the knowledge of the Lord as the waters now cover the sea. II. The perfection of the Mosaic Judicial Code in its origin and administration, emanating from Him who is omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, and administered in all matters of doubt and uncertainty, with a constant reference to the Divine will, by the Urim and Thummim, and by the waters of jealousy, when contrasted with the Laws of man, proves the imperfection of all human legislation. *Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? How can frail, fallen, imperfect man perform a perfect action? Hence imperfection is of necessity impressed upon every work of man, upon all governments, and upon all legislation, civil and ecclesiastical. He who expects perfection in Church or State, will never have his expectations realized till the Premillenial Advent and Personal Reign of Jehovah Jesus. But every imperfection in government does not justify rebellion, nor every imperfection in a Church schism and separation. If, indeed, the blind lead the blind, both will fall into the pit of hell. If in any locality the unsearchable riches of Christ are not preached to the soul's edification, they who have felt the powers of the world to come, will go, and ought to go, where they can obtain a faithful ministration of the Gospel. But no imperfection in legislation can justify opposition to human laws, unless those laws are manifestly opposed to the Divine Will. "The powers that be (monarchical, aristocratical, republican, judicial, and ministerial) are ordained of God, and whosoever resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God, and they who resist shall receive to themselves damnation." But whilst we advocate the necessary imperfection of all human legislation, we are bound especially to praise God for the inestimable blessings of our incomparable Constitution. England equals, if she does not surpass, all other nations in the equity of her Laws, and *Job xiv. 4. Matthew xv. 14; Luke vi. 39. the rights and liberties of her subjects. The acknowledged integrity and impartiality of the Judicial Bench, and the independence of the Bar, conjoined with the trial by jury, are the Palladium of our civil rights. Would to God that we Ministers of the Gospel were as able exponents of the Volume of Revelation as our Judges are of the Laws and Statutes of the Realm! Would to God that we Ministers of the Gospel were as active, zealous, and energetic in enforcing the cause of Divine truth as the Advocate at the Bar is in pleading the cause, and asserting the rights of his client! Then, indeed, would the word of the Lord go forth and be glorified; then, indeed, would Christ, by the unction of His Spirit resting upon heaven-taught and heavensent Ministers" see of the travail of His soul and be satisfied." III. From the spirit and letter of the Judicial Law we learn, that the entire abolition of capital punishments, especially as regards the crime of murder, is directly opposed to God's revealed will. That the murderer should be put to death was the Divine decree of immutable and perpetual obligation during the patriarchal dispensation anterior to the Mosaic economy and the promulgation of the law from Horeb. +"Surely your blood of your lives will I require; at the hand of every beast will I require it, and at the hand of man; at the hand of every man's brother will I require the life of man. Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made He man." This decree was perpetuated and enforced by the Mosaic Judicial Code. "These things shall be a statute of judgment unto you throughout your generations in all your dwellings. Whoso killeth any person, the murderer shall be put to death, by the mouth of two witnesses; but one witness shall not testify against any person to cause him to die. Moreover ye shall take no satisfaction for the life of a murderer, which is guilty of death: but he shall be surely put to + Numbers XXXV, 29-34. * Isaiah liii. 11. + Genesis ix. 5, 6. death....so ye shall not pollute the land wherein ye are for blood defileth the land: and the land cannot be cleansed of the blood that is shed therein: but by the blood of him that shed it. Defile not, therefore, the land which ye shall inherit, wherein I dwell: for I the Lord dwell among the children of Israel." * If one be found slain in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee to possess it, lying in the field, and it be not known who hath slain him: then thy elders and thy judges shall come forth, and they shall measure unto the cities which are round about him that is slain. And it shall be, that the city which is next unto the slain man, even the elders of that city shall take an heifer, which hath not been wrought with, and which hath not drawn in the yoke: and the elders of that city shall bring down the heifer unto a rough valley, which is neither eared nor sown, and shall strike off the heifer's neck, there in the valley. And the priests the sons of Levi shall come near: for them the Lord thy God hath chosen to minister unto Him, and to bless in the name of the Lord, and by