Excellency of the Divine Law.
3. Its excellency is further seen in its power to secure the happiness of the entire universe. Poetry is poor, and the imagination altogether inadequate to exhibit the scene which would everywhere and always meet our eye were the law of God perfectly obeyed by all. Every individual being possessed of those feelings which we have just alluded to, all would possess in themselves a source of unbounded happiness. Moreover, the mind of the individual would not have to depend merely upon itself, but every other being would regard him with perfect love, and would seek his welfare. And thus, all loving and all loved, every heart would be attuned to harmony, and every voice in concert would sweetly swell the universal chorus, for God would be exalted to his proper throne, and would reign supreme over willing and delighted subjects, who were ever yielding the homage of love to a God of love; while the feeling of every heart towards the Great Supreme first, and then towards all fellow-creatures, being precisely that the exercise of which causes exuberant gladness, and this being, in such a supposed state, uninterrupted, our happiness would meet with no rude check, and being perfect, so would our bliss be perfect also. What a delightful vision is presented to our view. The God whose name is love, sitting on the throne of universal empire, and swaying the scepter of love over all the intelligent creation; the teeming myriads of the universe burning with seraphic love to him, acquiescing, delighting in his will, and dwelling rejoicingly in his presence; their hearts being under the soft control of love, they regard their fellow-creatures with a beaming eye, and the melody of love is heard in every whisper, and in every note. Nor is all this a pleasant fiction. Such is Heaven. Law, perfectly observed there—the law of love—secures the happiness of all. And it is nothing but the universal neglect of God's law which has transformed this beauteous earth into the wilderness that it is. Oh how wretched has the infraction of law made man everywhere! How earth sighs, from her deepest recesses, over the ills which have resulted therefrom, and wherewith humanity is weighed down and crushed! Whenever man causes a sigh to rise from any heart, that sigh is wrung from the bosom by his violation of God's law. Trace up, then, all the misery which has filled the world, to this, its proper source, and say whether the beauty of the law is not apparent in the happiness it can cause, and in the wretchedness which its violation occasions. 4. Its excellency is seen in the fact that the moral sense, the conscience, of every man approves it. Among even those who, alas for them! impiously set themselves against God and his revelation, there is not one that can take any exception against this law. All have broken it, and all by nature dislike it, as a law for themselves, and refuse to obey it; but all have a perception of its excellence. And that part of it especially which refers to our behavior to each other, has been adopted by all classes, and has received even from the ungodly the designation,—"the golden rule." And every man wishes all others to regulate their conduct toward himself by this law, whether he is governed by it or not. And this universal demand, even from those who have violated it, is a universal testimony to its excellence. Yes, all men love to see it exhibited and observed by others. For who is there so base as not to approve the self-denying philanthropy of a Howard, the untiring humanity of a Clarkson, and of many others whom it would be easy to mention? Yet all that was so admirable in them was conformity, in some good degree, to this law. How often men admire, without giving themselves the trouble to think what it is that imparts loveliness to the objects of their applause. You may, perhaps, see one who is fitted to adorn the choicest circles, leaving the elegant occupations and refined society of her graceful home, entering the abode of poverty and affliction, to administer with her own hands to the wants of the suffering, or, by her soft and sweet-toned consolations, soothing the mind of the miserable. You may observe her encountering all that delicacy shrinks from, a ministering angel to the wretched. You speak in glowing terms of her goodness, but do you recognize that such a one is only complying, and that but partially, with one branch of this beauteous law? What we instantly hate, too, is a violation of this law. We see a sordid wretch, who, having gold in his coffer, loves to keep it there; a son of misery, aye, a daughter of sorrow humbly sues for a trifle from his abundance; but the vile lover of his yellow earth turns a deaf ear to the pleadings of distress; anguish may rise, and swell, and overwhelm the soul—he beholds it all unmoved, his heart is like the nether mill-stone. We vent our indignation—honest, praiseworthy indignation. But the conduct so justly stigmatized is precisely the opposite to that enjoined by God's law, and is expressly denounced by it. See how, when unbiased by personal considerations, we take part with the law, and approve it as "holy, and just, and good." Thus in the meed of admiration which we bestow on virtue, and in the frown of indignation with which we greet the contrary, does the moral sense of all men testify to the excellence of the law. Partial conformity to it presents us with partial excellence and partial happiness; while perfect conformity thereto, is perfect excellence and perfect happiness. 5. The excellency of the law is further shown in the fact that the Saviour, when intending to exhibit a perfect model of loveliness of character, made it his rule. It has been already remarked that the loveliest character that we ever met with derived all that was really excellent from conformity to the law of God. There is no imaginable excellence that it does not comprehend. Take, then, the finished portrait of perfection which we have in the whole demeanor of Jesus of Nazareth. Whatever forbearance, magnanimity, benevolence, self-renunciation, he manifested, he never went a hair's breadth beyond the requirements of this law. Did he forget his own fatigue at Jacob's well? Did he wipe away the tears from the widowed cheek of her of Nain? Did he weep in sympathy with the sorrow-stricken sisters of Lazarus? Did he go about doing good, laboring to reclaim the wanderer, to instruct the ignorant, to bless the wretched, and to raise all about him to virtue and happiness? Did he bury in oblivion his cruel wrongs, and pray for his very murderers? Did he forget his own anguish on the cross, when his weeping mother caught his eye, and when the accents of the dying thief fell upon his ear? In no one instance did he ever step beyond the circle law had drawn. In all he did, when in childhood and youth, he was subject to his parents; when in after life he lived only for the good of all around him and for the glory of his Father, he only, as it was predicted of him, magnified the law and made it honorable, by complying with its demands. Study then the character of Jesus, gaze on the exquisite loveliness that was embodied in his demeanor; and as you admire, recognize therein neither more nor less than law perfectly observed:— "For in his life the law appears,
Drawn out in living characters." H. H. Dobney (Baptist), in "Future Punishment."