Chapter XX: Section I: The Law Of God (1)

As preliminary to a treatment of man’s state of apostasy, it becomes necessary to consider the nature of that law of God, the transgression of which is sin. We may best approach the subject by inquiring what is the true conception of

I. Law in General.

1. Law is an expression of _will_.

The essential idea of law is that of a general expression of will enforced by power. It implies: (_a_) A lawgiver, or authoritative will. (_b_) Subjects, or beings upon whom this will terminates. (_c_) A general command, or expression of this will. (_d_) A power, enforcing the command.

These elements are found even in what we call natural law. The phrase “law of nature” involves a self-contradiction, when used to denote a mode of action or an order of sequence behind which there is conceived to be no intelligent and ordaining will. Physics derives the term “law” from jurisprudence, instead of jurisprudence deriving it from physics. It is first used of the relations of voluntary agents. Causation in our own wills enables us to see something besides mere antecedence and consequence in the world about us. Physical science, in her very use of the word “law,” implicitly confesses that a supreme Will has set general rules which control the processes of the universe.

Wayland, Moral Science, 1, unwisely defines law as “a mode of
existence or order of sequence,” thus leaving out of his
definition all reference to an ordaining will. He subsequently
says that law presupposes an establisher, but in his definition
there is nothing to indicate this. We insist, on the other hand,
that the term “law” itself includes the idea of force and cause.
The word “law” is from “lay” (German _legen_),—something laid
down; German _Gesetz_, from _setzen_,—something set or
established; Greek νόμος, from νέμω,—something assigned or
apportioned; Latin _lex_, from _lego_,—something said or spoken.

All these derivations show that man’s original conception of law
is that of something proceeding from volition. Lewes, in his
Problems of Life and Mind, says that the term “law” is so
suggestive of a giver and impresser of law, that it ought to be
dropped, and the word “method” substituted. The merit of Austin’s
treatment of the subject is that he “rigorously limits the term
‘law’ to the commands of a superior”; see John Austin, Province of
Jurisprudence, 1:88-93, 220-223. The defects of his treatment we
shall note further on.

J. S. Mill: “It is the custom, wherever they [scientific men] can
trace regularity of any kind, to call the general proposition
which expresses the nature of that regularity, a law; as when in
mathematics we speak of the law of the successive terms of a
converging series. But the expression ‘law of nature’ is generally
employed by scientific men with a sort of tacit reference to the
original sense of the word ‘law,’ namely, the expression of the
will of a superior—the superior in this case being the Ruler of
the universe.” Paley, Nat. Theology, chap. 1—“It is a perversion
of language to assign any _law_ as the efficient operative cause
of anything. A law presupposes an agent; this is only the mode
according to which an agent proceeds; it implies a power, for it
is the order according to which that power acts. Without this
agent, without this power, which are both distinct from itself,
the law does nothing.” “Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?” “Rules do
not fulfill themselves, any more than a statute-book can quell a
riot” (Martineau, Types, 1:367).

Charles Darwin got the suggestion of natural selection, not from
the study of lower plants and animals, but from Malthus on
Population; see his Life and Letters, Vol. I, autobiographical
chapter. Ward, Naturalism and Agnosticism, 2:248-252—“The
conception of natural law rests upon the analogy of civil law.”
Ladd, Philosophy of Knowledge, 333—“Laws are only the more or less
frequently repeated and uniform modes of the behavior of things”;
Philosophy of Mind, 122—“To be, to stand in relation, to be
self-active, to act upon other being, to obey law, to be a cause,
to be a permanent subject of states, to be the same to-day as
yesterday, to be identical, to be one,—all these and all similar
conceptions, together with the proofs that they are valid for real
beings, are affirmed of physical realities, or projected into
them, only on a basis of self-knowledge, envisaging and affirming
the reality of mind. Without psychological insight and
philosophical training, such terms or their equivalents are
meaningless in physics. And because writers on physics do not in
general have this insight and this training, in spite of their
utmost endeavors to treat physics as an empirical science without
metaphysics, they flounder and blunder and contradict themselves
hopelessly whenever they touch upon fundamental matters.” See
President McGarvey’s Criticism on James Lane Allen’s Reign of Law:
“It is not in the nature of law to reign. To reign is an act which
can be literally affirmed only of persons. A man may reign; a God
may reign; a devil may reign; but a law cannot reign. If a law
could reign, we should have no gambling in New York and no open
saloons on Sunday. There would be no false swearing in courts of
justice, and no dishonesty in politics. It is men who reign in
these matters—the judges, the grand jury, the sheriff and the
police. They may reign according to law. Law cannot reign even
over those who are appointed to execute the law.”

2. Law is a _general_ expression of will.

The characteristic of law is generality. It is addressed to substances or persons in classes. Special legislation is contrary to the true theory of law.

When the Sultan of Zanzibar orders his barber to be beheaded
because the latter has cut his master, this order is not properly
a law. To be a law it must read: “Every barber who cuts his
majesty shall thereupon be decapitated.” _Einmal ist keinmal_ =
“Once is no custom.” Dr. Schurman suggests that the word _meal_
(Mahl) means originally _time_ (_mal_ in _einmal_). The
measurement of time among ourselves is astronomical; among our
earliest ancestors it was gastronomical, and the reduplication
_mealtime_ = the ding-dong of the dinner bell. The Shah of Persia
once asked the Prince of Wales to have a man put to death in order
that he might see the English method of execution. When the Prince
told him that this was beyond his power, the Shah wished to know
what was the use of being a king if he could not kill people at
his pleasure. Peter the Great suggested a way out of the
difficulty. He desired to see keelhauling. When informed that
there was no sailor liable to that penalty, he replied: “That does
not matter,—take one of my suite.” Amos, Science of Law, 33,
34—“Law eminently deals in general rules.” It knows not persons or
personality. It must apply to more than one case. “The
characteristic of law is generality, as that of morality is
individual application.” Special legislation is the bane of good
government; it does not properly fall within the province of the
law-making power; it savors of the caprice of despotism, which
gives commands to each subject at will. Hence our more advanced
political constitutions check lobby influence and bribery, by
prohibiting special legislation in all cases where general laws
already exist.

