BV 4655 
 Morgan, 
 
 1945. 
 The ten 
 
 .M7 1901 
 
 G. Campbell 1863 
 
 commandments 
 
THE TEN 
 COMMANDMENTS 
 
 BT 
 
 REV. G. CAMPBELL MORGAN 
 
 AOTHOK or 
 
 '• The True Estimate of Life," etc. 
 
 New York Chicago 
 
 Fleming H. Revell Company 
 
 London and Edinburgh 
 
Copyright. 1901. by 
 
 SCBte iJiBiiB Institute uolportage AssociaTxo)* 
 
 OF Chicago. 
 
 Printed in the United States of America 
 
TO THE SACRED MEMORY 
 OP 
 
 DWIGHT I,YMAN MOODY 
 
 AT WHOSE EXPRESS DESIRE 
 
 THESE STUDIES WERE WRITTEN AND WHO 
 
 SO PERPECTI.Y UNDERSTOOD AND 
 
 SO GRACIOUSI.Y REVEAI^ED IN I,IFE AND SERVICE 
 
 THE TRUTH THAT WITH GOD 
 
 LAW IS THE EXPRESSION OF LOVE 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAOB 
 
 Introductory i 
 
 The First Commandment ...... 15 
 
 The Second Commandment 25 
 
 The Third Commandment ...... 36 
 
 The Fourth Commandment 44 
 
 The Fifth Commandment 52 
 
 The Sixth Commandment 65 
 
 The Seventh Commandment 76 
 
 The Eighth Commandment 88 
 
 The Ninth Commandment 97 
 
 The Tenth Commandment ...... 107 
 
 A New Commandment ....... 118 
 
The Ten Commandments. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 "And He humbled thee, and suffered thee to hunger, and fed 
 thee with manna, which thou knewest not, neither did thy 
 fathers know ; that He might make thee know that man doth 
 not live by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out 
 of the mouth of the Lord doth man live."— Deut. viii. 3- 
 
 ". . . So shall My word be that goeth forth out of My 
 mouth; it shall not return unto Me void, but it shall accom- 
 plish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing 
 whereto I sent it."— Isaiah lv. ii. 
 
 "... Jesus answered and said, It is written, Man shall 
 not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out 
 of the mouth of God."— Matt. iv. 4. 
 
 These three passages are linked together by the 
 common thought that human life is perfectly condi- 
 tioned when it is governed by the words that proceed 
 from the mouth of God. 
 
 Deuteronomy records the last messages of Moses to 
 the children of Israel. In this particular passage he 
 states the meaning of the varied circumstances through 
 which God has permitted them to pass. "He humbled 
 thee, suffered thee to hunger, and fed thee with 
 manna." To what purpose? 'That He might make 
 thee know that man doth not live by bread alone, but 
 
 r 
 
8 The Ten Commandments. 
 
 by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the 
 
 Lord." 
 
 Isaiah is the messenger of God to a people, who, 
 through disobedience, have passed into captivity. 
 Chapter Iv. records one of the messages in which he 
 contrasts their state of Hfe in captivity with the bless- 
 edness and joy experienced when living in perpetual 
 obedience to Divine law. It is of this law he speaks 
 when he says, "So shall My word be that goeth forth 
 out of My mouth." 
 
 In the New Testament we see Jesus, God's perfect 
 man, passing through the severest temptation. Re- 
 plying to the first suggestion of the enemy, He reveals 
 the realm in which He lives when He says, "Man 
 shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that 
 proceedeth out of the mouth of God." 
 
 Let the passages which indicate the common thought 
 be lifted from their setting. 
 
 i. "Every word that proceedeth out of the mouth 
 of the Lord." 
 
 ii. "My word that goeth forth out of My mouth." 
 
 Hi. "Every word that proceedeth out of the mouth 
 of God." 
 
 Thus is revealed the supreme verity upon which 
 the Mosaic, Prophetic, and Christian economies were 
 based. The methods have been different and progress- 
 ive ; the purpose has been ever the same. The crea- 
 tion of the Hebrew nation, its preservation, and all 
 its magnificent ritual and organization were directed- 
 to the end of giving expression to the first divine in- 
 tention of the blessedness of man, receiving his law 
 
Introductory. 9 
 
 from the mouth of God, and yielding unquestioning 
 obedience to it. 
 
 The prophetic office was that of forthtelling this 
 Word of God principally to those who were disobedi- 
 ent. Its exercise was ever characterized by fierce de- 
 nunciation of rebellion, glowing descriptions of the 
 glory of the Divine Kingship, and passionate appeals 
 to a return to loyalty. 
 
 Jesus, the author of Christian faith, lived from be- 
 ginning to end without deviation or exception by the 
 words proceeding from the mouth of God. In His 
 passion-baptism He bore the penalty of the disobedi- 
 ence of the race, and in His resurrection took again 
 His life, that He might communicate it to sinful men, 
 that in its energy they also might obey the law of 
 God. 
 
 Evidently, therefore, according to the consistent 
 teaching of Scripture, man only understands the pos- 
 sibility of his being as he becomes acquainted with the 
 law of God ; and only realizes this possibility as he lives 
 by the words proceeding from the mouth of God. 
 
 The reason for this is found in the fact that within 
 the Divine intention, every human life moves through 
 present probation to future purpose. Men are born, 
 not merely for to-day, but for God's to-morrow. Issue 
 and consummation are out of sight, and are perfectly 
 known to the Creator alone. The trouble is that so 
 many live as though the whole purpose of life were 
 Realized in the little day on earth. Yet men know that 
 \t IS not so, that this passing life is preparatory and 
 probationary. To-day men sow, to-morrow they reap. 
 
lO The Ten Commandments. 
 
 The reaping depends upon the sowing. If the ultimate 
 end is to be in harmony with the will of the eternal 
 love, they must obey the law proceeding from that love : 
 they must live by every word that proceedeth out of the 
 mouth of God. 
 
 THE SUPREME DUTY OF MAN. 
 
 The supreme duty of every man is that he should 
 discover and obey these words. If he live from day to 
 day, from week to week, from month to month, and 
 from year to year without reference to that law, hoping 
 that after being regardless of, if not rebellious against 
 it, he will at last slip into some happy state, then surely 
 he must indeed be blind and foolish. 
 
 In the close of the Book of Ecclesiastes, the preacher 
 says, "This is the end of the matter; all hath been 
 ; heard: fear God, and keep His commandments; for 
 I this is the whole of man" (xii. 13). Not "the whole 
 duty of man," as it was in the Authorized Version, but 
 the "whole of man." That is to say, if a man fear God 
 and keep His commandments, he is a whole man. 
 Judged by this standard, how many there are that are 
 not whole men. This very book of Ecclesiastes reveals 
 the fact. "Vanity of vanities, saith the preacher ; all is 
 vanity." That is the sum total of life lived "under the 
 sun," among things material and transient; life in a 
 hemisphere. The whole man is realized when man 
 "fears God and keeps His commandments." That is, 
 when both hemispheres are recognized. He who lives 
 without reference to the law of God fails to fulfil the 
 possibilities of his own being. He is not a man until 
 
Introductory. H 
 
 he lives by the words that proceed from the mouth of 
 God. 
 
 In the Epistle of James is found a word of deep sig- 
 nificance. "Whosoever shall keep the whole law, and 
 yet stumble in one point, he is become guilty of all," 
 (ii. lo). Placing this side by side with the passage 
 already referred to in Ecclesiastes, there are two 
 phrases with a common denominator, *'the whole": 
 *'the whole man," "the whole law.^" Herein lies the 
 explanation of the apparent severity of Jameses utter- 
 ance. Men are apt to think that if there be ten com- 
 mandments, of which they obey nine, such obedience 
 will be put to their credit, even though they break the 
 tenth. That, however, is to misunderstand God's 
 purpose of perfection for man, and the consequent per- 
 fection of His law. The ten words of Sinai were not 
 ten separate commandments, having no reference to 
 each other. They were ten sides of the one law of 
 God. The teaching of Jesus reveals the fact that these 
 commandments are so inter-related that if a man of- 
 fend in one point he breaks the unity of the law, and, 
 therefore, of his own manhood. It is by "every word 
 that proceedeth out of the mouth of God doth man 
 Kve." 
 
 If these positions are established there need be no 
 apology for a frank and honest facing of the Ten Com- 
 mandments. They were the comprehensive words of 
 God, uttered for the government of a people whose dis- 
 tinctive glory lay in the fact that they were a theocracy, 
 under the immediate Kingship of the Most High, and 
 whose recurring shame lay in their revolt from that 
 
12 The Ten Commandments. 
 
 authority. These words embody a perfect law of life 
 tor probationary days. They presuppose human fail- 
 ure and sin; and, therefore, they will have no place 
 in the government of God in heaven. Not that man 
 will do the forbidden things there, but the glorified 
 nature of man will have put the committing of such 
 things beyond the realm of possibility. In some meas- 
 ure the Christian dispensation antedates the heavenly 
 state, for its whole genius lies in the fact that newborn 
 souls share by that new birth in the motives and 
 impulses of God. 
 
 Man still lives, however, both in his own personality 
 and in his relation to his fellow-man, in perpetual touch 
 with the old nature. The words of God are, therefore, 
 of perpetual importance and value. He needs to be 
 solemnly reminded that the law of the spirit of life in 
 Christ sets him free from the law of sin and death, but 
 not from the law of God. Every word of the Deca- 
 logue is repeated with emphasis and new power in the 
 Christian economy. 
 
 In the series of studies now beginning it is proposed 
 to consider the essential law contained in the ten words 
 of the Decalogue, in every case endeavoring to trace 
 the enforcement and emphasis of that law in the light 
 of the Christian dispensation. 
 
 The severity of the law of God is the necessary se- 
 quence of His infinite love. The Eternal Heart pur- 
 poses and seeks the ultimate p'erfection of every hu- 
 man being. To condone sin in any way, or excuse it, 
 would be to make impossible the realization of that pur- 
 
Introductory. 13 
 
 pose. There is infinite significance in the opening 
 words of the Swan Song of Moses, the lawgiver : 
 
 The Lord came from Sinai, 
 
 And rose from Seir unto them, 
 
 He shined forth from mount Paran. 
 . And He came from the ten thousands of holy ones : 
 ' At His right hand was a fiery law unto them. 
 ^ Yet, He loveth the peoples ; 
 
 All His saints are in Thy hand : 
 
 And they sat down at Thy feet; 
 
 Everyone shall receive Thy words, 
 
 Deut. xxxni. 2, 3, 
 
 The fiery law is the most perfect expression of His 
 love for the peoples. Let men then with reverent sin- 
 cerity stand in the light of His law, that they may 
 understand the perfection of His love. 
 
THE FIRST COMMANDMENT. 
 
 "Thou shalt have none other gods before Me." — ExoDua 
 «x. 3. 
 
 Of the ten words of Sinai the first four deal with 
 man's relation to God. Of these the first brings us face 
 to face with the object of worship: *'Thou shalt have 
 none other gods before Me." The second reveals the 
 true mode of worship: *Thou shalt not make unto thee 
 a graven image, nor the likeness of any form that is in 
 heaven above." The order of worship is to be spirit- 
 ual, not material. The third states that this relation of 
 man to God — that of worship — is to he a perpetual one 
 governing all his life : "Thou shalt not take the name 
 of the Lord thy God in vain; for the Lord will not 
 hold him guiltless that taketh His name in vain." The 
 fourth provides that a specific seventh of man's time 
 is to be set apart for the express and sole purpose of 
 worshipping God: "Remember the Sabbath day to 
 keep it holy." 
 
 Having laid the basis of life and character the Dec- 
 alogue proceeds to deal with the relations of man to 
 his fellows. First comes the family relation: "Honor 
 thy father and thy mother" ; second : "Thou shalt not 
 kill"; third: "Thou shalt not commit adultery"; 
 fourth: 'Thou shalt not steal"; and fifth; "Thou shalt 
 
 15 
 
1 6 The Ten Commandments. 
 
 not bear false witness against thy neighbor." The re- 
 maining one is also of a moral nature, but shows that 
 the heart of man is to be jealously guarded against 
 wrong desire: "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's 
 house," and so forth. 
 
 The subject of the present chapter is the first com- 
 mandment, "I am the Lord thy God. . . . Thou 
 shalt have none other gods before Me." These are 
 simple words, but their majesty would thrill, if it were 
 fully appreciated. 
 
 THE NAME OF GOD. 
 
 There is deep significance in the name by which 
 God here declares Himself, JEHOVAH. It is a com- 
 bination of three Hebrew words, which may be trans- 
 lated into an English form thus : Yehi, "He will be," 
 Hove, "being," and Hahyah, " He was." A com- 
 bination is made from the three words by taking the 
 first syllable of the first YEHi, the middle syllable of 
 the second, hOVe, and the last syllable of the third, 
 hahyAH, so that we have the name YEHOVAH. 
 The whole name means, "He that will be. He that is, 
 He that was." Thus the very name brings man into 
 the presence of the Supreme, the Eternal, the Self- 
 existent God, Who is because He is — a great and per- 
 petual mystery to the finite mind of man, and for the 
 most part beyond all human analysis. If the mind 
 reach out to the limitless stretches of future genera- 
 tions, God says, "I am He that will be." If men think 
 of the present moment, with all its marvelous mani- 
 festations of life and order and mystery and revela- 
 
The First Commandment. 17 
 
 tion, God says, "I am He that is." If the mind be 
 carried as far back as possible into infinite spaces of 
 the past God says, "I am He that was." 
 
 Whether man thinks of his origin, of his present 
 condition, or of his future destiny, God says, "I AM" ; 
 and man cannot escape the great revelation of God 
 which is put into the word, "I am JEHOVAH."* 
 
 Such is the statement that leads up to the first law. 
 But God says more, ''I am Jehovah, thy God." The 
 word God here is Elohini, the plural of the word 
 Eloah, meaning the supreme object of worship. God 
 faces man, saying, "I am Jehovah, thy God — He that 
 will be, He that is. He that was, the supreme object of 
 worship." Upon that is based the commandment; and 
 to take it without that definition of the Person of God 
 
 *This interpretation of the meaning of the word Jehovah 
 has been severely criticised, and among other things has been 
 designated "elaborated absurdity." The interpretation is that 
 of the late Mr. Thomas Newberry, the author of the English- 
 man's Bible, a Hebraist of conspicuous ability. Of course it is 
 a personal conclusion by one who interprets the Old Testament 
 in the light of the New. The original Hebrew form YHVH 
 left open the question of the vowels. The generally accepted 
 idea that the word Jehovah is a hybrid of the combination of 
 the vowels of ADONAI and YHVH is also a conclusion ar- 
 rived at, and cannot be fairly stated to be a certainty. In corre- 
 spondence with Mr. Newberry on the point, after the criti- 
 cisms referred to, he said in a letter to me : "The explanation 
 of the Divine title Jehovah is given as a simple statement of 
 facts on the authority of the Sacred Scriptures. In Rev. i. 4, 
 the Holy Ghost has so interpreted its meaning." This may 
 appear to some to be "elaborated absurdity." There are others 
 of us who look upon it as sound and spiritual exposition. 
 
1 8 The Ten Commandments. 
 
 is to rob it of its great force. "I am Jehovah thy God. 
 . . . Thou shalt have none other Gods before Me.'* 
 
 I. — The Meaning of the Commandment. 
 
 If God is what he claim to be — He that will be. 
 He that is, He that was — then He must be the supreme 
 object of worship. If it be true that He is Jehovah, 
 man's God — ^then the commandment is a reasonable one, 
 and it must be a very unreasonable thing to have any 
 other God beside Him. In the very necessity of the 
 case, if the word spoken by God be true, then God 
 is sufficient, and God is God. There cannot be two 
 who fulfil that description of limitless life. Point to 
 another god, and he must be limited. That becomes 
 an impertinence and a sham to a man who has had a 
 vision of the true God. Therefore it is based upon the 
 necessity of the case — upon the most absolute reason- 
 ableness — that God first declares Himself and His 
 glory, and then utters the first great word, "Thou 
 shalt have none other gods before Me." 
 
 Every man needs a god. There is no man who has 
 not, somewhere in his heart, in his life, in the essentials 
 of his being, a shrine in which is a deity whom he 
 worships. It is as impossible for a man to live with- 
 out having an object of worship as it is for a bird to 
 fly if it is taken out of the air. The very composition 
 of human life, the mystery of man's being, demands 
 a center of worship as a necessity of existence. All 
 life is worship. There may be a false god, at the 
 center of the life ; but every activity of being, all the 
 energy ol life, the devotion of powers — these things 
 
The First Commandment. 19 
 
 are all worship. The question is whether the hfe and 
 powers of man are devoted to the worship of the true 
 God or to that of a false one. 
 
 There is a center, a motive, a reason, a shrine, a 
 deity somewhere — something which man worships. It 
 has been said that when man dethrones God, he deifies 
 and worships himself. There are men to-day of whom 
 it may be said that they worship themselves with all 
 their heart and ^yith all their strength and with all 
 their mind, and themselves only do they serve. In 
 every case man demands a god, a king, a lawgiver — • 
 one who arranges the programme, utters the com- 
 mandments, and demands obedience. 
 
 THE GENESIS OF IDOLATRY. 
 
 This incontrovertible fact reveals the genesis of 
 idolatry. The moment a man gets out of touch with 
 God and loses the vision of Him Who says, "I am 
 Jehovah Elohim, the Lord thy God," he puts some- 
 thing else in the place of God. Think of the gods of 
 the heathen, as mentioned in the Bible — Moloch, Baal, 
 and Mammon! The worship of Moloch was the de- 
 scent of man into the realm of awful cruelty, that of 
 Baal took men through the depths of bestiality and 
 impurity, and that of Mammon debased its devotees to 
 the lust which dreams that power lurks in possession. 
 Moloch, Baal and Mammon were the gods of the 
 heathen ; and these are they that men are worshipping 
 until this hour. Although these gods go by other 
 names in this cultured and enlightened twentieth cen- 
 tury, yet the world is crowded with idolatei's who wor* 
 
20 The Ten Commandments. 
 
 ship them. One need not go to Africa, China, or India 
 for specimens — they may be found at home. 
 
 In the great cities to-day are hundreds of men who 
 are offering human sacrifices to the Moloch of their 
 lustful cruelty. Such care not how many people die 
 in the struggle, so long as the base cravings of their 
 hearts are satisfied. Great numbers of men worship 
 Baal, the god of beastiality. How true this is, may be 
 shown by the fact that to-night and last night there 
 were 80,000 fallen women on the streets of London. 
 Who keeps them ? The worshippers of Baal. Is it 
 realized that all the horrible carrying away of the life 
 of young manhood in this terrible and damnable whirl- 
 pool of impurity is worship ? It is so. 'Tis the homage 
 of the man who, losing his God, worships at the shrine 
 of a fallen Venus. 
 
 Mammon worship is another evil form of devotion 
 which has also survived until this hour. The lust for 
 gold is getting such a hold upon the hearts of men 
 to-day that it is time the first commandment were 
 preached with new emphasis. The worship of the 
 god of gold is cursing the age. 
 
 So far generalities have been dealt with, and some 
 men will deny that they worship any of the gods' 
 named. There are, however, two other forms of wor- 
 ship mentioned in the Scriptures, one in the Old 
 Testament, and one in the New, worthy of attention. 
 *'He taketh up all of them with the angle, he catcheth 
 them in his net, and gathereth them in his drag : there- 
 fore he rejoiceth and is glad. Therefore he sacrificeth 
 unto his net, and burneth incense unto his drag; be- 
 
The First Commandment. 21 
 
 cause by them his portion is fat, and his meat plen- 
 teous." (Hab. i. 15, 16.) 
 
 It is a sad proof of the power of Mammon when tn 
 (man worships the things that provide him with fat- 
 'ness and with meat. Are there not a great many co- 
 day who worship their business instead of God? 1 
 shall most quickly reach my point by a story. 
 
 A boy was bringing home a loaf of bread ; and one 
 said: 
 
 "What have you there?" 
 
 "A loaf." 
 
 "Where did you get it ?" 
 
 "From the baker." 
 
 "Where did the baker get it?" 
 
 "He made it." 
 
 "Of what did he make it?" 
 
 "Flour." 
 
 "Where did he get the flour?" 
 
 "From the miller." 
 
 "Where did he get it?" 
 
 "From the farmer." 
 
 "Where did the farmer get it ?" 
 
 Then the truth dawned upon the boy*s mind, and he 
 replied : 
 
 "From God." 
 
 "Well, then, from whom did you get that loaf?" 
 
 "Oh, from God!" 
 
 Here is a boy who, in the last resort, acknowledges 
 God to be the Giver of good. 
 
 In this materialistic age, a man says : 
 
 "My business supports me and my family." 
 
22 The Ten Commandments. 
 
 It is a lie ; God supports him and his family. Men 
 deal with God only as a last resource, and yet go on 
 hoping to sneak into God's heaven when they have 
 done with his world ; but the God of Sinai is thunder- 
 ing out to this age, "Thou shalt put Me first, and the 
 business second." Men may not sacrifice to the net, 
 nor may they burn incense to the drag. 
 
 11. — The New Testament Enforcement, 
 
 A New Testament picture of idolatry is seen in 
 Philippians iii. i8, 19, "For many walk, of whom I 
 told you often, and now tell you even weeping, that 
 they are enemies of the cross of Christ : whose end is 
 perdition, whose god is their belly." That is the kind 
 of thing that is too often passed over. How many 
 there are who have just that one god of their animal 
 appetites! "What shall we eat? What shall we 
 drink ? Wherewithal shall we be clothed ? How shall 
 we satisfy the cravings of the flesh?- These are their 
 gods. A man of this sort does not burn incense to 
 drag or net; but he has gone down very low, when 
 the things for which he lives and strives, and to which 
 all the glorious possibilities of his manhood are con- 
 secrated, consist of eating, drinking, and other forms 
 of merely sensual gratification. 
 
