Ex. 20 1 And God spake all these words, saying,

De. 4 11 And ye came near and stood under the mountain; and the mountain burned with fire unto the heart of heaven, with darkness, cloud, and thick darkness. And the LORD spake unto you out of the midst of the fire: ye heard the voice of words, but ye saw no form; only ye heard a voice. And he declared unto you his covenant, which he commanded you to perform, even the Ten Commandments; and he wrote them upon two tables of stone.

De. 5 22 These words the LORD spake unto all your assembly in the mount out of the midst of the fire, of the cloud, and of the thick darkness, with a great voice: and he added no more. And he wrote them upon two tables of stone, and gave them unto me.

Definitely conceive this natural scenery of a plain sloping gradually down for a mile in width, extending two miles, with crescent shape in length, as a huge amphitheatre, with the dark, perpendicular cliff of granite rising from the foot of the gentle slope some fifteen hundred feet in height, seeming to one standing near—for such is ever the impression from gazing directly upward from the foot of a lofty crag—to tower “up to the midst of heaven,”

while the loose, black, ragged masses of granite appear ready to let go their hold on the side of the crag and drop into the plain beneath. As Israel is waiting in solemn expectation this morning, behold, the immense pillar of cloud, that hitherto has guided their march, is observed to rise slowly and majestically. It ascends upward and upward to the midst of heaven. Then it moves toward the lofty summit and covers Sinai as a cloud. Thereupon the lightnings begin to flash from the cloud and the thunders roll terrifically, causing the earth to tremble under their feet. Then the clang of the mighty signal trumpet calls forth all the hosts of Israel from their camp. Under the direction of Moses and their leaders, they approach near the foot of the dark cliff, and the myriads are arranged, row upon row, in serried ranks of two miles in length. They stand in breathless silence, for every spirit is awe-struck. As the thunders at length cease, and the voice of the trumpet is hushed, suddenly there bursts forth from the darkness on the summit an articulate voice, loud as the voice of the thunders and the trumpet.

Distinctly and audibly the voice of Jehovah himself spake to the assembled nation—issuing from the Glory on the summit of Sinai. The inspired lawgiver forty years afterward declares, “The Lord talked with you face to face out of the midst of the fire. These words the Lord spake unto all your assembly in the mount out of the midst of the fire, of the cloud, and of the thick darkness with a great voice, and he added no more. And he wrote them on two tables of stone and delivered them unto me.” Thus the very mode of the revelation of this Law, in view of Moses, the lawgiver, set it apart to itself as above all the revelations made through Moses. S. R.—Moses adds elsewhere, “For ask now of the days that are past, which were before thee, since the day that God created man upon the earth, and ask from the one side of heaven unto the other, whether there hath been any such thing as this great thing is; or hath been heard like it? Did ever people hear the voice of God speaking out of the midst of the fire, as thou hast heard, and live?” Bush.

In Acts 7:38 Stephen affirms that Christ was the Jehovah who spake to Moses in Mount Sinai (see also Ps. 68:7, 8; Eph. 4:8). B.—God has many ways of speaking to the children of men: by his Spirit, by conscience, by providences, by his voice; all which we ought carefully to attend to; but he never spake, at any time or upon any occasion, so as he spake the Ten Commandments, which therefore we ought to hear with the more earnest heed. It was not only spoken audibly, but with a great deal of dreadful pomp. H.

The scenes of Sinai were a long and magnificent step of progress in the revelations of God to men. We may think here not so much of the external surroundings—the bringing into service of all the grandest agencies of nature to impress men with reverence and fear and awe, and so to plant the more deeply in their souls the idea of law as emanating unmistakably from the Infinite One; but we may consider the great fact itself of a revealed Law. It is surely a point in the progress of God’s revelations of himself second to nothing that has gone before—second to nothing in all the ages save the greater mission of his Son for the purposes of redemption. God revealing to man a rule of duty; expressing it in terms at once so simple and so comprehensive; including the duties we owe to God on the one hand and to fellow-beings on the other; putting it on permanent record; accompanying it with demonstrations of majesty and glory, endorsing it so surely and so sublimely; adjusting it so nicely in harmony with the intelligent convictions of rational minds, and so commending it to every man’s conscience as intrinsically and eternally right:—truly the promulgation of such a law through such agencies is surpassingly grand and glorious; and is one of the great epochs in the march of God’s revelations of himself to mortals. H. C.

The Ten Commandments formed a distinct part of God’s revelation. They were spoken by God’s own voice from the midst of the fire. They only were thus promulgated; “he added no more.” They were written on tables of stone. They were deposited in the ark of the covenant. These facts show that they held a distinct place in the Law-giving at Sinai, and that they are not to be confounded with the ceremonial and judicial statutes, subsequently given. The grounds of this distinction: The Decalogue was: (1) An epitome of universal moral truth. (2) Internally complete as such—the first table laying down our duties to God, as respects his being, his worship, his Name, his day, his human representatives; the second forbidding all injury to our fellow-men (injuries to life, property, chastity, character), while requiring by implication the fulfilment of all positive duties, and the regulation even of our secret thoughts. (3) The basis of the covenant with Israel. The foundation on which all subsequent legislation was reared. Orr.

