Signs of the Times, Vol. 10, No. 24. (6/19/1884)

Signs of the Times

Jun 19, 1884

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jun 19, 1884

Faith the Christian's Privilege.

By Ellen G. White

MANY who are sincerely seeking for holiness of heart and purity of life are perplexed and discouraged. They are constantly looking to themselves, and lamenting their lack of faith; and because of this lack, they feel that they cannot claim the blessing of God. These persons mistake feeling for faith. They look away from the simplicity of true faith, and thus bring great darkness upon their souls. Instead of thinking of self, they should train their minds to dwell upon the mercy and goodness of God. They should recount his promises, believing that he will fulfill his word. When we repent of our past transgressions of his law, and resolve to render obedience in the future, we should believe that God for Christ's sake accepts us, and forgives our sins.

At times a deep sense of our unworthiness will send a thrill of terror through the soul; but this is no evidence that God has changed toward us, or we toward him. We may not feel to-day the peace and joy which we felt yesterday; but by faith we should grasp the hand of Christ, and trust him as fully in the darkness as in the light. No effort should be made to rein the mind up to an intensity of emotion; but we should faithfully perform every duty, and then calmly rest in the promises of God.

Satan may whisper, "You are too great a sinner for Christ to save." But while you acknowledge that you are sinful and unworthy, meet the tempter with the cry, "By virtue of the atonement I claim Jesus as my Saviour. I trust not to my own merits, but to the precious blood of Christ, which cleanses me. This moment I hang my helpless soul on him."

Be not discouraged because your heart seems hard. Every obstacle, every internal foe, only increases your need of Christ. He came to take away the heart of stone, and give you a heart of flesh. Look to him for grace to overcome your special faults, to put away every darling sin.

If we would permit our minds to dwell more upon Christ and the heavenly world, we should find a powerful stimulus and support in our warfare against sin. By faith we may look upon the crowns laid up for those who shall overcome; we may listen to the exultant song of the redeemed: "Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honor and power;" "for thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us to God by thy blood." Pride and love of the world will lose their power as we contemplate the infinite love of Christ, and the glories of that better land so soon to be our home.

An unyielding trust, a firm reliance upon Christ, will bring peace and joy to the soul. But let none imagine that without earnest effort on their part they can retain the assurance of God's love. When the mind has been long permitted to dwell only on earthly things, it is a difficult matter to change the habits of thought. That which the eye sees and the ear hears, too often attracts the attention and absorbs the interest. But if we would enter the city of God, and look upon Jesus in his glory, we must become accustomed to beholding him with the eye of faith here. The words and character of Christ should be often the subject of our thoughts and our conversation; and each day some time should be especially devoted to prayerful meditation upon these sacred themes.

Let none deceive themselves with the belief that God will accept and bless them while they are trampling upon one of his requirements. The willful commission of a known sin silences the witnessing voice of the Spirit, and separates the soul from God. Jesus cannot abide in the heart that disregards the divine law. God will honor those only who honor him.

"To whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are." If we indulge anger, lust, covetousness, hatred, selfishness, or any other sin, we become servants of sin. "No man can serve two masters." If we serve sin, we cannot serve Christ. The Christian will feel the promptings of sin; but he will keep up a constant warfare against it. Here is where Christ's help is needed. Human weakness becomes united to divine strength, and faith exclaims, "Thanks be to God, who giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ."

The Christian life must be a life of constant progression. Peter sets before us the successive steps, in these words: "Giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue; and to virtue, knowledge; and to knowledge, temperance; and to temperance, patience; and to patience, godliness; and to godliness, brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness, charity. For if these things be in you, and abound, they make you that ye shall neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus." "Wherefore the rather, brethren, give diligence to make your calling and election sure; for if ye do these things, ye shall never fall; for so an entrance shall be ministered unto you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ."

Here is a course by which we may be assured that we shall never fall. Those who are thus working upon the plan of addition in obtaining the Christian graces, have the assurance that God will work upon the plan of multiplication in granting them the gifts of his Spirit. Says Peter, "Grace and peace be multiplied unto you through the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord."