 These are but instances of widespread idolatry ; but 
 in the ''presence of it all, God's perpetual message to 
 man is this: "I am Jehovah Elohim; thou shalt have 
 none other gods before Me." If men put Moloch, 
 Baal, Mammon, net, drag, appetites, or aught else, 
 into the place that demands devotion and energy, to 
 
The First Commandment. 23 
 
 the forgetfulness of God, they are idolators, even 
 though they recite the Creed every Sunday of their 
 life. Man was made for the God Who declares that 
 His creature shall have none other God before Him. 
 He will be the God and the center of every man, and 
 the very nature of man's being makes the demand a 
 reasonable one. 
 
 Upon all these commandments the New Testament 
 throws a flood of light, and so far from abrogating 
 them, it emphasizes, reiterates and invests them with 
 new force. There is a sense in which Christians are 
 not "free from the law." It is only when grace en-/ 
 ables men to keep the law, that they are free from it ; 
 just as a moral man who lives according to the laws 
 of the country is free from arrest. God has not set 
 aside law, but He has found a way by which man can 
 fulfil law, and so be free from it. Has God, in this 
 Christian era, given up His claim to worship, and said 
 that men may have another god? Far from it. New 
 Testament light upon the point may be found in the 
 words of Jesus, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God 
 with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all 
 thy mind" (Matt. xxii. 37) ; and again, "Thou shalt 
 worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou 
 serve" (iv. 10). 
 
 There is but one excuse for idolatry, namely, ignor- 
 ance; and there are cases in which even that fails to 
 justify. If a man does not know God, he cannot wor- 
 ship him ; but if he lives in a place where God has re- 
 vealed Himself perfectly, and where he may have the 
 light if he will, then the last excuse for idolatry is 
 
24 The Ten Commandments. 
 
 swept away. Take the commandment as applied to 
 God*s ancient people. Has it ever been considered 
 how much there was which might have excused 
 idolatry in those days of old ? Not only the coming of 
 Jesus, but all the great discoveries of science during 
 the last hundred years, have made idolatry more sin- 
 ful than ever. In the days when the imagination of the 
 superstitious peopled every wind-storm with demons, 
 when lightnings and thunders were mysteries unsolved 
 and unsolvable, there was some excuse for the man 
 who, in his ignorance of God, became a fire or devil 
 worshipper; but in these days of analyses, when men 
 get to the root of Nature's sights and sounds, finding 
 them to be, after all, not inexplicable and mysterious, 
 but processes and manifestations of a system of rigid 
 law, the excuse for idolatry is gone. Natural phe- 
 nomena being accounted within the realm of law, man 
 must acknowledge a lawgiver, and every discovery of 
 science within the last fifty years has made God more 
 real to the hearts of men who are looking for Him 
 and are willing to see Him. Every scientific explana- 
 tion of the mysterious, and of that which savored of 
 witchcraft, makes the sin of worshipping anything in 
 the place of God more heinous. The more brilliant 
 the light of the Divine outshining, the more dark is 
 the sin of idolatry. 
 
 Let men take five minutes to shut out everything 
 save the great fact that they stand alone with God. 
 Some are terribly afraid to spend even as much time 
 as that with their own thoughts. If they will, if they 
 
The Second Commandment. 25 
 
 dare, let them ask, as they stand in the Hght of that 
 first commandment, "What is my god? To what is 
 my Hfe devoted?" If the answer indicates anything 
 that puts God into the background, then in the name 
 of heaven and of their own safety, let them 
 
 Break down every idol, cast out every foe, 
 
 and let the God Who will be. Who is. Who was, be 
 their God. 
 
 THE SECOND COMMANDMENT 
 
 "Thou shalt not make unto thee a graven image, nor the 
 /ikeness of any form that is in heaven above, or that is in the 
 earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; thou 
 shalt not bow down thyself unto them, nor serve them : for I 
 /he Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the 
 fathers upon the children, upon the third and upon the fourth 
 generation of them that hate Me; and showing mercy unto 
 thousands, of them that love Me and keep My commandments." 
 
 Exodus xx. 4, 5, 6. 
 
 The second commandment Is by no means a repeti- 
 tion of the first. It forbids a practice which becomes 
 possible only when the One God is believed in and 
 worshipped. 
 
 The first forbids us to have any other gods besides 
 the One Who makes Himself known by the name, 
 "I am Jehovah Elohim, the Lord thy God." The 
 second, taking it for granted that there is no god but 
 the one true God, forbids the creation of anything 
 
26 The Ten Commandments. 
 
 ' which is supposed to be a representation of Him, to 
 assist man in worship. 
 
 I. — The Commandment, 
 First, let us consider the commandment. Some 
 
 I there are who think that the Puritan fathers imagined 
 that what was forbidden was the making of the Hke- 
 ness of anything in the heavens above or the earth 
 beneath, and so they came to look upon every form 
 of art as idolatrous. I have known Christian folk 
 who, because of this commandment, would not have 
 their photographs taken, and who refused to have a 
 picture in their houses! 
 
 *> This, however, could not have been the Divine in- 
 tention ; for, immediately after the giving of this com- 
 
 ^ mandment, among the pattern of things pertaining to 
 the Tabernacle, in the very holiest of all, two images 
 of the cherubim overshadowed the mercy-seat. On 
 flie borders of the garment of the High Priest, also, 
 as he went into the Holy Place to minister, there were 
 bells and pomegranates. Man was not forbidden to 
 make a representation of anything: he is forbidden to 
 use the representation as an aid to worship. 
 
 In Westminster Abbey, to-day, there may be seen 
 a great many vacant niches where images once stood. 
 They were removed not because they were statues, but 
 because lamps were burned in front of them, and wor- 
 shippers knelt before them. That was essentially a 
 violation of this commandment. Man is not to make 
 to himself "a graven image, nor the likeness of any 
 form that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth 
 beneath, or that is in the water under the earth : thou 
 %halt not bow down thyself unto them, nor seroe^ 
 
The Second Commandment. 27 
 
 ihem," In the closing words lies the force of the 
 commandment. It strikes at a desire that is very- 
 deep-seated in the human heart. 
 
 Man declares that he must have something to help 
 him in his worship of God. Devout souls in the 
 Roman Catholic Church avow that they do not worship 
 the image, but the God behind it; that they do not 
 worship the crucifix, but that it helps them to think 
 of the Christ. Yet this is exactly what is forbidden in 
 this commandment. Not that man should not actually 
 worship image or crucifix, but that they should not be 
 used as representations to help in worship. "God is a 
 Spirit, and they that worship Him must worship in 
 spirit and in truth." The material cannot help the 
 spiritual, 
 
 WHY MAN MAKES IMAGES. 
 
 In order to a careful examination of the reason of 
 this commandment let it be considerecj why man makes 
 an image or a picture to help him in iiis worship. The 
 answer may be briefly stated — the spiritual sense in 
 man, that which realizes God, is dead. No man who 
 knows God, no man who is'living in daily communion 
 with Him, needs a picture to help him to pray. None 
 who know what it is to live and walk with God amid 
 the work of the week would derive help from an image 
 placed in front of them when they worship. By the 
 new birth of the Spirit they have had the spiritual con- 
 sciousness restored; so that they know God, and are 
 able to commune directly with Him. 
 
 If a man crave help, it is thereby proven that he 
 lacks the spiritual consciousness. This very lack ren- 
 
28 The Ten Commandments. 
 
 ders him incapable of creating anything which gives a 
 proper representation of God. Every attempt which 
 man has made to represent God in any way has re- 
 sulted in a false picture of Him. When God said, 
 "Thou shalt not make unto thee a graven image, nor 
 the likeness of any form; thou shalt not bow thyself 
 unto them nor serve them," it was because he knew 
 that if men, who had lost their sense of Him and His 
 presence, made something to represent Him, it would 
 be a false representation, and men would thereby get 
 false notions of Him, even as they sought to worship. 
 
 Look at the matter from another point of view. In 
 the instant that man sets up a representation of any 
 description to help him to realize God, he denies that 
 which is essential in God. Suppose that it is an image, 
 a picture, or some system of worship, concerning which 
 he says, "This is intended as an aid to my worship of 
 the one God." See what he has done ! The image, the 
 picture, or the system of worship is limited. The 
 essential fact of God is that He is limitless, that He is 
 eternal, that He is self-existent, there being no end to 
 His being, and no limit to His power. Limitlessness 
 lies at the heart and center of the thought of God, 
 and the moment a man makes an image, he denies the 
 essence of God. For that reason God forbade that 
 there should be the making of any images; for, not 
 only is the image false, it is misleading. 
 
 Yet once again. If the image of God that man has 
 made — that which he puts in the place of God, that 
 he may understand Him — if that is false, and if it is 
 limited, what is the effect produced by worship upon 
 
The Second Commandment. 3§ 
 
 character? "As a man thinketh in his heart, so i& 
 he." The thought of God produced by a false repre- 
 sentation of God will produce character ^hat is false. 
 There is another scripture which says, concerning 
 idols, "Noses have they, but they smell not : they have 
 hands, but they handle not: feet have they, 
 but they walk not: neither speak they through 
 their throat." Then follows the philosophy of 
 idol-worship: "They that make them are like 
 unto them." Every man is like his god. Man 
 becomes like the thing that he puts in the place of 
 God. If man gets a false notion of God, through his 
 idol or image, he becomes as false as his god. Here 
 then is the tremendous reason for this enactment. It 
 is not a merely capricious commandment ; but, like all 
 the commands of God, it is based upon eternal princi- 
 ples. In effect God says to man, "Thou shalt not at- 
 tempt to liken Me to anything, because every effort of 
 that kind must result in failure, and must react upon 
 man to his abiding injury." 
 
 II. — Present-Day Application, 
 
 Are the men of to-day in danger of breaking this 
 command? Most certainly they are. Consider a few 
 of the ways in which the second commandment is 
 broken. The revival of priestism; the prevalent pas- 
 sion for ritual; the elevation of the ordinances of the 
 Christian religion into undue place and prominence; 
 the professed worship of nature; the worship of hu- 
 manity, which is becoming a cult and a religion ; these 
 are instances. In all these things, men tell us that 
 
30 
 
 The Ten Commandments. 
 
 they worship God; but they are trying to worship 
 Him through some supposed expression of Him which 
 they have made for themselves. 
 
 What is the priest ? An attempt to reveal God to the 
 heart, in order that man may worship Him. Wherever 
 a man gives his soul away to the priest, because he 
 imagines that he is getting to know God through the 
 priest, the latter becomes to the man an image and an 
 idol. In every case where this has been done, man^s 
 conception of God has suffered, and the result has 
 been the degradation of the worshipper. 
 
 That is a statement which is easily made, but for its 
 verification history may be appealed to. Look at the 
 nations of the world which have become priest-ridden, 
 and what has been the result? Take Spain as an in- 
 stance. What is the meaning of its degradation? 
 Simply that the people have had a false view of God, 
 because they have tried to reach Him through the 
 priest, instead of going directly to Him. The reign of 
 priestism has become one of the most prolific sources 
 of evil. It has broken the second commandment. 
 God says, in the first commandment, "I am your God, 
 worship Me"; He says in the second, "Come directly 
 to Me, and let no supposed help intervene between 
 us." There is to be nothing but direct communication 
 between the soul and God. 
 
 The same danger is seen with regard to ritual. An 
 ornate service, beautiful and aesthetic surroundings, 
 are supposed to create the conditions of true worship. 
 What is the result of all this upon the spiritual nature 
 of man? Are the men and women who go over to 
 
The Second Commandment. 
 
 31 
 
 ritualism in any form becoming more spiritual? Do 
 their lives manifest the fruit of the Spirit, the character 
 of Christ, the life of God? Most assuredly not! 
 Ritualism may be refined, but it begins and ends in 
 the senses. When man says he is helped to get nearer 
 to God by merely aesthetic worship, it is nearness to 
 a false deity, not to the true God. 
 
 The same principle applies to free church life. One 
 loves the simplicity of v^orship which is seen when a 
 great congregation comes into the presence of God, 
 and every man and every woman exercises the right 
 of priesthood in His presence. When ornate service 
 is put in the place of the rights of individual souls, 
 men are as great idolaters as were they of olden days, 
 who made graven images or painted pictures, and fell 
 down to worship them. 
 
 In the present day, there is a great danger of making 
 the Lord's Supper something more than a simple \yY 
 memorial service; and every such attempt is fraught ^ 
 with peril. Only recently, some men, loved and re- 
 spected, have given utterance to the statement that 
 the Lord's Supper has in it some sort of mystic ele- 
 ment that assists the soul in worship. The soul is 
 assisted just as far as Christ is remembered, as He 
 commanded in the memorial feast spread upon the 
 table, and great risk is run when anything more than 
 that is read into that simple service. The moment 
 some special influence is claimed for the Lord's Sup- 
 per the ordinance is lifted into the place of the Master, 
 and as soon as that is done all the spiritual verities 
 which lie behind the observance are injured. 
 
32 The Ten Commandments. 
 
 Turning from that higher level, remember how 
 much is said to-day about worshipping God through 
 Nature. Let no one undervalue the ministry of 
 Nature. The flowers, the valleys, the hills, the sun- 
 shine, the birds are full of beauty, but no man ever 
 reaches God through Nature. Men do get to 
 Nature through the God Who made it. Let a man 
 be right with God, and he will find the mystic key 
 that unlocks all Nature for him ; but the men who try 
 to climb to God through Nature never succeed. Man 
 cannot use a flower as a representation of God for 
 worship, without having a God Who is a falsity, and 
 thereby causing suffering to himself. 
 
 The new cult of humanitarianism is really an at- 
 tempt to worship God through human nature; but it 
 is a sorry business. If this new idea of God is ex- 
 pressed in the individual or in the sum-total of the 
 race, let it be remembered that God Himself becomes 
 guilty of all the awful things which have blotted the 
 page of human history — a terrible thought! God is 
 far above humanity, but He loves it, and will redeem 
 it, if it will return to Him. To worship humjuiity in 
 order to get to God is to be guilty of tb*: self-same 
 sin of putting up as a representatiop of God some- 
 thing that does not represent Him^ but falsifies Him, 
 and reacts in disaster upon the Inen who worship. 
 
 WARNING AND PROMISE. 
 
 Notice particularly the solemn warning and the 
 gracious promise linked to the commandment. This 
 is one of those passages of Scripture which are most 
 often and constantly misused. God says, "Thou shalt 
 
The Second Commandment. 33 
 
 not make unto thee a graven image, nor any form that 
 is in the heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, 
 or that is in the water under the earth: thou shalt 
 not bow down thyself unto them, nor serve them :for I 
 the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniqui- 
 ty of the fathers upon the children, upon the third and 
 upon the fourth generation of them that hate Me; 
 and showing mercy unto thousands of them that love 
 Me and keep My commandments." There are persons 
 who read the first part of that command and pass to 
 the second part, and declare that if a man be impure, 
 God will punish his child on that account. The sub- 
 ject of the result of the sin of a man as manifested 
 in succeeding generations is not now under discussion. 
 What is the simple and plain meaning of these con- 
 cluding words? If a man put something in the place 
 of his Creator, that iniquity of making a representa- 
 tion of God is visited upon the children of the third 
 and fourth generation of them that hate Him. That 
 is to say, if, in worship, men put something in the 
 place of God, if they come under the influence of wor- 
 ship which is an attempt to put something between 
 God and man, then they are not only harming them- 
 /• selves but their children. The probability is that their 
 [ idea of worship will be transmitted to their children, 
 I and their children's idea of worship will be trans- 
 Mnitted to their children, so that the wrong that men 
 do themselves when they misrepresent God is a wrong 
 which they are doing to their children likewise. That 
 is the first and simple meaning of the words used in 
 connection with this commandment. 
 
34 The Ten Commandments. 
 
 It is a solemn thing thus to pass on to children a 
 
 wrong conception of God; it is the most awful thing 
 
 , a man can do. Men often take lower ground, and 
 
 / talk about passing to their children evil forces and 
 
 ' habits. Nothing can minimize the awfulness of such 
 
 conduct; but here is the root of it all. When a man 
 
 puts something, as the object of his worship, in the 
 
 place of God, he passes on the same practice to his 
 
 offspring. What a terrible heritage he is thus handing 
 
 down to the child ! 
 
 But proceed to notice the gracious promise standing 
 iide by side with the warning: "Showing mercy unto 
 thousands." There is very little doubt that the render- 
 ing ought to be, "Showing mercy unto a thousand 
 generations of them that love Me, and keep My com- 
 mandments." That is to say, that if a man sweeps 
 the idols away, and gets into living connection with 
 God, worshipping Him without anything between, the 
 result will be that his child's child will, most likely, so 
 worship. Here is a remarkable comparison — God 
 visits the iniquity to the third and fourth generation; 
 but He shows mercy unto the thousandth generation! 
 If a man will commit to his posterity a worship which 
 IS true, strong, whole-hearted, and pure, and will 
 sweep away all that interferes between himself and 
 God, he is more likely to influence for good the thou- 
 sandth generation that follows him, than a man of the 
 opposite character is to touch that generation with 
 evil. 
 
 Granted that man has but one God, it is still a 
 question of supreme importance how he is worship- 
 
^ I 
 
 The Second Commandment. 35 
 
 ping Him. If he is doing this through a priest, if 
 he is doing it through ritual, if he is doing it through 
 
 some creation of his own, he is robbing himself of 
 the essential blessing that comes from true worship. 
 
 God calls men into His own presence, to immediate 
 worship. They worship, not when they listen to 
 preaching, not when they are attentive to the form 
 and fashion of music, not when they are thinking of 
 a table upon which the emblems are spread ; but when 
 they pass through the preaching, and when they pass 
 beyond the emblems, and when they are face to face 
 with God. Whenever a man stops short of that face- 
 to-face worship of the Eternal God, he is working ruin 
 to his own character, because he is breaking the com- 
 mandment of God. 
 
 Thank God, to-day, no man need stop short. The 
 veil has been rent, the priest has been swept away, 
 ritual has been put out of sight, and there is a direct 
 pathway open from the place where man is into the 
 very presence-chamber of the Eternal God. Without 
 priest, prophet or preacher man can go right into the 
 presence of God and worship Him. And because He 
 has opened the new and living way, every attempt 
 to put something between the soul and God is of the 
 essence of idolatry, against which His face was set in 
 the days of His ancient people Israel, and against 
 which His face is as surely set to-day. 
 
35 The Ten Commandments. 
 
 THE THIRD COMMANDMENT. 
 
 "Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God iti vain, 
 for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh His name 
 in vain." — Exodus xx. 7. 
 
 The name of God, in Scripture, is always a revela- 
 tion. By every title in which God made Himself 
 known to man, He revealed some attribute of the 
 Divine character. The names of the Hebrew people 
 were intended, in every case, as a prayer or a prophecy, 
 and were based upon parental hope. Something like 
 the same principle holds true of the names of God. 
 Men learned .^ome new facts concerning His nature or 
 His methods with each new name or title by which 
 He made Himself known to them. Bearing that in 
 mind, a new gleam of light falls upon this command- 
 ment — "Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord 
 thy God in vain." 
 
 I. — The Command. 
 
 If men use the name of God, they must use it in 
 a way which is true to its meaning and intentions? 
 and any use of the name of God which denies these, 
 and the character of God thereby revealed, breaks 
 this commandment. 
 
 Turn to Isaiah xlviii. i : "Hear ye this, O bouse of 
 Jacob, which are called by the name of Israel and are 
 come forth out of the waters of Judah; which swear 
 by the name of the Lord, and make mention of the 
 God of Israel, but not in truth nor in righteousness." 
 That is the supreme form x)f breaking this coiwm^ind- 
 
The Third Commandment. 37 
 
 ment; swearing by the name of the Lord, but not in 
 truth; making mention of the God of Israel, but not 
 in righteousness. These people used the name of God, 
 but did not obey the revelation contained therein, and 
 so violated the third commandment. 
 
 In Matt. vii. 22, 23, "Many will say to Me in that 
 day, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy by Thy name, 
 and by Thy name cast out devils, and by Thy name 
 do many mighty works? And then will I profess 
 unto them, I never knew you : depart from Me, ye that 
 work iniquity." Here, again, are people using the 
 name to prophesy, using the name to cast out devils, 
 using the name to do mighty works; but they them- 
 selves are unknown to the King. That is a subtle 
 form of the profanity against which this command- 
 ment utters its warning. A man takes the name of 
 God in vain when he does not use it in the way that 
 God intended it should be used, when he himself is 
 not true to the revelation of God that the name makes. 
 "^ "The Lord will not hold him guiltless"— the Hebrew 
 word there is clean — "the Lord will not hold him to 
 be clean that taketh His name in vain." This is a 
 solemn assertion. The test of moral cleanliness is 
 the attitude of a man to the name of God. He is 
 clean or unclean as he uses the name of God in truth 
 or for vanity. So that the man who never uses the 
 name of God at all, the man who, through sincerity 
 of questioning doubt, has dropped the name of God 
 out of his vocabulary, has a great deal better chance of 
 being clean than the man who is always talking about 
 God, but is all the time denying Him in his life. This 
 
38 The Ten Commandments. 
 
 is, indeed, a very searching test. God says a man^s 
 relation to His name is the proof of what that man is, 
 in the fibre of his being, as to cleanness or uncleanness. 
 How wonderfully the Lord's Prayer throws light 
 upon this subject! Of course, by the Lord's Prayer 
 is intended that which is commonly so called, the 
 prayer which He gave as a pattern to His disciples. It 
 would be well to examine this prayer in its true pro- 
 portion ; for repetition seems to have robbed it of half 
 its real beauty. Notice its opening petition. Matt. vi. 
 9, id: "Our Father which art in heaven. Hallowed be 
 Thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, 
 as in heaven, so on earth." That is most probably a 
 false punctuation. As a matter of fact, after the in- 
 vocation, "Our Father which art in heaven" — the 
 approach of the soul to God — there are three peti- 
 tions, all linked together like a triptych, and then a 
 sentence following which conditions the three, and not 
 the one only. / 
 
 Our Father which art in heaven, 
 
 Thy name be hallowed, 
 
 Thy kingdom come, 
 
 Thy will be done, 
 As in heaven, so on earth. 
 