The Promulgation of the Decalogue from the heights of Sinai, in the manner set forth in the Book of Exodus, stands before us as an instance that is better fitted than any other which might be named, as determinative of the question now moved within the Church, concerning the Reality of a Revelation, authenticated by supernatural attestations. There needs no argument to show that, if the Promulgation of the Law from the heights of Sinai took place in the manner affirmed in the Mosaic books—if, indeed, then and there God spake these words “from out of the thick darkness,” and amid the blasts of the trumpet; if it be so, then this descent of the ALMIGHTY—speaking to man, carries with it, as well the immediate antecedents of the event, as its more proximate conditions, and its next following consequences. If this history be true as to its central fact, it must be true, also, as to its indispensable conditions. The Sinaitic narrative must be true altogether, or it must be false altogether. I ask a moment’s attention to the central fact.

The most unmarked spot on earth’s alluvial levels might have been chosen as the scene of the event of which we read in the nineteenth and twentieth chapters of the Book of Exodus. But it was otherwise ordered, and a group of mountains, remarkable beyond any other elsewhere found, was singled out as the fittest for so great an occasion. Thus, therefore, it is that the enduring continuity of local traditions which gives a sort of indestructible vitality to the names of places, whether they be important or unimportant, has clustered upon this mountain mass with a peculiar strength, as if it should never come to be doubted where it was that the Eternal, the King, Immortal, Invisible, came down to hold converse—not, as often heretofore, with favored men apart and singly, but now with a people congregated to meet him at his call. The stern sublimity of this group of precipices, its unchanging conditions, which neither man nor nature has affected in the lapse of ages, have preserved, in its primeval majesty, a scene which the modern traveller, devout or undevout, acknowledges as signally proper for the purpose when a nation was summoned to appear before God. Sinai, in its aspect as the Hebrew people saw it when it was crowned with the unquenchable fires, and such as the traveller now sees it in its unchanging aspect of sterile majesty, is a scene proper for the purpose to which then it was made subservient.

The Arabian spearman, as if heaven had placed him there, has held watch around the heights of Sinai these thirty centuries and more; and this guard has been conservative of the Sinaitic tradition. Throughout the ages of the Saracenic history, this functionary—whether intended or involuntary—has held the memory of the one event, as if in the freshness of a recent recollection. Yet more has the Law, spoken from Sinai, lived in the constant heart and in the obduracy, too, in the better nature, in the noble martyr strength, and also in the senile traditions, and in the daily habitudes, and in the ponderous literature, and in the speech of the people, whose ancestors then filled the wide plain at the foot of Sinai. It is the same people, immovable in mind, and now, as for ages past, a witness for God in all lands. Each Jewish heart is an enduring tablet whereupon the Sinaitic words are anew and anew written—as with the finger of God. I. T.

Name, and its Meaning.

The Hebrew name which is rendered in our Version the Ten Commandments occurs in Ex. 34:28; De. 4:13, 10:4. It literally means the Ten Words. In Ex. 24:12, the Ten Commandments are called the Law, even the Commandment. They are elsewhere called the Words of the Covenant (Ex. 34:28, where the strict rendering would be, the Words of the Covenant, even the Ten Words), the Tables of the Covenant (De. 9:9, 11, 15), and simply the Covenant (De. 4:13); also the Two Tables (De. 9:10, 17). But the most frequent name for them in the Old Testament is, the Testimony, or the Two Tables of the Testimony. In the New Testament they are called simply the Commandments. The name Decalogue is found first in Clement of Alexandria, and was commonly used by the Fathers who followed him. Clark.

