Untitled article by Editor

Publishing Committee · Battle Creek, Mich. · May 12, 1859

PERPETUITY OF THE MORAL LAW. No. 2.

By Editor

With a seeming determination to take as limited and circumscribed views of things as possible, W. G. Springer comes to us again this week on the perpetuity of the Moral law. No doubt the subject is growing to him very complicated. It will grow more so still before he makes good his proposition that God's law varies in different ages of the world. He accuses us of raising in our last a number of points and side issues. We were only endeavoring to follow him and to reply to some of the minor or secondary points with which he opened this discussion. But that no more time might be spent in this manner, we proposed, at the close of our remarks, six questions which lie at the very foundation of this subject, for W. G. S. to answer. For it is utterly futile to think of conducting a discussion to profit by picking here and there at what we may consider flaws in another's theory, taking exceptions to an occasional mode of expression, and confining ourselves to secondary and so comparatively unimportant points. We must first agree upon some general principles to which we can appeal as authority; we must both have some common ground on which to anchor; then we can test the legitimacy of our deductions. If we cannot agree on any general principles, there, manifestly is the theater of our discussion till we can. To arrive at this ground was the object of those questions. How then does W. G. S. treat them? Does he proceed to their consideration so as to avoid in future these minor points and side issues against which he complains? Not at all; but he passes over them entirely, adhering strictly to his former policy which we can but regard as mere quibblings around the plainest principles. Whether or not he has taken this course to gain time in the consideration of those knotty questions the future will reveal. We could wish however that he had proceeded at once to the real question at issue which is contained in them. Had he done so, his present effort would have been saved entirely. Let us test it on one of the questions! The fourth question was, Will God judge the world at last by diverse rules of judgement? Had Bro. S. taken up this point, and answered this question in the negative, we should have had the admission that there is a standard of morality to which all our race, the first man as well as the last, are alike amenable, and by which we shall all be judged in the great day. By the side of such an admission, his present remarks about Adam and Eve, the "apples" and the forbidden fruit, are inconceivably puerile. But if he answers that question in the affirmative, and declares that God will judge the world at last by diverse rules of judgment, he "brings his sanity to serious doubt;" for this would be to admit that God who at all times has required his rational creatures to develop a holy character—to be holy for he is holy—has given them different standards by which to become so, thereby showing that what he esteemed essential to the development of a good character in one age he did not in another, thus making himself a changeable being, in contradiction to that unchangeableness which the Scriptures declare to be one of his especial attributes. He may take which horn of this dilemma he chooses: He will find either of them for his present belief very long and sharp.

Our friend wishes to know what we mean by the term "law," the "moral law," and the "law of Moses." Look at this a moment. He at first requested us to investigate with him the law question, because, having read our pamphlets, he could not agree with their teaching. If, now, he has read as he claims, he knows as well as we what we mean by the term "moral law;" but if he has not examined so far as this, he is altogether hasty in calling for a discussion, and had better suspend till he finds out what we do believe. Yet he pretends to be held of necessity to the supposition that we mean by the term law the prohibition that rested upon Adam in regard to the forbidden fruit; and that "the obedience of the law was eating apples and not eating of the forbidden fruit." A disputant who will make so ungenerous an application as this, gives every evidence of being hard pushed. We can define again if he wishes it. We mean then by the terms "law" and "moral law," that law which regulates our relation to God and our fellow-men, summarily contained in the ten commandments as uttered by God from Sinai. By the "law of Moses" we mean the regulations peculiar to the typical dispensation of which he was the mediator. The prohibition laid upon Adam in regard to a certain tree of the garden was not the moral law, but only a test of his obedience to that law. No better test could have been given under the circumstances. Thus, to infringe upon that prohibition, he had, first, to bring down the authority of God's declaration second to that of some other being; thus directly violating the first precept of the decalogue; second, he had to covet, and third, he had to steal, taking that fruit which did not belong to him. His plucking the forbidden fruit was, therefore, a direct violation of three out of the ten commandments. We do not believe he was ignorant of the rest, but that God had instructed him in all things necessary to the development of a perfect character. According to S.'s view, however, Adam might have blasphemed God and killed Eve, and yet been all right, provided he kept himself from that particular tree. Such a view, those may adopt who can.

We shall not now notice all the points Bro. S. has introduced in his present effort, lest in his next he should accuse us of having raised them. Some of them however claim attention. He charges us with reasoning as though there never was but one dispensation; let us remind him on the other hand that he talks as though every man had a dispensation of his own. According to his language no person was ever under the law that Adam and Eve were; they had it all to themselves. Cain and Abel no doubt had a dispensation of their own; and some how or other, it had become wrong in their dispensation to kill, though we find no recorded command against it at that time. Will W. G. S. take the position that therefore none existed, or that murder was not wrong? Then how can he reason thus in regard to the Sabbath? We find no one of the ten commandments written out previous to the exode; nor is there any need that they should be there written, when we consider that that record was not the rule for the first generation of men to walk by, but only a succinct history of those ages written twenty-five hundred years this side the creation. We do however find direct proof that there was a command for the Sabbath in existence, as we can show to any reasonable mind, Bro. S.'s denial to the contrary notwithstanding.

The record of Gen. ii, 2, 3, is of what God did on, and afterwards to, the seventh day. He rested on it, and afterwards blessed and sanctified it, because that on it he had rested. To sanctify is to set apart to a religious use. Now we ask how the Sabbath day could be set apart to a religious use, if no directions were given to man how to use it? Mark ii, 27. It could not be. Let W. G. S. think of this. An illustration of this use of the term sanctify, may be seen in Ex. xix, 12, 23. Moses said, verse 23, "The people cannot come up to Mount Sinai; for thou chargedst us, saying, Set bounds about the mount and sanctify it." Turn back to verse 12 where this charge was given and we read, "And thou shalt set bounds unto the people round about, saying, Take heed to yourselves that ye go not up into the mount, or touch the border of it," &c. To sanctify or set apart mount Sinai, then, was to tell the people how to regard it, and command them not to come near it. So with the Sabbath. Its sanctification consisted in God's telling Adam how to regard and use it; and this information must of course constitute a command for its observance. To say that Gen. ii, 2, 3, is spoken by prolepsis, as Paley has it, is without foundation in truth or reason.

A limited space compels us to defer a few remarks till next week.