 The phrase, "As in heaven, so on earth," has ref- 
 erence, not merely to "Thy will be done," but to "Thy 
 kingdom come," and to "Hallowed be Thy name.'* 
 These thoughts in the Lord's Prayer — the hallowing 
 of the name, the coming of the kingdom, the doing of 
 the will — are different phases of the same thing, for 
 a man hallows the name by submission to the king- 
 
The Third Commandment. 39 
 
 dom, and by doing the will. Hallowing the name is 
 
 not simply holding it in reverence. 
 \ One of the names by which God is known is that 
 I of King, and men hallow the name of King when they 
 ' submit to God's kingship. Another name is that of 
 
 Father, and they hallow the name of Father when 
 
 they do the will of their Father, which is in heaven, 
 
 as Jesus did. 
 
 II. — Present-Bay Application. 
 
 Men to-day are breaking this commandment in 
 three ways — by profanity, frivolity, and hypocrisy. 
 
 The sin of profane swearing prevails to this mo- 
 ment, and there is no more insidious habit. It is very 
 often the sin of thoughtlessness. 
 
 Evil is wrought by want of thought. 
 As well as want of heart. 
 
 Some men do not know when they do swear; they 
 were born in the midst of the most fetid moral atmos- 
 phere, and began to talk in blasphemy from their 
 earliest days. That is a very terrible thing; but such 
 men are not nearly so guilty as others who have been 
 brought up in a pure moral atmosphere, and have, 
 nevertheless, fallen into the habit. 
 
 Much would be gained if men would think of what 
 they are doing in profane swearing, especially where 
 the name of God is involved. An expression made 
 use of with terrible frequency is "God damn you." 
 A man is annoyed in some way by another, and gives 
 ready tongue to this oath. It is taking God's name in 
 
40 The Ten Commandments. 
 
 vain, because the man who says it does not mean it. 
 There is not a man who says it who would Hke to see 
 it carried out with respect to his fellow-man in all its 
 terrible meaning. It is trifling with the name of God, 
 invoking Him to do something which it is never in- 
 tended He shall do. That is not the most shocking 
 aspect of the vain use of the name of God in that 
 particular expression, for men are not only asking 
 God to do something which they do not wish Him to 
 do, but to do something that He never does. God never 
 damned a man. The idea is an awful heresy. God's 
 work is the work of salvation, and if a man is lost it 
 is the man's own suicidal act. God is not casting men 
 away into eternal loss. The awful passing out into 
 Utter darkness of the man who is without God, and 
 who is therefore lost, is the man's own fault. No man 
 goes into that darkness except by his own act. God 
 is not doing it. The idea that He damns men is being 
 thrust into the minds of men by their own profanity 
 of language, and it is a libel upon the love of God and 
 upon all the excellencies of His character. The false 
 idea involved in the profane phrase already mentioned 
 takes its effect upon those who hear it as regards their 
 thought of God, and this effect is demoralizing and 
 debasing. Oh, that every man who has fallen into the 
 habit of profane swearing, having become its slave 
 almost unconsciously, would take heed to the words 
 of Sinai, thundering in our ears to-day, "Thou shalt 
 not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain" ! 
 
 Another form of taking God's name in Vam obtains 
 in some sections of society. This Ts a light and frivo 
 
The Third Commandment. 41 
 
 Idus use of the holy name, a prevalent and fashionable 
 joking about God. Stories are told in which the name 
 of God is made use of in such a way as to affect men 
 with a false humor. Such tales should be shunned as 
 men would shun the fire of hell. In every instance 
 where men permit themselves to look at sacred things 
 in a frivolous light, there is evil reaction upon the 
 heart and consciousness; they are robbing themselves 
 of that sacred sense of veneration and reverence for 
 God, without which there is no real worship and no 
 acceptable service. That man is unclean through and 
 through who has lost his veneration for God and His 
 holy, sacred name. The man who does not tremble in 
 the presence of God, though he trusts while he 
 trembles, never worships and never works as he ought 
 to do. 
 
 The last and most subtle form of breaking the third 
 commandment is committed by the man who says, 
 ''Lord, Lord,'' and does not the things that the Lord 
 says. Prayer without practice is blasphemy; praise 
 without adoration violates the third commandment; 
 giving without disinterestedness robs the benevolence 
 of God of Its lustre and beauty. Let these thoughts {J 
 be stated in other words. The profanity of the church 
 is infinitely worse than the profanity of the street ; the 
 blasphemy of the sanctuary is a far more insidious 
 form of evil than the blasphemy of the slum. Is there 
 a blasphemy of the church and the sanctuary? The 
 prayer that is denied by the life, the praise offered to 
 God which is counteracted by rebellion against Him 
 when the hour of that praise has passed away, that is 
 
42 The Ten Commandments. 
 
 blasphemy, that is taking the name of God in vain. 
 If a man passes into the sanctuary and preaches and 
 prays and praises with eloquent lips and beautiful 
 sentences and devotional attitude, even with tears, and 
 goes home to break the least of these commandments, 
 that man blasphemes when he prays; but if he de- 
 ceives the world, he never deceives God ! If a man 
 take the name of God for vanity, if truth is not behind 
 his worship, he had better not worship at all. The 
 form in which this third commandment is broken 
 most completely, most awfully, most terribly, is by 
 perpetually making use of the name of the Lord, while 
 the life does not square with the profession that is 
 made. There are men who, if told that they were pro- 
 fane swearers, would be terribly shocked. They have 
 never allowed an oath to cross their lips in their lives, 
 nor do they know what it is to make use of profane 
 or vulgar language, and they make their boast in their 
 freedom from these things. Yet these men are break- 
 ing the third commandment more often and more ter- 
 ribly than the most profane swearer. 
 
 Not only is it a more awful thing than actual swear- 
 ing to take the name of God upon the lips, if a man is 
 not true to his profession, but his example is far more 
 pernicious to religion than is that of the swearer. The 
 man who professes with his lips to honor God, and 
 yet denies Him in his life, will do far more to hinder 
 the coming of the Kingdom than the man who openly 
 blasphemes and makes no profession of honoring God. 
 The most subtle and awful form of breaking the third 
 
The Third Commandment 43 
 
 commandment of which any man can be guilty is that 
 of hypocrisy. 
 
 And what is the last name, the name into which 
 in the smallest syllables and sweetest sound God has 
 compressed most of His heart, most of His power, 
 most of His love? Go back again to that message de- 
 livered of old, and hear it there, "Thou shalt call His 
 name JESUS: for He shall save His people from 
 their sins." 
 
 Here is a man who takes the name of Jesus, and 
 sings about it, but is not saved from his sins. That 
 man is breaking the third commandment. 
 
 A man imagines that the religion of Jesus is a cult. 
 He admires Christr talks about His teachings, criti- 
 cises His conduct, and patronizes all that He said and 
 did, but he is not saved from sin. The man is a blas- 
 phemer. Unless the last name, the name of Jesus, 
 gathering into itself all human beauty and all Divine 
 attributes — unless, as it is used, it is the keynote of 
 the soul, the talisman of deliverance from evil — then 
 had the name better never be mentioned, for so it is 
 taken in vanity. May it be to all more than that, and 
 may they be able to say of that name — 
 
 Jesus the prisoners' fetters breaks. 
 
 Bruises the serpent's head; 
 Power into strengthless souls He speaks. 
 
 And life into the dead. 
 
44 The Ten Commandments. 
 
 THE FOURTH COMMANDMENT. 
 
 "Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shall 
 thou labour, and do all thy work : but the seventh day is a Sab- 
 bath unto the Lord thy God : in it thou shalt not do any work, 
 thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy man-servant, nor thy 
 maid-servant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within 
 thy gates: for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, 
 the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day 
 wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day, and hallowed it. 
 —Exodus xx. 8-ii. 
 
 This fourth word of the Decalogue closes its first 
 section. That section deals with man in his relation 
 to God. Having stated the fact of the Deity, and 
 urged the claims of God on man in the first three, and 
 before passing to the second half of the law which 
 deals with man in relation to men, the present com- 
 mand is given. It provides for the perpetual main- 
 tenance of a symbol of the relationship that exists be- 
 tween God and man. At regular intervals through 
 all the days, man is to turn wholly from that which is 
 material to that which is spiritual. By the recurrence 
 of the Sabbath, he is to be reminded that every day is 
 measured and planned in the counsels of God. By 
 turning from the activities of his physical being, in 
 order that his spiritual nature may, without distrac- 
 tion, take hold upon spiritual verities, the fact is to 
 be kept in his memory that his whole being is of God, 
 and its well-being conditioned in His government. 
 
 In every hour of human life the physical and the 
 spiritual interact upon each other, and in their proper 
 inter-relation each contributes to the strengthening of 
 
' The Fourth Commandment. 45 
 
 the other. Of this fundamental law of human nature 
 the Sabbath is the perpetual symbol. For the days of 
 earthly probation the value of the Sabbath is created 
 by the intervening days, the light of the seventh is a 
 perpetual suggestion of their true meaning and final 
 import. The right understanding of this relation is 
 all-important to a true conception of the meaning and 
 method of the fourth commandment. 
 
 Consider, then, first, the two-fold command; and, 
 secondly, its application to our own day. 
 
 I. — The Command. 
 
 This commandment has been spoken of as referring 
 only to the Sabbath. This is a mistake, and the full 
 weight of that part of it which refers to the seventh 
 day is only appreciated as it is remembered that one- 
 half of it has to do with the six days. Stripping the 
 commandment for the moment of all explanatory and 
 expository sentences, it will be found to consist of 
 two simple injunctions : 
 
 First, "Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy." 
 
 Second, "Six days shalt thou labor, and do all thy 
 work." 
 
 The will of God for man is that he should work. 
 It is also that at the seventh day interval he should 
 cease his work, and worship. The work of the six 
 days, being the carrying out of a Divine purpose, is 
 in itself practical worship of the highest description. 
 The worship of the seventh day, in which he turns to 
 the places of contemplation, meditation, and adora- 
 tion, is work in the highest realm. Each is the com- 
 
46 The Ten Commandments. 
 
 plement of the other. He who never works is unfitted 
 for worship. He who never pauses to worship is ren- 
 dered incapable of work. While the present study, for 
 reasons that will be obvious, deals almost exclusively 
 with the obligation of the Sabbath, it is absolutely 
 necessary to start with a clear understanding that the 
 final statement in the first section of the Decalogue is 
 that man fulfils the ideal relationship to God, con- 
 tained in the statement of the first three command- 
 ments, only as he is a worker and a worshipper. 
 
 The reason for this is found in the fact of the kin- 
 ship of man to God. Every side of his nature is a 
 result of Divine thought and action. It is constructed 
 upon the basis of thought and action. Consequently, 
 the threefold nature of man, resulting in the one per- 
 son fulfils its highest possibilities within this realm 
 only. The first word of God, therefore, is — "Six days 
 shalt thou labor, and do all thy work." The complex 
 system of present-day civilization makes it possible 
 that some men may live without work. That, how- 
 ever, is only possible in the proportion in which men 
 have departed from the Divine ideal. Man is placed in a 
 world which contains all that is necessary for his 
 physical being, but to obtain it he must work. The 
 soil is stored with forces of life, but man must bend 
 over it and smite it with labor before it will answer 
 the demands his need is making upon it. The harvest 
 comes by the way of human work. Man needs bread, 
 and works upon the soil, and the golden harvest is 
 God's crown upon human labor. This fact of labor is 
 not the result of the Fall. It is part of the original 
 
The Fourth Commandment. 47 
 
 intention, for man was placed in the garden of Eden 
 "to dress it and to keep it." In the process of the 
 centuries men have been discovering the secrets of 
 God long locked in the treasury of Nature. These 
 all, rightly understood and applied, minister to the 
 possibilities of increased power to do the work that 
 provides for the needs of the race. To that side of the 
 commandment the vast mass of human beings are 
 obedient, not willingly always, but of necessity. 
 
 This being granted, the Infinite Love, in perfect 
 understanding of the need of His own creation, pro- 
 vider that every seventh day man should lay aside the 
 tools of his craft and enter into the upper reaches of 
 his life's possibilities. It is well worth a careful note 
 that the old essential Hebrew idea of the Sabbath 
 was not that of gloom, but rather of gladness. The 
 Sabbath was a day of delight, a holiday, a day in which 
 man found, in cessation from toil, the possibility of en- 
 tering into the realization of his own nature's capacity 
 for enjoyment. To think upon Jehovah, to commune 
 with the Infinite, uprising from the earth to stand erect, 
 conscious of affinity with God, man was to foretaste the 
 larger life for which the present was but a probation, 
 and thus be equipped for taking hold with new con- 
 secration and firmer grip upon the work of the coming 
 days. 
 
 Thus the Sabbath had its ethical meaning. From 
 the quiet calm of the Sabbath day man returned to the 
 necessary and swift movements of the six. As he did 
 so, the integrity and justice of the things with which he 
 tiad communed in the hours of rest, touched wid in- 
 
43 The Ten Commandments. 
 
 fluenced him in all the hours of work. He delved 
 deeply, and measured justly, and weighed righteously 
 for six days, because on the seventh he became con- 
 scious of the balances of the sanctuary and the right- 
 eousness of God. 
 
 Thus the two commandments are one, so inter- 
 related that they can never be separated. To fail in 
 obedience to the one is to make it impossible to obey 
 the other. Obedience to each creates the power to 
 obey the other. Work makes worship, worship fits 
 for work. 
 
 II. — Present-Day Application, 
 
 From this consideration it will be seen that the 
 Sabbath is not the ideal of any dispensation of Divine 
 dealings. It is universal in the purpose of God, and 
 was part of the economy of time which waited for the 
 birth of man. The change of day in the Christian 
 dispensation from the seventh to the first is of great 
 symbolic value, and although no Divine word was 
 written commanding the change, the spiritual facts of 
 Christianity altered it surely, yet without proclamation 
 or noise. Until Christ had come, man worked toward 
 his Sabbath. Since Christ, he works from his Sabbath. 
 In the old economy, in the last analysis, the Sabbath 
 depended upon the work ; in the new, the work grows 
 out of the Sabbath. 
 
 Thus, the grace of God as revealed in Christ includes 
 the first principles of the Divine government, and yet 
 brings them to the level of the need of man in his im- 
 potence and fall. 
 
The Fourth Commandment. 49 
 
 These are the busiest days that humanity has ever 
 geen, days of strenuous life and quick movement, days 
 in which men have no time for the contemplation of 
 anything out of which the virtue has passed, merel> 
 out of respect for the time when virtue yet was in it. 
 Effete things must be swept on one side, and only 
 those that contribute to the well-being of the race are 
 to be maintained. 
 
 How will this aspect of the age affect the question 
 of the fourth commandment? The conditions of life 
 Jto-day increasingly demand work, that is, as has been / 
 before indicated, among the vast majority of the hu-, 
 man family. Not only the law of God, tender and be- 
 neficent, but the law of human society, too often stern 
 and cruel, says to man, Thou shalt work! The fact 
 that there are any who escape obedience to the com- 
 mand is the saddest fact in sociology. If the necessity 
 for work were still understood in all its Divine bear- 
 ings, no human being in Whitechapel or Belgravia, 
 on Fifth avenue or in tenement house, would be 
 allowed to eat a meal until that meal had been pur- 
 chased by the contribution of a quota of toil to the 
 commonwealth of wcrk. 
 
 Returning, however, to the previous position, that 
 this is pre-eminently the day in which men work, it 
 is an appalling fact that forgetfulness of God has 
 issued in the folly of forgetfulness of, or opposition 
 to. His law concerning the Sabbath. Atheism, of 
 course, would sweep away that great time symbol of 
 the tender compassion of the Father of men. The 
 ioss of the Sabbath is the necessary outcome of the de- 
 
50 The Ten Commandments. 
 
 ^hronement of God ; and all the degradation of human- 
 ity that always follows the sweeping away from na- 
 tional life of the seventh day of rest is the logical se- 
 quence of Atheism. Well and graphically did Paul 
 describe its issue in his word "atheists and without 
 hope in the world." 
 
 The most insidious and dangerous attack upon the 
 Sabbath, however, is that of those who would, to 
 use their own phrase, secularize it. These are they 
 who would take advantage of the rest which has 
 I come to them through the government of God, in 
 order to prove by the folly of their pleasure-seeking, 
 and the weary restlessness of their feverish activity, 
 their departure from that government. If men had 
 but eyes to see, and hearts to understand the silent 
 goings of the eternal things, a sojourn in Paris 
 would be the most powerful sermon that could be 
 preached on the sanctity of the Sabbath, and the dese- 
 cration of everything that is distinctively glorious in 
 human nature which follows in the wake of its un- 
 hallowing. 
 
 Christ's attitude. 
 
 What IS the church's duty to-day? Much has been 
 made of the attitude of Christ in speech and deed 
 . toward the Sabbath. Some have imagined that by 
 / words He uttered and by deeds He did He relaxed 
 the binding nature of the old command. This view 
 however, is to absolutely misunderstand and misin- 
 terpret the doing and the teaching of Jesus. First, 
 in this connection, let it be remembered that all He 
 
The Fourth Commandment. 51 
 
 said concerning it He uttered while He was fulfilling 
 His mission as the Jewish Messiah. It is impossible 
 too clearly to state the fact, because many who teach 
 that in the Christian dispensation the original ideal 
 of the Sabbath is not bniding, quote our Lord's words 
 in support of their contention. This is indeed to fail 
 to distinguish between things that diifer. His great 
 statements reveal the true meaning of the Sabbath, 
 as observed under a Jewish economy. They undoubt- 
 edly have a far wider application, reaching back to 
 the original ideal, and throwing light far on to the 
 end of time. Said He, "The Sabbath was made for 
 man." The fair inference is that while man walks in 
 the ways of God, he must of necessity make a Divinely 
 intended use of this great gift. Said He, moreover, 
 "The Son of Man is Lord also of the Sabbath." Not, 
 let it be noticed, "Son of God," but "Son of Man." 
 Speaking here of Himself certainly, but of Himself in 
 representative capacity as fulfilling the first Divine 
 intention. He claims to be, not the destroyer, but Lord 
 of the Sabbath. 
 
 Those who through His finished work have entered 
 into that new realm of life in which all work grows 
 out of rest, and the meanest activity of the commonest 
 day finds its root and inspiration in the cross of His 
 passion and the glory of His resurrection morning, 
 must ever be loyal to the law of Infinite Love, and 
 during the little while in which they wait and watch 
 for the morning, gather in the seven-fold light of the 
 Christian Sabbath for spiritual development and exer- 
 cise, that so through all the working days there 
 
52 
 
 The Ten Commandments. 
 
 may be perpetual life in the power of the eternal 
 things considered on the first day of the week. The 
 Sabbath idea, as now embodied in the resurrection 
 day, must be defended from all attacks, and by the 
 joyousness of worship and the readiness of service, 
 demonstrate its delight. 
 
 THE FIFTH COMMANDMENT. 
 
 "Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be 
 long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee." 
 
 Exodus xx. 12. 
 
 Differences of opinion have been expressed as to 
 the division of the Decalogue, some maintaining that 
 the first four commandments were written upon the first 
 table, and the last six upon the second. Others have 
 held that upon each table five were written. The first 
 theory maintains that the first division defines the law 
 that governs man's relationship to God, while the sec- 
 ond division defines the law that governs his relations 
 to his fellow. Those who hold the second theory main- 
 tain that the fifth commandment is part of the law reg- 
 ulating man's relation to God. Dean Farrar suggests 
 that the first five were written upon one table, and 
 may be spoken of as Pietas, while the second five upon 
 the second table may be spoken of as Probitas. It will 
 be seen, therefore, that the difficulty is in the plac- 
 ing of the fifth commandment. Dean Chadwick sug- 
 gests that it is a bridge connecting the two. This is, 
 perhaps, the most reasonable explanation. It is, how- 
 ever, so clearly a commandment dealing with the re- 
 
The Fifth Commandment 53 
 
 lation of one human being to another, that here it is 
 considered as the first of the second half of the Deca- 
 logue, that half, namely, which reveals for all time 
 the Divine thought of human relationship. 
 
 This commandment is most closely linked in thought 
 and intention to those that have preceded it, for here 
 the paren t is viVwpH as being in the, place pf God_toJthe 
 child. In the early days of human life, while as yet 
 the mind is unable to grasp the most elementary ideas 
 of God, the supreme facts concerning Him are to be 
 impressed upon the child by a revelation of them in 
 its parents. In the procession of human life the child 
 owes its being to its parents, and one of the most evi- 
 dent and remarkable facts of human nature is the atti- 
 tude of the opening mind and affection of the little one 
 toward them, an attitude absolutely differing from 
 that entertained toward any other person. What God 
 is to the adult, parents are to the child — lawgiver and 
 lover, provider and controller. Upon the child's re- 
 sponse to the first facts of relationship will depend 
 its response to the higher facts to be revealed in the 
 process of the years. Happy are those children who 
 pass by a natural and beautiful sequence from the 
 honoring of their parents to the hallowing of the name 
 of their God. Happy are those parents who so hallow 
 the name of their God that it becomes easy for the 
 children entrusted to their care to honor them. 
 