What we call the “Ten Commandments,” are currently called in the Hebrew text “the ten words” (see Ex. 34:28; De. 10:4; 4:13, the article being used in all three places). The words of the Hebrew stem כָּבוֹר, commonly translated by the English verb “command” and its derivatives, are not currently used to denote what we call “the Ten Commandments,” and are, perhaps, not even once used distinctively in this meaning. This special meaning of the word “commandment” is purely a matter of translation usage, and not of Hebrew usage. What is thus true of the term commandment, as applied to “the ten words,” is perhaps even more emphatically true of the term “law” in the same application. We are accustomed, and correctly, so far as the ethical aspects of the matter are concerned, to regard “the ten words” as being pre-eminently the Law of Jehovah, as recorded in the Old Testament. Nevertheless, neither the Old Testament nor the New are accustomed to apply the term Law distinctively to “the ten words;” it is doubtful whether they so apply it in even a single instance. “The ten words” are a portion of the commandments of Jehovah; they are found in the Law of Jehovah; they are an especially important part of the Law and the commandments; but it is not according to biblical usage to call them either by the name law or by the name commandments. This is the more noteworthy because the Bible, instead of signaling their importance by applying these two names to them, has other names which it uses for this purpose. It speaks of “the two tables of the testimony” (Ex. 31:18; 32:15, etc.), and of “the tables of the covenant” (De. 9:9, 11, 15; Heb. 9:4, etc.). The Bible regards “the ten words,” indeed, as precepts to be obeyed; but it far more prominently regards them as the foundation and evidence of special privileges accorded to Jehovah’s people—as a charter of rights, rather than a code of prohibitions. The Law was kept beside the ark, the pot of manna and other national memorials, before the ark, but only the two tables within the ark (1 Kings 8:9). The two tables were kept, not for purposes of study or appeal (it was death to look into the ark), but as a testimony, as sacred Divine credentials; the Law, on the other hand, was in the custody of the priests and elders for purposes of administration. The two tables, in the ark, with the mercy-seat over them, forming the central object of the sanctuary and its worship, represent the moral principle of the religion of Israel. God’s covenant with Israel, as with any man in all time, is on the basis of the keeping of the “Ten Commandments;” yet there is propitiation for the repentant man, who is conscious of sin because he has failed to keep them. This twofold symbol is to the religion of the Pentateuch what the life and death of Christ are to Christianity—a fixed standard of obligation, coupled with a proclamation of forgiving grace. Beecher.

Division into Tables.

We know that the Tables were two, and that the Commandments were ten, in number. But the Scriptures do not, by any direct statements, enable us to determine with precision how the Ten Commandments are severally to be made out, nor how they are to be allotted to the Two Tables. On each of these points various opinions have been held. Cook.

The Ten Commandments were engraved on two tables of stone (Ex. 31:18), and on both sides of the tables (32:15, 16), and when these were broken by Moses, as significant of the fact that the covenant of God with the people had been broken by the sin of the golden calf (32:19), two other tables of stone were by Divine direction prepared like unto the first, and the Lord wrote the commandments upon them afresh (34:1). We are nowhere expressly informed how many commandments were written on each of the tables. The most equitable division of the matter would be to put the preface, together with the first three commandments, in the first table, and the last seven in the second. The original tables of stone upon which they were written, and which Moses deposited in the ark of the covenant, were still in existence in the time of Solomon (1 Kings 8:9). Probably they perished together with the ark when the temple was burned by Nebuchadnezzar. But if monumental evidence is worth anything, the text of these commandments is beyond dispute. W. H. G.

In the numerical arrangement and distinction of the several precepts of the Decalogue, the Romanists differ essentially from Protestants. The Roman Church makes but one commandment of the first two, while they divide the tenth into two, making the first sentence of that commandment the ninth. The motive for thus abstracting the second commandment from the Decalogue is very easily imagined on the part of a church which gives so much countenance to image-worship; and it is equally obvious that the partition of the tenth into two, is wholly with a view to compensate the mutilation by leaving the nominal integrity of the code unimpaired. That such a disjunction of the parts of the tenth commandment is wholly unauthorized and violent, will be evident upon a comparison of the text as it stands in Exodus with that of Deuteronomy. In the one the coveting of a “house” occurs before the coveting of a “wife;” whereas in the other the order is reversed, and “house” occurs after “wife.” If, then, the Papal division were well founded, the ninth commandment according to the one reading would be, “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s house,” and according to the other, “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife.” Such a diversity, it appears from Hallett’s “Notes on Scripture Texts,” actually exists in some of the Catechisms and Manuals of the Roman Church. Bush.

Two Copies of the Decalogue.

In addition to the copy of the Decalogue in Ex. 20, which is evidently the original and authentic one, we have a second, and in some respects a different copy, in De. 5. The differences are merely formal and for the most part immaterial. K.

