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The object of law is education. There is no law made for any other use, so far as law applies to human beings. God never rested a law of His on force. Every law He has made rests on love. No law was ever passed in order to punish people, but to save people from punishment. Looked at in this light the value of, law cannot be over-estimated. It might be called the free, the impartial, the universal educator of men. Into the realm of human rights which for ages lingered in prolonged night — a night without a star — it rises like a sun, and the realm of darkness becomes illuminated. Nothing is more unfortunate than to have people suppose that love is one thing and law is another, even its opposite. If it were so, then is my mind one thing and my arm another when, in obedience to my will, it makes a movement. For law is only the armed extension of love; doing its wish, serving its purpose, and therefore one with itself. To deify force, even non-intelligent force — force governed in no other law in its outgoings than the law of change — is sad enough; but to deify force that is not only intelligent, but is so cruel that it delights in the suffering it can inflict, is infamous. Such a theology, or such a travesty on theology, is but a mockery of the Christian religion. Now, then, we have come to the understanding of the use of law and its relation to love. We have ascertained that law, in its use, is education as it relates to man; and as it relates to God it is only a servant to love — a means of wisely expressing unto mortals His affection for them. We now come to the further statement, that while law is valuable both as a method of education and as a means of expressing His love, yet in relation to both of these objects it has its strict limitations; that is, it can only carry the moral education of man up to a certain point, which point is by no means sufficiently high to meet the necessities of the soul; and that it can only in a very imperfect manner proclaim to the universe the Divine affections. Now, the necessities of the soul are the necessities of our whole being. For the word soul is an all-including word, and within its significance every faculty, power, and sense are embraced. But the necessities of our whole being can never be met by mere knowledge, which is all that law can give. Nor can it reveal unto us the nature of God in any such degree as we crave to know it. For law can only reveal to us the conscience of God, while His affections, His mercies, His sympathies are not directly expressed by it. And while God is the highest embodiment of conscience that we can imagine; while He is the superlative expression of moral sense, He is more than this. There is another thought in this connection that may help some of you, that not only is law unable to express God, but God's design aims at a finer expression of Himself than law can give. The master recognizes the inability of his servant, and therefore calls upon other assistance. And this is seen if you will ask and answer this question: What is God's design as it stands related to moral beings? Is it to make fashionable a class of conduct or a class of character? A class of character, assuredly. In this connection the interrogation might not be amiss, nor lacking just application to us all, What sort of a character under our profession of piety are we growing, granted that the outward conduct is in strict conformance with religious requirements? What is the actual inner state? Are we in our natures as good as we are in our behaviour? Are we as faultless in our dispositions as God's eye sees them as we are in that deportment which men's eyes see? These are questions that penetrate us, friends. God grant they do not carry fire on their point as they enter into us. One other thought touching this matter of law as it relates to the fruits of the Spirit. Let me ask you this question: What is the highest form of law? Don't think of the legislature, of the statute book, of the Decalogue, no, nor of the Sermon on the Mount; for in none of these will you find Jaw expressed in its highest form. Where then? In man, if he be good enough, in God always. The highest form of law is impersonated law, law that has been translated out of statute into character; out of the enactment into the act, and out of the act into the spirit. Enshrined in that spirit like a pure element in a transparent substance, the law shines forth with an expression so fine that the obedience of earth and the piety of heaven alike take it as their guiding star. This was precisely the condition of things in the case of Jesus of Nazareth. In Him the spirit of all good law found embodiment. He was, as it were, the breathing, living, walking genius of justice; that justice which was utterly just because it kept its own alliance with the love, the mercy, and the pity of the skies. They who heard Him speak heard the law speak; hence the people recognized that He spake as one having authority — a crude, popular way of expressing a sublime perception only dimly sensed. One thing I cannot refrain from suggesting: never think that the object of the Spirit's work is to deliver you from penalty. Heaven is something more and finer than an escape from hell. No one ever shuns hell; he grows up above it. Heaven is character; and he whose character is being grown daily by the culture of the Spirit is growing daily into the heavenly state. Ah, it is not what the Spirit mercifully holds me back from, but what it graciously leads me unto, that makes me love Him. He has led me to knowledge without which I should not have had the powers and pleasures of intelligence. He has led me into sensitiveness touching my own rights and the rights of others, and thereby has given me self-dignity, and with it humanity. He has brought me into emotional neighbourhood with God; so that I live in the same city with Him — His own city — and am one of His subjects, and have the honour of serving Him day and night. Not only so, but this blessed Spirit has utilized the subtle forces of my own mind and nature in my behalf — forces which lurk in nerves of feeling that the anatomist has never found, and which move in strong currents through channels of my soul that psychologists have never discovered.

(W. H. Murray, D. D.)

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KJV: But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith,

WEB: But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faith,