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LEVITICAL LAW

It has been already remarked, that our brother speaks of "the law of nature," without explaining his meaning. But what is this law of nature but the law of God, the Author of nature? Distinct from the Creator's law there is no law of nature. Some parts of the laws of God are mutable, and others immutable. The Decalogue is a moral and natural law; natural, because it is founded in the natural relations that subsist between us and the Creator, and between us and our fellow-creatures. This law requires us to love God; and we cannot conceive this obligation should ever cease, or that the contrary should ever "be allowed or commanded." We are required to love our neighbor, not excepting our enemies; and this precept involves the duty of praying for them: but we are not permitted to pray for the wicked when dead; we must leave them in the hands of their Judge, who will do them no act of injustice. Before death the obligation to pray for a sinner may cease: "If any man see his brother sin a sin which is not unto death, he shall ask, and he shall give him life for them that sin not unto death." "But," adds the inspired writer, "There is a sin unto