In De. 5: 7-21, we find a repetition of the Ten Commandments. On these, as the basis of the covenant, the whole legislation rests, and therefore a rehearsal of them is a fitting introduction to a repetition and enforcement of the Laws of the Theocracy. Some differences appear between the statement of the “ten words,” as given here and as given in Ex. 20. It is chiefly in the fourth commandment that these are to be found. It begins here with “remember” for “keep;” reference is made to the command of God as sanctioning the Sabbath, which is omitted in Exodus; a fuller description of the animals to be exempted from work on that day is given; the words, “that thy manservant and thy maidservant may rest as well as thou,” are added; and in place of a reference to the resting of God after the Creation as the ground of the Sabbath institute, as in Exodus, there is a reference to the deliverance of the Israelites out of bondage in Egypt as a reason why the Lord commanded them to keep the Sabbath day. In the fifth commandment there are two additions here—the one of the words, “as Jehovah thy God hath commanded thee,” and the other of the words, “that it may go well with thee.” In the tenth commandment the first two clauses are transposed, “desire” appears in place of “covet” in relation to “wife,” and “field” is added to the specification of objects. These differences are of little moment. The only one demanding notice is that in the fourth commandment, where different reasons are assigned for the ordinance of the Sabbath. The two reasons assigned, however, are perfectly compatible; the one is fundamental and universally applicable, the other is subsidiary and special in its application; the one is a reason why the Sabbath was originally instituted and is for all men, the other is a reason why it was specially and formally instituted in Israel and was especially memorable to that people. In a popular address to them it seems fitting that the latter rather than the former should be the one adduced. As a memorial of their deliverance from Egypt, the Sabbath was all important to them, for by it they were constantly reminded that “they were thereby freed from the dominion of the world to be a peculiar possession of Jehovah, and so amid the toil and trouble of the world had part in the holy rest of their God.” Baum.—It was also fitting in a recapitulatory address that special emphasis should be laid on the fact that what the Law enunciated was what “the Lord had commanded.” The addition of “field” in the tenth commandment is probably due to the fact that now, the occupation and division of the land having begun, the people were about to have what they had not before—each his own property in land. In the tenth commandment, also, there is a difference in the two accounts worthy of notice. In Deuteronomy “field” is added to the enumeration of objects not to be coveted, and the “wife” is put first and apart, while in Exodus the “house” precedes the “wife,” and the latter ranks with the rest. In Deuteronomy also this separation of the wife is emphasized by a change of the verb: “Neither shalt thou desire thy neighbor’s wife, neither shalt thou covet thy neighbor’s house.” W. L. A.

A mere annalist would naturally repeat these laws verbatim, as first pronounced on Sinai. But Moses was God’s own lawgiver, filled with the Spirit of God to complete a code already begun. And hence, in his case alone, there might be weighty reasons for some partial change in the way of expansion or comment when the Decalogue was republished. In the preface and the first three commands where the first person is used, the repetition is exact. But in the fourth and fifth commandments Moses speaks as the Lawgiver, and renews them both with Divine authority, adding that significant clause, “as the Lord thy God commanded thee.” A fresh reason is now given for the observance of the Sabbath, from the great deliverance and redemption which God had wrought for his people Israel. Such a change is quite natural, and adds to the force of this repetition of the Decalogue, transferring the command from past time to time present, when the speaker is God’s own inspired messenger, the dying Lawgiver of his people. Instead of a mere record of what had occurred forty years before, it now becomes a present voice of authority from the living God to his own people. And nothing else than the high dignity of Moses as the mediator of the Old Covenant can fully explain this transition from the simple annalist to the voice of authority and the tones of the Legislator, so that the change increases and renews the impressiveness without impairing the authority of the original message. Birks.

Negative or Prohibitory Form of the Precepts.

The predominantly negative character is rather a testimony to their deep spiritual import, as confronting at every point the depravity and sinfulness of the human heart. The Israelites then, as professing believers now, admitted by Divine grace into a covenant relation to God, and made heirs of his blessed inheritance, should have been disposed of themselves to love and serve God; they should not even have needed the stringent precepts and binding obligations of law to do so. But as a solemn proof and testimony how much the reverse was the case, the Law was thrown chiefly into the prohibitory form: “Thou shalt not do this or that;” as much as to say, Thou art of thyself ready to do it—this is the native bent of thy inclination—but it must be restrained, and things of a contrary nature sought after and performed.

In itself the Law was simply the revelation of God’s holiness, with its circle of demands upon the faith, love, and obedience of his people: it testified of what was in his heart as the invisible Head of the kingdom, in respect to the character and conduct of those who should be its members. But the testimony it thus delivered for him necessarily involved a testimony against them, because of the innate tendency to corruption which existed in their bosoms. And this incidental testimony against the sinfulness of the people—which is, at the same time, an evidence of the Law’s inherent spirituality and goodness—has its reflection in the very form of the precepts in which it is contained. . . . It is also to be noted that the negative commands include in them the injunction of the contrary duties, and the positive commands the prohibition of the contrary sins, so that in each there is something required as well as forbidden. Further, the precept which forbids the external acts of sin, forbids likewise the inward desires and motions of sin in the heart; so also the precept which commands the external acts of duty, requires at the same time the inward feelings and principles of holiness, of which the external acts could only be the fitting expression. P. F.

Character and Perpetuity of the Moral Law.

