October 19, 1899
JESUS CHRIST conquered the world—not by shedding the blood of others, but his own.
WHILE the church seeks the power that is from beneath, she need not expect to be endued with “power from on high.”
THE armies and navies of the great military powers can speak like the whirlwind, earthquake, and fire; but God yet speaks in the “still small voice.”
AMS THE man who controls themselves as a disposition to let other people alone, so the government which is “of the people” is not found meddling with the rights of a foreign race. But all this is changed when the principle of self-government is cast aside.
MAN does not exist to direct law; the law exists to direct man. The law existed before man was created.
MAN cannot make law. He cannot make a law of nature, and cannot make a moral law. It would be as easy to make the one as the other. The moral sphere was no more left without law at creation than was the physical sphere. And as man can only discover and apply physical laws, or laws of nature, so also he can but discover and apply the laws of morality. The law of gravitation is older than the law against murder or any other act destructive of rights.
THE province of the human “law-maker” is to be a discoverer and not an inventor. He may invent some “moral” laws of his own, but he cannot improve on the moral legislation of the Creator, which covers every possible point of moral relations. As an inventor in the domain of legislation, no man is ever entitled to a patent.
THE Creator of all things made the law for all, and therefore all law is just and perfect, and anything not just and perfect is not law. A bad “law” always sets at naught the real law of the point to which it applies; and to obey the one is synonymous with breaking the other.
THE only power that man has of himself is the power to do wrong. The power to do right is a higher power, being the power of God. The power to do one righteous act is superior to the power to do all wrong acts.