September 14, 1899
THE early church derived her marvelous power in the earth not from politics, but from Pentecost.
THE law can establish the letter of righteousness; but we are divinely warned that the letter alone “killeth.”
LET men pass what laws they please; it will still remain true that “the word of God is not bound,” and will prevail in spite of all opposition.
IT never does anybody much good to be forced to accept a benefit that he ought to take of his own free will. The law is out of place when it tries to force people to accept an unappreciated blessing.
LAWS and informalities never kept any institution alive after the spirit of it was dead in the heart of the people. How then can laws be relied on to “save the Sabbath”?
WHAT is needed here, and everywhere, is not that laws should be brought to the aid of Christianity, but that Christianity should be brought to the aid of law. When people are made good, they will do right; but no amount of commands to do right can make any person good.
BECAUSE “evil men and seducers” are waxing worse, as foretold by the prophet, crime is increasing in the land; and if the law cannot prevent crime from increasing, how can it prevent the progress of the moral degeneracy that is back of the crime?
WITH the gospel in the world as the divinely-appointed agency to persuade men to do right, it cannot be the province of the civil law to compel men in the moral sphere. If compulsion is right, persuasion must be wrong; and vice versa.
THE only authority which can rightfully speak in matters of religion, is that Authority which is infallible; hence the pope puts forth the claim to infallibility and “it is at least impossible for the magistrate to adjudge the right of preference among the various sects that profess the Christian faith without erecting a claim to infallibility which would lead us back to the church of Rome.”