3. Law implies _power to enforce_.

It is essential to the existence of law, that there be power to enforce. Otherwise law becomes the expression of mere wish or advice. Since physical substances and forces have no intelligence and no power to resist, the four elements already mentioned exhaust the implications of the term “law” as applied to nature. In the case of rational and free agents, however, law implies in addition: (_e_) Duty or obligation to obey; and (_f_) Sanctions, or pains and penalties for disobedience.

“Law that has no penalty is not law but advice, and the government
in which infliction does not follow transgression is the reign of
rogues or demons.” On the question whether any of the punishments
of civil law are legal sanctions, except the punishment of death,
see N. W. Taylor, Moral Govt., 2:367-387. Rewards are motives, but
they are not sanctions. Since public opinion may be conceived of
as inflicting penalties for violation of her will, we speak
figuratively of the laws of society, of fashion, of etiquette, of
honor. Only so far as the community of nations can and does by
sanctions compel obedience, can we with propriety assert the
existence of international law. Even among nations, however, there
may be moral as well as physical sanctions. The decision of an
international tribunal has the same sanction as a treaty, and if
the former is impotent, the latter also is. Fines and imprisonment
do not deter decent people from violations of law half so
effectively as do the social penalties of ostracism and disgrace,
and it will be the same with the findings of an international
tribunal. Diplomacy without ships and armies has been said to be
law without penalty. But exclusion from civilized society is
penalty. “In the unquestioning obedience to fashion’s decrees, to
which we all quietly submit, we are simply yielding to the
pressure of the persons about us. No one adopts a style of dress
because it is reasonable, for the styles are often most
unreasonable; but we meekly yield to the most absurd of them
rather than resist this force and be called eccentric. So what we
call public opinion is the most mighty power to-day known, whether
in society or in politics.”

4. Law expresses and demands _nature_.

The will which thus binds its subjects by commands and penalties is an expression of the nature of the governing power, and reveals the normal relations of the subjects to that power. Finally, therefore, law (_g_) Is an expression of the nature of the lawgiver; and (_h_) Sets forth the condition or conduct in the subjects which is requisite for harmony with that nature. Any so-called law which fails to represent the nature of the governing power soon becomes obsolete. All law that is permanent is a transcript of the facts of being, a discovery of what is and must be, in order to harmony between the governing and the governed; in short, positive law is just and lasting only as it is an expression and republication of the law of nature.

Diman, Theistic Argument, 106, 107: John Austin, although he
“rigorously limited the term law to the commands of a superior,”
yet “rejected Ulpian’s explanation of the law of nature, and
ridiculed as fustian the celebrated description in Hooker.” This
we conceive to be the radical defect of Austin’s conception. The
Will from which natural law proceeds is conceived of after a
deistic fashion, instead of being immanent in the universe.
Lightwood, in his Nature of Positive Law, 78-90, criticizes
Austin’s definition of law as command, and substitutes the idea of
law as custom. Sir Henry Maine’s Ancient Law has shown us that the
early village communities had customs which only gradually took
form as definite laws. But we reply that custom is not the
ultimate source of anything. Repeated acts of will are necessary
to constitute custom. The first customs are due to the commanding
will of the father in the patriarchal family. So Austin’s
definition is justified. Collective morals (_mores_) come from
individual duty (_due_); law originates in will; Martineau, Types,
2:18, 19. Behind this will, however, is something which Austin
does not take account of, namely, the nature of things as
constituted by God, as revealing the universal Reason, and as
furnishing the standard to which all positive law, if it would be
permanent, must conform.

See Montesquieu, Spirit of Laws, book 1, sec. 14—“Laws are the
necessary relations arising from the nature of things.... There is
a primitive Reason, and laws are the relations subsisting between
it and different beings, and the relations of these to one
another.... These rules are a fixed and invariable relation....
Particular intelligent beings may have laws of their own making,
but they have some likewise that they never made.... To say that
there is nothing just or unjust but what is commanded or forbidden
by positive laws, is the same as saying that before the describing
of a circle all the radii were not equal. We must therefore
acknowledge relations antecedent to the positive law by which they
were established.” Kant, Metaphysic of Ethics, 169-172—“By the
science of law is meant systematic knowledge of the principles of
the law of nature—from which positive law takes its rise—which is
forever the same, and carries its sure and unchanging obligations
over all nations and throughout all ages.”

It is true even of a despot’s law, that it reveals his nature, and
shows what is requisite in the subject to constitute him in
harmony with that nature. A law which does not represent the
nature of things, or the real relations of the governor and the
governed, has only a nominal existence, and cannot be permanent.
On the definition and nature of law, see also Pomeroy, in
Johnson’s Encyclopædia, art.: Law; Ahrens, Cours de Droit Naturel,
book 1, sec. 14; Lorimer, Institutes of Law, 256, who quotes from
Burke: “All human laws are, properly speaking, only declaratory.
They may alter the mode and application, but have no power over
the substance of original justice”; Lord Bacon: “Regula enim legem
(ut acus nautica polos) indicat, non statuit.” Duke of Argyll,
Reign of Law, 64; H. C. Carey, Unity of Law.