 This conception of the command lifts it at once 
 into the front rank of importance, and reveals the fact 
 that it has a dual significance. JFirst. of cnnrse^ it is 
 a__law_ for children, and none the less certainly it in- 
 
54 The Ten Commandments. 
 
 eludes an ideal life for parents, of the most stringent 
 and binding nature. Its importance cannot be over- 
 estimated, as alljth e subseq ugiiMp Q^^n^^^^^Qlg llts^cofl-. 
 ce rning human relatiQ nship_wiilM.-£asy_.£^.diffic 
 obe y, accord ing to the m^asur^ of ^^b^H^^nre r^ndfr^j 
 to this. Consider, then, first the command; secondly, 
 the light thrown upon it by the New Testament ideals 
 and teaching; and, lastly, its practical application to 
 the conditions of life now obtaining. 
 
 I. — The Comnumd. 
 
 It is too often taken for granted that this is a com- 
 mandment addressed to young children only. Noth- 
 ing can be further from the truth. Assuredly it is, 
 in the first place, addressed to such, for the simple rea- 
 son that, in the order of nature, children are always 
 young first. To imagine, however, that the command 
 loses its force when the days have gone in which it is 
 possible to speak of children as young, is to misunder- 
 stand at least half of its deep significance. The word 
 "honor" has a much larger meaning than that of obe- 
 dience. The thought of obedience is necessarily inclu- 
 ded. In the process of the years, however, all human 
 beings, for the development of their own possibili- 
 ties, come to the place of personal responsibility, when 
 they have to choose for themselves in the great crises 
 and the minor matters of life. A boy will never be a 
 man if he always must obey his parents. The training 
 of the years of obedience will affect all the choice of 
 subsequent years; but beyond the period of control 
 there must come that of individual responsibility. It 
 
The Fifth Commandment. ee 
 
 IS at once evident that t his command includ^ s_the 
 whole life of a child , for all men and women are still 
 the children of their parents; and even though the 
 days have passed when it is necessary or right that 
 they should obey, the days are never past when it is 
 necessary and right that they should honor their par- 
 ents. Jh<^ pnmmanrl^ thfHi h as a twofold application — 
 fi}:sfcr"tu"tbev43e riod of childhood, and , secondly, to the 
 perio d^ of adult life. 
 
 The meaning of the word * 'honor" is — to attach 
 we ight to ; t o put in the plac e of superiority ; to hold in 
 high opinion; to reverence, in the best sense of that 
 word. To the child who is not yeFof age to think, 
 to~plan, to will, honoring of parents consists in subjec- 
 tion, obedience implicitly and gladly rendered. This, 
 like every law of God, is for the child a gracious and 
 yet imperative requirement. 
 
 It is gracious in that it frees the child from respon- 
 sibility and care, until character is formed and the 
 mind trained to the possibilities of correct judgment. 
 The Divine thought for the child is ever that it should 
 play. The tides of young life are full of hope and 
 movement and humor. That these should not be hin- 
 dered in their development, God has set over the life 
 those who in the very nature of the relationship they 
 bear to the child will think the best thoughts, and plan 
 the best programmes for it ; and the little one, free from 
 these cares for which it is not prepared, may grow and 
 develop. 
 
 The command is imperative because the very im- 
 mature condition of child-life necessitates mature 
 
56 The Ten Commandments. 
 
 thought and arrangement and training, out of which 
 are to grow the commands laid upon the child. To 
 refuse lo obey is to run the risk, or indeed, to insure 
 the certainty, of wrecking the life, and making impos- 
 sible the realization of all its fairest and highest possi- 
 bilities. The very imperative nature, therefore, of the 
 command is also proof of its gracious intention. 
 
 The exceeding beauty of the commandment is also 
 seen in that God calls the child to obey those whom, 
 in the very nature of things, he loves. There may be 
 cases where tutors and schoolmasters may have to be 
 placed in loco parentis, but it is certain that this is 
 never so without peril to the child. The principle of 
 obedience rendered to such is almost always that of fear 
 of authority, whereas, in the Divine intention, the prin- 
 ciple of obedience is that of love. This may hardly 
 be the place in which to discuss the great educational 
 system in vogue to-day, yet a passing word may be per- 
 mitted which is spoken of strong conviction by one 
 who himself was trained for the teaching profession, 
 and that word may, perhaps, be most strongly put in 
 a personal form. I would never, under any considera- 
 tion, consent to put my boys for the larger portion of 
 any year away from the influence of their mother's life 
 and my personal interest, no matter how excellent were 
 the schoolmaster and staff. Obedience to father and 
 mother is God's safeguard and law of development for 
 child-life. 
 
 The moment comes when for the perfect develop- 
 i[ient of character the child must act apart from control, 
 that honor should be rendered to the parents does not 
 
The Fifth Commandment. 57 
 
 then cease to be a Divine intention. It takes a new 
 form, that namely of respect, which expresses itself in 
 courtesy ajid kindly deeds, and where necessary, in 
 provision being made for the comfort of the declining 
 years. Where the first part of this intention, that of 
 obedience, has been gladly rendered, the second can 
 hardly, by any possibility, fail to be accorded. Passing 
 from the period of freedom from care to the strenuous 
 years when will is to be exercised and choice made 
 alone, the child will appreciate the true value of that 
 love that thought and planned and commanded in the 
 earliest days ; and response will be made in the rever- 
 ence and love with which the child will illumine the 
 last days of father and mother. As the keenness of the 
 conflict of life becomes a reality, it is impossible to 
 forget how the first years of existence were sheltered, 
 and coming to understand that while childhood played 
 itself into maturity it did so at the cost of the anxious 
 thought and incessant toil and agonized prayer of par- 
 ents, it becomes the delight of life increasingly to 
 honor them and to pour upon them so much as may be 
 the love which they created, and for which in the even- 
 ing of life they long more, perhaps, than for any other 
 blessing. 
 
 THE PROMISE OF LONG LIFE. 
 
 The promise coupled with this command, in common 
 with almost all the promises made to the ancient peo- 
 ple of God, applies rather to the nation than to the indi- 
 vidual. It is the declaration of the result of accepting 
 and acting upon a philosophy, rather than the an- 
 
58 The Ten Commandments. 
 
 nouncement of a personal reward. There can be no 
 doubt that the personal element is present, for in the 
 majority of cases the honoring of the parents results in 
 the realization of habits and character that tend to the 
 lengthening of the days. Character moulded in the 
 atmosphere of honor to parents has within it the ele- 
 ment of quiet power which tends to prolong life. On 
 the other hand, character formed in the atmosphere 
 of insubjection has within it the element of reckless- 
 ness and fever which tends to the shortening of life. 
 The true application of the promise is, however, to the 
 nation, and may thus be stated. That people, among 
 whom the sacredness of the family ideal is maintained, 
 and children render obedience to their parents during 
 the period of immaturity, and always honor, will be 
 the nation of strength, retaining its hold upon its own 
 possessions, and abiding long in the land. 
 
 APPLICATION TO PARENTS. 
 
 Before turning from the consideration of the com- 
 mand as given in the Hebrew economy, some word 
 must be said as to its application to parents. This ap- 
 plication is obvious. Nothing is more certain than the 
 fact that, i f^ parents ar e ^ to be honored, t hey must be 
 honorable. If obedience is to be rendered gladly and 
 implicitly, it must be to a control that is conditioned in 
 love. Love that is God-like, far-seeing, and compre- 
 hensive, love which permits of no present pleasure at 
 the cost of possible future pain ; such love can only be 
 where character is in harmony with Divine intention. 
 No father or mother can think right thoughts or plan 
 
The Fifth Commandment. eg 
 
 pure programmes for their children unless they, in 
 their turn, are living the life of subjection to God, and 
 are receiving from him the ordering of all their ways. 
 If, indeed, the father and mother by their representa- 
 tion of God to the child are to prepare that child for 
 subjection to God by choice of will in the days to come, 
 what perpetual responsibility rests upon them that 
 their fellowship with God should be such as to insure 
 their correspondence to His character, and, conse- 
 quently, their correct representation of the same to 
 their children. In brief, the surest way to insure that I 
 children shall honor parents, is for the parents to live . 
 the life before them which reflects the glory and grace 1 
 of God. 
 
 II. — The Light Thrown by New Testament Ideals 
 dmd Teaching. 
 
 This is one of the commandments of the old dispen- 
 sation that no one will be prepared to say has been ab- 
 rogated in the new. In common with the rest, it is 
 included and emphasized in a more explicit revelation 
 of the sacredness of the relation existing between par- 
 ents and children, and a more emphatic statement of 
 the Divine purpose and thought. The example of 
 Christ itself is one of infinite beauty and great suggest- 
 iveness. The fact that God's second Man was sent 
 into the world, not as was the first, in full possession of 
 the distinguishing glories of humanity, but a babe hav- 
 ing to pass through the period of childhood, is of in- 
 finite value in the light it throws upon the fifth com- 
 mandment. During those early years the boy Jesus 
 
6o The Ten Commandments. 
 
 was under the control of Mary, His mother, and His 
 reputed father Joseph. He grew and advanced in 
 wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men, 
 under the developing control of human love and over- 
 sight. 
 
 When at the age of twelve they brought Him to the 
 Temple to present Him before the Lord, a picture of 
 Him in relation to His mother is presented that is full 
 of suggestiveness. The fact that she sought Him sor- 
 rowing proves almost to a certainty that He had hardly 
 ever been outside the immediate sphere of her influ- 
 ence. To miss Him, not to find Him immediately at 
 hand, was to her something new and strange ; and the 
 picture of the anxious mother, assisted by her husband, 
 seeking Him, reveals in vivid light the exquisite rela- 
 tionship existing between them in that home at Naza- 
 reth. When at last she found Him, His question to 
 her, rightly read, reveals the same fact — that of His 
 honor for her. His confidence in her. Said He : 
 
 "Wist ye not that I must be in My father's house ?** 
 
 It seems that the very writing of these words may 
 have robbed them of their music. Certain it is that a 
 popular conception of them is out of harmony with 
 the beauty of the whole scene and story. That He in 
 any sense rebuked His mother is not conceivable. Put 
 the emphasis upon the "ye" — "Wist ye not" — and a 
 revelation is at once obtained of a question coming 
 out of love and confidence, as though He had said : 
 
 "Mother, surely you knew Me well enough to know 
 that nothing could detain Me but the affairs of that 
 
The Fifth Commandment. 6i 
 
 Father of Whom you have given Me knowledge and 
 revelation." 
 
 Then, be it remembered, there was here no breaking 
 away from the restraint of parental control, for it is 
 distinctly stated, "He went down with them, and came 
 to Nazareth; and He was subject unto them." 
 
 Some have seemed to imagine that when He spoke 
 of His disciples as being His mother. His brethren, 
 His sisters, He, in some measure, spoke slightingly of 
 His mother. Such interpretation is, however, surely 
 to misunderstand His meaning. No slight was cast 
 upon her, but rather the highest honor upon His dis- 
 ciples. 
 
 For Him, also, the years of obedience ended, but the 
 years of honor never. In the last and awful hours of 
 His human life, amid the dense darkness of Calvary^s 
 unspeakable woe, He thought still of her whom He had 
 so loved ; thought, moreover, of her present necessity, 
 and commended her to the loving care of the man who 
 most deeply understood His love and the methods of 
 its manifestation. Thus in the Person and example of 
 Jesus the fifth commandment has its most glorious en- 
 forcement. 
 
 In His teaching, also. He gave the most forceful 
 interpretation of the fifth commandment in its applica- 
 tion to one of the abuses that He found around Him. 
 Men were excusing themselves from the duty of pro- 
 viding for the necessity of their parents, by saying 
 that funds which might have been used in that way 
 were Corban, that is, dedicated to the service of the 
 altar. In the most emphatic terms Jesus declared that 
 
62 The Ten Commandments. 
 
 to dedicate funds to the altar which should be used in 
 providing for the necessities of parents was to make 
 void the law of God. According to this, then, it is a 
 far more holy thing to use possessions for the care and 
 comfort of parents in their age, than to present such 
 funds to the altar of God to their neglect. 
 
 This example and teaching of the Master proves the 
 New Testament position, a position which is unfolded 
 and emphasized again and again in the writings of the 
 apostles. 
 
 III. — The Practical Issue, 
 r 
 
 Perhaps no sign of the present time is more sad than 
 
 the prevalence of disobedience on the part of children to 
 parents during the days of childhood, and lack of rev- 
 erence and respect when once the restraints of home 
 jhave been left behind. This is manifested in very many 
 ways, and, alas! is not peculiar to people outside the 
 Christian Church. It has been my lot during the past 
 sixteen years to stay in very many Christian homes. 
 The strength and beauty of some of them abide as a 
 perpetual fragrance. Others of them, alas! have left 
 the most painful impressions. Children self-willed 
 and consequently bringing themselves into perpetual 
 unhappiness, and inflicting discomfort upon all who 
 came in contact with them, have prophesied evil 
 things for the days to come. Boys who have seemed 
 ;ishamed to use to their circle of companions the word 
 father, have substituted flippant and irreverent epi- 
 thets, which, if they had but realized it, at once de- 
 graded, not their parents, but themselves in the thought 
 
The Fifth Commandment. 63 
 
 of all right-thinking people. Girls too often seem to 
 look upon their mother as a household institution, pro- 
 vided in order that they might be free for all the friv- 
 olity of a giddy set. An eagerness to be away from 
 home, a longing for the day when the forbidding or 
 command of the parents might be escaped, these signs 
 are on every hand, and they are of the saddest. 
 
 In very many cases the children are not so much to 
 blame as the parents. This failure to honor father and 
 mother, wherever it is found, is, in large measure, due 
 to the breakdown of the parental ideal. The father has 
 come to think of himself as a provider of food and rai- 
 ment and education, and occasionally as a species of 
 moral policeman, rather than as a revelation of God to 
 his bairns. From the way in which thousands of fath- 
 ers to-day treat their children, one would imagine that 
 the name was a synonym for poorhouse-master, rather 
 than a name lent in order that from it men may un- 
 derstand their true relation to their children, and the 
 tremendous responsibility that rests upon them. The 
 sin of fathers in the matter of the training of children 
 is far greater than they have yet appreciated in this 
 country. It is very questionable whether the hymn 
 beginning — 
 
 When mothers of Salem their children brought to Jesus. 
 
 is a correct interpretation of the Bible story. The 
 Greek pronoun is masculine, and the old Hebrew ideal 
 was that the father was responsible for the training 
 of the bairns. If fathers think of themselves as less 
 than God intends them to be, they must not be surprised 
 
64 The Ten Commandments. 
 
 if children cease to honor them. Too often, also, to- 
 day, the mother makes herself the slave of her own 
 children in all the details that make for material com- 
 fort, and forgets that she should be to them the most 
 radiant revelation of the beauty of the Divine grace. 
 
 It should be noticed especially that the command is 
 to honor father and mother. This is so because both 
 are requisite to a true representation of God to the 
 child, and consequently to the perfect development of 
 the possibilities of the child's nature. Let there be a 
 return on the part of parents to the high ideals of their 
 own holy position, and there will assuredly be a re- 
 turn on the part of children to the pathway of obedi- 
 ence to the command to honor father and mother. 
 
 Let children, however, remember that everything 
 depends for them upon their obedience to this fifth 
 commandment of the Decalogue. Their relation to the 
 first four "Words" is proved by their attitude to this. 
 Infidelity, sacrilege, profanity, rebellion, are all in- 
 cluded in the sin of failing to honor parents. It is 
 equally true that all the following commands are in- 
 cluded in the fifth. Children that honor their parents 
 will be saved from murder, impurity, theft, slander, 
 and covetousness. The history of the centuries proves 
 that, under stress of swift and subtle temptation, young 
 men and maidens have again and again proved invul- 
 nerable, by the memory and conscious influence of a 
 godly father and sainted mother. Let every boy and 
 girl, every youth and maiden, every man and woman, 
 guard from attack the sacred shrine in which faihef 
 
The Sixth Commandment. 65 
 
 and mother are held to be beyond the criticism of the 
 crowd, sacred and holy as the first revelations of God 
 in the tenderness and strictness of their government 
 
 THE SIXTH COMMANDMENT. 
 
 "Thou shalt do no murder." — Exodus xx. 13, 
 This second commandment in the second table of the 
 Decalogue is the first that deals purely and simply with 
 the relation of man to man. So closely allied is human 
 inter-relation to the relation existing between God and 
 man, that this first word conditioning the former is 
 based upon the latter. At the very foundation of the 
 social fabric lies the fact of the sovereignty of God over 
 every individual life. Before defining the laws which 
 are to condition the well-being of society, the realm in 
 which there may be no action based only on human 
 will is clearly defined. Human life is emphatically de- 
 clared to be sacred. It is a Divine creation, mysteri- 
 ous and magnificent in its genesis and possibility, ut- 
 terly beyond the control or comprehension of any 
 human being. It is, therefore, never to be taken at the 
 will of one, who can by no means know the full mean- 
 ) ing of its being. The revelation of God made to man 
 I proves that He has purposes for every individual and 
 ] for the race, stretching far beyond the present moment 
 S or manifestation ; and to terminate a single life is to set 
 i up the wit and wisdom of man as superior to that of 
 \ God. The immensity of the issues of death is so great 
 that there can be no sin against humanity, and, there- 
 
66 The Ten Commandments. 
 
 fore, against God, greater than that of taking life. 
 In this brief commandment, therefore, is contained a 
 statement of the first principle of human life, so clear 
 and so vital as to demand the closest attention. Notice, 
 then, first, the command; secondly, the application of 
 the principle it contains to the present day ; and lastly, 
 its application in thi Kingdom of God. 
 
 I. — The Command. 
 
 Man's first relationship is to God. He is His off- 
 spring. He is, and he is what he is, by Divine volition 
 and power. All other relationships grow out of this first 
 one, and are, therefore, subservient to it. Subsequent 
 commandments dealing with blood, social, and civic 
 ties, are all binding upon men, because they are includ- 
 ed within this first and highest relationship of life. The 
 sacredness of marriage, the right of property, the im- 
 portance of reputation, and the supremacy of character, 
 all gain their force and value from the nature of life. 
 They mark, in fact, the unfolding of life in its varied 
 possibilities. The giving of life includes all. The cess- 
 ation of life ends all. Every power of the individual is 
 due to the power of God, and all the possibilities of 
 the race are to be traced to the same original source. 
 It follows, then, of necessity, that life, being a gift of 
 God, is in itself the most wonderful relationship, that 
 of man to God. This commandment, therefore, in sim- 
 plest words, and yet in sternest manner, flings a fiery 
 law around the life of every human being, reserving to 
 Him Who first bestowed it the right to end it. 
 \ The change in translation which the Revised Ver- 
 
. The Sixth Commandment. 67 
 
 /sion has given is significant and important. Instead 
 of "Thou shalt not kill," it reads "Thou shalt do no 
 murder," and there is a difference in the thought sug- 
 gested. It is possible to kill and yet not to murder; 
 it is necessary, therefore, to have a clear understanding 
 
 \ of what murder really is. , Under the old economy, 
 cities of refuge were provided, inlb which a manslayer 
 might pass and find protection from the avenger of 
 blood. A careful perusal of the account of the insti- 
 tution of these cities in Numbers xxxv. 9-34 will throw 
 light upon the difference that may exist between killing 
 and murder. All murder is, of course, killing, but all 
 killing is not necessarily murder. In the passage re- 
 ferred to, the word "unwittingly" (R.V.), "unawares" 
 (A.V.), reveals the difference. The man who, through 
 error, unintentionally took the life of his fellow-mai* 
 was allowed to take refuge withlfi one of these cities. 
 It is, however, explicitly stated that if the deed were 
 done intentionally the city of refuge itself did not offer 
 sanctuary. 
 
 Here, then, is the difference between killing and 
 murder. Killing is unwitting and unintentional tak- 
 ing of life; murder consists in the intentional taking 
 Df human life on the alone responsibility of human will. 
 Let it be dearly noticed in passing that killing unwit- 
 Hngly was not looked upon as a light offence. The 
 man who took life in this way was denied his liberty 
 for an indefinite term. His safety was to be condi- 
 tioned in his abiding in the city of refuge until the 
 death of the High Priest. If he ventured from the 
 safety of those protecting walls he also might pay the 
 
68 The Ten Commandments. 
 
 penalty of death at the hands of the avenger of blood. 
 For the murderer, however, the man who of malicious 
 intention, took the life of his fellow-man, no sanctuary 
 was to be found on the face of the earth. 
 
 The simplicity of the commandment reveals its far- 
 reaching application. Whoever is murdered, and 
 whomsoever by, the law of God is against the act. 
 This, in common with every utterance of Divine gov- 
 ernment, is no piece of class legislation; but human 
 life is of value because it is human life, whether its days 
 are being passed in the purple of the court, or in the 
 rags of the dunghill; and the claim of man to safety 
 from death at the hands of his fellowman is based 
 upon the life he has received from God, not upon the 
 accidental circumstances that are so largely the out- 
 come of human arrangement. 
 
