p. 203 | THE LAW IS SPIRITUAL by Walker

Publishing Committee · Battle Creek, Mich. · Nov 13, 1860

THE LAW IS SPIRITUAL.

By Walker

ACCORDING to the constitution which God has given the soul, it must feel the want of spiritual mercies before it can feel love for the giver of those mercies; and just in proportion as the soul feels its lost, guilty, and dangerous condition, in the same proportion will it exercise love to the being who grants spiritual favor and salvation. How, then, could the spiritual want be produced in the souls of men, in order that they might love the spiritual benefactor?

Not by temporal bondage and temporal suffering, because these would lead men to desire a temporal deliverance. The only possible way by which man could be made to hope for and appreciate spiritual mercies, and to love a spiritual deliverer, would be to produce a conviction in the soul itself of its evil condition, its danger as a spiritual being, and its inability, unaided, to satisfy the requirements of a spiritual law, or to escape its just and spiritual penalty. If man could be made to perceive that he was guilty and needy; that his soul was under the condemnation of that holy law of God, he would then, necessarily, feel the need of a deliverance from sin and its consequences; and in this way only could the soul of man be led to appreciate spiritual mercies, or love a spiritual benefactor.

Mark another fact in connection with the foregoing which is to be especially noticed, and which will be developed fully—The greater the kindness and self-denial of a benefactor manifested in our behalf, the warmer and the stronger will be the affection which his goodness will produce in the human heart.

Here then, are two facts growing out of the constitution of human nature: First, the soul must feel its evil and lost estate, as the prerequisite condition upon which alone it can love a deliverer. Second, the degree of kindness, and self-denial in a benefactor, temporal or spiritual, graduates the degree of affection and gratitude that will be awakened for him.

Now in view of these necessary conditions, mark the means which God has used, and the manifestations which he has made of himself in order to secure the supreme love of the human soul.

In the first place the soul is brought to see and feel its evil and lost condition, and its need of deliverance.

At the advent of Jesus the Roman world was in precisely the condition which was necessary to prepare it for his doctrines. The Jews had the moral law written in their scriptures and recognized it as the will of Jehovah; and the Gentiles had its requirements concerning their duty to each other, and their duty to worship written in their hearts. Both the doctors among the Jews and the schools of philosophy among the Gentiles, especially those of the Stoics, taught the obligatory nature of many of the important moral duties which man owes to man. No period in the history of the heathen mind ever existed before or since, when man's relations to man were so clearly perceived. The Jews, however, had these advantages, that while the few intelligent Gentiles received the instruction of the philosophers in relation to morals, as truth, it was truth without any higher sanction than that of being spoken by wise men, and therefore it contained in itself no authority or weight of obligation to bind the conscience, while they had the moral law as a rule of duty, sanctioned by the authority and infinite justice of Jehovah. Thus the moral virtues assumed the sanctions of religious duties; and they had not only the moral precepts thus sanctioned, but having been taught the true character of God their religious duties were likewise united in the same sacred decalogue.

Now Jesus applied the divine law directly to the soul, and laid its obligations upon the movements of the will, and the desires. He taught that all wrong thoughts and feelings were acts of transgression against God, and as such would be visited with the penalty of the divine law. Thus he made the law spiritual and its penalty spiritual, and appealing to the authority of the supreme God, he laid its claims upon the naked soul—he entered its secret recesses—he flashed the light of the divine law upon the awful secrets known only to the soul itself; and with the voice of God he spoke to the "I" of the mind—Thou shalt not will, nor desire, nor feel wickedly.