Fairbairn, in Contemp. Rev., Apl. 1895:473—“The Roman jurists draw
a distinction between _jus naturale_ and _jus civile_, and they
used the former to affect the latter. The _jus civile_ was
statutory, established and fixed law, as it were, the actual legal
environment; the _jus naturale_ was ideal, the principle of
justice and equity immanent in man, yet with the progress of his
ethical culture growing ever more articulate.” We add the fact
that _jus_ in Latin and _Recht_ in German have ceased to mean
merely abstract right, and have come to denote the legal system in
which that abstract right is embodied and expressed. Here we have
a proof that Christ is gradually moralizing the world and
translating law into life. E. G. Robinson: “Never a government on
earth made its own laws. Even constitutions simply declare laws
already and actually existing. Where society falls into anarchy,
the _lex talionis_ becomes the prevailing principle.”

II. The Law of God in Particular.

The law of God is a general expression of the divine will enforced by power. It has two forms: Elemental Law and Positive Enactment.

1. _Elemental Law_, or law inwrought into the elements, substances, and forces of the rational and irrational creation. This is twofold:

A. The expression of the divine will in the constitution of the material universe;—this we call physical, or natural law. Physical law is not necessary. Another order of things is conceivable. Physical order is not an end in itself; it exists for the sake of moral order. Physical order has therefore only a relative constancy, and God supplements it at times by miracle.

Bowne, Theory of Thought and Knowledge, 210—“The laws of nature
represent no necessity, but are only the orderly forms of
procedure of some Being back of them.... Cosmic uniformities are
God’s methods in freedom.” Philos. of Theism, 73—“Any of the
cosmic laws, from gravitation on, might conceivably have been
lacking or altogether different.... No trace of necessity can be
found in the Cosmos or in its laws.” Seth, Hegelianism and
Personality: “Nature is not necessary. Why put an island where it
is, and not a mile east or west? Why connect the smell and shape
of the rose, or the taste and color of the orange? Why do H2O form
water? No one knows.” William James: “The parts seem shot at us
out of a pistol.” Rather, we would say, out of a shotgun.
Martineau, Seat of Authority, 33—“Why undulations in one medium
should produce sound, and in another light; why one speed of
vibration should give red color, and another blue, can be
explained by no reason of necessity. Here is selecting will.”

Brooks, Foundations of Zoölogy, 126—“So far as the philosophy of
evolution involves belief that nature is determinate, or due to a
necessary law of universal progress or evolution, it seems to me
to be utterly unsupported by evidence and totally unscientific.”
There is no power to deduce anything whatever from homogeneity.
Press the button and law does the rest? Yes, but what presses the
button? The solution crystalises when shaken? Yes, but what shakes
it? Ladd, Philos. of Knowledge, 310—“The directions and velocities
of the stars fall under no common principles that astronomy can
discover. One of the stars—‘1830 Groombridge’—is flying through
space at a rate many times as great as it could attain if it had
fallen through infinite space through all eternity toward the
entire physical universe.... Fluids contract when cooled and
expand when heated,—yet there is the well known exception of water
at the degree of freezing.” 263—“Things do not appear to be
mathematical all the way through. The system of things may be a
Life, changing its modes of manifestation according to immanent
ideas, rather than a collection of rigid entities, blindly subject
in a mechanical way to unchanging laws.”

Augustine: “Dei voluntas rerum natura est.” Joseph Cook: “The laws
of nature are the habits of God.” But Campbell, Atonement,
Introd., xxvi, says there is this difference between the laws of
the moral universe and those of the physical, namely, that we do
not trace the existence of the former to an act of will, as we do
the latter. “To say that God has given existence to goodness, as
he has to the laws of nature, would be equivalent to saying that
he has given existence to himself.” Pepper, Outlines of Syst.
Theol., 91—“Moral law, unlike natural law, is a standard of action
to be adopted or rejected in the exercise of rational freedom, _i.
e._, of moral agency.” See also Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 1:531.

Mark Hopkins, in Princeton Rev., Sept. 1882:190—“In moral law
there is enforcement by punishment only—never by power, for this
would confound moral law with physical, and obedience can never be
produced or secured by power. In physical law, on the contrary,
enforcement is wholly by power, and punishment is impossible. So
far as man is free, he is not subject to law at all, in its
physical sense. Our wills are free _from_ law, as enforced by
_power_; but are free _under_ law, as enforced by _punishment_.
Where law prevails in the same sense as in the material world,
there can be no freedom. Law does not prevail when we reach the
region of choice. We hold to a power in the mind of man
originating a free choice. Two objects or courses of action,
between which choice is to be made, are presupposed: (1) A
uniformity or set of uniformities implying a force by which the
uniformity is produced [physical or natural law]; (2) A command,
addressed to free and intelligent beings, that can be obeyed or
disobeyed, and that has connected with it rewards or punishments”
[moral law]. See also Wm. Arthur, Difference between Physical and
Moral Law.

B. The expression of the divine will in the constitution of rational and free agents;—this we call moral law. This elemental law of our moral nature, with which only we are now concerned, has all the characteristics mentioned as belonging to law in general. It implies: (_a_) A divine Law-giver, or ordaining Will. (_b_) Subjects, or moral beings upon whom the law terminates. (_c_) General command, or expression of this will in the moral constitution of the subjects. (_d_) Power, enforcing the command. (_e_) Duty, or obligation to obey. (_f_) Sanctions, or pains and penalties for disobedience.

