THE CHRISTIAN LAWYER. *

MATTHEW Xxii, 35-40.--Then one of them which was a lawyer, asked him a question, tempting him, and saying, Master, which is the great commandment in the law? Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.

THIS law is just as truly the foundation of all just law now as it was then. It underlies all positive, municipal laws, and gives them authority over conscience; since the very fountain of authority is in the will of the Infinite, and only he who made the conscience can be its lord. Legal writers, indeed, make a difference between the law that forbids things in themselves sinful, and the law that regulates matters in themselves indifferent; between the crimes which strike directly at the second table of the moral law, and the offenses which respect the conventional arrangements of society. But in respect to authority over the conscience, all law must find its ultimate support in the revealed or implied will of God; and municipal law, whatever may be its divisions, is to be regarded therefore as the application in life of the very principles here announced. The Jew had his civil as well as moral law; and it was just as much in respect to

*This discourse was occasioned by the decease of HENRY STARR, Esq., and was delivered before a large number of the members of the Bar.

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the one as the other, Jesus uttered the doctrine of the text, on these two commandments, hang all the law and the prophets. Even the Greek and the Roman, in their mythology, beautifully figured Themis the goddess of law and right, as the daughter of heaven and earth. They imaged her as issuing from the will and heart of the Supreme, that she might appear to men clothed with the radiance of divine authority; they gave her the earth for her mother, because this world was to be the sphere of her labor, and it was to be her special employment to regulate human society, and preserve the peace, the holiness, and the rights of man. They made Law a divine thing, of incomparable purity, of strict justice, of vast and far-reaching influence over human destiny.

In the early ages men knew but one set of ministers for the unfolding and the executing of the Supreme law. The father was both master and priest; the patriarch who ruled his tribe, officiated in religion; the sovereign who represented in himself the majesty of civil law, assumed the robes of the chief minister at the altar, and led the worship of the people in the temple. When the Tarquins were expelled from Rome, it became a question how they should provide for the regular performance of religious rites; the kingly and the priestly offices were so united in one man, that the absence of the king was an effectual interdict upon the functions of the priest; and it was to repair the damage which the suspension of the priestly office inflicted upon the cause of liberty, and prevent the people from feeling that a king was necessary at all in any of the departments of State, that independent priests were chosen to discharge those ecclesiastical duties which before were attached to the throne.

Among the Jews it was not until the exodus from Egypt that a formal division was made of the two de

partments of law. That which pertained directly to worship and the heart was given to Aaron as its minister; that which regulated the civil and social state was filled by Moses as its chief; both being equally the servants of God for the unfolding and execution of his divine law. At the coming of Christ, a still broader and more marked line of demarcation between the two was visible. The theocracy in form was to disappear for a time. Christi

anity was to pass beyond the bounds of a single state directly legislated for by Jehovah, and enter into conflict with sin and corruption and ignorance, under all forms of civil government. Its great business was with the hearts of men as the fountains of influence, into which the salt of heavenly grace must be cast, and with the minds of men into which the light of the knowledge of God in the person of Jesus Christ must be poured. The law of God, in its highest sanctions passed into eternity, and shed the gloom of an impenetrable darkness around the future life; while the guilty subjects, panting for deliverance from their fallen state, in vain attempted to shake off the chains of evil which were around them, or penetrate the mystery that kept watch by the portals of the other world. was not therefore to reform governments, purify civil legislation, and model States, that the Christian ministry were directly commissioned. It was not as propagandists of any one species of political economy, or any form of State government, or as the ministers of civil law in any respect, that they were set apart, with such solemnity, to their high office. It was to reform the hearts of men by the simple preaching of the Gospel, the clear unfolding of the plan of redemption, and the impressive urgency of a life of elevated thought, and holiness, and love. It was to bring home to the conscience and affections of men the sovereignty of God and the amazing demonstra

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tions of his mercy in the sacrifice of his Son; and so to win them from unbelief and build them up in the love and knowledge of Christian truth, and at length make them meet for the inheritance of the Saints in light. These were the great ends proposed to the Christian ministry. To deal with the minds and hearts of men with direct and prime reference to the character and claims of God as their Sovereign, Christ as their Redeemer, and the Holy Ghost as their Sanctifier, was their grand mission. In order to effect this unique and special work, Jesus separated entirely the church and the state, the ministers of religion and the offices of civil Government. By his emphatic declaration, "my kingdom is not of this world," he declared the necessity of a spiritual organization which should seek for spiritual conquests and busy itself about the purification of the human heart and the preparation of the soul for its life in eternity; which should make the inner life the great field of its operation, and seek to cleanse the source from which flow the corruptions and miseries of time and eternity.

But while the Church is placed by itself and commissioned to perform a special work with man as immortal, and directly accountable to the Divine law-giver for all the feelings and purposes of his soul; while from the present state of mankind it is of vast importance that this work be intrusted to men set apart mainly for this high object, yet in so doing the Almighty God has neither rendered the other department of law useless, nor in any respect prejudiced its operation. So far from abrogating all other laws and constituting the church the sole legislator, he has expressly affirmed the necessity of separate civil governments, and given them the sanction of an unequivocal command: "For there is no power but

of God; the powers that be are ordained of God." "Wherefore ye must needs be subject, not only for wrath, but for conscience sake." There are outward and visible relations of man with man; and there are duties which spring out of the constitution of society and respect the peaceful association of individuals in one body politie; there are questions which will arise even in the present condition of this world, that must be settled by some competent authority. From the necessities of our fallen humanity, in which the Divine law has so feeble a hold; from the depth and power of that depravity which at first resists the entrance of true religion into the affections and afterward impedes its progress toward a perfect renovation of the heart; from the vastness of the work to which the ministry is devoted, in seeking to instill a pure Christianity into the souls of men and lead them forth into the spiritual kingdom of Jesus Christ as his obedient subjects; from causes such as these arise along side of the Church, political government and civil law and the visible authority for the regulation of human intercourse, the protection of rights, and the maintenance of that state of order and peace in which the Gospel itself may make the greatest progress in purifying and elevating mankind.

Assuming that the ministers of religion are aiming directly at what constitutes the chief end of life; that it is their mission to seek for men the glory, the honor, and the immortality which belong to the noblest condition of the soul in another world; yet is it most true that the civil law, although its direct aim may be limited to that which is temporary and outward, does greatly assist the Gospel in the attainment of its largest results. For it is not in a lawless condition of society, where the foundations of morality are overturned and there is no arbiter