Appendix
693
Israel, they have, of necessity, taken it upon themselves to interpret
and enforce the law of God. They have assumed the right to control
[764]
the conscience, and thus have usurped the prerogative of God
.
In the former dispensation, while sins against God were visited
with temporal penalties, the judgments executed were not only by
divine sanction, but under His direct control, and by His command.
Sorcerers were to be put to death. Idolaters were to be slain. Profanity
and sacrilege were punished with death. Whole nations of idolaters
were to be exterminated. But the infliction of these penalties was
directed by Him who reads the hearts of men, who knows the mea-
sure of their guilt, and who deals with His creatures in wisdom and
mercy. When men, with human frailties and passions, undertake to
do this work, it needs no argument to show that the door is opened to
unrestrained injustice and cruelty. The most inhuman crimes will be
perpetrated, and all in the sacred name of Christ
.
From the laws of Israel, which punished offenses against God,
arguments have been drawn to prove the duty of punishing similar sins
in this age. All persecutors have employed them to justify their deeds.
The principle that God has delegated to human authority the right to
control the conscience is the very foundation of religious tyranny and
persecution. But all who reason thus lose sight of the fact that we
are now living in a different dispensation, under conditions wholly
different from those of Israel; that the kingdom of Israel was a type
of the kingdom of Christ, which will not be set up until His second
coming; and that the duties which pertain to man’s relation to God are
not to be regulated or enforced by human authority
.
Note 9. Page 608. Concerning the identity of the Ramah of Samuel
with the Ramah of Benjamin, Dr. Edersheim says: “These two points
seem established: Saul’s residence was at Gibeah, and he first met
Samuel in Ramah. But if so, it seems impossible, in view of
1 Samuel
10:2
, to identify the Ramah of Samuel with the Ramah of Benjamin,
or to regard it as the modern Neby Samuel, four miles northwest of
Jerusalem.”