All these are of a loftier sort than are found in human law. But we need especially to emphasize the fact that this law (_g_) Is an expression of the moral nature of God, and therefore of God’s holiness, the fundamental attribute of that nature; and that it (_h_) Sets forth absolute conformity to that holiness, as the normal condition of man. This law is inwrought into man’s rational and moral being. Man fulfills it, only when in his moral as well as his rational being he is the image of God.

Although the will from which the moral law springs is an
expression of the nature of God, and a necessary expression of
that nature in view of the existence of moral beings, it is none
the less a personal will. We should be careful not to attribute to
law a personality of its own. When Plutarch says: “Law is king
both of mortal and immortal beings,” and when we say: “The law
will take hold of you,” “The criminal is in danger of the law,” we
are simply substituting the name of the agent for that of the
principal. God is not subject to law; God is the source of law;
and we may say: “If Jehovah be God, worship him; but if Law,
worship it.”

Since moral law merely reflects God, it is not a thing _made_. Men
_discover_ laws, but they do not _make_ them, any more than the
chemist makes the laws by which the elements combine. Instance the
solidification of hydrogen at Geneva. Utility does not constitute
law, although we test law by utility; see Murphy, Scientific Bases
of Faith, 58-71. The true nature of the moral law is set forth in
the noble though rhetorical description of Hooker (Eccl. Pol.,
1:194)—“Of law there can be no less acknowledged than that her
seat is in the bosom of God; her voice the harmony of the world;
all things in heaven and earth do her homage, the very least as
feeling her care, and the greatest as not exempted from her power;
both angels and men, and creatures of what condition soever,
though each in a different sort and manner, yet all with uniform
consent admiring her as the mother of their peace and joy.” See
also Martineau, Types, 2:119, and Study, 1:35.

Curtis, Primitive Semitic Religions, 66, 101—“The Oriental
believes that God makes right by edict. Saladin demonstrated to
Henry of Champagne the loyalty of his Assassins, by commanding two
of them to throw themselves down from a lofty tower to certain and
violent death.” H. B. Smith, System, 192—“Will implies
personality, and personality adds to abstract truth and duty the
element of authority. Law therefore has the force that a person
has over and above that of an idea.” Human law forbids only those
offences which constitute a breach of public order or of private
right. God’s law forbids all that is an offence against the divine
order, that is, all that is unlike God. The whole law may be
summed up in the words: “Be like God.” Salter, First Steps in
Philosophy, 101-126—“The realization of the nature of each being
is the end to be striven for. Self-realization is an ideal end,
not of one being, but of each being, with due regard to the value
of each in the proper scale of worth. The beast can be sacrificed
for man. All men are sacred as capable of unlimited progress. It
is our duty to realize the capacities of our nature so far as they
are consistent with one another and go to make up one whole.” This
means that man fulfills the law only as he realizes the divine
idea in his character and life, or, in other words, as he becomes
a finite image of God’s infinite perfections.

Bixby, Crisis in Morals, 191, 201, 285, 286—“Morality is rooted in
the nature of things. There is a universe. We are all parts of an
infinite organism. Man is inseparably bound to man [and to God].
All rights and duties arise out of this common life. In the
solidarity of social life lies the ground of Kant’s law: So will,
that the maxim of thy conduct may apply to all. The planet cannot
safely fly away from the sun, and the hand cannot safely separate
itself from the heart. It is from the fundamental unity of life
that our duties flow.... The infinite world-organism is the body
and manifestation of God. And when we recognize the solidarity of
our vital being with this divine life and embodiment, we begin to
see into the heart of the mystery, the unquestionable authority
and supreme sanction of duty. Our moral intuitions are simply the
unchanging laws of the universe that have emerged to consciousness
in the human heart.... The inherent principles of the universal
Reason reflect themselves in the mirror of the moral nature....
The enlightened conscience is the expression in the human soul of
the divine Consciousness.... Morality is the victory of the divine
Life in us.... Solidarity of our life with the universal Life
gives it unconditional sacredness and transcendental authority....
The microcosm must bring itself _en rapport_ with the Macrocosm.
Man must bring his spirit into resemblance to the World-essence,
and into union with it.”

The law of God, then, is simply an expression of the nature of God in the form of moral requirement, and a necessary expression of that nature in view of the existence of moral beings (Ps. 19:7; _cf._ 1). To the existence of this law all men bear witness. The consciences even of the heathen testify to it (Rom. 2:14, 15). Those who have the written law recognize this elemental law as of greater compass and penetration (Rom. 7:14; 8:4). The perfect embodiment and fulfillment of this law is seen only in Christ (Rom. 10:4; Phil. 3:8, 9).

_Ps. 19:7_—“_The law of Jehovah is perfect, restoring the soul_”;
_cf._ _verse 1_—“_The heavens declare the glory of God_”—two
revelations of God—one in nature, the other in the moral law.
_Rom. 2:14, 15_—“_for when Gentiles that have not the law do by
nature the things of the law, these, not having the law, are the
law unto themselves; in that they show the work of the law written
in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness therewith, and
their thoughts one with another accusing or else excusing
them_”—here the “_work of the law_”—, not the ten commandments,
for of these the heathen were ignorant, but rather the work
corresponding to them, _i. e._, the substance of them. _Rom.
7:14_—“_For we know that the law is spiritual_”—this, says Meyer,
is equivalent to saying “its essence is divine, of like nature
with the Holy Spirit who gave it, a holy self-revelation of God.”
_Rom. 8:4_—“_that the ordinance of the law might be fulfilled in
us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit_”;
_10:4_—“_For Christ is the end of the law unto righteousness to
every one that believeth_”; _Phil. 3:8, 9_—“_that I may gain
Christ, and be found in him, not having a righteousness of mine
own, even that which is of the law, but that which is through
faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith_”;
_Heb. 10:9_—“_Lo, I am come to do thy will._” In Christ “the law
appears Drawn out in living characters.” Just such as he was and
is, we feel that we ought to be. Hence the character of Christ
convicts us of sin, as does no other manifestation of God. See, on
the passages from Romans, the Commentary of Philippi.