 In the same way the person taking the life of anothef 
 is a murderer, whatever the social position may be. 
 Taking human life is never made legal by the privilege 
 of power, or plea of poverty. God clearly declares life, 
 thinking, acting life, to be outside the realm where the 
 will of man has any right to act as to its continuance 
 or cessation. 
 
 This at once marks as murder the intentional tak- 
 ing of human life, whether by the individual, by society, 
 or by the nation ; and brands as a breaking of the com- 
 mandment the act of killing, capital punishment, and all 
 war, save where such act, such punishment, such war, 
 immediately and unequivocally follow the clearly-ex- 
 pressed commandment of God. 
 
The Sixth Commandment. 69 
 
 In the history of the ancient Hebrew people God del- 
 egated His right to men for the maintenance of a social 
 order based upon righteousness. The death penalty- 
 was visited at His express command upon certain forms 
 of sin, and wherever the hand of man took the life of 
 his fellow-man under the clearly-marked conditions of 
 the Divine economy, killing was not murder, but the 
 carrying out of the Divine will through a human in- 
 strument. Achan, stoned to death, did not lose his life 
 by the volition of his fellow-men. It was forfeited by 
 the will of God at the hands of men. The execution- 
 ers were but carrying out the express order of heaven. 
 No leader of the old time, whether he were judge, 
 king, or prophet, had any right of his own will, even 
 in the interest of the nation, to take human life. The 
 matter was very different when God made man the 
 agent of His act. That the death sentence was never 
 passed at the caprice of human will is most certainly 
 proved by a careful study of the Mosaic economy, in 
 which the sins which were punishable by death are 
 minutely described, and the laws of their detection and 
 judgment carefully expressed. 
 
 The same line of argument applies to the question of 
 war under the old economy. The only justifiable wars 
 in human history have been those undertaken immedi- 
 ately and directly in obedience to a definitely express 
 Divine command. In such cases God chose to make 
 man, instead of plague or of famine, the agent of His 
 act of judgment. The history of the ancient people 
 proves that when wars were undertaken only under i 
 these conditions the loss of life was almost entirely upon 
 
70 The Ten Commandments. 
 
 the side of those against whom God sent His hosts. 
 When, as was often the case, God's people en- 
 tered into war upon their own initiative, they were 
 routed with slaughter. The whole history of the He- 
 brew people proves that the sixth commandment was 
 of abiding importance. Human life in every divine 
 economy has been held sacred from the attack of man 
 upon his own initiative. 
 
 II. — The Application of the Principle to the Present 
 Day, 
 
 This sacred basal law of human society abides until 
 this hour. The only difference between the Christian 
 era and that of the Hebrew dispensation is to be found 
 in the fact that with the advent of Christ the law be- 
 came absolute. From that moment through the cen- 
 turies there has been no delegation of the Divine righV 
 to any human tribunal or court. "God having of old 
 time spoken unto the fathers in the prophets by divers 
 portions and in divers manners, hath at the end of these 
 days spoken unto us in His Son," and the speech of the 
 Son magnifies the law in this particular respect, and is 
 of such a character as to make all killing murder, save 
 that which is purely accidental. No person will be pre- 
 pared to say that murder by an individual is justifiable 
 to-day for purposes of revenge. The destruction of 
 life for public ends the Master rebuked in His own dis- 
 ciples, when they would have called down fire from 
 heaven upon those that refused to hear Him. War was 
 condemned absolutely by the teaching and action of 
 Christ when in the garden He rebuked Peter for using 
 
The Sixth Commandment. 71 
 
 the sword, commanding him, "Put up . . , thy 
 sword into its place : for all they that take the sword 
 shall perish with the sword," and when before Pilate 
 He said, "My kingdom is not of this world : if My king- 
 dom were of this world, then would My servants 
 fight." 
 
 It is often argued that, in defence of the weak and 
 oppressed, war may be justifiable ; and that, surely, is 
 t plausible argument. It is not for us, however, to take 
 our standard of conduct from the most refined and cul- 
 tured paganism, but from Christ Himself, Who speaks 
 to this age. It is, therefore, of the supremest im- 
 portance to remember that the point at which, in the 
 quotations already given, the Lord denounced war, was 
 when its possibility was suggested for His own defence 
 against the malice and wickedness of the unholiest 
 coalition that the world has ever seen. In His case, not 
 by the punishment of evil-doers, not by conflict against 
 oppressors, but by suffering, and through death, tri- ( 
 umphs were won ; and whoever is prepared to justify 
 war under any circumstances, must do so at the cost of 
 calling in question the wisdom of the Lord's action. 
 
 The same line of argument applies to capital punish- 
 ment. Men may have their modes of government, and 
 the world may still attempt to discover through policy 
 and philosophy new methods of creating a nobler so- 
 ciety, but in the purpose of God there is but one King, 
 His anointed Son ; and one code of ethics, the speech of 
 that Son ; and one principle of government, the grace of 
 that Son ; and within the economy of that kingdom all 
 punishment inflicted by man on man is remedial and 
 
72 The Ten Commandments. 
 
 redemptive. Not merely for the salvation of the 
 wronged, but also for the reclamation of the one who 
 wrongs was the cross uplifted, and when man visits 
 } man with death, he exercises a form of punishment 
 ' which shuts out the possibility of a remedy. 
 -, In the light of the Christian era war finds no justifi- 
 f cation, and capital punishment has no place. 
 
 There are other forms of murder in these latter days, 
 which are peculiarly the product of the age, and which 
 are hardly ever named murder, because it is difficult 
 sometiwies to detect the hand that strikes the deadly 
 blow. The oppression of masses of people in the hunt for 
 wealth is murder, and though our laws are so feeble 
 that they are unable to detect the wrong-doers and pun- 
 ish them, this keen, swift word of God traces every 
 murderer to his home, and the God Who hears the cry 
 of His suffering people will call all such to account. 
 The victims of lead-poisoning in the potteries, and of 
 "phossy-jaw" in the match factories, are murdered by 
 the men who, claiming to be free from all blame, too 
 often des:?crate the tabernacle of God by unholy gifts. 
 The death of the little child in the over-crowded hells 
 of the slums is murder by the man who gathers his 
 wealth from the rack-rented houses, without a care for 
 those who perish that he may gain. "Am I my broth- 
 er's keeper ?" is a very popular sentiment even to-day ; 
 but men seem to forget that the lips that first uttered 
 the words do not recommend the sentiment. 
 
 The Infinite Love has found its fullest expression In 
 this Christian age, and therefore human life is more 
 than ever sacred. God has not for the last nineteen 
 
The Sixth Commandment. 73 
 
 hundred years delegated to a nation His own right over 
 human life, for among the records there is none prov- 
 ing that He has ordained war, since His Son decHned 
 the use of the sword for the winning of His victories. 
 
 III. — The Application in the Kingdom of God, 
 
 So far the subject of the application of the law to the 
 whole age has been under consideration. In conclusion 
 it may be asked in what sense the commandment is 
 binding upon those who are actually within the king- 
 dom, claiming that Christ is absolute Monarch in their 
 lives. 
 
 In the law of the Kingdom enunciated upon the 
 mount of old, He said, "Ye have heard that it was said 
 to them of old time. Thou shalt not kill ; and whosoever 
 shall kill shall be in danger of the judgment : but I say 
 unto you, that everyone who is angry with his brother 
 shall be in danger of the judgment, and whoso- 
 ever shall say to his brother Raca, shall be in 
 danger of the council; and whosoever shall say, 
 Thou fool, shall be in danger of the hell of 
 fire." Here murder is tracked to its lair, anger ; and the 
 King declares that if anger be in the life of one of His 
 subjects, such subject is in danger of judgment; that if 
 anger find an expression in contempt, "Raca," such 
 subject shall be "in danger of the council," that is, of 
 discipline. And if such subject shall say "Thou fool," 
 that is an expression that marks condemnation, such 
 subject shall be "in danger of the hell of fire." 
 
 There is no room here for a question as to whether 
 a man in the Kingdom may take the life of another. He 
 
74 The Ten Commandments. 
 
 is not to be angry with his brother. The Revised Ver- 
 sion has omitted the words "without a cause," for while 
 many ancient authorities insert it, the weight of opinion 
 is in favor of the view that Jesus did not use these 
 words. Anger itself in the heart against a man is con- 
 trary to the genius and spirit of Jesus. Anger there 
 will be, and must be, against sin ; but, as in the case of 
 the Lord Himself, anger against sin is not anger 
 against the sinner. All the aggressive force of the 
 Kingdom of Jesus Christ is to be directed against sin, 
 and none of it against the men who are In the grip of 
 sin. The Church of Christ has always been renegade 
 from the Spirit of Christ when she has attempted to 
 carry on His warfare with the weapons that are carnal ; 
 and when in the name of the Prince of Life, life has 
 been destroyed. He has been insulted, and this sixth 
 commandment has been broken. Under the kingship 
 .|1 of Jesus, if the possibility of murder lurk within the 
 ^ heart of man, it is counted as murder. Whenever He 
 triumphs in human life He creates the man, in dealing 
 with whom all other human life is reckoned sacred. 
 
 The nation, the society, the individual which takes 
 life of set purpose is guilty of murder. This is hardly 
 the age in which such a sentiment will be popular, but 
 it is getting to be time that the Church cease debating 
 the sophistries of the age, and find her way back to bed- 
 rock principles, refusing absolutely to be frightened or 
 cajoled into complicity with movements that are in their 
 very nature contradictory to, and subversive of, the 
 teaching and the Spirit of Christ. As yet there has 
 
The Sixth Commandment 75 
 
 been no answer to the philosophy of Russell Lowell's 
 satire : 
 
 Ez fer war, I call it murder, 
 
 There you hev it plain and flat ; 
 I don't want to go no furder 
 
 Than my Testyment fer that. 
 God hez sed so plump an' fairly, 
 
 It's ez long ez it is broad, 
 An' you've gut to git up airly 
 
 Ef you want to take in God. 
 
 'Taint your eppyletts an* fethers 
 
 Make the thing a grain more right ; 
 'Taint affollerin' your bell-wethers 
 
 Will excuse ye in His sight. 
 Ef you take a sword an' dror it, 
 
 An' go stick a feller thru, 
 Guv'ment aint to answer for it, 
 
 God'll send the bill to you. 
 
 There is a vast amount of highly respectable, cul- 
 tured, and most interesting paganism abroad in the 
 world ; and it is, after all, much to be preferred to the 
 barbarism of the past; but, in the name of God and 
 Christ, let the line of demarcation between this pagan- 
 ism and Christianity be clear and distinct. The Divine 
 word was given on Sinai, amid the thunder and the 
 lightning, "Thou shalt do no murder." That word in 
 gentle speech, far more searching and binding, is 
 breathed through the Christian era, from the lips of 
 Him Who died to save life ; and whenever a human life 
 is slain upon the field of battle, or taken in the name of 
 society^i or murdered in the interests of the wealthy. 
 
*j6 The Ten Commandments. 
 
 His wounding is repeated, and His teaching trampled 
 under foot. The simple facts should be kept in mind. 
 Life is of God. To take it, as to give it, is His preroga- 
 tive. Man has no right to do so, save where imme- 
 diately delegated to the work by the express command 
 of the Most High. In this dispensation of grace, God 
 never delegates this right to man. Those, then, who 
 are His, must decHne to have any complicity with war, 
 raise their protest against punishment which takes life, 
 refuse to have profit or pleasure at the cost of human 
 life, and so live in communion with Him, that anger 
 shall be destroyed within, save as it moves in the power 
 of His infinite love against evil in every form. 
 
 THE SEVENTH COMMANDMENT. 
 
 "Thou shalt not commit adultery."— Exodus xx. 14. 
 Immediately after the commandment declaring the 
 sacredness of human life follows that which safeguardji 
 the highest earthly relationship, and conditions in 
 strength and purity the holy and sacred office of the 
 procreation of life. God's first circle of society is that 
 of the family, and the origin of the family in His pur- 
 pose lies within the sacred unity of man and woman. 
 The first principle of human life is its relationship to 
 God. The second is its inter-relation, that of man to 
 man. Within this second realm the type and origin of 
 all subsequent relations is the family. Nothing can be 
 more essential, therefore, for the social order, than that 
 the relationship upon which all subsequent ones are 
 
The Seventh Commandment. ']'J 
 
 based should be jealously guarded against any and 
 every form of attack. The unity of the race is the pur- 
 pose of God, and this grows out of the unity of hus- 
 band and wife. The union of husband and wife is not 
 capricious, but essential ; for "God created man in His 
 own image . . . male and female created He 
 them" (Gen. i. 2^]), The unity of husband and wife 
 is thus the unity of the expression of the Divine image. 
 Both are necessary to give full expression to the Di- 
 vine. The duality, therefore, is only the double expres- 
 sion of a most sacred and holy power of procreation. 
 
 Such a consideration as this reveals at once the tre- 
 mendous force of this seventh commandment, and ex- 
 plains its binding nature upon the race in all ages and 
 places. The actual words of the command are directed 
 against the sin of unchastity as violating the sacred 
 rights of the marriage relation. Its spirit emphatically 
 forbids all unchastity, for if this sense of essential 
 unity in marriage be admitted, and it be accepted that 
 the union of lives is always in the plan and govern- 
 ment of God, then it at once becomes evident that all 
 unchaste conduct before marriage, on the part of man 
 or woman, is a wrong done to the marriage that is to 
 be; and unfaithfulness before marriage is as much 
 adultery as unfaithfulness after marriage. 
 
 There is no subject, perhaps, more difficult to deal 
 with faithfully, and yet there is none demanding more 
 honest and fearless handling. 
 
 Consider, then, first the command; secondly, its 
 bearing on certain facts of present-day life ; and lastly, 
 
78 The Ten Commandments. 
 
 the fierce and searching Christian ethic that touches 
 the subject. 
 
 I. — The Command, 
 
 The command is a simple, unqualified, irrevocable 
 negative. "Thou shalt not"! No argument is used, 
 no reason given, because none is required. The sin is 
 of so destructive and damning a nature that it is in it- 
 self sufficient cause for the stern forbidding. To em- 
 phasize the commandment, therefore, it is only neces- 
 sary to consider the sin against which it is directed. A 
 sevenfold vice is this sin of unchaste conduct, being sin 
 against the Individual, the Family, Society, the Nation, 
 the Race, the Universe, and God. 
 
 It is a sin against the Individual. This needs no 
 proof. Nature visits the sin with the heaviest penal- 
 ties in every department of the complex being of man. 
 The terrible results of unchaste life in the purely phys- 
 ical realm are such as cannot be named here. They 
 are well known. Every man of science will bear testi- 
 mony to the awful demand that Nature makes for pur- 
 ity, and will assert that she has no pity for the unclean. 
 The statistics of lunacy in this and all lands could tell 
 horrible tales of the effect of unclean life upon the 
 mental side of man's nature. Many sad stories prove 
 that the highest spiritual culture and usefulness have 
 been marred and ended by the sin of yielding unlaw- 
 fully to lust. The perfect unity and balance of spirit, 
 soul, and body is destroyed by this vice, and that man 
 or woman surely and irrevocably commits suicide who 
 falls into and persists in unchaste habits and life. 
 
The Seventh Commandment 79 
 
 If is a sin against the Family. The sacredness of 
 motherhood and childhood, and the demands they 
 make upon the care and thought of all, are secured and 
 met in the Divine institution of marriage. Wherever 
 the rights of the marriage relationship are violated 
 and set aside, God's provision for both is broken down, 
 and the disastrous result of the breakdown of the fam- 
 ily circle and entity results. The race is to be trained 
 in groups, and the power and provision for such train- 
 ing is the government of the essential love of parents. 
 As the fifth commandment clearly teaches, the two 
 sides of parenthood are necessary to the nurture of 
 child-life. When the family is destroyed as a perfect 
 whole by the sin of unchastity, an incalculable harm is 
 done to the children. There is no more heartbreaking 
 announcement in the newspapers than that which de- 
 clares that in the granting of a decree nisi, the charge 
 of the children has been given to one parent. Therein 
 lies the destruction of the family after the Divine pat- 
 tern, and the sin that leads to it is indeed terrible for 
 this reason also. 
 
 It is a sin against Society. This follows from the 
 previous consideration. The family is a unity of indi- 
 viduals sharing a common life and governed by a com- 
 mon love. Society is a union of families. Every at- 
 tempt to create society upon any other basis is wicked 
 and ends in disaster. The history of the monastic 
 orders is a flaming proof of this fact. The attempts 
 also to organize societies upon bases of common inter- 
 ests of trade or intellectual pursuits all break down 
 «ooner or later. Society is the accumulation of fam'*- 
 
So The Ten Commandments. 
 
 lies, and all the human inter-relations of property, of 
 reputation, and of character break down with the 
 breakdown of the family. The sin which blights the 
 marriage relation and destroys the family is the enemy 
 of all true socialism. All the things that may be had 
 in common can only so be shared as it is for ever 
 understood that communism in the realm cf sex is the 
 most damnable sin against the commonwealth. 
 
 It is a sin against the Nation, This, again, moves 
 out as a logical sequence from the former considera- 
 tions. The adulterer is the enemy of the state, and 
 as such, after being divorced in the divorce court, 
 should be imprisoned by the criminal courts. The 
 man or woman upon whose guilt the marriage tie is 
 broken, no Christian minister of any denomination has 
 a right to remarry. It is an act of treason to the state 
 to allow such persons to go free. They should be in- 
 carcerated in separation from the other sex to the end 
 of their days, and then they could not wipe out the 
 ^vrong they did the nation when by unchaste action 
 they struck a blow at the family. The greatness of a 
 people depends upon the purity and strength of the 
 people, and in every nation where the marriage rela- 
 tion is violated with impunity the virus of death is 
 surely and certainly at work. This is at once proved 
 by the lurid lights that flash from the decay of Assyria, 
 Greece, Rome, and in our own times, of France also. 
 In this respect it is most true that "righteousness 
 exalteth a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people." 
 (Proverbs xiv. 34.) 
 
The Seventh Commandment. 8l 
 
 It is a sin against the Race. No man can deny his 
 accountability for a share in the development or de- 
 struction of the race. The solidarity of humanity is 
 more than a dream of visionaries. It is an indisputa- 
 ble fact. Every life is contributing its quota of force 
 to the forces that make or mar. All are hindering or 
 hastening the perfect day. The crime of prolonging 
 sorrow and agony lies at the door of every impure hu- 
 man being. The agony and wrong of degraded hu- 
 manity is a curse upon the unchastity of the past, and 
 every licentious and bestial man or woman is inflicting 
 new wounds, not only upon the immediate present, but 
 also upon the years yet unborn. The voice of the hu- 
 man race, so often, alas! unheard in the clamor of 
 the interests of the passing moment, is thundering 
 perpetually the Divine command, "Thou shalt not com- 
 mit adultery." 
 
 It is a sin against the Universe. The life of the uni- 
 verse is love. The origin of all is love, for "God is 
 love." The propagation of all is love. From the high- 
 est form, that of the unity of the marriage relation, 
 through all the lower spaces of action, love is the law 
 of growth. The lair of the wild beast is fiercely 
 guarded by the love that holds it sacred. The nesting 
 of the birds is token of the impulse of the love-life that 
 throbs through all creation. The bee that carries the 
 pollen from flower to flower is the messenger of the 
 same instinct. Love is everywhere. The sin of lust- 
 ful unchastity is the violation of love, blighting and de- 
 stroying it. Let every adulterer and adulteress know, 
 then, that their impurity sins against all the genius of 
 
82 The Ten Commandments. 
 
 the universe, and if they but Hsten, every pure and 
 holy love of man and maiden, every devotion of the 
 beasts to their mates, every song of bird, and every hum 
 of the wing of summer bee, proclaims the heinousness 
 of their offence against the whole creation. 
 
 li is a, sin against God. This has virtually been 
 said m every previous argument. Every human being 
 is made in His image. Of every family He is the true 
 Father. In all society He is the Shepherd. Over all 
 nation? He is King*. The race is His own to its utmost 
 limit. 7 he love law of the universe is the will of God 
 for all. Thus, lastly and consequently, every impure 
 act or person strikes a blow at the very heart of 
 God. By ^n eternal necessity He excludes the "abom- 
 inable . . . and fornicators" (Rev. xxi. 8) from 
 the new heaven and the new earth, and gives them 
 "their part iiP. the lake that burneth with fire and brim- 
 stone, which Is the second death." 
 
 Thus the seventh commandment is seen to be binding 
 and inexorable because of the purpose of God that all 
 His love creation should reach the highest platform of 
 perfection. To minimize the law against impurity is 
 to deny the value of love. 
 
 II. — Application of the Command To-Day, 
 
 There are certain signs of the times which point to 
 the necessity for a re-statement of this commandment. 
 
 The first of these is the tendency, which is only too 
 apparent, to loosen the binding nature of the marriage 
 tie. There seems to be an increasingly popular notion 
 that the marriage relation h t rivi^ owl 5^nly. This is a 
 
The Seventh Commandment. 8^ 
 
 vkat error. It is wholly Divine. The lawfulness of 
 the ntarried state lies within the supreme fact of sex, 
 and this is a part of the Divine creation. God, who 
 thus Ci^ated, has conditioned the law of union, and 
 every rmarriage is, therefore, a part of a Divine plan. 
 
 Alas ! too constantly the relationship is entered upon 
 without any recognition of God, and hence the awful 
 misery that often ensues, for no human being can tam- 
 per with Divine matters without being harmed. Once 
 the union is consummated it is for the period of life. 
 
