nn,i prop<'rty, "·hich nrc the. preciO!ls rcsnl!s of fnl1y-developc1l hnmnn lnw, lie out6ide the purposes for which the Divine law was necessnry. Dut it must be remembered that DiYine lnw hnd to fulfil these purposes, as St. Pnul tonchee ue, hy its being truly law, and not merely a code of moral and religious precepts. It ia therefore of importance to obsorre what conclusions as to the definite meaning and force of law have been drawn by the human mind with the aid of the experienco g·ained in the development of law. Dy none in any age has the philosophy of law been more carefully studied, or its terms more exactly defined, thnn by the ancient Romans. The Roman mind, above all others, wns a legal mind. 'l.'ho iron power '>f the Roman state, to which the modern nations of Europe have succeeded in uroportion as they have accepted and assimilated the principles which constituted its strength, wo.s the power of the sovereign authority of law. What, then, is the exact idea of law which presented itself to the Roman mind? The Romans used two words in somewhat the same sense, but by no means as perfectly syno- nymous, lez and jus; jus having the wider sense of the two, •including often that which is right according to the general principles of justice, while lex is law in its strict and proper sense. Cicero (' De Leg.' i. 6) defines lez: thus : "Qum scripto sancit quod vult ant jubendo aut vctando." It has been thus defined by 11 modern scholar: "A law is a rule or command of the sovereign power in a state, pub- lished in writing, and addressed to and enforced upon the members of such state; and this is the proper sense of law in Roman writers." 1 This definition is singularly exact and 1:omplete. It includes all the elements into which writers 2 on.the subject of jurisprudence have resolved every law; viz. "a command of the lawgiver,· an obligation imposed thereby on the citizen, and a sanction (or punishment) thre.atened in the event of disobedience;" the command, which is the first element in law, being a rule which prescribes or forbids, not a single act merely, but all acts of th:o same kind. There are obviously three ideas, correlative to these three elements, involved in the complete idea of law, and necessary to its perfectness: the supremo authority of the lawgiver; his right to claim obedience; and his power to punish transgression. Only where these are absolute, can law have all its force; so. tliat it follows, that no law can be law in tke fullest and most exa,ct sense of tlie word e,:r,ce:pt I)ivim.e law. • • It is important to bear these conclusions in mind in examining the subject of the g'.,ing of the law by Moses, and also in reference to St. Paul's argument respecting lJivine law in his Epistle to the Homans. For tliere can be no doubt that much of that argument derives its force from the true meaning of "law" as understood by the Roman mind. The character of that mind gavo a special direction to this c;position of the gospel, which the apostle adapted to the intellectual education of il,ose to whom he was writing; a direction which we find in no other epistle except in that to the Galatians. In that epistle, however, the question of "law" is treated far Jess generally and philosophically, and rather in reference to a particular question, ond to the teaching of the Old Testament Scriptures.
NECESSITY J!OR THE REVELATION Oll' DIVINE LAW,
27. It is of course impossible to doubt that the development of human law has been, both in its process and in its results, of inestimable value for the educa- tion of man as a reasonable being, and specially as ennbling him to realiso the 1 The late George Long in article Lex in Smith's 'Dictionary of Antiquitica.' t Bentham in il:,e 'Fragment on Government,' and Austin in his 'Province of J:uiapru- dence Detenuiuc<l' (Mduc·~ 'Andcnt T,nw' p, 7). H;THODUCTION TO 'IJIJ<.: l'ENT1\TEUCIL