The Jews had three sorts of law. They had the moral law, the ceremonial law, and the civil law. The civil law existed for a time; its principles, as far as they are moral, relate to all time. The ceremonial law lasted till Christ, its end and its object, came. But the moral law, like the God that announced it, is the same yesterday, to-day, and forever. This law was not invented on Mount Sinai, but only enunciated there. It was ever true; it is now true; and it ever will be true. God’s enunciation of it on Mount Sinai was an act of mercy in letting his creatures know what was the precise exaction of his will, and what would be the highest conformity to that will, if the commands in stone could be transferred to the heart, and be made actual and real in the life and the experience of mankind. J. C.—The moral law, expressed briefly in the Ten Commandments, is that part of the Law of Moses which is binding upon all men, and at all times. It contains a brief view of what is ever and unchangeably right—right in the eyes of God, and right for man to do; it is the Law that should be engraven upon every heart; it should ever be the standard of duty; and every man’s prayer should be that his heart “may be inclined to keep it alway, even to the end.” W. G. B.—Though the Mosaic dispensation be now at an end, yet concerning these moral precepts of it, our Saviour declares, that “one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled” (Matt. 5:18). Accordingly we find both him and his apostles quoting these Ten Commandments as matter of perpetual obligation to Christians; who are now, as the Jews were formerly, “the Israel of God.” Abp. Secker.

In every mode of incidental allusion, and of the most solemn and formal authentication, CHRIST, in the exercise of his public ministry, recognized the Decalogue, and also the summary of it, in two great commandments, as the Law of God. CHRIST, the Light of the world, and the Author of a spiritual religion for all nations, to the end of time, CHRIST, whose word is our warrant, and it is our only warrant for the hope of immortality, establishes his mission, and he expressly founds his religion upon the Mosaic revelation at large; and he does so in an emphatic manner upon the Sinaitic Decalogue. He takes this Law as the very ground of that higher and more spiritual interpretation which an intimate moral code demands. The several occasions on which he does this at once authenticate the Mosaic Canon, and expand its letter so as to send it in to govern the thoughts and intents of the heart. I. T.—Only one Law and Testimony was ever referred to by our Lord; one Law of Love (Lev. 19:18; De. 6:5). Christ’s words illuminated the unity and Mosaic authorship of the whole when he said, “On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” He never quoted any other code nor referred to any other lawgiver than Moses. Neither did his disciples nor the apostles. “Master, Moses said” (Matt. 22:24); “Master, Moses wrote to us” (Luke 20:28);

“This is that Moses in the wilderness, who received the living oracles to give unto us” (Acts 7:37). Cheever.—Even if there were no Pentateuch in existence, the fact of the giving of the Law at Sinai through the mediation of Moses would be more firmly established than any other fact of ancient history. An event which has struck such deep roots in the consciousness of a nation as the giving of the Law at Sinai rests upon as sure a foundation as the existence of the nation itself. To establish this conclusion, we do not even need the line of testimony which we actually possess, and which reaches back to the very earliest antiquity of the nation of Israel. K.

The Laws of the Ten Commandments stood out from all the other precepts enjoined under the ministration of Moses, and were intended to form a full and comprehensive exhibition of the righteousness of the Law, in its strict and proper sense. No doubt many of the other precepts teach substantially what these commandments did, or contain statements and regulations bearing some way upon their violation or observance. But this was not done with the view of supplying any new or additional matter of obligation; it was merely intended to explain their real import, or to give instructions how to adapt to them what might be called the jurisprudence of the State. P. F.

Its two tables are a standing declaration of the true relation between morality and religion for all nations and ages. The fourth commandment is, in its principle, no exception to this. The Decalogue belonged to the Israelites, not because the truths expressed in it were exclusively theirs, but because it was revealed to them in a special manner. Clark.—The very order of the precepts is suggestive. First come our duties to God, and then those to our fellow-men. As in the Lord’s Prayer we are taught to think first of God’s name and kingdom, before we ask anything for ourselves, so in the Decalogue our obligations toward God are first set before us, and then those under which we lie to our fellow-men. The earliest thing to be sought by any one is to be right with God, and that will bring him into harmony with men. Religion is the foundation of morality. The first table of the Law is the root and trunk of the tree; the second is the outbranching, efflorescence, and fruitage thereof. W. M. T.—No theory of morals is built upon the deepest foundation which does not recognize the final ground of the obligation of duty in the voice of God. Duty is debitum—debt. Who is the creditor? Myself? An impersonal law? Society? No, God. The practice of morality depends, like its theory, on religion. In the long run, and on the wide scale, nations and periods which have lost the latter will not long keep the former in any vigor or purity. He who begins by erasing the first commandment will sooner or later make a clean sweep of all the ten. And, on the other hand, wherever there is true worship of the one God, there all fair charities between man and man will flourish and fruit. The two tables are one law. Duties to God come first, and those to man, who is made in the image of God, flow from these. A. M.

By every precaution against their destruction and by every honor which could be paid to them, God seemed to intimate what a peculiar value was to be attached to this central code of duty; as though he would imprint on Israel and on us this great truth, that no rites of worship and no statutes of civil jurisprudence are of worth in his eyes unless, at the heart of them all, there lie enshrined and observed the great maxims of spiritual religion and of everlasting rectitude. It is morality which must lie at the basis of national order and prosperity. It is religion which must form a foundation for national morals. Both religion and morality must live as the informing soul at the centre of a nation’s institutes, if the nation is to possess true vitality. Are not these the lessons taught by the very history of the Decalogue, and by its position in the statute books of Israel? Dykes.

