REPEALING LAW TO SHIELD TRANSGRESSORS.
ORIGINALLY the Federal Anti-trust Law contained a clause providing for imprisonment of parties convicted of violating its provisions. But in order to evade this part of the penalty, men who were openly disregarding the law secured the enactment by Congress of another law repealing the imprisonment clause of the penalty. Many people have condemned this repeal as a connivance of the law-making power to help out guilty parties and save them from punishment. Probably a great majority of the people of the United States would condemn such action. But many religious teachers maintain that the supreme Lawgiver has acted in the same manner. It is declared that in order to save sinners from the death penalty, He abrogated the law that condemned them. If this were true, He could justly be charged with encouraging the things which the law forbade. It would be an acknowledgment on His part that the law was unjust. But the plan of redemption reveals a very different story. Instead of repealing the law whose transgression makes one a sinner (1 John 3:4), in order to give the condemned one release, the Lawgiver Himself suffered the penalty, thus honoring the perfect, immutable law. That the moral law was not in any way affected by the Gospel, only to be emphatically vindicated, is shown by the fact that none but penitent sinners are liberated from the penalty of its transgression, and these only through faith in Christ. "He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life; and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him." John 3:36. There could be no such penalty if the law were repealed; for death is the result of sin (Rom. 6:23), and "sin is not imputed when there is no law" (Ch. 5:13). The principle of repealing law that men may be liberated from its provisions can apply only to the affairs of men; and, owing to human imperfection, and the consequent imperfection of human law, such repeals are often in the line of justice. But it is not so with the acts of God. His ways are always just, and therefore perfect. Jesus came not to destroy the law, but to fulfil it (Matt. 5:17, 18), and that it might be fulfilled in those "who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit" (Rom. 8:4). The Gospel was not designed to palliate sin or to shield the sinner, but to show up more vividly the heinousness of sin and to reform the sinner—to reconcile him to God through faith in Jesus Christ. "Do we then make void the law through faith? God forbid; yea, we establish the law." Ch. 3:31. When men were casting about for a "Lord's day," other than the day which He Himself had set apart by precept and example, why should they have settled upon Sunday, and why not on the day on which Christ died? What claim has one of these days above the other? The great sacrifice of His life for fallen man was made when He died. The penalty of sin was paid when He died. Why, then, would not that be as much the "Lord's day" as the day on which He rose from the dead? But, more pertinent still is the query, Why should man assume to make a "Lord's day" at all? Every time man undertakes to do something outside of, or foreign to, the Lord's directions, he is sure to do something contrary to His expressed will. He is sure to set his judgment above God's judgment. The Lord set apart the seventh day as His day, His "holy day," and gave the reason for it—a reason based on a fact that never can be altered. See Gen. 2:2, 3; Ex. 20:8-11. But puny man interposes his judgment, and declares that another day and another reason are more appropriate. Then he assumes that when the prophet refers to the Lord's day (Rev. 1:10), he must mean the day that man has designated, rather than the day that God Himself has chosen. Whom shall we obey? Whose is the better judgment?