ARTICLE V.-THE DESIRABLENESS OF PREACHING THE GOSPEL RATHER THAN THE LAW IN TIMES OF THE FAILURE OF PUBLIC INTEGRITY.

THERE is no error more subtle and dangerous than the idea that the law of God does not form a perfect standard of action, but adapts itself to man's wishes and imperfect moral condition. The conception that the law is thus a shifting rule is destructive of all true righteousness. Obedience to a right moral standard is as imperative under the gospel as under the law. The justification of the gospel does not touch those who are disobedient to the law of God in their hearts. Christianity is no paradise of the lawless or dreamland of lotus-eaters. The grand old principle of duty is as truly a watchword of the religion of Christ as it was of the religion of Moses. Often the believer, hard pressed by the temptations and trials of life, can say nothing but this: "I will just try to do the will of God, and press on.' The law of God in its most comprehensive sense is simply the manifestation of the will of God. It is the pure expression of his spirit and nature. It is that desire, or command, which goes forth from God as the stream from the fountain; and as there is but one divine lawgiver, so there can be but one divine law, the undivided and perfect expression of the mind of the lawgiver, unchangeable and eternal. No new events or facts in the moral universe can change the law-not even the great facts of sin and redemption. These modify only the relations of the subject to the law.

Here, then, we have a perfect standard-"the law is boly, and just, and good." To suggest the possibility of God's putting forth any expression of an imperfect moral standard, or aught but a perfectly righteous one, were less respectful than to impugn the glory of the lower heavens and cast contempt on the law that leads in harmony the movements of the natural universe. It were far less destructive to deny the perfection of a physical than of a moral law.

If the law is thus perfect and immutable, if it is not lowered

to meet the changing conditions of an imperfect and sinful creature, how comes it about that Christianity seems to build upon another principle of perfection? How is it that the apostle to the Gentiles in so many words declares concerning believers that they "are not under the law;" and that "by the works of the law no flesh can be justified;" and, above all, that the law is done away by Christ?

Has the law, indeed, abdicated the throne since the coming of Christ? Has the law of God changed itself into some poor, inferior thing by which its absolute claims upon the spirit of man are nullified?

These questions are difficult; we would attempt in the briefest manner to offer some humble suggestions toward their explanation.

In discussing the relations of the law to the gospel, it is nec essary to understand the meaning which the apostle Paul commonly gives to the word "law."

In those places where the word is used without the article [vóμoc], as in Romans iii. 12; iii. 31; iv. 13, 14, 15; v. 13, 20; vii. 1; x. 4; xiii. 8; 1 Cor. ix. 20; Gal. ii. 21; iii. 11, 18, 21; iv. 5; Phil. iii. 6; and also where the principal noun has no article, as pra voμov-in those places it is laid down by Winer and other scholars that the reference is invariably to the Mosaic law.

Undoubtedly this is true; but if there were no other idea attached to the "law" than simply that of the law of Moses, and especially of its prescriptive and ceremonial part, the question of the doing away of the law by the dispensation of Christ would not be so difficult.

If, when Paul speaks of his own righteousness which is of the law, and in which he was blameless, he referred simply to the Mosaic dispensation and to no other principle, then we can see the justness of his self-condemnation that his righteousness was no true righteousness; and if the "works of the law" were merely "ritual prescriptions," we can readily believe that by them no man is justified.

Being by birth and education a Jew, the apostle, when he speaks of the "law," refers without question to the Mosaic law, but, speaking also as a Christian, he does this in a somewhat secondary sense; that is, it was the law of God expressed

through the mouth and the institutions of Moses.

The principle of divine law was deeper than the Mosaic law. Those to whom he wrote, as Jews, regarded the law of God as embodied in the institutions of Moses. That was to them the sole expression of the moral and prescriptive law of God. That was the law. They were right in this, because God's law was given through Moses; and, in so far as the Mosaic institutions expressed the eternal principles of righteousness revealed to Moses, it was the law of God. What was merely temporary and ceremonial in it is done away. What belonged to a special outward theocracy suited to the religious condition of the age and of the race, is abolished. But underneath all was the eternal law of righteousness, which belongs to no particular age or people, and which appeals to the universal moral consciousness. To this, above all, Paul undoubtedly referred when he spoke of the law -to this larger and deeper idea of law, embracing the Mosaic law wherein it comprehended the eternal principles of righteousness, but going beyond and beneath the outward institution and precept.