It was the boast of Josephus, that whereas other legislators had made religion to be a part of virtue, Moses had made virtue to be a part of religion. Of this, among all other indications, the Ten Commandments are the most remarkable and enduring example. Delivered with every solemnity of which place and time could admit, treasured up with every sanctity which religion could confer, within the holiest shrine of the holiest of the holy places—more sacred than altar of sacrifice or altar of incense—they yet contain almost nothing of local or ceremonial injunction. The words were “written by the finger of God,” but the tables were not less surely fragments hewn out of the rock of Horeb. Hard, stiff, abrupt as the cliffs from which they were taken, they remain as the firm, unyielding basis on which all true spiritual religion has been built up and sustained. The Ten Commandments, in letter and in spirit, represent to us, both in fact and in idea, the granite foundation, the immovable mountain on which the world is built up; without which all theories of religion are but as shifting and fleeting clouds; they give us the two homely fundamental laws, which all subsequent revelation has but confirmed and sanctified—the law of our duty toward God, and the law of our duty toward our neighbor. A. P. S.

It is a law exclusively religious and moral, which only busies itself about the duties of man to God and to his fellow-creatures, and admits, by its very silence, all the varying forms of government that the external or internal State of society may seem to require. Characteristic, grand, and original, not to be met with in the primitive laws of any other nascent state, and an admirable and remarkable manifestation of the Divine origin of this one! It is to man’s natural and his moral destiny that the Decalogue addresses itself; it is to guide man’s soul and his inmost will that it lays down rules; whereas it surrenders his external, his civil condition to all the varying chances of place and of time. Another characteristic of this law is not less original or less urgent. It places God, and man’s duties toward God, at the head and front of man’s life and man’s duties; it unites intimately religion and morality, and regards them as inseparable. If philosophers, in studying, discriminate between them; if they seek in human nature the special principle or principles of morality; if they consider the latter by itself and apart from religion, it is the right of science to do so. But still the result is but a scientific work, only a partial dissection of man’s soul, addressed to only one part of its faculties, and holding no account of the entirety and the reality of the soul’s life. The human body, taken as one whole, is by nature at once moral and religious; the moral law that he finds in himself needs an author and a judge; and God is to him the source and guarantee, the Alpha and Omega of morality. Guizot.

The Law of God is not a string of precepts; it is a principle, a spirit, a unity. It encircles one like a ring of gold. If he steps over it at any point, he goes outside of it, and is a transgressor as really as though he should break it in pieces at every point. J. P. T.

The Law is to be regarded as a unity. It is not made up of isolated precepts. Our Saviour declares that it is summed up in two commandments. And the aposile reminds us that “Love is the fulfilling of the Law” love to God the root, and love to man the fruit. Taking them in order, the first four require of us a love that shall worship God alone, honoring his nature, revering his name, and guarding his rest day for his special service. The six later ones enjoin love to man, requiring loyalty in the home, restraint in the temper, purity of the body, fidelity of the hand, government of the tongue, unselfishness in the heart. What part or power of our being is there that is not held in the Law’s comprehensive grasp? And how deeply it strikes! It is a “critic” of the thoughts and intents of the heart. No superficial obedience can meet its claims. It is not difficult to see the purpose which it was designed to serve. It was the basis of Israel’s national life and legislation. It was for the instruction of the nations round about. And though it was set on a basis of redeeming mercy, it was designed to awaken the conscience to a sense of sin, to take the people to school, and thus to become their child-guide unto Christ. It was a form, written, of that high, that holy, that eternal law of righteousness which is the same for all times, all places, and all peoples—yea, of that Law of perfect love which the Divine Being fulfils in absolute perfection, and after which he would have his creatures conformed. C. C.

If men loved God supremely, there would be no idolatry upon the earth, nor any of its attendant abominations; no profaning of the name of God, nor making a gain of godliness; no perjuries nor hypocrisies, no pride nor self-complacency under the smiles of Providence; no murmuring, sullenness, no suicide under its frowns. Love would render it men’s meat and drink to obey God, and they would take everything well at his hands. And if they loved their fellow-creatures as themselves, there would be no wars between nations; no strifes between neighbors; no intolerance nor persecuting bitterness in religion; no deceit nor overreaching in trade; there would be no murders, thefts nor robberies; no cruelty in parents or masters; no ingratitude nor disobedience in children or servants; no unkindness nor treachery between friends; no jealousies nor bitter contentions in families—in short, none of those streams of death, one or more of which flow through every vein of society, and poison its enjoyments. Andrew Fuller.

