range in all the systems of laws. With all the light of Roman civil laws, Greek philosophy, a thousand years of law making in Europe, and with all our new states budding into being, where each selects the best for its own, we have reached the highest level of any lawmakers. Yet our laws are confessedly imperfect, from the fact that we send men to Washington, and to each state capitol, every winter, amending some laws, erasing others and making new ones. Still it is a question, whether our laws are not like the woman who came to Christ, who had suffered many things from many physicians, and spent all she had and was nothing better, but rather grew worse. They who hope for relief from our social wrongs through the operations of the law, must certainly be doomed to disappointment. Our hope is in the quickened conscience of men, as in the sight of God, and there is salvation in no other. 15The law makes nothing perfect. The law never regenerated a man. It never regenerated a nation. The law condemns men. It engenders hatred, which in the end is death. Its dominion is through fear and hope of gain. The strength of the law is selfishness, it is sin. The law never saved a man. It never saved a nation. It cannot save either. That no flesh can be justified by the works of the law is evident; for the just shall live by faith. The more law we have, the harder it is for the poor man to get justice at court. We turn to the law as a choice between two evils, whether it is better to suffer wrong, or to incur the expense of the court.

The prerogative of the law is not to regenerate men, nor society, but to soften the ills from the selfishness of the flesh,to restrain the violent, to compel the unjust to act justly, to curb the immoral, and to protect the innocent. Men have a

10 Heb. 7:19.

higher standard of morals for others than their selfishness will permit them to enforce against themselves. This brings our conduct onto a higher level than it would be without the force of laws. Laws are good as they are expressions of the intuitions of truth; and government under them is righteous, as the laws are administered in love. To the extent that laws are the fruits of the consciousness of truth in men, they become as beacon lights blazing the path through the crooked ways of this sinful world. The law of Moses was a light to the pathway of ancient Israel. Good laws are a guide to men in their business transactions, and even in their social relations. A statement of principles as a platform is necessary in organized parties, and an agreement as to doctrines stated in creeds is the vital organ, of any civic, religious, moral or fraternal organization. As long as we are in the flesh we will need the forms of the law, but these should never become our

masters.

The most corrupt at heart may be orthodox before the evangelical system of belief, and observant of all the religious ordinances; but it is a very different man who lives righteously and judges righteous judgment from a sincere conscience. The bondage of thought is, that men judge in the narrow channel of their creed or, party; so they cannot judge righteous judgment in the liberty of the consciousness of truth.

The divine government for men is the holiness of life in each individual. Eden had no code of laws. Laws became necessary by reason of the degeneracy of men after the fall. Where the selfishness of the flesh has influence, there will be need of laws. Clothing was not needed till after man sinned. We might as well try to regain the bliss of Eden by casting away our clothing, as to attempt to rid ourselves of the curse of the law by anarchy. To abandon all our relig

ious doctrines, would be to have no religion, and in the end become barbarians; also to do away with all our laws would be to render society worse than wild beasts. The divine government will be established, by quickening the divinity in men into holiness, to the perfect dominion over them.

T

CHAPTER VII

THE LAW VS. JEHOVAH

HE LAW" as used by Paul is positive law, ecclesiastic law, civil law social dicta and ordinances, in fine all prescribed rules for righteous living, as distinguished from a life in the liberty of the consciousness of truth.

God's way of governing men is by their quickened conscience. His kingdom on earth is by the determinations of their wills. As all nature obeys the impulses or instinct he imparts to it, so he seeks to govern men through the holiness of their intuitions. To the extent that laws are used as servants of the truth, protecting the inalienable rights of men, they are as Thus saith the Lord. But the history of laws is that they have not generally been so employed. Laws protecting rulers at the expense of the rights of their subjects are oppression. Laws expressing the opinions of organizations, enforced for the purpose of making others righteous, inflicting punishments where none have been injured, executed for the purpose of maintaining the dignity of the law, is making the law a god, and the service of other gods before Jehovah. The teaching of commandments of men for doctrine is idolatrous worship, and makes the life of God in men of small effect, no matter how good the laws, even the inspired word interpreted as law is robbed of its regenerating

power.

The demands of Moses and of the prophets were for an absolute surrender of men to Jehovah, as their only rightful ruler. The rebellion of Israel when in the wilderness

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and her rejection of Jehovah that he should not reign over them, when in the land of Promise were that they wished to be governed by laws as the nations about them were, instead of by the consciousness of truth in their souls; guided by the revelations from God through inspired men. Jesus said, "The kingdom of God is within you. Ye know that the princes of the Gentiles exercise dominion over them; and they that are great exercise authority upon them; and they that exercise authority upon them are called benefactors. But it shall not be so with you.

The teachings of Jesus were so manifestly opposed to the empire of the law, it was necessary at the outset of his ministry to explain that he was not advocating anarchy, in violation of the great principles of righteousness, as laid down by Moses and described by the prophets; but that in his movement not one jot nor one tittle of the inspired declarations should fail, but all would be fulfilled. In fact what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh; that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the spirit.

Christianity is not in perfect laws, but is the holy spirit quickened into dominion over men. The ministry of Jesus would have been incomprehensible to people, whose civilization was by the law. Righteousness before the law is in professions of self-righteousness, by which men become bigoted, puffed up with pride, and in the vanity of their imaginations, professing to be righteous they are wicked, and thinking themselves wise, they are fools. The Greek civilization was an intellectuality, and the Roman was law. The Romans knew

'Luke 17:21, 22, 25; Math. 20:25.