“These words the Lord spake unto all your assembly in the mount, out of the midst of the fire, of the cloud and of the thick darkness, with a great voice; and he added no more. And he wrote them in two tables of stone, and delivered them unto me.”
This is the covenant as it was written upon the tables of stone. It is, by its facts, limited to the Jews, for they are the only people who were ever delivered from bondage in Egypt. The abrogation of this covenant is clearly presented in the following language, found in Zechariah, the eleventh chapter and tenth verse: “And I took my staff, even Beauty, and cut it asunder, that I might break my covenant which I had made with all the people. And it was broken in that day; and so the poor of the flock that waited upon me knew that it was the word of the Lord. And I said unto them, If ye think good, give me my price; and if not, forbear. So they weighed for my price thirty pieces of silver.” This language had its fulfillment in the sale which Judas Iscariot made of his Lord and the abrogation of the ancient covenant or law.
The prophets were not confined to the kingdom of Israel, or to any one kingdom, nor yet to any one dispensation.
They bore the word of the Lord to all the nations, as we learn from such language as this: “The burden of the word of the Lord to Ninevah, to Sidon, to Tyre, to Idumea, to Babylon, to Samaria, to Egypt,” and to many others. It is very remarkable that no such latitude or longitude of relationships belongs to the ancient law. It was confined to the Israelites.
The Heavenly Father spake not to the ancients by his Son, but by the prophets. And much of that which they spake pertained to our own dispensation and to our own religion.
Much, very much, of that which they gave lies in the very [pg 158] foundation of our religion. We should always distinguish, carefully, between the Law and the prophets, and between these two and the psalms, remembering, however, that prophesy belongs also to many of the psalms. The abrogated covenant, or law, that was done away, was written upon stones. It, with all the laws which were after its tenor, was supplanted by the law of Christ. It was added because of transgression till Christ, “the seed,” should come. When he came it expired by limitation, and through his authority the neighborly restrictions or limitations were taken off from moral precepts, which were re-enacted by him.
The Funeral Services Of The National Liberal League.
The decent members of the Liberal League, who formed it to express their convictions, and who withdrew and formed a rival League when they found that the old organization had gone over to the defense of indecency, who gave to the League all the character it had, and who had great hopes at one time of destroying the influence of the preachers of the Gospel of Christ, and thereby ridding our country of that terrible pest called the Bible, have given up their name. Their “priests” have adopted the following arraignment of their old organization, a legitimate child of their own:
“Voted that, in the judgment of this Board, the name ‘National Liberal League’ has become so widely and injuriously associated in the public mind with attempts to repeal the postal laws prohibiting the circulation of obscene literature by mail, with the active propagandism of demoralizing and licentious social theories, and with the support of officials and other public representatives who are on good grounds believed to have been guilty of gross immoralities, that it has been thereby unfitted for use by any organization [pg 159] which desires the support of the friends of ‘natural morality.’ ”