broken in Eden was a prohibition law.  God said:  “Thou shalt not.”  The devil tempted and persuaded the first pair to disobey.  He did it by deceiving the woman.  The fact of redemption now is to bring them back to the law of God.  What is law?  God says that sin is a transgression of law.  Blackstone says:  “Law commands that which is right and prohibits that which is wrong.”  Law is one, as truth is one.  It is not possible to make a bad law.  If it is bad, it is not a law.  We have bad statutes.  Law is always right.  Nothing is wrong that is legal, and wrong may be licensed, but never legalized.  I find lawyers who do not understand this.  I often hear the term “legalized saloon”.  When I was passing the building of the supreme court in New York City, on Madison Avenue, I read an inscription on one of the marble statues representing a judge with a book on either side of the door:  “Every law not based on wisdom is a menace to the state.”  This is a false, misleading sentence for all law is wisdom.  It might have read:  “All statutes not based on wisdom, are a menace to the state.”  Then at the base of the statue of a soldier, on the other side of the entrance, was this statement:  “We do not use force until good laws are defied.”  Which ought to read:  “We do not use force until laws are defied.”  Such ideas as these are corrupting courts, and biasing the public mind, and the injury is more than apparent to the observer.  If law is not a standard, what standard can we have?  We must have one.  We repeat again:  “Law commands that which is right and prohibits that which is wrong.”  Any statute that does this is lawful.  Any that does not, is anarchy.

God is truly the author of law.  The theocratic form of government was perfect and the only perfect government that ever existed, we need no other statutes than those that God gave.  He said:  “We must not kill a bird sitting on her young; must not see our enemy’s beast fall under his burden and not help him rise.”  And the refinement of mercy was taught in the statute that said:  “You must not kill the mother and lamb in one day; must not seethe a kid in its mother’s milk; must not muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn.”  The use, and the only use, of law is to prevent and punish for sin.  All law has a penalty for those who violate it.  Governments that are the greatest blessing to its citizens are those who can prohibit, or abolish the most sin or crime.  Crime is not prevented by toleration, but by prohibition.  Nine of the ten commandments are prohibitive and begin with:  “Thou shalt not.”

The success of life, the formation of character, is in proportion to the courage one has to say to one’s ownself:  “Thou shalt not.”  It is not the man or woman who has no temptation to sin, who has the strong character, but the man or woman who has the desire but will not yield to sin.  Some people ask:  “Why did God make the Devil?” The Devil is God’s fire.  Like an alchemist God is purifying souls.  The Devil is an agent in salvation.  “Every Devil in hell is harnessed up to push every saint into heaven.”