Our Saviour claims all there is of us; he asks our first and holiest thoughts, our purest and most intense affection. His love is infinitely more tender and self-denying than a mother's love. The price paid for our ransom testifies to his estimation of the value of the human soul. Then what ingratitude do we manifest when we withhold from him our affections and our service. Is it too much to give ourselves, our time and talents, to Him who has sacrificed all for us? Can we choose the friendship of the world before the immortal honors which Christ proffers,—"to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father on his throne"?

The apostle Paul was highly honored of God; in holy vision he looked upon scenes whose glories he was not permitted to reveal. Yet this did not lead him to boastfulness or self-confidence. He realized the importance of constant watchfulness and self-denial. "I keep my body under," he says, "and bring it into subjection, lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a cast-away."

Paul suffered for the truth's sake; and yet we hear no complaint from his lips. As he reviews his life of toil and care and sacrifice, he says, "I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us." The shout of victory from God's faithful servant comes down the line to our time: "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? . . . . Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him that loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."

Though Paul was at last confined in a Roman prison, shut away from the light and air of heaven, cut off from his active labors in the gospel field, and momentarily expecting to be condemned to death, he did not yield to doubt or despondency. From that gloomy dungeon came his dying testimony, full of a sublime faith and courage that has inspired the hearts of saints and martyrs in all succeeding ages: "I am now ready to be offered, and the time of my departure is at hand. I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, shall give me at that day; and not to me only, but unto all them also that love his appearing."

The glorious reward that awaits this hero of faith,—a crown of righteousness, and eternal life in the presence of God,—may be won by each of us. Jesus and holy angels are waiting to give us the help we need. Every prayer sent up in faith from an honest heart will be heard, and the petitioner will have his request when he needs the blessing most. Sometimes we ask for things that are not for our own good or the glory of God. When this is so, our wise and good Father hears our prayers, but gives us nothing hurtful. He will guide our feet. By divine grace, all who will may climb the shining steps from earth to Heaven, and at last, "with songs and everlasting joy," enter through the gates into the city of God.

GATHERING SEED

By Advocate of Holiness

Out in the highways wherever we go, Seed we must gather and seed we must sow; Even the tiniest seed has a power, Be it of thistle or be it a flower.

Here where it seems but a wilderness place, Wanting in beauty and wanting in grace, Some gentle creature in tenderness goes Plucking the nettle and planting the rose.

Out of those gardens so gorgeous with flowers, Seed we may gather to beautify ours; While from our own little plot we may share Something to render our neighbors more fair.

Out of each moment some good we obtain, Something to winnow and scatter again. All that we listen to, all that we read, All that we think of is gathering seed.

Gathering seed we must scatter as well; God will watch over the place where it fell. Only the grain of the harvest is ours— Shall we plant nettles, or shall we plant flowers?

That which we gather is that which we sow. Seed-time and harvest alternately flow. When we have finished with time 'twill be known How we have gathered and how we have sown.

—Advocate of Holiness.

Our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount.

By John Wesley

[From a Sermon by John Wesley.]

"Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets; I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled." Matt. 5:17, 18.

Among the multitude of reproaches which fell upon him who "was despised and rejected of men," it could not fail to be one, that he was a teacher of novelties, an introducer of a new religion. This might be affirmed with the more color, because many of the expressions he had used were not common among the Jews; either they did not use them at all, or not in the same sense, not in so full and strong a meaning. Add to this, that the worshiping of God "in spirit and in truth" must always appear a new religion to those who have hitherto known nothing but outside worship, nothing but the "form of godliness."

And it is not improbable (some might hope it was so) that he was abolishing the old religion, and bringing in another,—one which, they might flatter themselves, would be an easier way to Heaven. But our Lord refutes, in these words, both the vain hopes of the one, and the groundless calumnies of the other.

I shall consider them in the same order as they lie, taking each verse for a distinct head of discourse.

I. "Think not that I am come to destroy the law or the prophets; I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill."