Fleming, Vocab. Philos., 286—“Moral laws are derived from the
nature and will of God, and the character and condition of man.”
God’s nature is reflected in the laws of our nature. Since law is
inwrought into man’s nature, man is a law unto himself. To conform
to his own nature, in which conscience is supreme, is to conform
to the nature of God. The law is only the revelation of the
constitutive principles of being, the declaration of what must be,
so long as man is man and God is God. It says in effect: “Be like
God, or you cannot be truly man.” So moral law is not simply a
test of obedience, but is also a revelation of eternal reality.
Man cannot be lost to God, without being lost to himself. “The
‘_hands of the living God_’ (_Heb. 10:31_) into which we fall, are
the laws of nature.” In the spiritual world “the same wheels
revolve, only there is no iron” (Drummond, Natural Law in the
Spiritual World, 27). Wuttke, Christian Ethics, 2:82-92—“The
totality of created being is to be in harmony with God and with
itself. The idea of this harmony, as active in God under the form
of will, is God’s law.” A manuscript of the U. S. Constitution was
so written that when held at a little distance the shading of the
letters and their position showed the countenance of George
Washington. So the law of God is only God’s face disclosed to
human sight.

R. W. Emerson, Woodnotes, 57—“Conscious Law is King of kings.” Two
centuries ago John Norton wrote a book entitled The Orthodox
Evangelist, “designed for the begetting and establishing of the
faith which is in Jesus,” in which we find the following: “God
doth not will things because they are just, but things are
therefore just because God so willeth them. What reasonable man
but will yield that the being of the moral law hath no necessary
connection with the being of God? That the actions of men not
conformable to this law should be sin, that death should be the
punishment of sin, these are the constitutions of God, proceeding
from him not by way of necessity of nature, but freely, as effects
and products of his eternal good pleasure.” This is to make God an
arbitrary despot. We should not say that God _makes_ law, nor on
the other hand that God _is subject to_ law, but rather that God
_is_ law and _the source_ of law.

Bowne, Philos. of Theism, 161—“God’s law is organic—inwrought into
the constitution of men and things. The chart however does not
make the channel.... A law of nature is never the antecedent but
the consequence of reality. What right has this consequence of
reality to be personalized and made the ruler and source of
reality? Law is only the fixed mode in which reality works. Law
therefore can explain nothing. Only God, from whom reality
springs, can explain reality.” In other words, law is never an
agent but always a method—the method of God, or rather of Christ
who is the only Revealer of God. Christ’s life in the flesh is the
clearest manifestation of him who is the principle of law in the
physical and moral universe. Christ is the Reason of God in
expression. It was he who gave the law on Mount Sinai as well as
in the Sermon on the Mount. For fuller treatment of the subject,
see Bowen, Metaph. and Ethics, 321-344; Talbot, Ethical
Prolegomena, in Bap. Quar., July, 1877:257-274; Whewell, Elements
of Morality, 2:35; and especially E. G. Robinson, Principles and
Practice of Morality, 79-108.

Each of the two last-mentioned characteristics of God’s law is important in its implications. We treat of these in their order.

First, the law of God as a transcript of the divine nature.—If this be the nature of the law, then certain common misconceptions of it are excluded. The law of God is

(_a_) Not arbitrary, or the product of arbitrary will. Since the will from which the law springs is a revelation of God’s nature, there can be no rashness or unwisdom in the law itself.

E. G. Robinson, Christ. Theology, 193—“No law of God seems ever to
have been arbitrarily enacted, or simply with a view to certain
ends to be accomplished; it always represented some reality of
life which it was inexorably necessary that those who were to be
regulated should carefully observe.” The theory that law
originates in arbitrary will results in an effeminate type of
piety, just as the theory that legislation has for its sole end
the greatest happiness results in all manner of compromises of
justice. Jones, Robert Browning, 43—“He who cheats his neighbor
believes in tortuosity, and, as Carlyle says, has the supreme
Quack for his god.”

(b) Not temporary, or ordained simply to meet an exigency. The law is a manifestation, not of temporary moods or desires, but of the essential nature of God.

The great speech of Sophocles’ Antigone gives us this conception
of law: “The ordinances of the gods are unwritten, but sure. Not
one of them is for to-day or for yesterday alone, but they live
forever.” Moses might break the tables of stone upon which the law
was inscribed, and Jehoiakim might cut up the scroll and cast it
into the fire (_Ex. 32:19_; _Jer. 36:23_), but the law remained
eternal as before in the nature of God and in the constitution of
man. Prof. Walter Rauschenbusch: “The moral laws are just as
stable as the law of gravitation. Every fuzzy human chicken that
is hatched into this world tries to fool with those laws. Some
grow wiser in the process and some do not. We talk about breaking
God’s laws. But after those laws have been broken several billion
times since Adam first tried to play with them, those laws are
still intact and no seam or fracture is visible in them,—not even
a scratch on the enamel. But the lawbreakers—that is another
story. If you want to find their fragments, go to the ruins of
Egypt, of Babylon, of Jerusalem; study statistics; read faces;
keep your eyes open; visit Blackwell’s Island; walk through the
graveyard and read the invisible inscriptions left by the Angel of
Judgment, for instance: ‘Here lie the fragments of John Smith, who
contradicted his Maker, played football with the ten commandments,
and departed this life at the age of thirty-five. His mother and
wife weep for him. Nobody else does. May he rest in peace!’ ”

(_c_) Not merely negative, or a law of mere prohibition,—since positive conformity to God is the inmost requisition of law.