 There is (Vily one reason for its disannulling until 
 death, and that is the far more awful fact than death, 
 that, namely, of fornication. The prevalent notion 
 that incompatibility of temperament is sufficient rea- 
 son for divorce is a blow at the very throne of God; 
 and also, therefore, at the foundations of human well- 
 being. Purity inust refuse to give one moment's 
 countenance in Any form to such a doctrine of hell. 
 It is a most appalling and horrible thing that to this 
 day a certain woman's literary work is much ap- 
 plauded by professing Christian people. This woman 
 turned her back upon the Divine commandment and 
 spent the later years of her life in braving out her ac- 
 tion. No book that she wrote shall find a place on the 
 shelves of my library. 
 
 Another sign cA the times in this direction is the 
 filthy fiction which has polluted the realm of literature 
 in recent years^ fiction in which the marriage relation 
 is treated with awused pity, and whoremongers and 
 adulterers are pitied and excused^ if not defended. 
 Such literature is the most pernicious prostitution of a 
 
84 The Ten Commandments. 
 
 free press that any country can suffer from. A writer 
 who once publishes a book or an article which under- 
 values the necessity of absolute chastity should by such 
 action put himself or herself outside the pale of true 
 literature. So long as the nation is in thousands of 
 its members impure, such reading will be provided and 
 read ; but surely every member of the Christian Church 
 should be true to the unalterable law of love expressed 
 in this commandment, and that not only in their own 
 personal lives, but in the influence they exert. Then 
 the Church should refuse to give any countenance 
 whatsoever to such writers or their books. 
 
 Then, again, is there not a growing danger of minis- 
 tering to impurity in the multiplication on every hand 
 of callings for women which throw them among men 
 and give them wages which are insufficient? One of 
 the greatest curses of England to-day, both for the 
 sake of her sons and daughters, is the employment of 
 young women in the hotels and tobacconists* shops 
 of our cities and towns. At this point I may be old- 
 fashioned, but I confess to great regret that the con- 
 ditions of life created in this feverish age of Mam- 
 mon worship have made it necessary for our daughters 
 to go out of our homes at all to secure their living. 
 If this be necessary, at any rate let them take the most 
 religious care as to the character of the men with 
 whom they are to be thrown in contact day by day. 
 Unchastity has begun too often under conditions that 
 seemed to be honest and pure enough. 
 
 Then how one would thank God if some word that 
 was not prudish or narrow might be spoken to the 
 
The Seventh Commandment. 85 
 
 women of this country about their dress. The half * 
 dr£5s of the society woman is surely a sign of reversion 
 to type, and has in it the pandering to animalism 
 which has for ages been the curse of the marriage rela- 
 tion. Moreover, the distortions of the female form 
 that are common everywhere are alike an insult to 
 beauty and to goodness, and therefore to God. I am 
 not pleading for the uniform of the Salvationists, nor 
 even the bonnet of the Pentecostal League, but for the 
 becoming and beautiful and modest attire, which shall 
 have no possible suggestiveness that is not in harmony 
 with the homage and reverence that man should ever 
 render to woman. This is a subject that seems to be 
 of no moment to some. Let every daughter of the 
 King think the subject out alone with her Master, and 
 that which I have failed to say will be understood. 
 
 And yet once more. There is an anomaly that dies 
 hard in the distinction that is being made between the 
 guilt of man and woman in this matter of unchastity. 
 When General Booth issued that remarkable book, 
 "Darkest England," he said, in defence of his using 
 the word "fornication": 
 
 "Why not say prostitution ? For this reason : prosti- 
 tution is a word applied to one-half of the vice, and that 
 the most pitiable. Fornication hits both sinners alike." 
 
 The importance of that statement cannot be over- 
 estimated. Until the man who sins is branded with as 
 deep a scar as is the woman, that public opinion which 
 shields him is guilty of complicity with this vice which 
 is deadly and damning. 
 
86 The Ten Commandments. 
 
 III. — The Christian Ethic. 
 
 After all that has been said, there yet remain the 
 most scorching, withering words of all to repeato They 
 fell from the lips of the Incarnate Purity in that mani- 
 festo of His Kingdom which He gave to His dis- 
 ciples during the days of His sojourn on earth. Let 
 them be read as He uttered them: "I say unto you, 
 that every one that looketh on a woman to lust after 
 her hath committed adultery with her already in his 
 heart. And if thy right eye causeth thee to stumble, 
 pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable 
 for thee that one of thy members should perish, and 
 not thy whole body be cast into hell. And if thy righ* 
 hand causeth thee to stumble, cut it off, and cast 'i\i 
 from thee : for it is profitable for thee that one of thy 
 members should perish, and not thy whole body go into 
 hell. It was said also. Whosoever should put away his 
 wife, let him give her a writing of divorcement : but I 
 say unto you, that every one that putteth away his 
 wife, saving for the cause of fornication, maketh her 
 an adulteress: and whosoever shall marry her when 
 she is put away committeth adultery." (Matt. v. 28- 
 
 32.) 
 
 If this law be obeyed, the impure act will for ever- 
 more be prevented, for this ethic passes beyond the 
 act to the thought. According to this teaching the 
 wish proves capacity for the deed, and is to be con- 
 demned equally with the deed. In order that impur- 
 ity of thought and desire may be prevented, it is profit- 
 able to maim the body. The eye and the hand arc 
 
The Seventh Commandment. 87 
 
 precious, but not so precious as purity of spirit. At 
 the severest cost the law of love is to be obeyed. He 
 knew that unchastity of thought and deed makes spir- 
 itual development impossible, and therefore repeated 
 the old commandment with new emphasis and mean- 
 ing. The word of Jesus is the sternest of all, and 
 there can be no obedience to it save as the heart itself 
 is purified. The grace of His Kingdom is manifested 
 here, in that He imparts His own purity to those who 
 submit to Him, and thus saves all such from the un- 
 holy and polluting influence of unchaste conduct. 
 
 The duty of every Christian, and of the Christian 
 Church, is plainly marked in the light of this word of 
 the Master. First, of course, there must be no trifling 
 with impurity, and discipline must be received within 
 the borders of the fellowship. To permit known wrong 
 to continue unjudged is to insult the Lord Himself, 
 and to rob the Church of her power of witness to 
 purity. There must be no intermarriage between the 
 godly and the ungodly. The high ideal of the family 
 taught in the New Testament can only be realized when 
 the marriage relation is cemented and glorified in the 
 common loyalty of husband and wife to Jesus Christ. 
 If the Church is to be the messenger of peace and 
 power to the present age, there must be no room in her 
 fellowship for any person who in any degree is un- 
 chaste in speech or conduct ; and no room in individual 
 lives for any act or thought that is smirched with un- 
 cleanness. 
 
 It is for those to whom is given the sacred work of 
 teaching the will of God, by precept and life to repeat 
 
88 The Ten Commandments. 
 
 the great purifying laws of God in words that burn, 
 *Thou shalt not commit adultery"; ''Everyone that 
 looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed 
 adultery with her already in his heart." 
 
 THE EIGHTH COMMANDMENT. 
 
 *Thou shalt not steal."— Exodus xx. 15. 
 
 At this point the Decalogue passes from the discus- 
 sion of the essential facts of human life to matters of 
 lesser importance, affecting human inter-relation. By 
 the phrase "of lesser importance" it is not intended to 
 suggest that they are unimportant, but in the words of 
 Jesus, "Life is more than meat"; and up to this point 
 the commandments have forbidden sins which inter- 
 fere with the relation of man to God, or harm in any 
 way the life of man in itself. In the Mosaic economy, 
 violation of any of the first seven commandments in- 
 curred the death penalty. This was not so with regard 
 to the last three, proving that in the realm of compar- 
 ison the first seven are of greater importance. To the 
 mind of God, worship and the relation of the wor- 
 shipper to Himself are matters of supreme moment. 
 
 The rebellious nature of sin is remarkably evidenced 
 by the fact that human laws have inverted the order of 
 this importance. At the present moment, laws protect- 
 ing property are far more numerous upon the statute- 
 books of all lands than laws protecting life. It would 
 assuredly be wrong for man to punish man for refusal 
 to worship, or for worshipping gods other than the 
 
The Eighth Commandment. 89 
 
 true, or the true in ways other than appointed ; yet it is 
 an appalHng matter that the breakdown of active and 
 solemn recognition of relationship between man and 
 God is hardly counted sin at all in public opinion. A 
 preacher may denounce murder, impurity, theft, lying, 
 in terms of fiery indignation, and he will carry any 
 ordinary audience with him, but if he denounce the sin 
 of godlessness in the same terms, he will most probably 
 arouse the resentment of a large percentage of his con- 
 gregation. And yet this sin of rebellion is the root 
 from which all others grow. Gradually, however, the 
 best opinion of all men is being conformed to the Di- 
 vine ideal, and the age is coming to understand that 
 "life is more than meat." Whether it can be said that 
 as yet there is any approach to a consensus of opinion, 
 that life is only perfectly conditioned in the will of 
 God, may be open to question. 
 
 So much having been said as to the relative value of 
 the commandment, now turn to a consideration of this 
 law dealing with the question of human possession. 
 *Thou shalt not steal." There is urgent need for close 
 attention to this commandment, for while the actual act 
 of stealing is looked upon increasingly as vulgar, yet 
 the day is characterized by a multiplication of methods 
 of theft, which men are prone to speak of by any other 
 than the right. "Business acumen," "the habit of the 
 trade," "imperialism," are all phrases used under cer- 
 tain circumstances, where the true fact of the case 
 might be expressed in the one, less euphonious, but far 
 more truthful, word theft. Even in the realm of actual 
 stealing, if the person perpetrating the deed is of suffi- 
 
90 The Ten Commandments. 
 
 ciently good social standing, one is apt to hear of klep- 
 tomania. It is a curious thing that the word is hardly, 
 if ever, used in the East-end police-courts. Let there be 
 an honest facing of the Divine purpose as marked in 
 the command, "Thou shalt not steal." Consider, first, 
 the command; secondly, the light of the New Testa- 
 ment upon it; and, thirdly, its application to our own 
 
 time. 
 
 I. — The Command, 
 
 The command is, in the first instance, a recognition of 
 the rights of property. It gives the lie to the dictum of 
 Proudhon, the father of anarchism; — La propriiti, 
 c'est le vol. Property is not theft. Man is by his crea- 
 tion able to possess, and to deny the possibihty of pos- 
 sessing property is to make theft impossible. In the 
 last analysis all possessions belong to God, as all wealth 
 is created by God. Man, in his relation to God, is ever 
 compelled to own that nothing he possesses can be held 
 to be outside of the right of divine interference. Man 
 in relation to man can claim to possess, outside the 
 right of human interference, this being clearly recog- 
 nized by the command. 
 
 While thus recognizing the rights of property, the 
 commandment forbids any violation of these rights. 
 For illustration, let it be taken for granted that men do 
 possess the things which they call their own. It will 
 at once be seen that there are only three ways in which 
 man can come Into possession of anything: either by 
 the free gift of another person, or by toil, which re- 
 ceives something as legitimate return, or by theft, the 
 taking that from another which belongs to him« 
 
The Eighth Commandment. 91 
 
 The commandment recognizes the first two, and for- 
 bids the third. The reason for this will be discovered 
 by an examination of the three. The first two are based 
 upon the essential laws of human inter-relation ; name- 
 ly, love and work. The first of such is the law of love. 
 The gift bestowed by one upon another, or by another 
 upon one, is an expression of love, and becomes the 
 property of the one to whom it is given. Something 
 earned by toil, for the possession of which the work 
 done has been a legitimate return, in that it has also ben- 
 efited the person who received it, is property. Theft 
 violates both of these laws. The thief cannot love the 
 person from whom he steals, and it is very difficult for 
 the person from whom the theft is made to love the 
 thief. The thief violates the law of toil by attempting to 
 possess without toil, and thus to take from another 
 something for which no equivalent return is made. 
 Thus the commandment recognizes the true rights of 
 property, the rights of love and work, and forbids the 
 possession of anything save upon the condition of 
 obedience to these laws. 
 
 11. — The Light of the New Testament, 
 
 This may be gathered from one remarkable passage 
 — "Let him that stole steal no more : but rather let him 
 labor, working with his hands the thing that is good, 
 that he may have whereof to give to him that hath 
 need" (Eph. iv. 28). It will immediately be seen that 
 the argument of the preceding section is here gathered 
 tip and stated with startling force. Mark well the an- 
 tithesis. On the one side, stealing, the false method of 
 
92 The Ten Commandments. 
 
 possession ; on the other, working and giving, the true 
 methods. This is a drawing of the Hne with surprising 
 definiteness. According to this, all property which has 
 not been obtained by working or by giving, is stolen 
 property. Every item possessed has either been be- 
 stowed as a gift, or worked for, or stolen. Apply this 
 to much of the social, commercial, and national life of 
 our time, and a great deal of vaunted morality will be 
 seen to be grossest immorality. 
 
 But the New Testament carries the idea further, and 
 lays upon the strong the burden of the weak, declaring 
 that property is to be gained by work, not merely that 
 it may be possessed, but that the over-plussage may be 
 given to the disabled brother by the way, who has lost 
 his power to work, and yet may not steal. Thus within 
 the new economy of the "holy nation," that man also 
 steals who simply works for the satisfaction of his own 
 necessity, and fails to recognize the strenuous claim of 
 the common life he shares with the weakest member of 
 the new social order. This last statement has reference 
 strictly only to those who are living immediately with- 
 in the Kingdom of God. But, as the very genius of the 
 life of that kingdom is that of caring for and loving 
 the unfit and the unworthy, no man who claims to have 
 put the crown of his being upon the brow of the Christ 
 is truly loyal to his King save as he wins by toil posses- 
 sions that he may pass on to the most needy and af- 
 flicted. 
 
 III. — Its Application to Our Own Times. 
 
 Broadly stated, the eighth commandment forbids all 
 forms of communism which deny man's right to prop- 
 
The Eighth Commandment. 93 
 
 erty. Of course, the word property is used throughout 
 this article in its simplest as well as in its broadest 
 sense. Anything honestly obtained Is property, be it 
 ever so small or large. It, moreover, denies all right to 
 property, save that of gift or work. All that a man 
 possesses as the result of gifts freely bestowed, or of 
 work honestly done, is secured to him by this enact- 
 ment ; and whosoever shall come into possession of any 
 such property, save by the free gift of the present 
 owner, or as return for work rendered, is to be branded 
 as a thief, and punished accordingly. Therefore, the 
 commandment arrests all men that possess anything 
 which they have obtained In any way, save as the free 
 gift of another, or in return for work rendered. This 
 commandment, then, strikes at many different forms of 
 stealing, which are being practised to-day. 
 
 Perhaps It Is hardly necessary to say anything con- 
 cerning the simple act of purloining articles belonging 
 to other persons. This is universally acknowledged to 
 be vulgar, and petty larceny may be severely punished 
 through the agency of the criminal courts of the coun- 
 try. For this reason very largely, thousands of persons 
 who are in heart quite capable of dishonesty are kept 
 from the overt act. Even in most respectable and moral 
 society, however, some forms of common theft have 
 come to be looked upon as regrettable lapses, rather 
 than sin against God. One Illustration will suffice. It 
 would be Interesting, but extremely painful, to pass 
 through the homes of thousands of Church members, 
 instituting a rigid examination as to the ownership of 
 all the books to be found therein. The habit of bor- 
 
94 The Ten Commandments. 
 
 rowing bcK)ks is in itself pernicious, but the appalling 
 extent of the carelessness as to the return of the same 
 is hardly realized, because people forget that to borrow 
 a book and npt to return it is a theft. If these sentences 
 should cause the discovery of some of my books, and 
 they are returned to me, I shall be for ever grateful for 
 having had this opportunity of enforcing the eighth 
 commandment. 
 
 The sin of stealing is terribly prevalent in the matter 
 of fraudulent getting. In this age, when a man's 
 "worth" is estimated by the amount he possesses, the 
 lust of possession seems to destroy the principle of hon- 
 esty in thousands of those who in other matters are 
 scrupulously careful. In certain circles, also, trickery, 
 dishonesty, lying, are all looked upon as evidences of 
 shrewdness and acumen in business matters. The com- 
 mandment that governs a very large percentage of 
 commercial life to-day is not "Thou shalt not steal," 
 but "Thou shalt not be found out." Unjust weights, 
 false measures, and (by far the most common of all) 
 lying advertisements, all break the eighth command- 
 ment. Nothing need be said of the long-firm swindles, 
 and the bogus companies that are so common, save this, 
 that God Almighty will hold every person guilty of a 
 breach of the eighth commandment who has given his 
 or her name to any such enterprise without having 
 carefully and personally examined the honesty or dis- 
 honesty thereof. 
 
 Then the whole habit of gambling is of the essence 
 of theft, and this for the reason that it is a means by 
 which men come mto possession of property which is a 
 
The Eighth Commandment. 95 
 
 violation of both the laws upon which property may 
 alone be held. A man who gambles, whether by play 
 or betting, puts into his pocket, money for which he 
 has done no honest work ; and by the very act he robs 
 the man from whom he receives, and violates the law 
 of love. Among all the foolish things that the enemies 
 of righteousness have ventured to say, no person has 
 yet been found foolish enough to write an essay on the 
 bond of brotherhood existing among betting men, or 
 the social possibilities of gambling. It is, moreover, a 
 fact that ought not to pass unnoticed, that the gam- 
 bling fever is the cause of more petty larceny and 
 wholesale fraud than any other form of sin. There is 
 no more insidious evil sapping away the integrity and 
 uprightness of the nations of the earth to-day than this 
 lust for possession without toil, which lies at the root 
 of all gambling. It behoves all lovers of God and men, 
 resolutely and without apology, to thunder the words 
 of the eighth commandment in the ears of all gam- 
 blers, whether their practices are gilded by the glory 
 of a court, or tarnished by the vulgarity of a slum. The 
 gambler, whether he wear the purple, broadcloth, or 
 corduroy, is a thief in the sight of God, and ought, 
 therefore, to be so in the sight of all honest men. 
 
 The commandment is, moreover, violated by all such 
 as enrich themselves by means that rob their fellow- 
 men of the inalienable rights of human beings. The 
 wealth that is tarnished by a death-rate higher than Is 
 necessary is ill-gotten gains, and they who spend their 
 days in the enjoyment of such wealth are branded in 
 the light of the perfect law of God as thieves — thieves^ 
 
96 The Ten Commandments. 
 
 indeed, by the side of whom Bill Sykes, the burglar, is 
 a hero, for in the prosecution of his unlawful practices 
 he risks his life; but these men risk nothing but the 
 lives of their fellow-creatures. 
 
 The commandment is broken again and again every 
 day within the great realm of capital and labor. How 
 often to-day might the words of James be quoted with 
 advantage : "Behold, the hire of the laborers . . . 
 which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth out ; and the 
 cries . . . have entered into the ears of the Lord 
 of Sabaoth." It is lamentable, but equally true, that 
 many a working man robs his master in that he with- 
 holds his fair share of honest labor, while he takes his 
 wage. To capital and labor the eighth commandment 
 has a double message. First, a fair day's wage for a 
 fair day's work ; and, secondly, a fair day's work for a 
 fair day's wage. 
 
 Principles apply to individuals and to nations with 
 equal force. This being so, this eighth word of the 
 Decalogue is a severe denunciation of the false imper- 
 ialism which is growingly manifest through all the na- 
 tions of the world. Strong peoples have, without 
 cause, stolen the land of the weaker. Weak nations 
 have been handed over to the control of new powers 
 without reference to their own rights, and to the wrong 
 of those so dealt with. It would be a humiliating busi- 
 ness for men of many countries to quietly sit down, 
 and examine the history of their own nation in the 
 light of this great word. 
 
 Those who pray "Thy kingdom come" should con- 
 sistently act in the light of this commandment by rec* 
 
The Ninth Commandment. 
 
 97 
 
 ognizing the right every man has to the things be- 
 stowed upon him as gifts, and those which he has 
 earned by toil, and should have no complicity with any 
 form of violating this principle of morality. The com- 
 munion of the Church is that of love, not of theft, and 
 within the borders of the kingdom the command is as 
 binding as ever — "Thou shalt not steal." 
 
 THE NINTH COMMANDMENT. 
 
 "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour." 
 
 Exodus xx. i6. 
 
 This commandment has a two-fold intention. First, 
 it guards the reputation; and, secondly, it closes the 
 door of opportunity against unworthy men, who might 
 seek to enter therein upon false testimony. Reputation 
 is of great value to those who desire to dwell in the 
 government of God. Such have seen the true nature 
 of things, and have discovered that the only shame that 
 can ever come to man is the shame of sin. Men out- 
 side the Divine government are ashamed of what they 
 speak of as failure, are ashamed, moreover, of poverty. 
 To be little and unknown, or to be poor, fills the heart 
 of the average man of the world with terror and fore- 
 boding. To those who walk in the light of the Divine 
 thought, to be little and unknown may be a part of that 
 Divine purpose, which ever moves toward glorious con- 
 summation ; and to be poor may be a part of the condi- 
 tion of being rich toward God. 
 
98 The Ten Commandments. 
 
 To all such the only thing to be feared is sin, and a 
 reputation unsmirched by evil is a most precious pos- 
 session. In the last analysis it really matters nothing 
 what others may think of a man. To be right with 
 God depends upon character, and character is not af- 
 fected by reputation. Character is the engraving upon 
 the being of a man, of the true facts concerning him- 
 self. Reputation is the estimate which others form of 
 him. The latter should ever be dependent upon the 
 former. That it is not so is due to the false ideals men 
 have of success and of greatness ; to the shallowness of 
 the popular estimate of sin ; and to the contempt of the 
 worldly for rightness. Many whom the world has con- 
 demned have passed stainless into the Divine presence. 
 