their word shall every controversy and every stroke be tried. And all the elders of that city, that are next unto the slain man, shall wash their hands over the heifer that is beheaded in the valley and they shall answer and say, our hands have not shed this blood, neither have our eyes seen it. Be merciful, O Lord, unto thy people Israel, whom thou hast redeemed, and lay not innocent blood unto thy people, Israel's charge. And the blood shall be forgiven them. So shalt thou put away the guilt of innocent blood from among you, when thou shalt do that which is right in the sight of the Lord." Whatever doubt may exist, whether any crimes ought now to be capitally punished, to which the penalty of death was not affixed by the Laws of Moses-whatever doubt may exist, whether the punishment of death ought not now to be executed upon the perpetrators of all those crimes against society for which it was enacted by the Mosaic Code (I specify crimes against society, because * Deuteronomy xxi. 1–9. the Israelites were under a Divine Theocracy, and sins against God, such as Sabbath-breaking, witchcraft, divination, idolatry, blasphemy, might under a Theocracy have merited a heavier punishment than they do now,) it is self-evident that he who sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed. No power has been conceded or delegated by the King of kings, and Lord of lords to any earthly potentate, to spare the life or revoke the irremissible doom of a clearly convicted murderer. * At the hand of every man's brother, saith Jehovah, will I require the life of man." Hence all Petitions to Parliament for the entire abolition of capital punishments;-all refusals of an eye-witness to give evidence to substantiate the perpetration of murder, and of a jury to convict when the crime has been clearly proved, are acts of high treason against the Majesty of Jehovah, and infractions of God's revealed will. Capital and secondary punishments must be inflicted by every government with all the stringency and rigor essential to the protection of the peaceful, orderly, and well-disposed. IV. The Mosaic Judicial Code should remind us of the great and terrible day of the Lord, when the voice of the Archangel and the trump of God shall change the living and raise the mouldering dead;— when Christ shall sit on His Throne of judgment;-when before His tribunal shall be congregated all who have lived, and all who shall live, and +"every eye shall see Him;"-when the universal family of man shall be divided into two classes, saints and sinners, the saved and the lost, the children of God and the children of Belial-and when the former shall be exalted to eternity of glory, and the latter be doomed to shame and everlasting contempt. On that dread day where will appear the Atheist,+ "the fool who hath said in his heart, there is no God?" On that dread day where will the Anti-Trinitarian appear, who denies Messiah's Divinity and coequality with the Father and the Holy Ghost, feigning Him to * Genesis ix. 5. † Revelations i. 7. Psalm liii. 1. be a super-angelic Being, or a man of like passions with himself? Where will the Anti-Trinitarian appear when Christ shall be manifested the effulgence of His Father's glory, and the perfect expression of His Essence"-"God the mighty man, the everlasting Father, the Prince of peace"-+" over all God blessed for ever?" Where will appear the Anti-Trinitarian blasphemer of the Triune Jehovah, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost, when " at the name of Jesus every knee shall bow, and every tongue shall confess He is Jehovah to the glory of God the Father"-when the very damned shall acknowledge the equity of their sentence-when §" all shall honour the Son even as they honour the Father?" Crimes against the triune Jehovah, not cognizable by human laws, will then "receive a just recompense of reward." On that dread day where will appear the profligate, the licentious, the immoral, the impenitent, the Sabbath-breaker, the habitual absentee from public worship, the drunkard, the liar, the swearer, the thief, the adulterer, the fornicator, the murderer, the receiver of stolen goods, the bearer of false witness against his neighbour, the tempter of others to intoxication, the mercenary vendor of licentious books or anti-evangelical tales of fiction, the one subversive of purity, the other of Gospel truth, and the man-stealer trafficking in the blood and sinews of the kidnapped posterity of Ham, when the Books shall be opened, and the dead shall be judged out of those Books according to their works? Then every unrepented sin of thought, word and action. shall be brought to judgment. Then the righteous judge will say to all Christless sinners: You have sown to the flesh, of the flesh you shall reap corruption, ¶"depart from me ye cursed into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels." On that dread day where will appear the idolatrous Papist, and semi-papistical Tractarian? No papal in * Heb. i. 3. Romans ix. 5. † Isaiah ix. 6. See Bp. Horsley's Biblical Criticism. Phillipians ii. 10, 11. Matthew xxv. 41. § John v. 23. |