Our Schoolmaster
“The law is our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ.”
So it reads; but if you will refer to your Bibles you will see the words “to bring us” are in italics, showing that they are not in the original. “The law worketh wrath,” therefore cannot bring us to Christ. It rushes up to a man, if I may so speak, takes him by the throat, and says, “Pay me what thou owest!” And the poor quickened sinner thinks he will; but the more he strives the deeper in debt he feels himself to be. The Holy Spirit teaches him that “every evil thought is a sin,” to say nothing of his evil doings, and that “he that offends in one point is guilty of all.” The law still, as it were, has hold of him; but when he is made to give up all for lost, finding himself utterly ruined, then the Blessed Spirit leads him to Christ; and here he experiences a good hope, and then, in God’s own time, a deliverance from the law and a glorious salvation.
William Gadsby (1773-1844) was a Strict and Particular Baptist preacher, writer and philanthropist. For thirty-nine years served as pastor for the church meeting at Black Lane, Manchester.