 May it not be reverently said that the Perfect One is 
 the supreme example of this truth? Looking at Him 
 and His career from the purely human side, He lost 
 His life through the sin against which this command- 
 ment is directed — that, namely, of false witness. For 
 the comfort of those whose reputation has been as- 
 sailed, let it ever be remembered that "He w^as despised 
 and rejected of men"; and, moreover, that He said, 
 "Blessed are ye when men shall reproach you and perse- 
 cute you, and say all manner of evil against you falsely 
 for My sake." Yet God does care for the reputation of 
 His own. In the end He will vindicate them. For the 
 passing hour He guards their reputation by this stern 
 and unbending requirement, and those who love His 
 law will ever remember this word, and refuse to rob 
 any man of his acquired right of reputation. 
 
The Ninth Commandment. 99 
 
 The commandment has also the other effect, that of 
 guarding the righteous from the evils resulting from 
 receiving unworthy men upon false testimony. The 
 man who willingly gives a rogue an entrance to some 
 position on a false statement of character shares his 
 roguery, and wrongs those upon whom the evil man is 
 imposed. It is not necessary to stay to consider the 
 subtle and far-reaching power of thought when ex- 
 pressed in speech. The words of James occur natur- 
 ally in this connection, "And the tongue is a fire ; the 
 world of iniquity among our members is the tongue, 
 which defileth the whole body, and setteth on fire the 
 wheel of nature, and is set on fire by hell." More harm 
 has been wrought in human society by false testimony 
 than can ever be stated or fully understood. Hence it 
 is of great importance to carefully examine this ninth 
 word of the Decalogue; and this will be done by no- 
 ticing, first, the simple intention of the command ; sec- 
 ondly, how the command may be violated ; and, thirdly, 
 its application to present-day questions. 
 
 I. — The Simple Intention of the Command. 
 
 The words "Thou shalt not bear false witness 
 against thy neighbor" demand truth in the statement, 
 directly or indirectly, made by man, to man, concern- 
 ing man. As the third commandment forbade the tak- 
 ing of the name of God in vain, and so conditioned the 
 relation of man to God in sincerity and truth; so the 
 ninth reveals the fact that man in his relation to his 
 fellow is to be actuated by the same principles, and pro- 
 ceed on the same lines. God ever deals with man upoH 
 
joo The Ten Commandments. 
 
 the basis of His full and accurate knowledge of what 
 man is. The Divine attitude towards man, and deal- 
 ings with man, are not governed by the appearances 
 which man desires to keep up before his fellows, nor by 
 the opinion formed of him by his neighbors. No truer 
 or more weighty words were ever spoken than those in 
 which the Psalmist describes the Divine knowledge in 
 Psalm cxxxix. : "O Lord, Thou hast searched me, and 
 known me. Thou knowest my downsitting and mine 
 uprising, Thou understandest my thought afar off." 
 
 Upon that intimate and absolute knowledge God 
 bases His dealings with men. Such also is His purpose 
 for man in his relation to his fellow. Human knowl- 
 edge is of necessity limited, but limited knowledge is 
 true so far as it goes, and the Divine requirement is 
 that every man should sincerely speak of, and deal 
 with, his brother man. The intercourse of men with 
 each other is to depend upon actual facts of character, 
 conduct, and capability. The whole social fabric is 
 based upon testimony that one bears to another, and 
 in order that that fabric may be established in truth and 
 righteousness, such testimony is to be true. No man "1 
 must be helped or harmed by statements made concern- | 
 ing him, which are not exactly in accordance with the i 
 facts as far as they are known. Beyond knowledge, 
 therefore, no testimony may be borne, and in ^he giving 
 of testimony, no facts are to be withheld that would 
 alter the decision. In order that men may approximate 
 in their dealings with each other, to the same law of 
 rectitude which characterizes the Divine dealing with 
 them, the opinions which one man produces in the mind 
 
The Ninth Commandment. loi 
 
 of a second concerning- the character of a third are to 
 be simple, exact, true. 
 
 II. — How the Commandment May Be Violated, 
 
 The first and simplest application of the command- 
 ment is to evidence given in courts of justice! The 
 very name just used indicates the true function of such 
 courts. They are tribunals for the execution of justice. 
 Justice is based upon truth, and any false testimony 
 borne is a violation of truth and produces a miscarriage 
 of justice. For this reason, therefore, perjury is made 
 a criminal offence, and rightly so, because through per- 
 jury other forms of crime may go unpunished, and the 
 innocent be made to suffer. To stay here, however, 
 would be to rob the commandment of more than half 
 its force, and because the majority of men may never 
 have had to give evidence in a court of human law, and 
 yet are daily in danger of breaking this word of the 
 Divine law, they should carefully examine the seven- 
 fold way in which false witness may be borne. 
 
 The most bare and unblushing form of the sin is, of 
 course, that of slander, the lie invented and distributed 
 with malicious intention. Perhaps no form of injury 
 done by man to man is more despicable than this. The 
 person who makes use of it is one compared with whom 
 the highway man is a gentleman, and the assassin al- 
 most kind. The highwayman robs of material things 
 that have been gained, and may be replaced. The as- 
 sassin ends the life by swift or sudden stroke, often 
 with little pain ; but the slanderer who invents a lie, and 
 uses it. forms a weapon which takes away a reputa* 
 
I02 The Ten Commandments. 
 
 tion, and all the chances are against its ever being re- 
 gained; and thus oftentimes causes untold and pro- 
 longed suffering to the innocent, while, in the majority 
 of cases, he himself goes undiscovered and unpunished. 
 
 Again, false witness is borne by tale-bearing, that is, 
 by repetition of some report without careful investiga- 
 tion. It is a very great question whether tne law of 
 libel is not based on righteousness when it provides 
 that not even the truth is to be circulated to the detri- 
 ment of any person. This, at any rate, is certain, that 
 to repeat a story, if it reflects upon the honor or char- 
 acter of any man, without the most careful inquiry, is 
 to violate the commandment. This is certainly one of 
 the most common forms in which it is done, and the 
 tale-bearer perpetually excuses the action by saying 
 that there was no intention to deceive, and the rumor 
 was believed to be correct. This, however, is no justi- 
 fication. It is of the essence of wickedness to speak of 
 a neighbor in such a way as is likely to work harm, un- 
 less the statements made are the statements of simple 
 and actual fact. There are persons who seem to revel 
 in this form of lawlessness, delighting in the very havoc 
 wrought by the tales they tell. ^ 
 
 False witness is also borne when a false impression 
 is made upon the minds of certain persons about others, 
 by a hint, a suggestion, or even the adroit asking of a 
 question. Stigma has been cast upon many a fair repu- 
 tation by such a question as, "Have you heard about 
 
 Mr. ?" The answer being given in the negative, 
 
 the questioner says, "Ah, well, the least said soonest 
 mended." Nothing further can be drawn from him, 
 
The Ninth Commandment. 
 
 103 
 
 but an unfavorable impression has been created, and 
 the innuendo has had all the deceiving effect of false 
 witness. 
 
 False witness, moreover, may also be borne by si- 
 lence. When one man utters a calumny upon a second 
 in the hearing of a third, if the third knows the state- 
 ment to be a calumny, and for some personal reason or 
 dislike, or it may be of fear, remains silent, that person 
 is as guilty of the breach of the law as is the one utter- 
 ing the calumny. 
 
 Then again, the imputation of motive is a prolific 
 source of evil. Some deed done, or some gift bestowed, 
 is called in question, not because they in themselves are 
 wrong, but because it is hinted there was a reason for 
 doing this other than that appearing — an ulterior, sel- 
 fish, sordid motive. Some sentences that mark the 
 methods of imputed motives are so commonly in use 
 that to mention them is to reveal how prevalent Is this 
 form of the sin. "Ah, yes ; he knows what he is doing." 
 "The gift was only a sprat to catch a mackerel." "He 
 knows which side his bread is buttered on." 
 
 Flattery is also a form of the same sin. To say to 
 another man concerning him things which are not be- 
 lieved to be true, which, indeed, are known to be un- 
 true, simply _for_the sake of pleasing him, and paying 
 ^^'^l^J^hl^jy^}^y> is to perjure the soul, and may be 
 to imperH his safety. In the same way, to utter unwar- 
 ranted praise, to give a testimonial of character, or to 
 recommend a man simply out of friendship for him, 
 while he Is known to be unworthy of the testimony 
 borne, is to inflict injury upon the person to whom he is 
 thus recommended. 
 
I04 The Ten Commandments. 
 
 Thus it will be seen how subtle a danger this of false 
 witness is, how easily and almost imperceptibly, im- 
 pressions of other people which are untrue may be 
 created. There is no word of the Decalogue more often 
 and unconsciously broken than this ninth command- 
 ment, and men need perpetually and persistently to 
 pray, 
 
 "Set a watch, O Lord, before my mouth; keep the 
 door of my lips." 
 
 III. — Application to Present-Day Questions. 
 
 The sin of bearing false witness is terribly prevalent 
 among individuals to-day. It would be a somewhat 
 startling revelation if records could be taken of all the 
 conversations at afternoon teas, Dorcas meetings, and 
 all those institutions at which women do congregate. 
 There is no doubt that men are also guilty of much 
 wrong-doing in this way, but it seems a peculiarly fa- 
 vorite form of iniquity among women. The habit of 
 talking of other people, discussing their affairs, is a 
 most pernicious one, filled with peril to those who do it, 
 and to those of whom they speak. J[t is largely indulged 
 in through want of better occupation and^Iack of mental 
 culture, with its accompaniment of conversational 
 power. It is spoken of often as a harmJess vice, the 
 only truth in that statement being that it is vice — ^harm- 
 less it by no means is. 
 
 A whisper broke the air, 
 A soft light tone, and low, 
 Yet barbed with shame and woe; 
 
 Nov/, might it only perish there. 
 Nor further go ! 
 
The Ninth Commandment. 105 
 
 Ah me ! a quick and eager ear 
 Caught up the little-meaning sound; 
 Another voice has breathed it clear, 
 
 And so it wandered round, 
 From ear to lip, from lip to ear, 
 
 Until it reached a gentle heart, 
 And that — it broke. 
 
 There is also abroad to-day a great deal of false char- 
 ity, which always works larger harm in the end. When 
 out of pity for the present necessity of an incompetent 
 man, he is recommended to a position for which he is 
 not fitted, his final failure is made surer, and harm is 
 wrought in the work committed to his trust. This is 
 done in commercial, literary, political, and religious life. 
 
 Nations and societies as well as individuals, may be 
 guilty of the sin of false witness. It seems to-day the 
 perpetual habit of certain sections of the press to im- 
 pute motives to foreign nations, and for politicians to 
 heap contumely and abuse on their opponents. Half 
 the unrest in Europe may be said to be due to false 
 witness borne by one nation against another through 
 the press. It might be a good thing if many of our 
 politicians and pressmen could for one brief half-hour 
 divest themselves of their critical capacity, and read 
 without prejudice an article of Marie Corelli's which 
 appeared in the pages of The Free Lance, entitled 
 "Manners, Gentlemen." 
 
 The air is full of suspicion, and while the old methods 
 of persecution by imprisonment and torture have 
 passed, martyrs are still being made by the process of 
 false witness borne, ivhile all the while the thunder of 
 ^e Divine riat sounds over the age, "Thou shalt not 
 
lo6 The Ten Commandments. 
 
 bear false witness against thy neighbor," and the Mas' 
 ter's words are still found in His manifesto of the 
 kingdom of heaven, "Judge not, that ye be not judged. 
 For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged; 
 and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured 
 unto you. And why beholdest thou the mote that is in 
 thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in 
 thine own eye ? Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, 
 Let me cast out the mote out of thine eye ; and lo, the 
 beam is in thine own eye. Thou hypocrite, cast out 
 first the beam out of thine own eye, and then shalt thou 
 see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's 
 eye." 
 
 Every violation of truth is a desecration of the Dec- 
 alogue, and there is no meaner form of rebellion against 
 God and harming one's fellow-men than that of creat- 
 ing impressions which are not true in the minds of 
 others. He that breaks this command is at once a 
 thief, a coward, and a liar — a liar, because false witness 
 is the opposite of truth ; a coward, because a lie once 
 started on its way, is never finally overtaken, and he 
 who thus aims at the heart of his fellow-man gives him 
 no chance of correction; a thief, for as Shakespeare 
 
 says: 
 
 Who steals my purse steals trash: 
 
 But he that filches from me my good name 
 Robs me of that which not enriches him 
 And makes me poor indeed. 
 
 The corrective is, of course, in the cession of the being 
 to Him Who is at once the embodiment of truth and 
 incarnate love- Where He reigns the motive 3-« love, 
 and love ever expresses iiself in truth. 
 
The Tenth Commandment 107 
 
 rHE TENTH COMMANDMENT. 
 
 "Thou shalt tiOt covet th}' neighbour's house, thou shalt not 
 covet thy neighbour's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maid- 
 servant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is thy neigh- 
 bour's." — Exodus xx. 17. 
 
 This tenth and last word of the Decalogue is in 
 some sense radically different from those that have 
 preceded it. It is the last requirement of the second 
 table, and most distinctly refers primarily to man*s rela- 
 tion to man. All the former commandments have for- 
 bidden overt acts. To disobey any of these is sooner 
 or later to be detected by one's fellow-men. This final 
 word utters its solemn warning against sin in the inner 
 and hidden life. This commandment may be broken 
 without the knowledge of any human being. Sooner 
 or later this also will reveal itself in some overt act, 
 and therein lies at once the importance of the com- 
 mandment, and the consequent solemn responsibility 
 resting upon those who are thus finally warned of 
 danger in its distant places. In English law the overt 
 act of treason is distinguished from design not carried 
 into effect. Yet were there no design there would be 
 no treasonable act. The peculiar nature of this com* 
 mand, therefore, is tliat it passes below the externals 
 of conduct to the hidden activities of the mind and 
 heart and will, setting up the kingship of God, in all that 
 strange and mystic region of human life. Thus, while 
 the tenth commandment distinctly deals with human 
 inter-relation, it sets such inter-relation in its rig^it 
 relation to Divine supremacy. This truth will be more 
 
io8 The Ten Commandments. 
 
 evident as the command is considered — first, in itself; 
 secondly, in the Hght of New Testament teaching ; and 
 thirdly, in its application to the conditions of today. 
 
 I. — The Command. 
 
 In examining the commandment itself it is well to 
 notice carefully the word which is made, use of to mark 
 the sin. The actual word "covet," in its original mean- 
 ing, implies delight in some object, and because delight 
 in anything necessarily means a sense of desire to pos- 
 sess, the word was used to mark that desire to possess, 
 more than the delight which prompted the desire. In 
 the repetition of the commandment as chronicled in the 
 Book of Deuteronomy (v. 21) two words are used. 
 The first word translated "covet" in the Revised is the 
 same as that already referred to in Exodus. The sec- 
 ond word translated "desire" in the Revised is a word 
 meaning simply to wish for. The Apostle Paul in quot- 
 ing the commandment uses a Greek word, which in its 
 different forms in the New Testament is most fre- 
 quently translated "lust." It is often rendered "desire," 
 and sometimes "covet," and occasionally "concupi- 
 scence." These translations will help to throw light 
 upon the word. Its essential meaning is "to set the 
 heart on," very literally, "to pant after." 
 
 The sin, therefore, suggested by the word is very evi- 
 dently that of desire to possess something which be- 
 longs to another. Notice the sequence suggested by the 
 very word itself. The eyes rest upon some object which 
 commands the admiration of the beholder; something 
 which is to that person delightful and to be desired. 
 To desire to possess that object is to covet. There is, 
 
The Tenth Commandment 
 
 109 
 
 of course, an unnamed quantity in the circumstances 
 addressed, something which is not wrong, but out of 
 which the wrong may spring. That unnamed quantity 
 is comparative poverty, inabiHty to obtain a Hke object 
 to the one admired by lawful means. That condition 
 may give rise to a desire to possess the object when not 
 lawfully obtainable. That desire is the sin of covet- 
 ing. By way of illustration, a person may see a pic- 
 ture upon the walls of his friend's house, admire it, 
 desire it and then purchase one like it. The desire in 
 that case is not the sin of coveting, for it may be sat- 
 isfied legitimately. Where the object admired is for 
 any reason out of the reach of the one admiring, admi- 
 ration merging into desire to possess breaks the com- 
 mandment. Herein lies the searching and revealing 
 power of this last word of the Decalogue. This desire 
 for that which cannot lawfully be possessed is dis- 
 tinctly forbidden, and so this tenth word passes much 
 deeper in its moral requirement than any that has pre- 
 ceded it. It sets up God's right over the realm of 
 desire. 
 
 The whole force of the commandment lies in these 
 words taken out of the commandment. "Thy neigh- 
 bor's, . . thy neighbor's, . . his. . . his. . . 
 his. . . his. . . thy neighbor's.'' This is a seven- 
 fold guarding of the interests of another. It is not 
 wrong to desire a wife, nor a man servant, nor a fcid 
 servant, nor an ox, nor an ass, nor anything that in 
 itself is right. It is wrong to desire any of these when 
 through any circumstances they are out of the reach 
 of the one desiring. 
 
 !'■ 
 
no The Ten Commandments. 
 
 This examination of the commandment in itself is 
 enough to arrest the conscience and to bring man to 
 say it is impossible to prevent desire following upon 
 admiration ; and this is indeed true, but this truth is the 
 revelation of the fallen condition of humanity, and this 
 is what the apostle meant when, in his great argument 
 on the relation of the law to sin, he said, "I had not 
 known sin except through the law ; for I had not known 
 / coveting, except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet ; 
 but sin, finding occasion, wrought in me through the 
 commandment all manner of coveting, for apart from 
 the law sin is dead." That sin is present in every life 
 is evidenced by this very desire to possess unreachable 
 things. This sin is only discovered in the light of this 
 commandment. Well will it be, if this searchlight of 
 Divine requirement shall so astonish men as to drive 
 them to Him Who alone is able to deal with the unex- 
 plored reaches of the nature, and then will they also 
 be able to say,'^"The law hath been our tutor unto 
 Christ." 
 
 The value and importance of the commandment will 
 be gathered from a consideration of its far-reaching 
 (?) application. First, it conditions individual life. Covet- 
 ousness disturbs all the highest possibilities of life, and 
 finally makes them impossible. These highest possi- 
 bilities are indicated in the apostle's arrangement of 
 the fruit of the Spirit: "Love, joy, peace, long- 
 suffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, meek- 
 ness, self-control." Covetousness will destroy the 
 bloom and mar the beauty of all the fair cluster. 
 Instead of love, there will be suspicion and hatred; 
 
The Tenth Commandment. iii 
 
 instead of joy, sorrow, heart-ache; instead of peace, 
 feverish unrest ; instead of long-suffering, impatience ; 
 instead of kindness, cruelty ; instead of goodness, miser- 
 liness ; instead of faithfulness, infidelity ; instead of 
 meekness, arrogance ; instead of self-control, self-assur- 
 ance. The apostle's phrase, 'The goodness and severity 
 of God," was no accidental combination of apparent 
 opposites. The severity of the tenth word of the 
 Decalogue is based upon His goodness. Though it 
 search like fire, it is in order that beyond the fire cleans- 
 ing of the soil, there may come the verdure and fruitage 
 of Paradise, in order that "instead of the thorn shall 
 come up the fir tree, and instead of the brier shall come 
 up the myrtle tree." 
 
 Secondly, it includes in its scope all social life. Out 
 of disobedience to this command will spring sins that 
 break every law written upon the second Table of the 
 Law. It is the sin of covetousness that makes it possi- 
 ble for a man to say, "It is Corban," of possessions he 
 should use in honoring his father and his mother. 
 Criminal records will prove that in a great majority 
 of cases, unholy desire was the inspiration of murder. 
 No word need be written to demonstrate the fact that 
 the look of concupiscence ever precedes the act of 
 adultery. Theft of every description is the ofiFspring 
 of desire to possess that which is unreachable by law- 
 ful means. The evil spirit that makes false witness 
 possible is motived far more often than perhaps appears 
 by covetous aspiration. Thus the whole realm of 
 human inter-relation is disorganized and broken up 
 by the dishonoring of the tenth commandment. 
 
112 The Ten Commandments. 
 
 And yet again, it is a command that conditions tht 
 Divine relationship. The sin of covetousness proves 
 that the soul is out of harmony with God, and dissatis- 
 fied with Him. This sin issues, therefore, in the break- 
 ing of the four commandments of the first Table of 
 the Decalogue. It is for the accommodation of dis- 
 torted human life that man has created other gods, 
 themselves covetous and selfish. Unsatisfied desire, 
 moreover, issues in the attempt to make some represen- 
 tation of God, for the easing of conscience which per- 
 petually cries out for the authority of Deity. Pro- 
 fanity and blasphemy of all kinds result from the pain 
 of a hunger that finds no satisfaction in the false gods 
 thus set up. All profanity is the wail of lust. The 
 desecration of the day of rest is due to the restless- 
 ness born of unholy desire. It will thus be seen how 
 far-reaching and searching is this closing word of the 
 Divine enunciation of morality. The first command- 
 ment and the last are closely linked, and all that lie 
 between are conditioned within them. If a man have 
 no God but Jehovah Elohim, then will he covet noth- 
 ing, save what his God supplies. If a man covet any- 
 thing that he may not lawfully obtain, it is because of 
 hunger deeper than that born in the coveting, his hun- 
 ger, namely, for the one true God. 
 