The negative form of the commandments in the decalogue merely takes for granted the evil inclination in men’s hearts and practically opposes its gratification. In the case of each commandment a whole province of the moral life is taken into the account, although the act expressly forbidden is the acme of evil in that one province. So the decalogue makes itself intelligible: it crosses man’s path just where he most feels inclined to wander. But back of the negative and specific expression in each case lies the whole mass of moral requirement: the thin edge of the wedge has the positive demand of holiness behind it, without obedience to which even the prohibition cannot in spirit be obeyed. Thus “_the law is spiritual_” (_Rom. 7:14_), and requires likeness in character and life to the spiritual God; _John 4:24_—“_God is spirit, and they that worship him must worship in spirit and truth._”

(_d_) Not partial, or addressed to one part only of man’s being,—since likeness to God requires purity of substance in man’s soul and body, as well as purity in all the thoughts and acts that proceed therefrom. As law proceeds from the nature of God, so it requires conformity to that nature in the nature of man.

Whatever God gave to man at the beginning he requires of man with
interest; _cf._ _Mat. 25:27_—“_thou oughtest therefore to have put
my money to the bankers, and at my coming I should have received
back mine own with interest._” Whatever comes short of perfect
purity in soul or perfect health in body is non-conformity to God
and contradicts his law, it being understood that only that
perfection is demanded which answers to the creature’s stage of
growth and progress, so that of the child there is required only
the perfection of the child, of the youth only the perfection of
the youth, of the man only the perfection of the man. See Julius
Müller, Doctrine of Sin, chapter 1.

(_e_) Not outwardly published,—since all positive enactment is only the imperfect expression of this underlying and unwritten law of being.

Much misunderstanding of God’s law results from confounding it
with published enactment. Paul takes the larger view that the law
is independent of such expression; see _Rom. 2:14, 15_—“_for when
Gentiles that have not the law do by nature the things of the law,
these, not having the law, are the law unto themselves; in that
they show the work of the law written in their hearts, their
conscience bearing witness therewith, and their thoughts one with
another accusing or else excusing them:_” see Expositor’s Greek
Testament, _in loco_: “ ‘_written on their hearts_,’ when
contrasted with the law written on the tables of stone, is equal
to ‘unwritten’; the Apostle refers to what the Greeks called
ἄγραφος νόμος.”

(_f_) Not inwardly conscious, or limited in its scope by men’s consciousness of it. Like the laws of our physical being, the moral law exists whether we recognize it or not.

Overeating brings its penalty in dyspepsia, whether we are
conscious of our fault or not. We cannot by ignorance or by vote
repeal the laws of our physical system. Self-will does not secure
independence, any more than the stars can by combination abolish
gravitation. Man cannot get rid of God’s dominion by denying its
existence, nor by refusing submission to it. _Psalm 2:1-4_—“_Why
do the nations rage ... against Jehovah ... saying, Let us break
their bonds asunder.... He that sitteth in the heavens will
laugh._” Salter, First Steps in Philosophy, 94—“The fact that one
is not aware of obligation no more affects its reality than
ignorance of what is at the centre of the earth affects the nature
of what is really discoverable there. We discover obligation, and
do not create it by thinking of it, any more than we create the
sensible world by thinking of it.”

(_g_) Not local, or confined to place,—since no moral creature can escape from God, from his own being, or from the natural necessity that unlikeness to God should involve misery and ruin.

“The Dutch auction” was the public offer of property at a price
beyond its value, followed by the lowering of the price until some
one accepted it as a purchaser. There is no such local exception
to the full validity of God’s demands. The moral law has even more
necessary and universal sway than the law of gravitation in the
physical universe. It is inwrought into the very constitution of
man, and of every other moral being. The man who offended the
Roman Emperor found the whole empire a prison.

(_h_) Not changeable, or capable of modification. Since law represents the unchangeable nature of God, it is not a sliding scale of requirements which adapts itself to the ability of the subjects. God himself cannot change it without ceasing to be God.

The law, then, has a deeper foundation than that God merely “said
so.” God’s word and God’s will are revelations of his inmost
being; every transgression of the law is a stab at the heart of
God. Simon, Reconciliation, 141, 142—“God continues to demand
loyalty even after man has proved disloyal. Sin changes man, and
man’s change involves a change in God. Man now regards God as a
ruler and exactor, and God must regard man as a defaulter and a
rebel.” God’s requirement is not lessened because man is unable to
meet it. This inability is itself non-conformity to law, and is no
excuse for sin; see Dr. Bushnell’s sermon on “Duty not measured by
Ability.” The man with the withered hand would not have been
justified in refusing to stretch it forth at Jesus’ command (_Mat.
12:10-13_).