The ritual or ceremonial law, delivered by Moses to the children of Israel, containing all the injunctions and ordinances which related to the old sacrifices and service of the temple, our Lord did indeed come to destroy, to dissolve, and utterly abolish. To this bear all the apostles witness; not only Barnabas and Paul, who vehemently withstood those who taught that Christians "ought to keep the law of Moses" (Acts 15 : 6); not only St. Peter, who termed the insisting on this, on the observance of the ritual law, a "tempting God," and "putting a yoke upon the neck of the disciples, which neither our fathers," saith he, "nor we were able to bear"—but "all the apostles, elders, and brethren, being assembled with one accord" (verse 10), declared that to command them to keep this law was to "subvert their souls;" and that "it seemed good to the Holy Ghost," and to them, "to lay no such burden upon them." This "hand writing of ordinances our Lord did blot out, take away, and nail to his cross." Verse 24.

But the moral law contained in the ten commandments, and enforced by the prophets, he did not take away. It was not the design of his coming to revoke any part of this. This is a law which never can be broken, which "stands fast as the faithful witness in Heaven." The moral stands on an entirely different foundation from the ceremonial or ritual law, which was only designed for a temporary restraint upon a disobedient and stiff-necked people; whereas this was from the beginning of the world, being "written not on tables of stone," but on the hearts of all the children of men, when they came out of the hands of the Creator. And, however, the letters once wrote by the finger of God are now in a great measure defaced by sin, yet they cannot wholly be blotted out while we have any consciousness of good and evil. Every part of this law must remain in force upon all mankind, and in all ages, as not depending either on time or place, or any other circumstances liable to change, but on the nature of God, and the nature of man, and their unchangeable relation to each other.

"I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill." Some have conceived our Lord to mean, I am come to fulfill this, by my entire and perfect obedience to it. And it cannot be doubted but he did, in this sense, fulfill every part of it. But this does not appear to be what he intends here, being foreign to the scope of his present discourse. Without question, his meaning in this place is (consistently with all that goes before and follows after), I am come to establish it in its fullness, in spite of all the glosses of men; I am come to place in a full and clear view whatsoever was dark or obscure therein; I am come to declare the true and full import of every part of it; to show the length and breadth, the entire extent of every commandment contained therein, and the height and depth, the inconceivable purity and spirituality of it in all its branches.

And this our Lord has abundantly performed in the preceding and subsequent parts of the discourse before us, in which he has not introduced a new religion into the world, but the same which was from the beginning—a religion the substance of which is, without question, as old as the creation, being coeval with man, and having proceeded from God at the very time when "man became a living soul;" (the substance, I say; for some circumstances of it now relate to man as a fallen creature)—a religion witnessed to both by the law and by the prophets, in all succeeding generations. Yet was it never so fully explained, nor so thoroughly understood, till the great author of it himself condescended to give mankind this authentic comment on all the essential branches of it, at the same time declaring it should never be changed, but remain in force to the end of the world.

II. "For verily I say unto you [a solemn preface which denotes both the importance and certainty of what is spoken], till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled."

"One jot;" it is literally, not one iota, not the most inconsiderable vowel; "or one tittle," mia keraia,—one corner or point of a consonant. It is a proverbial expression, which signifies that no one commandment contained in the moral law, nor the least part of any one, however inconsiderable it might seem, should ever be disannulled.

"Shall in no wise pass from the law," ou mee parelthee apo tou nomou. The double negative, here used, strengthens the sense, so as to admit of no contradiction; and the word parelthee, it may be observed, is not barely future, declaring what will be; but has likewise the force of an imperative, ordering what shall be. It is a word of authority, expressing the sovereign will and power of him that spake; of him whose word is the law of Heaven and earth, and stands fast forever and ever.

"One jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass, till heaven and earth pass;" or, as it is expressed immediately after, eos an panta geneetai, till all (or rather all things) be fulfilled, till the consummation of all things. Here is, therefore, no room for that poor evasion (with which some have delighted themselves greatly) that "No part of the law was to pass away, till all the law was fulfilled; but it has been fulfilled by Christ, and therefore now must pass, for the gospel to be established." Not so; the word all does not mean all the law, but all things in the universe; as neither has the term fulfilled any reference to the law, but to all things in Heaven and earth.

