p. 315 | The Law of God by R. F. Cottrell

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Oct 24, 1878

The Law of God.

By R. F. Cottrell

BY ELDER R. F. COTTRELL.

Most sacred, most exalted theme!—a theme that never can be exhausted. Human language cannot reach the hights of that glorious, holy law, the admiration of angels and of holy men—that divine law given by the voice of God, and written with his own finger, and comprehended under ten short precepts, the whole duty of man! Inspiration has declared it "perfect;" and enlightened human reason responds, "It is perfect." The first commandment directs us to make the Creator the object of our supreme love and reverence. That is right. If he be our Creator, Preserver and supreme Benefactor, we ought to treat him, and none other as such. The second forbids idolatry. That certainly is right. The third forbids profaneness. The fourth fixes a time for religious worship. If there be a God, we ought surely to be worshiped. It is suitable that there should be an outward homage, significant of our inward regard. If God be worshiped, it is proper that some time be set apart for that purpose, when all may worship him harmoniously and without interruption. One day in seven is certainly not too much; and I do not know that it is too little. The fifth defines the peculiar duties arising from the family relations. Injuries to our neighbor are then classified by the moral law. They are divided into offences against life, chastity, property, and character; and the greatest offense in each class is expressly forbidden. The greatest injury to life is murder; to chastity, adultery; to property, theft; to character, perjury. Now the greatest offense must include the less of the same kind. Murder must include every injury to life; adultery every injury to purity, and so of the rest. And the moral code is closed and perfected by a command forbidding every improper desire in regard to our neighbor.

The summary of the law of God, given in the ten commandments, consists of eight negative, and two positive precepts; and the two positive precepts are brought together in the midst of the law. These bear a resemblance to each other, the one teaching the duty of special honor to God, the other, honor to parents, to whom the son or the daughter is in a similar relation as that of man to his God.

These commandments are to teach us supreme love to God, and equal love to our fellow men. "Love is the fulfilling of the law." We cannot love God and our neighbor, while we willingly violate one of these holy precepts. "This is the love of God, that we keep his commandments." Four of the ten precepts teach us how to love God. Three of these tell us how we should not treat our Creator; the fourth enjoins a positive act of honor and worship to him as our Maker. The Sabbath is the memorial of God's rest from the work of creation. Hence it is the memorial of the creation—the memorial of God the Creator. God not only forbids us to dishonor him by having other gods, worshiping created things, and profaning his sacred name, but he positively enjoins us to reverence him by remembering the day of his Sabbath, or rest, to keep it holy to him. The Sabbath is sacred to his memory. And it is the only institution given for this express purpose, and this alone. We honor God by keeping each precept of his law; but he has given us the Sabbath that we may, by keeping it, give expression especially to our love, reverence, and obedience to him. Is it not reasonable that we should keep this precept?

The second branch of the law teaches us to love our neighbor. It begins with the positive precept to honor parents. The spirit of this precept carried out would result in honoring all men according to their character, station, and our relation to them. Hence we read, "Honor to whom honor is due; in honor preferring one another;" and, "Honor all men. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honor the king." In the five remaining precepts we are forbidden all wrong acts and even desires in regard to our neighbor and that which is his. "The law of the Lord is perfect."

In the language of an apostle of Jesus Christ, this law is "holy, just, and good." It is not only holy in its character and just in its demands, but good, because its observance would promote the best good of mankind. All men would like to have all others act toward them in accordance with its requirements. Every sane mind approves of its just principles. No one would have it changed in the least, in respect to the treatment which they are to receive from others. Why then should any one wish it abolished—destroyed—or changed in the least particular? It would seem that no man in his senses would dare to take his position against it, holding that it has been abolished or changed in the least. Then wonder, O Heavens! and be astonished and greatly amazed, O Earth! when men professing to be the friends and lovers of God take this bold and blasphemous position, and attempt to prove it by the Bible!

An aged, and should-be venerable, minister of the gospel, in a discourse upon the Sabbath-question, addressing himself by his given name, said, "Levi, do you believe the law of God is dead? I do." And this was said with reference to the moral law, that holy, perfect code which contains the Sabbath precept. What can a demon say more? Indeed the demons know better than this. They "believe and tremble" in view of their transgressions of that righteous law, and the divine vengeance which they fear as the consequence.

But why do professed Christians claim that that holy, just, and good law has been abolished? It is all on account of one, and only one, precept of the law, the Sabbath commandment. Good men find no fault with any other precept of the entire code. Through erroneous teaching and false tradition they find themselves violating the letter of this commandment, not observing the day named in the commandment, the seventh day, the day that became the "Sabbath [or rest] of the Lord" from the fact that he rested upon it. They have been taught that Christ changed the day of the Sabbath from the seventh to the first day of the week, the day on which he rose from the dead. They do not stop to consider that it is an impossibility to change God's rest-day to a day on which he did not rest, as much as so it would be to change the day of Christ's resurrection to a day on which he did not rise.

But experience has taught that when they look for Scripture proof of this change of the day, it is not to be found. What then is to be done? Instead of acknowledging and obeying the truth, the position is taken that the Sabbath was a Jewish institution and has been abolished; and finding upon trial that they cannot prove this, unless they can prove that the entire code with which it is connected has been destroyed, they undertake to prove that the whole moral law has been done away.