The obligation to obey this law and to be conformed to God’s
perfect moral character is based upon man’s original ability and
the gifts which God bestowed upon him at the beginning. Created in
the image of God, it is man’s duty to render back to God that
which God first gave, enlarged and improved by growth and culture
(_Luke 19:23_—“_wherefore gavest thou not my money into the bank,
and I at my coming should have required it with interest_”). This
obligation is not impaired by sin and the weakening of man’s
powers. To let down the standard would be to misrepresent God.
Adolphe Monod would not save himself from shame and remorse by
lowering the claims of the law: “Save first the holy law of my
God,” he says, “after that you shall save me!”

Even salvation is not through violation of law. The moral law is
immutable, because it is a transcript of the nature of the
immutable God. Shall nature conform to me, or I to nature? If I
attempt to resist even physical laws, I am crushed. I can use
nature only by obeying her laws. Lord Bacon: “Natura enim non nisi
parendo vincitur.” So in the moral realm. We cannot buy off nor
escape the moral law of God. God will not, and God can not, change
his law by one hair’s breadth, even to save a universe of sinners.
Omar Kháyyám, in his Rubáiyát, begs his god to “reconcile the law
to my desires.” Marie Corelli says well: “As if a gnat should seek
to build a cathedral, and should ask to have the laws of
architecture altered to suit its gnat-like capacity.” See
Martineau, Types, 2:120.

Secondly, the law of God as the ideal of human nature.—A law thus identical with the eternal and necessary relations of the creature to the Creator, and demanding of the creature nothing less than perfect holiness, as the condition of harmony with the infinite holiness of God, is adapted to man’s finite nature, as needing law; to man’s free nature, as needing moral law; and to man’s progressive nature, as needing ideal law.

Man, as finite, needs law, just as railway cars need a track to
guide them—to leap the track is to find, not freedom, but ruin.
Railway President: “Our rules are written in blood.” Goethe, Was
Wir Bringen, 19 Auftritt: “In vain shall spirits that are all
unbound To the pure heights of perfectness aspire; In limitation
first the Master shines, And law alone can give us liberty.”—Man,
as a free being, needs moral law. He is not an automaton, a
creature of necessity, governed only by physical influences. With
conscience to command the right, and will to choose or reject it,
his true dignity and calling are that he should freely realize the
right.—Man, as a progressive being, needs nothing less than an
ideal and infinite standard of attainment, a goal which he can
never overpass, an end which shall ever attract and urge him
forward. This he finds in the holiness of God.

The law is a _fence_, not only for ownership, but for care. God
not only demands, but he protects. Law is the transcript of love
as well as of holiness. We may reverse the well-known couplet and
say: “I slept, and dreamed that life was Duty; I woke and found
that life was Beauty.” “Cui servire regnare est.” Butcher, Aspects
of Greek Genius, 56—“In Plato’s Crito, the Laws are made to
present themselves in person to Socrates in prison, not only as
the guardians of his liberty, but as his lifelong friends, his
well-wishers, his equals, with whom he had of his own free will
entered into binding compact.” It does not harm the scholar to
have before him the ideal of perfect scholarship; nor the teacher
to have before him the ideal of a perfect school; nor the
legislator to have before him the ideal of perfect law. Gordon,
The Christ of To-day, 134—“The moral goal must be a flying goal;
the standard to which we are to grow must be ever rising; the type
to which we are to be conformed must have in it inexhaustible
fulness.”

John Caird, Fund. Ideas of Christianity, 2:119—“It is just the
best, purest, noblest human souls, who are least satisfied with
themselves and their own spiritual attainments; and the reason is
that the human is not a nature essentially different from the
divine, but a nature which, just because it is in essential
affinity with God, can be satisfied with nothing less than a
divine perfection.” J. M. Whiton, The Divine Satisfaction: “Law
requires being, character, likeness to God. It is automatic,
self-operating. Penalty is untransferable. It cannot admit of any
other satisfaction than the reëstablishment of the normal relation
which it requires. Punishment proclaims that the law has not been
satisfied. There is no cancelling of the curse except through the
growing up of the normal relation. Blessing and curse ensue upon
what we are, not upon what we were. Reparation is within the
spirit itself. The atonement is educational, not governmental.” We
reply that the atonement is both governmental and educational, and
that reparation must first be made to the holiness of God before
conscience, the mirror of God’s holiness, can reflect that
reparation and be at peace.

The law of God is therefore characterized by:

(_a_) All-comprehensiveness.—It is over us at all times; it respects our past, our present, our future. It forbids every conceivable sin; it requires every conceivable virtue; omissions as well as commissions are condemned by it.

_Ps. 119:96_—“_I have seen an end of all perfection ... thy
commandment is exceeding broad_”; _Rom. 3:23_—“_all have sinned,
and fall short of the glory of God_”; _James 4:17_—“_To him
therefore that knoweth to do good, and __ doeth it not, to him it
is sin._” Gravitation holds the mote as well as the world. God’s
law detects and denounces the least sin, so that without atonement
it cannot be pardoned. The law of gravitation may be suspended or
abrogated, for it has no necessary ground in God’s being; but
God’s moral law cannot be suspended or abrogated, for that would
contradict God’s holiness. “About right” is not “all right.” “The
giant hexagonal pillars of basalt in the Scottish Staffa are
identical in form with the microscopic crystals of the same
mineral.” So God is our pattern, and goodness is our likeness to
him.

(_b_) Spirituality.—It demands not only right acts and words, but also right dispositions and states. Perfect obedience requires not only the intense and unremitting reign of love toward God and man, but conformity of the whole inward and outward nature of man to the holiness of God.

