A Baptist Vindication of the Law.
By Editor
SOME six months ago, the Herald of Truth, Baptist organ of the Pacific Coast, was asked if that denomination held the doctrine that the moral law was abolished, in accordance with the views of Dr. Anderson, its Oregon correspondent. The editor evaded the responsibility of a direct answer, but intimated that the Herald's correspondents at large would furnish a solution of the problem. Dr. Tombes, of Los Angeles County, Cal., espoused the antinomian side in an article especially directed against the seventh-day Sabbath; but since that time no correspondent has been heard from on the subject, until, quite recently, "Bene-Berak" (who, by the way, is of the San Francisco Bulletin editorial corps), furnished an article entitled, "Words of Jesus." In this short contribution there is more than enough sound, Scriptural logic to offset the weak theology of both the "doctors" referred to. We extract as follows:— "The mission of Christ is brought out very clearly in the seventeenth verse of the fifth chapter of Matthew by the use of these words: 'Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets; I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill.' Beautiful words are these. They breathe nothing of war or of unholy ambition. Peace pervades the whole sentence. Fidelity to truth and history is at the foundation. No doubt some people would have thought more of Christ if he had come to set up himself, rather than vindicate the claims, honor, and government of another. John, as the forerunner of Christ, was very careful that his listeners should look away from him to the one who should come after him; and when that one came in the person of Jesus, he makes haste to say, 'My father is greater than I.' Christ presented no new code of morals. He simply came to magnify the law of God and make it honorable, by living a life in the flesh that fulfilled every requirement of the decalogue. This was the first and only illustration of the kind the world has ever seen, or will ever see under the present conditions of creation. What a beautiful picture of holy living was that! According to the generally accepted theory, Christ took upon himself our nature, sin alone excepted, and lived and moved among his fellows as a human being,—eating, drinking, sleeping, becoming weary with burdens, feeling sad over unappreciated kindness; and at last suffered the pangs of death, and yet in all these thirty-three years of human existence, his conduct and conversation were the perfection of the law. "Some are disposed to exact the New Testament scriptures at the expense of the Old Testament scriptures. Some even appear to think that we have outlived the Old Testament scriptures. Christ did not so think or teach. His frequent commendatory allusions to the law and to the testimony abundantly and forcibly demonstrate his appreciation of the same. God's laws as given on Sinai are just as binding on the human family to-day as when first committed to Moses on the two tables of stone, written with the finger of God. The world will never outlive these laws. They will never be changed to suit our convenience or circumstances, or the peculiarities of the age in which we live. 'I am the Lord' is to remain a fixed fact forever, and 'Thou shalt have no other gods before me' will never be modified to allow us to divide our worship among a variety of objects. 'Remember the Sabbath-day to keep it holy' has the same force to-day as when first proclaimed to the people. "Christ's course in this world proves his divine origin. Never man spake like him. It is not in man to act like him. He came not to destroy. He came to save. The human way of doing things is to build up at the expense of others. The human way of exaltation is to rise on the fortunes and bodies of our fellows. Human ambition for place, or power, or position, stops at no means within its grasp to accomplish its end. Everything is subordinated to the object in view. Believing that Christ had come into the world to set up a temporal kingdom, the Jews were disappointed that he did not go about that business according to their narrow and selfish standard. Christ not only showed them, by pursuing an entirely different course, that he was not of this world, but plainly told them that the kingdom he had come to set up was not of this world; that his mission was simply to restore, as far as possible, man's obedience to the law of God. He did not come to crush broken reeds; he did not come to quench smoking flax. He came to smooth the rough paths of life; to plant flowers in the place of thistles; to throw up a shade over the arid wastes, and create a spring in the desert; to put his shoulder under the other end of the burden of the heavy laden; to feed the hungry, soothe the distressed, bind up broken hearts, pour oil on troubled waters; to give beauty for ashes, and joy and gladness for heaviness and gloom.