 II. — The Teaching of the New Testament, 
 
 Turning now to the New Testament, nothing can 
 be clearer or more emphatic than its repetition and 
 enforcement of the great principles of this command- 
 ment. The words of Jesus Himself admit of no mis- 
 understanding. They were spoken in answer to a man 
 
The Tenth Commandment. 113 
 
 who asked the Master to satisfy his desire by compell- 
 ing his brother to divide the inheritance with him. 
 "Take heed and keep yourselves from all covetousness, 
 for a man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the 
 things which he possesseth." This statement He 
 enforced by the parable of the rich fool, who, notwith- 
 standing all his getting, found no present rest, and yet 
 with acumen and concentration attempted to feed his 
 soul with "goods," imagining that the spirit-life could 
 be satisfied with eating, drinking, and merriment. 
 
 So also Paul ranks "the covetous man" with the "for- 
 nicator," the "unclean person," the "idolater," and 
 declares that he has no "inheritance in the kingdom 
 of Christ and God." (Eph. v. 4-5.) 
 
 James, in his satire of the rich, that is, of men who 
 have attempted to satisfy their life by possessing, and 
 whose whole activity has been actuated by desire for 
 gold, shows clearly the heinousness of the sin, and 
 reveals how it issues in the breaking down of the social 
 ideal. (James v. 1-6.) 
 
 Peter tracks adultery to the same cause in his burn- 
 ing words, "Having eyes full of adultery, and that can- 
 not cease from sin : enticing unsteadf ast souls : having 
 the heart exercised in covetousness" (2 Peter ii :i4.) 
 
 John declares in a comprehensive sentence the per- 
 ishing nature and cause of sinful life, placing it in 
 immediate antithesis to the permanence and cause of 
 holy life. "The world passeth away, and the lust thereof, 
 but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever." 
 (i John ii:i7.) -^ 
 
 The writer of the letter to the Hebrews, in his con- 
 cluding portion, warns those to whom he writes against 
 
114 ^^^ Ten Commandments. 
 
 the same sin, putting covetousness and content into 
 opposition, and showing how the first is rendered 
 impossible, and the second made simple, to those who 
 rest in the faithfulness and fellowship of God. "Be 
 ye free from the love of money; content with such 
 things as ye have, for Himself hath said, I will in no 
 wise fail thee, neither will I in any wise forsake thee. 
 So that with good courage we say: The Lord is my 
 helper ; I will not fear : What shall man do unto me ?" 
 (Heb. xiii:5-6.) 
 
 To return to the teaching of Jesus, a striking and 
 forceful statement of the principle is contained in the 
 remarkable words, *' Ye cannot serve God and Mam- 
 mon" (Matt. vi:25). He made this statement after 
 warning His disciples against laying up treasures for 
 themselves upon the earth. He followed it by declar- 
 ing that they were not to be anxious concerning the 
 things they should eat, or drink, or put on. They were 
 rather ''to seek first the kingdom of God." The sen- 
 tence itself is most suggestive, as putting into contrast 
 the two camps in which men serve — God and Mammon. 
 The inspiration and force of service in the camp of 
 God is that of rest and satisfaction. The stimulus and 
 spur of service in the camp of Mammon is that of 
 desire and covetousness. Man serves God in the quiet 
 force of his rest in God. Man serves Mammon in the 
 restless energy of his desire for Mammon. Herein lies 
 the most terrible indictment of covetousness. It is the 
 fever which makes the eye glisten with a false luster, 
 the cheek flush with deceitful color, the muscles twitch 
 with unnatural activity, the nerves throb with restless 
 desire. It is the service whose final wage is death. 
 
The Tenth Commandment. 115 
 
 Wherever man desires anything, small or great, outside 
 the possibility of righteousness, he is in that measure 
 in the grip of a fever which must destroy him unless 
 it be quenched. 
 
 lll.~The Application. 
 
 Was there ever a day in which this great principle 
 needed more forceful statement than to-day? Is it 
 too much to say that covetousness lies at the root of 
 all the evils that blight the world, especially its so- 
 called civilized portion? The oppression of feeble races, 
 the inability to cope with the outbreak of savagery, the 
 indifference to righteousness that alone exalts a nation, 
 the toleration of giant evils that sap the virtue of the 
 people — these all may be traced to the restless and 
 unsatisfied heart of man in his covetousness for that 
 which, possessed, does but breed new desire. Some 
 great words are being dragged through the mire, 
 because they are chained to the car of the unsatisfied 
 god, covetousness. In Mr. Watts's famous picture of 
 Mammon, a terrible indictment, he has portrayed the 
 monster as of enormous proportions, bloated, and 
 apparently comfortable in his swinish overfulness. 
 While I admit the force of the picture, had I the art- 
 ist's brush I would not so paint him, but rather lean 
 and gaunt, hungry and wild, with one arm clasping 
 the nations, and the other out-reached, with fury on his 
 face that there was no more to possess. 
 
 Not only in the national outlook is covetousness dis' 
 covered, but^t the base of all social problems lies the 
 jame^wprm of discontent. The greed of the capitalist 
 and the madness of the anarchist, the brutality of great 
 
ii6 The Ten Commandments. 
 
 corporations and the superb cruelty of un-Christianized 
 democracy, all arise from lust of possession. All the 
 individual vices that are robbing the nations of their 
 young men and maidens — drink, impurity, gambling — 
 grow out of unsatisfied craving of the heart — covetous- 
 ness. jlumanity;, away from God, covets, jnd no 
 amount of getting proves to be gain. 
 
 Oh, that the words of Eliphaz the Temanite — ^true in 
 principle, though wrong in their application to Job — 
 might be sounded out in some such way as to convince 
 belief and produce obedience. 
 
 "Acquaint now thyself with Him, and be at peace : 
 
 Thereby good shall come unto thee. 
 
 Receive, I pray thee, the law from His mouth, 
 
 And lay up His words in thine heart. 
 
 If thou return to the Almighty, thou shalt be built up; 
 
 If thou put away righteousness far from thy tents. 
 
 And lay thou thy treasure in the dust, 
 
 And the gold of Ophir among the stones of the brooks ; 
 
 And the Almighty shall be thy treasure, and precious silver 
 
 unto thee. 
 For then shalt thou delight thyself in the Almighty, 
 And shalt lift up thy face unto God. 
 
 Thou shalt make thy prayer unto Him, and He shall hear thee ; 
 And thou shalt pay thy vows. 
 Thou shalt also decree a thing, and it shall be established unto 
 
 thee, 
 And light shall shine upon thy ways." (Job xxii. 21-28.) 
 
 Surely this last word of the Decalogue must bring 
 every soul who honestly faces it into the place of con- 
 viction of sin, and to a sense of utter helplessness. It 
 may be men have passed through the examination of 
 all the foregoing commandments with some measure 
 of self-respect still left, with some consciousness that 
 
The Tenth Commandment. 117 
 
 they have not greatly sinned; but who at the last can 
 stand in the light of this quick and powerful word, 
 and claim to be guiltless? It was Paul who after 
 thirty years of Christian experience, reviewing his old 
 life as a Hebrew of the Hebrews, could say, "as touch- 
 ing the law, a Pharisee ; as touching the righteousness 
 which is in the law, found blameless," who yet had to 
 say that when he faced this last word, "Thou shalt 
 not covet," he became conscious that sin wrought in 
 him "all manner of coveting;" and he found that the 
 commandment which was unto life, was in him unto 
 death. Very few dare look back upon the past and say 
 even in the light of the earlier commandments condi- 
 tioning the externals of life, that they have been 
 ^'blameless," not one dare say they have not desired 
 forbidden things. 
 
 The study of the Decalogue must therefore be closed 
 with a confession of hopelessness. In it there is found 
 the law of life, but not life. We are undone. It may 
 be possible for men so to live as to escape the detection 
 of their fellow men, but when God speaks to them in 
 the secret stillness of the inner chamber of their being 
 the arresting word, "Thou shalt not covet ;" and when 
 Jesus adds to that His word of exposition, "Every one 
 that looketh. .hath, .already in his heart," they bow 
 their heads in the dust, and say "We also have sinned, 
 and come short of the glory of God." Thus the com- 
 mandments bring men into the light of Divine require- 
 ment, and draw from them the confession of guilt, 
 and leave them waiting for the Deliverer. The com- 
 mandments without the Cross utter a sentence of 
 death. 
 
ii8 The Ten Commandments. 
 
 A NEW COMMANDMENT. 
 
 "A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love oni> 
 another; even as I have loved you, that ye also love one 
 another. By this shall all men know that y^ are My disciples, 
 if ye have love one to another." — John xiii, 34, 35. 
 
 In considering the Ten Commandments it has been 
 seen how the ethic of Jesus magnified the law as given 
 by Moses. Nothing therein minimized the value, or 
 lowered the standard, of the Decalogue. He distinctly 
 declared this to be the case when He said, "Think not 
 that I came to destroy the law or the prophets: I came 
 not to destroy, but to fulfill." Both in His life and 
 teaching. He fulfilled the law; that is, He filled it to the 
 full, passing in deed and word, beyond the mere letter, 
 into the region of spiritual intention. Those who had 
 known Him as Teacher could never charge Him with 
 having substituted the traditions of men for the com- 
 mandment of God, or say that He had so explained 
 the commandments as to make them simple ^nd easy. 
 His kingly words had searched the realm of motive, 
 and had spoken in authority as to the vital importance 
 of character. 
 
 He uttered this new commandment when He was 
 about to leave His disciples. "Knowing that His hour 
 was come, that He should depart out of this world 
 unto the Father, having loved His own which were 
 in the world. He loved them unto the end" (John xiii: 
 I ) , These words declare the principle underlying His 
 life. It was that of l<we. In the impulse of that love 
 He girded Himself and washed the feet of the disciples, 
 
A New Commandment. 119 
 
 thus giving expression to the supreme truth He had 
 come to teach men, that where love is the motive of 
 Kfe, service is its expression. 
 
 He then commenced His final teaching, and in this 
 connection enunciated the new commandment which 
 revealed the purpose of the whole economy of grace. 
 In Him grace had its epiphany, and in him grace finally 
 accomplished its greatest work, not for the setting aside 
 of law, but in order that all the requirements of law 
 may be met in activities of life which spring from the 
 impulse of love. 
 
 There is a sense in which the commandment is not 
 new. "Beloved, no new commandment write I unto 
 you, but an old commandment which ye had from the 
 beginning: the old commandment is the word which ye 
 heard. Again, a new commandment write I unto you 
 which thing is true in Him and in you: because the 
 darkness is passing away, and the true light already 
 shineth" (i John 11:7-8). The commandment was 
 old. Christ had already summarized the law by declar- 
 ing it to be love. "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God 
 with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all 
 thy mind. This is the great and first commandment. 
 And a second like unto it is this, Thou shalt love thy 
 neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments 
 hangeth the whole law, and the prophets." Moreover, 
 this summary of the law was embodied in the Mosaic 
 economy from which Christ quoted (Deut. vi, 5. I^ev. 
 xix, 18), 
 
 What, then, is new in this repetition of the old com- 
 mandment? The answer is given by John in the pas- 
 sage already quoted. That which is new is the light 
 
I20 The Ten Commandments. 
 
 shed upon the commandment by the life and teach- 
 ing of Christ; which by the time John wrote, was also 
 shining through the lives of His disciples, so that He 
 was able to say, *'A new commandment . . . which is 
 true in Him and in you.'* 
 
 Let consideration be given to this old commandment 
 in its new light. Notice, first, this new command- 
 ment as including the old; secondly, the new command- 
 ment as revealed in Christianityo 
 
 I. — The New Commandment as including the Old. 
 
 Every breach of the Decalogue is a violation of love. 
 It follows, therefore, if love suggest, control, direct 
 the life, there can be no such breach. With regard to 
 man's relation to man, this is distinctly taught by the 
 Apostle Paul in his letter to the Romans. "Owe no 
 man anything, save to love one another: For he that 
 loveth his neighbour hath fulfilled the law. For this, 
 Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not kill. 
 Thou shalt not steal. Thou shalt not covet, and if there 
 be any other commandment, it is summed up in this 
 word, namely. Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thy- 
 self. Love worketh no ill to its neighbour: love there- 
 fore is the fulfillment of the law" (Rom. xiii. 8-10). 
 It is equally true of man's relation to God. Of such 
 importance is the understanding of this simple and 
 sublime principle, that it may be well to recall the 
 whole of the ten words, noticing how love fulfils them. 
 
 If man love God in all the breadth and beauty sug- 
 gested by the words "with all thy heart, and with all 
 thy soul, and with all thy mind," he cannot possibly 
 find room for another God, and so the first word is 
 
A New Commandment. 12 1 
 
 kept. If man love God supremely, he will not suffer 
 anything to stand between him and God, thus the 
 graven image is broken to pieces, and swept away by 
 the force of a stronger affection. Out of love will 
 spring that hallowing of the name of God which will 
 dry the springs of blasphemy, and make the double 
 dealing of the hypocrite an impossibility. The Sab- 
 bath will be eagerly welcomed, and all its privileges 
 earnestly and gladly appropriated when it is a season 
 in which love may find its way into the attitude of wor- 
 ship, and the acts of service flowing therefrom. 
 
 Passing to the second table, and looking now at love 
 in its working towards others, it will at once be seen 
 that the only sufficient power for obedience and hon- 
 our rendered to parents is that of love. There will be 
 no thought of murder until the awful moment has 
 arrived in which the flame of love has died out upon the 
 altar. Unchastity of every description is love's sure 
 destruction, growing gross upon the very death of that 
 which it so vilely personates. All theft is rendered 
 impossible by true love for one's neighbor. Love sits 
 as a sentinel at the portal of the lips, and arrests the 
 faintest whisper of false witness against a neighbor; 
 nay, rather dwells within the heart, and slays the 
 thought that might have inspired the whisper. It is love 
 and love alone that, finding satisfaction in God, satisfies 
 the heart's hunger, and prevents all coveting. 
 
 The new commandment, therefore, which is an ex- 
 pression of the intention of the old, perfectly states the 
 one law that includes the many. If man may but learn 
 to love, he may walk erect in the light of Sinai, *'with- 
 out spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing." 
 
122 The Ten Commandments. 
 
 Yet this is but imperfectly to state the fulness of the 
 
 new law. To love, is to have a righteousness that 
 
 exceeds the righteousness of the Scribes and Phari- 
 
 ^ sees. It is to do more than can be expressed in the 
 
 (letter. Love is the fruitful tree whose branches run 
 
 over the wall. Love is the impulse which carries deed 
 
 far beyond duty. Love is lavish, prodigal, imprudent 
 
 often, to the calculating correctness of the mere literal- 
 
 ist. Love will take its precious ointment and pour it 
 
 l. without thought of cost as an expression of itself. 
 
 To know the value of love as the force which fulfils 
 law, it has to be contrasted with other impulses. Duty 
 will become mechanical, exact, regular. Love will take 
 the second mile, and give the cloak also, the second 
 always including the first, the cloak ever following the 
 coat. Thus, while duty may keep the letter, love will 
 enfold it in an atmosphere that glorifies it. Thus it 
 is that "scarcely for a righteous man will one die : per- 
 adventure for a good man some would even dare to 
 die." The difference between righteousness and good- 
 ness here is that between duty and love. 
 
 For the sake of appearances how much will man do ? 
 With what regularity all the details of conduct that 
 are watched by the eyes of men will be attended to, 
 lest haply the observer should adversely criticise. Love 
 cares little for appearance, will often startle the mere 
 casual observer by its utter disregard of what the criti- 
 cal may think, if it may but serve the need of some 
 lonely soul, or carry a message of hope into some dark 
 dungeon of despair. 
 
 Self-esteem is also a remarkably stern sentinel of 
 words and deeds. To maintain his reputation man will 
 
A New Commandment. 123 
 
 often suffer much, and yet how often, alas! will he 
 break the law of God under this very impulse. Love 
 has forgotten self, and therefore has no time to waste 
 in maintaining reputation or ministering to personal 
 satisfaction. It thinks of others, serves others, and so 
 fulfils the whole law. 
 
 II. — The New Commandment as Revealed in 
 Christianity. 
 
 From this bare statement of the case there will be no 
 dissent. To perfectly love is to perfectly fulfil the law 
 which was uttered in love. It is at this point that man 
 becomes conscious of his own impotence. Who can 
 love with absolute disinterestedness ? It is at this point 
 also that Christianity asserts itself by revealing the love- 
 life in a Person, and communicating that life as a 
 dynamic of love to others. 
 
 Jesus of Nazareth was Love Incarnate. His whole 
 existence was the most perfect expression of love that 
 the world has ever had. It was therefore the fulfilling 
 bf the law, so that the testimony of God, man, and devils 
 declares His perfection. Thrice the Divine voice broke 
 the usual silence of the heavens, in announcment of 
 the satisfaction of God in the life of Jesus ; the Roman 
 Procurator uttered the true sentence, after all evidence 
 had been given, when he said: *T find no fault in 
 Him"; and although He needs no tribute from the 
 under-world of darkness, it is a significant and sug- 
 gestive fact that a demon said to Him, 'T know Thee 
 Who Thou art, the Holy One of God," This thrice- 
 attested perfection was the result of His perfect love. 
 He loved God, and proved it by His own uncompromis- 
 
124 The Ten Commandments. 
 
 ing loyalty to His will. His love to man was mani- 
 fest in His attitude toward friends and foes, In the 
 severity of the anger that occasionally flashed forth 
 against tyrants and oppressors ; and in the unceasing 
 tenderness of His action toward the oppressed. What- 
 ever question is asked about Christ, the answer is 
 somehow conditioned in love. Ask concerning His 
 character, and answer by describing the characteristics 
 which in their sum total made that character, and 
 every one of them springs from, and the whole of 
 them result in, love. Inquire what was the reason of 
 all He did, or said, and again it will be found that He 
 acted and spoke in the impulse of love. Examine the 
 direction in which His life proceeded, from boyhood 
 to manhood, from the secrecy of the home at Naza- 
 reth to the public ways of the Teacher, and ever on to 
 the Cross, and Hi? pathway is the pathway of love. 
 Mark the activity of His life, and never in the records 
 can a deed be discovered save such as are deeds of 
 love. Observe the time of His coming or going. His 
 delays and His hastenings. His retirements and returns 
 to the ways of men. His whole life was a radiant 
 revelation of love itself, and love as the fulfillment 
 of law. 
 
 The issue of this life was at once a mystery and 
 revelation of love, crowning all that had gone before. 
 In His death love made atonement for the sin of the 
 loveless. The difference between self-sacrificing love, 
 and self-seeking lust, creates the necessity for atone- 
 ment in a double sense. "Sin is the transgression of 
 the law," and demands atonement. *Tove is the fulfil- 
 ment of the law," and provides atonement. One of the 
 
A New Commandment. 12$ 
 
 first evidences of the principle of sin in the life of man 
 was his selfish attempt to place the blame of wrong 
 upon another. The supreme evidence of the life o^ 
 love lies in the fact that love takes the blame attached 
 to others. The Cross was the necessary outcome oi 
 the perfect love of God as revealed in Christ. "He 
 that knew no sin was made sin." Love, having ful- 
 filled the law, was faultless, but took to itself the fault 
 and guilt of all who through lack of love had broken 
 law. This is the supreme mystery of atonement, not 
 here explained but declared. 
 
 Through the mystery of this death, love became 
 dynamic. Herein lies the lonely splendor of Chris- 
 tianity. It was love that was able to say, "I lay down 
 My life, and if I lay it down, I will take it again." 
 Taking it again in the power of resurrection. He 
 henceforth has communicated it to all repentant and 
 believing souls, so that to such it may be said in the 
 words of the apostle, "Christ in you the hope of glory." 
 
 Thus, love at the center has definite relation to the 
 whole circumference of conduct. Love as the impulse 
 of life produces the activities of love. Love being the 
 supreme reason, all the deductions are also of love. 
 Who shall write anything to describe the love-life after 
 the poem of love from the pen of Paul. "Love suf- 
 fereth long, and is kind ; love envieth not ; love vaunt- 
 eth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave itself 
 unseemly, seeketh not its own, is not provoked, taketh 
 not account of evil, rejoiceth not in unrighteousness, 
 but rejoiceth in the truth, beareth all things, believeth 
 all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. Love 
 never faileth." Within the compass of that marvellous 
 
126 The Ten Commandments. 
 
 description, lies the most perfect unfolding of the fuU 
 filment of law by love. 
 
 Herein, then, lies the severest test of all profession 
 that it is possible to discover : "He that saith he is in 
 the light, and hateth his brother, is in the darkness even 
 until now." Every breach of law is due to lack of love, 
 and all hatred in the heart is due either to the absence 
 of the Christ within, or to wilful disobedience to His 
 impulses of love. 
 
 It is only at Calvary that man can do without Sinai, 
 for it is only there that all the purposes suggested in 
 the code of the mountain of fire can come within the 
 range of possibility. It is only when His love indwells 
 the spirit, and constrains the heart, that law is fulfilled. 
 Let but Christ reign in the life of man, and thoughts 
 will be born, words will be spoken, and deeds will be 
 done in love. Then in thought and word and deed law 
 will be fulfilled. 
 
 It will be profitable to search and try the heart by 
 the new commandment rather than by the old. Let 
 all the deeds of the days be tracked to motive, and 
 every word traced to inspiration, and every thought 
 probed to conception; and if the result of the process 
 be that love is discovered, men may rest content both 
 as to deeds and words and thoughts. 
 
 Such searching must result in deep humiliation, but 
 it should also drive the humbled soul into the new life 
 of dependence upon Him Who was, and is, the Eternal 
 Lov«. 
 
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