M ARRIAGE, MOSES, MURDER, PENTATEUCH, ROB BERY, SABBATH, SLAVE, T HEFT, et C. I t iS, in deed, both unnecessary and impracticable to exhaust in this place all that might with propriety be brought under the head of Law. We therefore make no such attempt, but refer our readers to the cognate articles for further information. The chief point here to be considered, is the authority ascribed in thc Bible itself to law in general, and to Biblical law in particular. The misconceptions on this subject prevalent in the religious world are the more surprising, since many distinguished ecclesiastical teachers of various periods. and among these St. Augustine of the fourth and fifth, and the Reformers of the sixteenth century, have stated the Biblical doctrine respecting the law with particular clearness.
3. Authority. Christ and the apostles ex press themselves respecting the authority of the law so variously that in order to reconcile their apparent contradictions. the divines of various Christian denominations have usually felt them selves compelled to distinguish between different portions of the law, some of which, they assert, were abolished by Christ, while they maintain that others were established by him. Against this convenient mode of overcoming the difficulty the following observations may be adduced: (1) Neither Christ nor the apostles ever distin guish between the moral, the ceremonial, and the civil law, when they speak of its establishment or its abolition.
(2) They even clearly indicate that the moral law is by no means excepted when they speak of the abolition of the law in general. Thus, for instance, St. Paul, after having stated that the law is not incumbent upon the righteous, guards us against misunderstanding him, as if this referred to the ceremonial law alone; for he specifies va rious transgressors to whom the law is given, and who are restrained by the same. The transgres sors mentioned by St. Paul are not those of the ceremonial, but of the moral law 0 Tim.
i (3) In order to reconcile the apparent contradic tions between the various dicta of the New Testa ment concerning the authority of the law, we must not commence, as is usually done, namely. by distinguishing the matter of the law, but the form of manner in which it is binding or obli gatory. He who said that not a jot nor a tittle of
the law should perish until all things were ful filled, certainly could not mean that more than two-thirds of the law were abolished, but intended forcibly to express the idea that, in a certain sense, by his instrumentality, the whole law, with out any exception, had obtained an increased au thority. We, therefore, conceive that in order to reconcile the apparent, but merely apparent, con tradictions of the New Testament, we must distin guish not so much the various materials, ritual, civil, and moral, of which the law is composed, as the various manners in which its modus obli gandi may exist.
(4) The authority which other beings may ex ercise upon us is twofold; it is either nonziothet ico/ or didactical. The nomothctical authority, which a book, or the living voice of another moral being may exercise upon us, is either such that it precludes the exercise of our own judg ment, like that which Pythagoras is said to have exercised upon his disciples, who were in the habit of settling all their disputes, as by a final reason from which there was no appeal, by cuir6s g0a, he has said so ; or the authority is such as to excite the faculties of the listener, so that he perceives the necessity of the truth communi cated. In this last case the authority exercised is not nomothetical, but didactical.
(5) So it was also with the human race at large: it was necessary that the law of Moses should ex ercise nomothctical authority by 'Cursed is he who does not continue in the words of this law.' And so it is now with a great portion of Christian re ligionists, who still require frightful curses and opposite benedictions somewhat similar to those formerly pronounced on the mountains Ebal and Gerizim, in order to keep them in the right di rection. But the assertion of this nomothetical authority was not the ultimate aim of Christ. His most intimate disciple, whom he especially loved, states strikingly, 'On 6 v6,1243s Ota Mtuaiws 6368n• xat dX750eta 'Incror) Xptcrroii i-yevero, For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.