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Here is a boy who begins to study mathematics. The teacher gives him specific rules. "Do thus, and you will add numbers. Do so, and you will subtract or multiply." It is not a matter of principles or laws at all. The boy has, and can have, no conception of the great fundamental laws of numbers and of their relations. He takes his arithmetic and studies the rule for decimals or long division, and does his sums by the process laid down in the rule. But one day, the boy comes to the teacher with his sum worked out by a process not laid down in his arithmetic. He has thought it out by a process of his own. The rules he has been practising have led him unconsciously up to certain great mathematical principles which are not confined in their working out to the one little rule of the arithmetic, but are capable of a variety of expressions. Is the teacher angry because the sum was not done by the rule? Is he not rather delighted? He sees, in the lad's overstepping the rule, the very result at which he has been aiming. All the rules were directed to bring about this grasp of principles which he has obtained. Henceforth he will not be bound by the rules, but will he therefore violate the great laws of mathematics? Will "he not be as much under law as ever, yea, under the same law, when he measures the orbits of planets or weighs suns, as when he repeated the multiplication table, or cast up the little columns in simple addition? So it is in moral development. You want to teach a child the great principle of order. You begin with specific rules. "You must put your books in such a place, and your hat in such a place. You must study such and such hours. You may amuse yourself at such times." The time finally comes when all thess rules drop off of themselves. They are no longer needed. He has got hold of the great truth of order, and its obligation has its grip upon him, and that was all that the rules were intended for. That being reached, he may be orderly and systematic in his own way. The great point is that, however his way may differ from that prescribed by his old rules, he is still under law, and under the same law — the law of order. So then, when God's law, the pedagogue, the law of commandments, precepts, prohibitions, hands a man over to Christ, it introduces him to a life which is just as much under the power of law and of the same law as ever. Law is not abolished, but whereas formerly the law was applied to the man from without, it now begins to work from within the man. In other words, he lives by the law of God written upon his conscience and wrought into his life. He is a law unto himself. He is no longer a moral schoolboy, but a man in Christ Jesus. The law of precepts has been silently preparing the man to be kindled and quickened into life by contact with Christ's life. You know how, at the sacred season in Rome, the workmen are engaged for clays in arranging the lines of lamps over the dome and portico of St. Peter's; and when at last the hour strikes, on a sudden the whole gigantic structure bursts into flame. Just so law draws the line of obedience and duty; but these, however symmetrical and sharp, are dead and cold until they feel Christ's touch; then the life kindles and glows. The lines of law are all irradiated.

(Marvin R. Vincent, D. D.)

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KJV: Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith.

WEB: So that the law has become our tutor to bring us to Christ, that we might be justified by faith.