_Mat. 5:22, 28_—the angry word is murder; the sinful look is
adultery. _Mark 12:30, 31_—“_thou shalt love the Lord thy God with
all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and
with all thy strength.... Thou shalt love thy neighbor as
thyself_”; _2 Cor. 10:5_—“_bringing every thought into captivity
to the obedience of Christ_”; _Eph. 5:1_—“_Be ye therefore
imitators of God, as beloved children_”; _1 Pet. 1:16_—“_Ye shall
be holy; for I am holy._” As the brightest electric light, seen
through a smoked glass against the sun, appears like a black spot,
so the brightest unregenerate character is dark, when compared
with the holiness of God. Matheson, Moments on the Mount, 235,
remarks on _Gal. 6:4_—“_let each man prove his own work, and then
shall he have his glorying in regard of himself alone, and not of
his neighbor_”—“I have a small candle and I compare it with my
brother’s taper and come away rejoicing. Why not compare it with
the sun? Then I shall lose my pride and uncharitableness.” The
distance to the sun from the top of an ant-hill and from the top
of Mount Everest is nearly the same. The African princess praised
for her beauty had no way to verify the compliments paid her but
by looking in the glassy surface of the pool. But the trader came
and sold her a mirror. Then she was so shocked at her own ugliness
that she broke the mirror in pieces. So we look into the mirror of
God’s law, compare ourselves with the Christ who is reflected
there, and hate the mirror which reveals us to ourselves (_James
1:23, 24_).

(_c_) Solidarity.—It exhibits in all its parts the nature of the one Lawgiver, and it expresses, in its least command, the one requirement of harmony with him.

_Mat. 5:48_—“_Ye therefore shall be perfect, as your heavenly
Father is perfect_”; _Mark 12:29, 30_—“_The Lord our God, the Lord
is one: and thou shalt love the Lord thy God_”; _James 2:10_—“_For
whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet stumble in one point,
he is become guilty of all_”; _4:12_—“_One only is the lawgiver
and judge._” Even little rattlesnakes are snakes. One link broken
in the chain, and the bucket falls into the well. The least sin
separates us from God. The least sin renders us guilty of the
whole law, because it shows us to lack the love which is required
in all the commandments. Those who send us to the Sermon on the
Mount for salvation send us to a tribunal that damns us. The
Sermon on the Mount is but a republication of the law given on
Sinai, but now in more spiritual and penetrating form. Thunders
and lightnings proceed from the N. T., as from the O. T., mount.
The Sermon on the Mount is only the introductory lecture of Jesus’
theological course, as _John 14-17_ is the closing lecture. In it
is announced the law, which prepares the way for the gospel. Those
who would degrade doctrine by exalting precept will find that they
have left men without the motive or the power to keep the precept.
Æschylus, Agamemnon: “For there’s no bulwark in man’s wealth to
him Who, through a surfeit, kicks—into the dim And
disappearing—Right’s great altar.”

Only to the first man, then, was the law proposed as a method of salvation. With the first sin, all hope of obtaining the divine favor by perfect obedience is lost. To sinners the law remains as a means of discovering and developing sin in its true nature, and of compelling a recourse to the mercy provided in Jesus Christ.

_2 Chron. 34:19_—“_And it came to pass, when the king had heard
the words of the law, that he rent his clothes_”; _Job 42:5,
6_—“_I had heard of thee by the hearing of the ear; But now mine
eye seeth thee; Wherefore I abhor myself, And repent in dust and
ashes._” The revelation of God in _Is. 6:3, 5_—“_Holy, holy, holy,
is Jehovah of hosts_”—causes the prophet to cry like the leper:
“_Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean
lips._” _Rom. 3:20_—“_by the works of the law shall no flesh be
justified in his sight; for through the law cometh the __
knowledge of sin_”; _5:20_—“_the law came in besides, that the
trespass might abound_”; _7:7, 8_—“_I had not known sin, except
through the law: for I had not known coveting, except the law had
said, Thou shalt not covet: but sin, finding occasion, wrought in
me through the commandment all manner of coveting: for apart from
the law sin is dead_”; _Gal. 3:24_—“_So that the law is become our
tutor,_” or attendant-slave, “_to bring us unto Christ, that we
might be justified by faith_”—the law trains our wayward boyhood
and leads it to Christ the Master, as in old times the slave
accompanied children to school. Stevens, Pauline Theology, 177,
178—“The law increases sin by increasing the knowledge of sin and
by increasing the activity of sin. The law does not add to the
inherent energy of the sinful principle which pervades human
nature, but it does cause this principle to reveal itself more
energetically in sinful act.” The law inspires fear, but it leads
to love. The Rabbins said that, if Israel repented but for one
day, the Messiah would appear.

No man ever yet drew a straight line or a perfect curve; yet he
would be a poor architect who contented himself with anything
less. Since men never come up to their ideals, he who aims to live
only an _average_ moral life will inevitably fall _below_ the
average. The law, then, leads to Christ. He who is the _ideal_ is
also the _way_ to attain the ideal. He who is himself the Word and
the Law embodied, is also the Spirit of life that makes obedience
possible to us (_John 14:6_—“_I am the way, and the truth, and the
life_”; _Rom. 8:2_—“_For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ
Jesus made me free from the law of sin and of death_”). Mrs.
Browning, Aurora Leigh: “The Christ himself had been no Lawgiver,
Unless he had given the Life too with the Law.” Christ _for_ us
upon the Cross, and Christ _in_ us by his Spirit, is the only
deliverance from the curse of the law; _Gal 3:13_—“_Christ
redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for
us._” We must see the claims of the law satisfied and the law
itself written on our hearts. We are “_reconciled to God through
the death of his Son_,” but we are also _“__saved by his life__”__
(Rom. 5:10_).