From all this we may learn that there is no contrariety at all between the law and the gospel; that there is no need for the law to pass away, in order to the establishing the gospel. Indeed, neither of them supersedes the other, but they agree perfectly well together. Yea, the very same words, considered in different respects, are parts both of the law and of the gospel; if they are considered as commandments, they are parts of the law; if as promises, of the gospel. Thus "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart," when considered as a commandment, is a branch of the law; when regarded as a promise, is an essential part of the gospel, the gospel being no other than the commands of the law, proposed by way of promise. Accordingly, poverty of spirit, purity of heart, and whatever else is enjoined in the holy law of God, are no other, when viewed in a gospel light, than so many great and precious promises.

There is, therefore, the closest connection that can be conceived between the law and the gospel. On the one hand, the law continually makes way for, and points us to, the gospel; on the other, the gospel continually leads us to a more exact fulfilling of the law. The law, for instance, requires us to love God, to love our neighbor, to be meek, humble, or holy. We feel that we are not sufficient for these things; yea, that "with man this is impossible;" but we see a promise of God, to give us that love, and to make us humble, meek, and holy; we lay hold of this gospel, of these glad tidings; it is done unto us according to our faith; and "the righteousness of the law is fulfilled in us," through faith which is in Christ Jesus. We may yet further observe that every command in Holy Writ is only a covered promise. For by that solemn declaration, "This is the covenant I will make after these days, saith the Lord; I will put my laws in your minds, and write them in your hearts." God hath engaged to give whatsoever he commands. Does he command us then to "pray without ceasing?" to "rejoice evermore?" to be "holy as he is holy?" It is enough; he will work in us this very thing; it shall be unto us according to his word.

But if these things are so, we cannot be at a loss what to think of those who, in all ages of the church, have undertaken to change or supersede some commands of God, as they professed by the peculiar direction of his Spirit. Christ has here given us an infallible rule, whereby to judge of all such pretensions. Christianity, as it includes the whole moral law of God, both by way of injunction and of promise, if we will hear him, is designed of God to be the last of all his dispensations. There is no other to come after this. This is to endure till the consummation of all things. Of consequence, all such new revelations are of Satan and not of God; and all pretensions to another more perfect dispensation fail to the ground, of course. "Heaven and earth shall pass away;" but this word "shall not pass away."

Seek the Lord as Present Help

SEEK the Lord as a present help.

Seasons and Life’s Opportunities

THE seasons pass quickly by, and our opportunities with them. And so it is with the years of our lives. Looking forward, what a long, bright, and happy vista of seasons we see. What wonders of accomplishment. But looking backward, from the end of our journey, what a changed look life has. There is a lesson in all this which is easily learned, and he who learns it in the spring of life, need not, when the last sad hour comes, mourn with Byron, but can with Paul, contemplate the past with a degree of satisfaction, and the future with that confidence which is the possession of those only who know they have been faithful subjects of the great King.—Sel.

The Ten Commandments Still Binding.

DR. H. CLAY TRUMBULL comments in the Sunday School Times, on a portion of the third chapter of Romans, as follows:—

“What things soever the law saith, it speaketh to them that are under the law; that every mouth may be stopped.” Verse 19. Many a man is ready to say, in sweeping terms, that he has tried to do about right, and that he is reasonably satisfied with his life-record. But if you can bring any such man to look at God’s law in detail, requirement by requirement, he will have to admit, if he says anything at all, that he has not lived up to that law, by any manner of means. There is not much comfort for us sinners in the ten commandments. If we are to have our deserts according to our performances by that standard, we are lost. There can be no question on that point. And the severest putting of the ten commandments which the world ever knew, was the Sermon on the Mount. If any man could bring himself to say that he has not been guilty of a breach of the ten commandments, as he understands them, the Sermon on the Mount will stop his mouth effectually. He knows that he is lost forever, if he is to be judged by the law’s requirements as they are there defined and elaborated. It is true that there are men so thoughtless or so shameless as to say that they want no other gospel than the Sermon on the Mount; but they are men whose mouths ought to be stopped in the face of that inspired demand for absolute holiness in life and in thought and in heart; for those things are spoken that every mouth which would claim Heaven as a right may be stopped by the sinner’s recognition of his violations of God’s law as there disclosed and applied.

