. It goes with man wherever he goes, to tell him, if he is prepared to listen to it, what is right and what is wrong, and in the end to punish him if he refuses to obey.

“That law has been broken, but is still binding. When Moses came down from the mount with the two tables, he threw them from him and broke them when he witnessed the wickedness of the children of Israel. But he had just to re-ascend to the mount and have them written again by God’s own finger, which thing may be unto us for an allegory. Man has broken God’s law; but that law retains all its claims, and ever renews them. The law is embodied in the gospel. Christ came not to destroy the law, but to fulfil. The gospel, wherever it goes, carries within it the law fulfilled by Christ, the law still binding on his followers.

“The law has two marked features. (1.) It is imperative. It speaks as one having authority; it speaks in the name of God. It says, ‘Thou shalt do this, thou shalt not do that.’ ‘The Categorical Imperative’ was the designation given to it by the great German metaphysician. Its function is not to tell us what is, but what ought to be. All its affirmations are commands; all its negations are prohibitions. It has rewards, rich and numerous, for those who obey it. It has penalties, certain and terrible, for those who transgress it. God has a vicegerent to sustain it, in the conscience, ‘which shows the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the meanwhile accusing, or else excusing, one another.’ There is a witness within which constrains us to acknowledge its right to obedience. (2.) It is determinative. It is categorical; it has its definite requirements which it cannot forego, and will not lower. ‘Guilty or not guilty’ are the alternatives it proposes. It admits of no middle course or compromise; it accepts of no excuse; it will not listen to any plea of extenuation.

RELATION OF LOVE AND LAW.

“The planet is held in its sphere by two influences; one impelling, the other staying it. So it is with moral beings; they are drawn by love, but it is love regulated by law. It is well that the earth should have an attraction toward the sun, without which it would wander into an outer region of coldness, darkness, and destruction; but were there no restraining power, it would be drawn into the sun’s atmosphere, and be consumed by his heat. In like manner, moral excellence implies of necessity these two things, love and law; the one to attract, the other to guide in the right path.

“It is not easy to embody in human conceptions, and to express in human language, the relation of law and love. We know that the two are closely connected. Their connection is in God, the source of both. Even as God is the origin of all other things, of nature, of force, of matter, of mind, so is he also the origin of love and law. All these streams, if we follow them up sufficiently far, carry us to the Fountain. Love is the refreshing water; the law is the channel for it to flow in; and the spring is in the bosom of God. Let us love one another, for love is of God. Charity is the highest of all the graces: ‘And now abideth these three, faith, hope, and charity; but the greatest of these is charity.’ But then charity never tries to set itself above law; if it did so, it might work only mischief. ‘Love is the fulfilling of the law.’ Love takes the form of a commandment. When asked by the lawyer, ‘Which is the great commandment in the law?’ Jesus said unto him, ‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.’ Thus indissolubly are charity and commandment joined in Scripture. It is love that makes us like unto God, who is love; but the love of God is a love regulated by eternal justice.

“What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.” There is no propriety in drawing invidious comparisons as to the relative importance of the two. It might be argued that law is the higher, for it commands love, says when it is to flow, and where it is to stay. But then love is the very end for which the law exists; the end of the commandment is charity. Law without love is a mere form without life; love without law is a life without a body in which to reside. Law without love is a channel without a stream; love without law may be a stream bursting forth and spreading destruction. Let the two revolve around each other like binary stars, each with its own color, the one the complement of the other. Let righteousness stand forever on the pedestal on which he has been set up, with his high look and unbending mien the master and the guardian; and ever beside him, beneath him, and leaning upon him, yet beautiful and graceful as he, let there be seen love, with smiles upon her face and gifts in her hands.

NOT TO BE SEPARATED.

“I believe they were never separated till sin appeared. Alas, that seducer and corrupter has severed them! There has arisen a stern doctrine, which has no tenderness; whose gaze is as unmoved and unmovable as that of the Egyptian sphinx, looking out from its desert of sand. If there be theologians still dwelling in a cold palace of ice, I recommend them to let the beams of the Sun of Righteousness shine upon it and thaw it. But the defect I am now speaking of belongs rather to the seventeenth than the nineteenth century. We are now more in danger of a sentimental and a simpering faith, acting the part of a Delilah, professing love to the man who boasts that he is strong, only in the end to show how weak he is, and to consign him to blindness and darkness. Let us have charity, they say; but charity without principle to guide it may distribute its gifts very indiscriminately and injuriously. Let us have fire, they insist; but we cannot have fire without fuel to feed it, and fire cannot be allowed to burn and consume in every place and as it pleases. While the sun has a photosphere to radiate its beneficent influence, it has also a solid body to keep up the supply of heat and light. There should be a vessel to contain the pleasant incense that we offer, otherwise it will soon dissipate into insanity.

LOVE WITHOUT LAW.

“It is true that there have been men who have preached or practiced a Pharisaic morality; that is, a law without love. A law has been set forth and enforced which is not the law of love, and has driven men away from God, who is love, and from the gospel, which is essentially a message of reconciliation from God to sinful men. The terrors of the law have been used, not as by Paul to persuade men, but to tempt or drive them to rebellion or resistance. In ages past, law has been used lawlessly by monarchs and by masters. But in the present day, the tendency seems all the other way. If some preachers, in ages gone by, preached hell and damnation instead of Christ, it is possible that some in these times are so relaxed by a weak charity that they have not the courage or faithfulness to bid men flee from the wrath to come. If there have been preachers in certain ages who insisted on nothing but stern duty, there are not a few in our day who recommend love without the due restraints of law, who are tampering with the marriage relation, lowering the sacredness of wedlock, and allowing such liberty of divorce as is fitted to break up the family, which, I may remark, is the only means of securing proper moral culture, and training the rising generation to virtue. More evil may arise from lawless love, which is fascinating, than from hatred, which is repulsive. So we have no intention of changing the truths of God’s word, on the miserable pretense of making them softer and more lovable than God has made them in his word.

THE FRUITS OF SUCH TEACHING.

“It is a profound saying of one of the brothers Hare: ‘To form a correct judgment concerning the tendency of any doctrine, we should rather look at the forms it bears in the disciples than in the teacher. For he only made it; they are made by it.’ We may now see the kind of characters that are made in this school of love and humanity. There was first a turning away from the old doctrine, and this has been followed by a turning away from the old morality.”

The reform introduced by the third angel’s message touching the law of God exactly meets the needs of this generation. Every year makes this more apparent. D. M. CANRIGHT.