Its contents are just what they ought to be. They enjoin only what is right; they forbid only what is wrong. They err neither in excess nor in defect. No error or incongruity can be detected from beginning to end. The ground that is covered takes in all the relations and interests of man, the recognition, the worship, the reverence, and the proportion of time he owes to God, all relative duties arising from the family, the household and the state, the regard due to the life, the domestic circle, the property, and the good name of one’s neighbor; and then the whole winds up with a precept that shows that thought as well as speech and act is included in the obligation. No modern theory of practical ethics discloses any duty which is not contained in the Sinaitic summary. That summary is suited to all lands, all races, all times, all states of society. It contains nothing that is sectional, or national, or fortuitous, or temporary. It is addressed to man as man everywhere and always. It lays hold of Jew and Greek, Barbarian and Scythian, male and female, bond and free, high and low, all nations, all classes without exception; for whatever other differences obtain, all stand upon the same footing as rational, responsible beings, and alike need some authoritative directory of conduct. . . . The perfection of the Decalogue may be argued from its manifest reasonableness. If there be no God, then religion does not exist, and it is folly to talk of sacred precepts; but if there be a God, the maker of heaven and earth, and sole ruler of the children of men, the one in whom we live and move and have our being, then the duties prescribed in the first table are due unto him. Nothing less can meet his exalted claims. Every feeling of propriety and gratitude summons us to render to him love, honor, reverence, worship, and obedience. And so with the other part of the Ten Words. If men be a race, if they have sprung from a common ancestor, if they are of one blood, if they are linked together, not casually or temporarily, but by a bond of nature, then beyond question they owe to each other all that the second table enjoins. They are members one of another, and as such must be governed invariably by the law of love. There is nothing arbitrary or capricious in any precept. All spring from a common source, and are self-commended by their bearing upon human welfare. And as far as the Decalogue is obeyed in its spirit, just so far is earth made to resemble heaven. . . . The Decalogue stands alone in the literature of the world. Whether we go to the west or to the farthest east, nowhere is there found anything approaching it in correctness and completeness as a standard of human duty. All rivals fall short either in excess or in defect. They are vague or inaccurate or confused. They mingle the trivial with the important, or they confuse ethics with politics or economics. They overlook the state of the heart, and they omit to ground their precepts either in right reason or the will of the supreme lawgiver. In distinction from all these, the Ten Words stand out as a clean-cut manual, resolving all duty into its essential principles, stating these with the utmost precision and clearness, and basing them upon the nature and perfections of the ever-living God. As has well been said, “There is contained in this short summary the outline of all treatises on morality and all codes of justice. Not the least blemish of any vicious or barbarous legislation is mingled with it. The form is Hebrew, national; but the truth is as broad as human life, and fitted to the wants of the race. If we compare this code with the remains of other ancient peoples, with the code of Menu, the sacred books of China, the fragments of the Persian religion, there is nothing like it.” Chambers.

If these Ten Commandments are examined closely reasons will appear on the face of them for their perpetual obligation. Their binding force comes not from the fact that they are enactments, but from the fact that they represent duties that cannot be separated from man’s well-being, or even from the normal conception of right and righteousness. They were before the Mosaic code, and they will survive it, like the life that precedes organization and outlives it. Had God not said, “Thou shalt have no other gods before me,” it would have been sin to worship any other God. And so of every other command. The Sabbath can be traced back to Eden, and was sanctified before any sin marred the creation, and even before one prohibition was laid upon man. These laws need no apology or vindication, because the moral instinct of mankind approves them as holy, just, and good. We might almost say that if God had not framed the Decalogue, the conscience and reason of man would have demanded it. Pierson.

It was not given to give life. “By the deeds of the Law shall no flesh living be justified.” It was designed as a Divine revelation of man’s religious and moral duties, as a perfect standard and rule of obedience, and one of perpetual and universal obligation. For as every precept of it flows directly from the unchangeable perfections of God, it must forever make the same uncompromising demand upon the obedience of its subjects. The ceremonial statutes might serve a temporary end and be abolished. But the moral law must necessarily enter into the Christian dispensation, and pervade it through every period of its existence. It will even pass into heaven itself, and there be the delight and govern the service of every glorified spirit and ministering angel. Bush.

The brevity of the Sinaitic Law, its comprehensiveness and its spirituality, its firm theistic cautions and its ethical effectiveness—these, its own qualities, these, its intrinsic attestations, this, its proper force for grasping and holding the human conscience—these qualities, which are, indeed, the strength of the Law, given in ten precepts, have, from that remote age to this, commanded the conscience of men, wherever the knowledge of it has come. These Ten Words, true as to their substance in all worlds, and of perpetual force, as in heaven so toward the human family throughout all time—this Sinaitic proclamation—who is it now that shall dare spend upon it his nugatory criticism? I. T.—How marvellous is the logical arrangement! How completely exhaustive its requirements! How all-searching its reach—leaving not an act of the life or thought of the soul untouched. Who can carefully study it and not see that “a greater than Moses is here?” Simple in its structure, sublime in its aim, all-embracing in its infinite sweep, and glorious in its holiness, it stands before us as a blazing mirror, reflecting the attributes of God. S. R.