“Through the law cometh the knowledge of sin.” Verse 20. It is not that the law creates sin, but that the law shows what is sin. Man has no way of knowing what is right and what is wrong except as God declares it to him. A man may want to do right or want to do wrong, he may intend to do right or intend to do wrong, without being sure what is right or what is wrong; but it is only when God’s law defines the limits of right and wrong, that man can know what is sin. A man’s uninstructed conscience tells him that he ought to do right, but it does not tell him what is right. It is by God’s law that a knowledge of sin comes to a man. Until a man knows what sin is, he cannot be sure whether he is sinning or not, while he is doing “as well as he knows how.” But you and I have the law to show us what is sin, and we have our own consciousness to show us how often and how grievously we have sinned.

“The righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ unto all them that believe; for there is no distinction.” Verse 22. There is no distinction in God’s sight; but there are very marked distinctions in man’s sight. Man makes a clear distinction between a little sinner and a great sinner; and man’s ideas of the relative magnitude of sin are of his own framing. Man is pretty sure to attach more importance to a sin against man than to a sin against God. Stealing or getting drunk is commonly supposed to be a more real and a more flagrant sin, than refusing to acknowledge one’s need of a personal Saviour, or to trust one’s self to the one Saviour provided against guilt and its consequences. And there is no time when men are readier to make distinctions in sins and in sinners than when they are passing on the course of one who has just died from among them. If he was a man who sinned greatly according to their measuring of sins, they admit that he needed a Saviour; but if he was what is called a fairly upright man in his outward conduct—why, isn’t it possible that he went to Heaven on his merits? After all, wasn’t it a little uncharitable for Paul to insist that everybody needs a Saviour; that “there is no distinction; for all have sinned, and fall short of the glory of God”? That is a question that is well worth considering.

“Do we then make the law of none effect through faith? God forbid; nay, we establish the law.” Verse 31. The gospel of Christ does not do away with the requirements of the law of God. It simply shows a way of salvation to those who fail of obeying that still-binding law. Every vital requirement of God’s fundamental law is as real and as important now as thirty centuries ago. Every breach of that law is as truly a sin now as then. Not one of us is entitled to violate God’s law in a jot or a tittle, on the strength of our discipleship of Christ, or of our trust in him for salvation. But as all of us have broken that law, and as all of us are liable to violate its requirements, we commit ourselves as sinners to Him who fulfilled that law, and who has a right to save from under its very curse those who so commit themselves to him. “Do we then make the law of none effect through faith? God forbid; nay, we establish the law.”

Sins of Omission.

THE decalogue commands two things and forbids eight. Idolatry, image worship, profanity, murder, adultery, theft, perjury, and covetousness are forbidden; honoring the Sabbath and parents is commanded. These make the ten commandments, meant for all time and for all classes of men. According to the character of the law, part of it being negative, and part positive, so does sin also assume either a positive or a negative form, for “sin is the transgression of the law;” and therefore theologians have long agreed to speak of sins, the fruit of our sinfulness, as of a twofold character, either sins of commission or sins of omission.

It is of the latter we purpose specially to speak. While we must regard the sins of omission of the most serious character, in the popular mind they are evidently regarded as of far less gravity than those sins which are committed, such as murder, theft, adultery, perjury, etc., which are justly and swiftly met by the penalties of the law, both civil and ecclesiastical, and any such transgressions are deemed flagrant and terrible.