This law which speaks to the conscience of every man, both Jew and Gentile, which is perfect, which is one and unchangeable, is, nevertheless, according to the apostle, insufficient as a principle of salvation. It is not lowered an iota as a moral standard by. Christianity, but yet it is powerless to save. It contains no principle of new spiritual life. While it remains as a perfect standard to the righteous, it is a death principle to the sinner. He who lives under it as a principle of justification and salvation is spiritually dead. Why is this? The answer is all-important in its practical bearings.

Real obedience is something of the heart; it supposes a right disposition of mind. The outward obedience proceeds from the inward disposition. God can see this, if man cannot. He can also perceive the absence of this right disposition of heart; and if it be absent, then the "righteousness which is by the law," is only, after all, a seeming righteousness, and by its best works, now as in Paul's time, no man is justified.

This right disposition of heart-how shall it be obtained? Here the law is powerless, "for if there had been a law given which could have given life, verily righteousness should have

been by the law." But the law is only the imperative expres sion of an externally prescribed rule of action, and it is totally unable to produce an internal change of disposition.* It indeed commands obedience, but it gives no ability to obey. It requires a spiritual righteousness, but it is utterly impotent to impart that new life from which such righteousness flows.

This new life must first be created within the sinful soul, and then the obedience, springing up from within, meets the law and flows on in the currents of the law's righteous require ments. All its acts done in this spirit have the beautiful char acter of "good works." Then the law has no restraining or coercive element, and it is even as if there were no law at all.

Thus it is said that the believer in Christ is no longer "under the law." When, through the power of faith in Christ, a new divine life comes into the soul, the man is delivered from the law of sin and death. The law is for the sinner who dis obeys it, and not for the righteous man, who loves it. The sinner feels the weight of the yoke, but with the believer the bondage is over because the spirit is free. He lives and works out his religious life under a new principle, not of law but of grace. Having been made a partaker of the "divine nature," he delights inwardly in the law of God, and this becomes the law of his own nature which he unconsciously obeys from a free impulse of love. This love is the fulfilling of the law.

Thus we have revealed to us the new dispensation of faith in Jesus Christ, whose central principle is love; and they who linger under the old system of law and works, may be strong men,-may do many wonderful works,-may, even to the eye of God, possess the hidden root of righteousness in them, but they are not distinctively Christians; they are not free men in the liberty wherewith Christ makes free. They are not be lievers after the pattern of Paul and John. They do not know the spring of a divine life and power which makes "new men in Christ. The religion of law may restrain sin for a while, but it cannot cure it. It may coerce and hold down the power of evil and punish it for a thousand years or forever, but it cannot destroy it. But the religion of love can alone regenerate this sinful world and bring in the "new heaven and new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness."

*Neander's Planting and Training, p. 236.

This truth of the right relations of the law to the gospel which has been briefly discussed, has its important practical bearings upon the subject of Christian preaching and living. We sometimes hear it said, that in order effectually to check the sin there is in the world we must preach the law. The gospel may do for calm weather, but the law is for times of outbreaking sin, of storm, violence, unrighteousness, and wrong. In a period when evil comes in like a flood, when good men. grow faint, when corruption and iniquity abound, when business integrity and political honor in signal instances fail, and even the church of God seems to be sunk in unrighteousness. and materialism, then we must lay aside the mild weapons of the gospel and take up the flaming thunderbolts of the law. Then Christ must retire weeping out of sight, and Moses must come down from Mt. Sinai with the tables of the law in his hands, his countenance very terrible to behold, and utter once more the awful retributions of the decalogue. Then we must preach the strong doctrines, and, above all, the doctrines and sanctions of the law. The law is the mighty helper and the only sure rock of defence when iniquity prevails. This, too, is said by good men who are preachers of the gospel, but whose gospel thus seems to break down just at the test-point, and they are seen, after all, in this view at least, to be preachers of Moses rather than ministers of Christ. Their philosophy of the Gospel, it is to be feared, does not grasp its deepest life, its divinest conception of power as related to the human soul.

If the gospel be not found to be equal to all the possible emergencies of the soul, of society, and of the world, if it be only a smooth-weather gospel, then it is not the power to save the world from sin and to make it holy, which it has been announced to be, and we must substitute in its place some stronger force, moral or physical.

The law, as that perfect standard of moral obligation which comes down from the will of God, is, as we have said, just as imperative under the gospel as under the law itself. The standard of right is not lowered one iota by the gospel; for the seat of this principle is in that intuitive sense of right which belongs to the nature of the soul, and which we call conscience; and the gospel is as truly addressed to man's con