dience, and his highest disapprobation of disobedience, and which for this purpose include the highest possible degree of natural good in each case of obedience, and the highest possible degree of natural evil in each case of disobedience. (a) They ratify the authority of the governor, and thus sanction his right to rule. 96 (b) They consist, exclusively, in natural good and evil. 98 (c) They are the decisive proof of authority. 99 (d) They are decisive proof, by manifesting the highest approbation of obedience, and the highest disapprobation of disobedience. At this point of the argument, the presumption against the promulgation of such sanctions is removed, and a presumption in its favor established. 106 (e) They are the necessary proof of authority. 107 110 111 112 114 116 119 122 (a) They are necessary in some respects or under some relation. This appears: (a3) From the import of the phrase legal sanctions.” ment. (a) Such a law requires an expression toward obedience and disobedience, fully proved to be sincere. (b) It must be an authoritative rule of action. (c) Law without sanctions, is not law; but only advice. (c3) From the fact that a law without sanctions is a decisive proof that the lawgiver is unable or unwilling to execute them. (d) From the fact that conformity and non-conformity to a law without sanctions, equally disprove and subvert authority. (b) Legal sanctions are necessary, as the necessary proof of his benevolence. (a) Such proof cannot be given by mere professions of proper feelings toward right and wrong. (b) Nor in certain other supposable ways. (a) Not by securing a greater amount of obedience without legal sanctions than with them. (b) Nor by promising reward to obedience but threatening no penalty to disobedience. At this point in the argument, we see why attempts to prove the benevolence of God from the light of nature have so often failed. 127 128 (c2) They are necessary as proofs of his highest approbation of obedience, and highest disapprobation of disobedience; be cause, (a3) Natural good and evil cannot become legal sanctions in certain other supposed modes: (a) Not as the mere dictate of individual kindness or unkindness; 129 (b) Nor as moral discipline; 130 131 131 135 138 139 139 139 141 143 144 144 147 (c) Nor as the payment of a debt from the governor to the subject; (d') Nor as the payment of a debt from the subject to the governor; (e) Nor as mere motives; (f) Nor because they are, abstractly, right; (g) Nor as the dictate of justice as distinct from benevolence. (b) The nature of legal sanctions requires this. (c) It is utterly insupposable and inconceivable that natural good and evil can become legal sanctions in any other way; for, (a) When employed in the manner advocated, they are the most significant and appropriate expressions of these feelings of the lawgiver, for which reason he is bound to employ them. (b) If the supposition be admitted, then they must become legal sanctions either by showing no feeling in regard to obedience or disobedience, or by showing a less degree than the highest. (a) It cannot be the former, from the nature of things. (a) A benevolent being will always entertain and ex- (a) The governor could furnish no proof, to his (c) By the omission, the governor would disprove (d) The truth of the proposition (c2) further appears from the view which men entertain of the supreme law of the state. 367 387 VOL. II. Distinction between the supreme law and various subordinate regulations, malum in se and malum prohibitum. The penalty attached to former, alone a legal sanction. The penalty attached to latter, only an inducement. Death-the supreme evil to man the only proper penalty of former, and the only penal sanction in human law. VOL. I. 153 155 160 164 167 175 177 Thus is the proposition (e) established. At this point in the argument, it is shown that Christianity is not a selfish system, and that those who deny the sanctions advocated, cannot prove the benevolence of God. (f) The legal sanctions of a perfect moral government include the highest degree of good and evil. The reward includes the highest possible good; still admits of degrees; is continued only while obedience continues. The penalty includes the highest possible evil; by no other can the highest abhorrence be shown; by not inflicting it, the lawgiver shows that he esteems transgression a less evil than the infliction. Objections: (1) Since reward ceases with obedience, penalty should cease with disobedience. (2) Should all rebel, benevolence would forbid their endless punishment. (3) Incredible and impossible that benevolence would adopt a moral government involving the penalty of eternal death. THE BIBLIOTHECA SACRA, No. LXVII. AND BIBLICAL REPOSITORY, No. CXIX. JULY, 1860. ARTICLE I. THE MISSIONARY SPIRIT OF THE PSALMS AND PROPHETS. BY PROF. E. P. BARROWs, andover. TO SOME it may seem strange that a missionary spirit should be spoken of as belonging to the Old Testament. They may have accustomed themselves to think of such a spirit as peculiar to the new dispensation of the gospel, in contrast with the stern exclusiveness of the Mosaic economy. In one sense this is true. If a missionary spirit be understood as including a regularly organized plan for the conversion of all nations, this is an idea first developed in the New Testament. No one of the ancient prophets ever received from God a command to go and preach the institutions of Moses, or even the fundamental doctrines of revealed religion, to all nations. Christ himself, who came as the Saviour of the world, confined his labors mainly to his own countrymen. It was only in an incidental way that he bestowed his benefactions upon those who were not Israelites. When, early in his ministry, he sent out his twelve apostles to preach, his commission was: "Go not into the way of the Gentiles, and into any city of the Samaritans enter ye not. rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel." It But go was not till after he had completed the work of making expiation for the sins of men, and was about to ascend to heaven, that he gave his disciples the broad commission: "Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature." 1 But while all this is true, we must never forget that the original covenant with Abraham had respect to the salvation of all nations. Though made with him and his seed after him, its end was to bless all families of the earth: "In thee shall all families of the earth be blessed;"2 "Seeing that 266 Abraham shall surely become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him;"3 "In thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed.”4 Although God, for a season, "suffered all nations," outside of Abraham's posterity, "to walk in their own ways," 5 it was still with reference to their final recovery and salvation. His plan was, first, to bring one family into covenant with himself, and, having multiplied it to a great nation, to manifest to that nation, by a series of stupendous miracles, his unity and infinite perfections, and subject it, for many succes sive centuries, to a system of laws and institutions of his own appointment; and that, too, under a remarkable providential guidance in connection with a series of prophets directly commissioned by him to rebuke the people for their sins and instruct them respecting his will. Having in this manner moulded one nation into the knowledge of himself, and thus prepared the way for a universal dispensation, he revealed to that nation the gospel of Christ, that it might be propagated thence, as from a common centre, over all the earth. The Mosaic economy, then, though itself exclusive, was the divine foundation for a nobler dispensation, which should know no distinction between the nations of mankind. was a partial, preparatory to a universal, dispensation. So far, therefore, as the benevolent design of God is concerned, all objections drawn from the exclusive character of the Mo It 1 Mark 16: 15. 4 Gen. 22: 18. 2 Gen. 12: 3. 8 Gen. 18: 18. |