But what of the sins of omission? Are his commands any less the law of God than things which he forbids? Are they less important? They are fewer in number, simpler in form, and have much less to do with detail; but they are most comprehensive and vital. They are chiefly these: We are commanded to love God, our parents, our neighbor, and regard the Sabbath. But, really, as the apostle says, “Love is the fulfilling of the law,” for if we love God, we shall so love his worship, his laws, his service, that we shall naturally “remember the Sabbath-day to keep it holy,” as a day of rest, and on which to honor and worship him; and if we love our neighbor, yea, even our enemies, we shall certainly love our father and mother, if so be that the love of Christ dwelleth in us.

The positive commands of God, therefore, while they are simpler than the negative, are all comprehensive. They take in the whole sphere of human duty. They embrace the negative, for this, “Thou shalt not commit adultery, thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not bear false witness, thou shalt not covet; and if there be any other commandment, it is briefly comprehended in this saying, namely, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. Love worketh no ill to his neighbor, therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.”—Rom. 13: 9, 10.

When our divine Master was asked which was the greatest of all commandments, he gave no one of the prohibitions, but gave love to God and man as the greatest, most important, the all-comprehensive law, and yet the violation of this law is merely a “sin of omission.” Who can fail to see that what the popular church thought is apt to regard as merely a short-coming, or a fault, is the greatest of all sins, since it is the violation of the greatest of all the laws of God? Who does not see that to be without love to God and man is to be a rebel and an enemy? That without love to God, even outward obedience is only a negative virtue, if not an abominable servility in his sight? And yet all this is “only” a “sin of omission.”

While the State imprisons thieves and perjurers, and hangs murderers, and the church expels them as unworthy of being in the brotherhood of believers, yet how little regard is paid to sins of omission! Why is it? Partly, of course, because it is a matter of the heart, and to judge the heart belongs only to the “Searcher of hearts;” partly, also, because there is so much “dissimulation” that passes for love; and partly because the good we do, which is the fruit of love and the best evidence of its existence, is often limited and hindered by causes which are beyond our control. But while, for this reason, we cannot gauge the love to God and humanity by the amount of good any one does, the doing of evil to our neighbor is proof positive of the temporary or total absence of such love to God. For “love worketh no ill to his neighbor.”

Another feature: The omission to love God and man is a great sin which God only fully sees. To the eyes of men it may be veiled by hypocrisy and pretense. Insincere persons may therefore flatter themselves with its possession because they have learned to dissimulate, and are receiving credit from others for being what they are not. But to God’s eye they are bare. They themselves will be all weakness and impotence for being devoid of the motive power in the soul which impels to all good. What a man loves to do he will do well, gladly, constantly. Hence it is that lovers of Christ “count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ.” But the great omission, the failing to love God and man, will make every duty a burden, every exertion a task.

The positive laws of God, which command us to do something, and begin by commanding first of all to love God, are the most essential to the building up of a sturdy, godly character. A negative Christian—one who simply does nothing, and therefore does no evil, or does simply refrain from gross violations of what God has forbidden, is a very poor sample of a follower of Christ. He is a carpet knight in this warfare. He is a negative, a passive nothing. He develops no strength in himself, nor does he accomplish anything for the Master. He will fail of being a rounded-out and manly Christian, and he will fail of securing his own salvation, for we must “work out our own salvation;” and work does not mean idleness.

It follows, therefore, from all that has been said, that while sins of omission are not readily punished by either the civil or church law—that while they are reached with great difficulty, and conviction therefore can be produced only by the searching agency of the Spirit which searcheth all things, they are of the gravest character and of the deepest dye. If we would be true to God, to our neighbor, to ourselves; if we would become perfect and fully developed after the model that the Bible holds up; if we would be successful and diligent workers for Christ, we must thoroughly try ourselves, and, discovering our spiritual poverty and emptiness, seek from that Fountain of all love an overflowing measure. This will make us acceptable in the sight of God, and endow us with such vigor and working power, such an unquenchable vitality, that even death cannot conquer it; but their full fruition will be a glorious immortality. “Be not deceived; God is not mocked; for whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap.”—Evangelical Messenger.

The Way of the Ungodly

“The way of the ungodly shall perish.”

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.

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