An instance will illustrate this. At Newfane, N. Y., the people had been stirred by the preaching of the Bible Sabbath. A Wesleyan Methodist minister came and gave out that he would preach on the Sabbath question. What was my surprise to hear him, in the very commencement of his discourse, appeal to 2 Cor. 3:7 and onward to prove that the law, or "that form" of it, which was written and engraven in stones was done away. Those who choose to bear the name of Wesley ought to be consistent, to teach the great principles of truth as he taught them. But when the speaker and the audience were reminded how Wesley did teach the perpetuity of the moral law, declaring that "there is no room for that poor evasion with which some have delighted themselves greatly, namely, that the law must pass away, that the gospel might be established," his reply was that Wesley was in this aiming a blow at Antinomians. Yes, he was; and it was just such Antinomians as we have at the present time bearing his name who teach the very thing which he condemned, namely, that the law of ten commandments has been superceded by the gospel.

Had the church continued to keep the Sabbath, as the disciples of Jesus did, "according to the commandment," no Christian would ever have been seduced into the horrible audacious doctrine that the law which was written by the finger of God has been done away. When they tell us boldly that the ten commandments have been abolished, they mean the Sabbath; and when they are not so bold, but qualify it as "the law," they mean the Sabbath, and nothing else. Is it not strange that they cannot discern that it is a lie that they are trying to prove?—that truth never stands in need of such shifts and evasions? But when men are given up to their own chosen deceptions, they are described by the prophet thus: "He feedeth on ashes; a deceived heart hath turned him aside, that he cannot deliver his soul, nor say, is there a lie in my right hand?" Isa. 44:20.

Did the great Jehovah commit such an oversight as to put with his own finger a Jewish ordinance which was to attain its end and be abolished, into the very midst of his moral law, which is co-existent with his divine nature and attributes? And then, having discovered the mistake, could his wisdom devise no way to dispose of that one precept, but to abolish the whole code "written and engraven in stones?" And cannot men in their senses see the flagrant folly and madness of representing the character of the great God, whom they profess to worship, in such a light?

Now why should the Sabbath cause so much trouble in men's minds as to necessitate the abolition of the entire law of which it is part, in order to get it out of the way? Why should the memorial of God—of his works and his rest—be so much despised? Why should that which the word of God teaches us to call "a delight," be called by men "a yoke of bondage?" Why that which Jesus said was "made for man" be degraded with the title of "the old Jewish Sabbath"? Why should that which He said was "for man" be said to be "against us," and "contrary to us," so that it must be taken "out of the way"? How has "the holy of the Lord, honorable" become so dishonorable? And why should it be esteemed a galling yoke, and grievous to be borne, to rest on the day on which God rested, the only day he ever blessed and sanctified, while it is perfectly easy, and compatible with gospel freedom to observe another day in the same way, a day on which the word of God has placed no distinguishing honor, but reckons it with "the six working days"? Isa. 58:13; Mark 2:27; Eze. 46:1.

It is true that the Sabbath and its commandment have some distinguishing peculiarities; but I can see no reason why these should single out this precept of the law for abolition, and its Sabbath for destruction. Let us examine some of these peculiarities, for the purpose of ascertaining whether they are such in their nature as to consign the Sabbatic institution to oblivion. 1. The fourth commandment is the only one of the ten which demands a specific act of honor, reverence, obedience, and worship toward the great Creator. 2. It is the only precept which distinguishes the true and living God from all "the gods that have not made the heavens and the earth." See Jer. 10:10, 11. 3. It is the only one of the ten which goes back to the creation for the reason of its institution and observance. 4. Going back to the account of the creation, we find the Sabbath the first revealed institution of the worship of God. 5. The Sabbath is the only institution which Jesus says was made for man; and from the account of the creation we find it made for him while in his innocence in Eden. 6. After the law of types and shadows was "nailed to the cross," we are expressly told that the disciples of Christ "rested the Sabbath day according to the commandment," and all may know that this Sabbath was the seventh day, the day named in the commandment; for the next day was "the first day" of the New Testament week. Luke 23:56; 24:1. 7. This seventh Sabbath is the only weekly Sabbath named in the whole Bible, from Genesis to Revelation; and we are assured in prophecy that it shall be observed in the world to come. Isa. 66:22, 23.

Do these things disqualify this Sabbath to hold a place in God's law, and stamp the fourth commandment as subject to change or abolition? Is there anything in its peculiarities which would lead to such an inference? Every one who has reasoning faculties and will use them knows better. Whence then comes the preposterous idea that this perfect, holy, just and good law of God ever needed any amendment? Nothing but the false doctrines and traditions of men ever suggested such a thought. But for the Sabbath, the law would be right; and but for the fact that men have departed from the Sabbath to keep a doctrine of men, the Sabbath, as it is in the law of God, would be right. Jesus, knowing that this great departure from God and his law would come, affirmed the perpetuity of every jot and tittle of it "till heaven and earth pass." See Matt. 5:17-20.

Dear reader, I humbly beseech you, as one who loves you, to love and honor the holy law of God. Yield to its every requirement, and you will find it not only just, but good. Nothing is unreasonable in one of its requirements; and it requires the very same things now that it did from the beginning. In a very little while we shall be judged by it; for signs and prophecies fulfilled show unmistakably that we are near the end of time. And at this very moment the last message of warning promised in prophecy, Rev. 14:9-12, is spreading over the earth, calling the attention of the people to "the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus." In almost every nation the true people of God are returning to the Sabbath of the Lord, and keeping it according to the commandment. The Sabbath question is agitating men's minds as never before since the commencement of the Reformation. The people are being tested whether they will keep the commandments of God, preparatory to the judgment.

Said Jesus, "If thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments." Again, "Blessed are they that do his commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life, and enter in through the gates into the city." I humbly hope to enter. Will you meet me there? If you never meet me here, may we clasp our glad hands there!