Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 51:203 (Jul 1894)
Article: The Priority Of Natural Law.
Author: Daniel Chauncey Brewer

BSac 51:203 (July 1894) p. 514

The Priority Of Natural Law.4

Daniel Chauncey Brewer

Boston, Mass.

During the last few centuries, and especially in our own time, pulpit orators and apologists have been pointing to the achievements of Christianity as among the most convincing evidences of its divine origin. Hospitals and schools, charitable organizations for the care of the homeless and friendless, have in turn served as examples for illustrating their theme, with the amenities of war and the growth of international good feeling. What will the church do, if a certain school of modern thought succeeds in imposing upon the coming age the theory, that, instead of taking their rise from the teachings of Christ and the law written in man’s heart, these refinements of brotherly kindness and charity, these laws and precepts, are but the results of the same evolutionary process which frames the man out of an ape?

Fortunately the peril is not so great as it may seem to be. The rank and file invariably refuse to interest themselves in the theories of scholars, when the position taken by the savants in question sets aside all natural interpretation in order to assume an explication which is as refined as it is laborious. Meanwhile, for the sake of science and truth, it is proper to join issue with these advanced thinkers, to test their arguments and review their formulas. If there is aught of good in what they have said, it must be culled and treasured; if their facts, though specious, seem to be founded on error, such must be accorded their true value.

In this fair-minded spirit, Christian publicists have considered and met the various propositions which from time to time spring up in apparent opposition to the claims of an all-conquering religion which dates the amelioration of the condition of men as they exist in the state, with its own inception. In a similar spirit it is desired in this note to treat the arguments which many French and German professors are at present championing, regarding the origin and development of that masterful system which is still so incomplete as to be uncodified, and whose concern reaches beyond the realm of the individual, and deals with sovereign states,—international law.

These arguments contend that positive law antedates natural law. However short-sighted the reader may be, once familiar with the terms, he will readily see how far-reaching would be the results of their triumph. The positive law of nations is the collection of rules recognized, by those subject to its articles, as obligatory. It is the written, the enacted law; the mass of statutes, of precedents, of treaties, which govern the relation of states. Natural law has been considered until recently to be the law w...