Nothing can be added to it or taken from it, so as to make it better. It is perfect. The first commandment directs us to make the Creator the object of our supreme love and reverence. This is right. If he be our creator, preserver, and supreme benefactor, we ought to treat him, and none other, as such. The second forbids idolatry. The third forbids profaneness. The fourth finds a time for religious worship. If there be a God, he ought surely to be worshipped. It is suitable that there should be an outward homage, significant of our inward regard. If God is to be worshipped, it is proper that some time should be set apart for that purpose, when all may worship him harmoniously and without interruption. One day in seven is certainly not too much. The fifth defines the peculiar duties arising from the family relations. Injuries to our neighbor are then classified by the moral law. They are divided into offences against life, chastity, property, and character. And, applying a legal idea, I notice that the greatest offence in each class is expressly forbidden. Thus, the greatest injury to life is murder; to chastity, adultery; to property, theft; to character, perjury. Now, the greater offence must include the less of the same kind. Murder must include every injury to life; adultery, every injury to purity, and so of the rest. And the moral code is closed and perfected by a command forbidding every improper desire in regard to our neighbor.

Where did Moses get that law? I have read history. The Egyptian and adjacent nations were idolaters; so were the Greeks and Romans; and the wisest and best Greeks or Romans never gave a code of morals like this.

Where did Moses get this Law, which surpasses the wisdom and philosophy of the most enlightened age? He lived at a period comparatively barbarous, but he has given a law in which the learning and sagacity of all subsequent time can detect no flaw. Where did he get it? He could not have soared so high above his age as to have devised it himself. It must have come from heaven. An.

Worshipping the Deity under the image of even the lower creature-forms, the religion of Egypt must have been of an essentially grovelling tendency, and could scarcely fail to have carried along with it many foul excesses and pollutions. Some of the most profound inquirers into the religion of the ancients have recently shown, on evidence the most complete, that the worship of ancient Egypt was essentially of a bacchanalian character, full of lust and revelry; that its most frequented rites were accompanied with scenes of wantonness and impure indulgence; and that it sometimes gave rise to enormities not fit to be mentioned. Such was the atmosphere in which the Israelites had lived during their abode in Egypt; and it was when fresh from such a region that the Law of the Ten Commandments was proclaimed in their hearing, and given to be enshrined in the innermost recess of their sacred structure—a law which unfolds the clearest views of God’s character and service—which denounces every form and species of idolatry as inconsistent with the spirituality of the Divine nature—which enjoins the purest worship and the highest morality, and in its very form is a model of perfection and completeness. Wisdom of this kind Moses could least of all have learned from the Egyptians; nor could it have been his, unless it had descended to him from above. P. F.—Step by step in the space of one thousand years the whole world had become utterly degraded. As men became gods, their gods more and more became men, with all the follies, vices, and passions of men. Thus the idolatry of Assyria, Phœnicia, Egypt, had become foul and odious. And these were the centres of the world’s civilization and power. Now, just at the lowest stage of this degradation, in every nation of earth, as all history testifies, arises this man Moses among a band of Egyptian slaves, and sets forth to the world a law every way worthy of the character of God, as reason will certify. Whence, then, came this Law? From what human source could he have gathered it in such an age? There is but one of two solutions of the wonder possible—either the eternal God spake it and gave it to Moses, or Moses and his Law of

Ten Commandments stands yet as the greatest miracle of all history. S. R.

When we know how early in the world’s history this Law was promulgated, it is very marvellous to find that an infant nation should, at starting, have a code of moral law so complete, yea, so elevated, that no other nation at that time presented anything like it, and that even now, thirty-three hundred years afterward, not the wisest man in the world can suggest anything loftier! The kingdoms of Babylon, Assyria, Egypt, have furnished us with naught like this, to say nothing of the Roman, Grecian, and Persian empires, the earliest of which was not founded for centuries after. And if, leaving the merely civil and political side of legislation, we ask for an embodiment of a moral and religious code on which legislation could safely be based, we do not find aught to be compared with this. Nor, if we look at the record of the national life of the very people to whom this Law was first given, do we find that even they approximated to conformity to it. In fact, nothing is more marked in their subsequent literature than their grievous departure from their own standards. When man makes any code of laws, those laws reflect himself and his own standard of attainment. But here is a code far beyond the attainment of any yet recorded nation. It is not necessary, however, to go to ancient nations to show that this Law betokens a higher than human origin. Look at legislation now. Look at the moral sentiment of peoples now. What is the cry? Love thy neighbor as thyself? Emphatically no! But “take care of your own interests, and let your neighbors look after themselves!” “Remove your neighbor’s landmark as you think well!” Why, if no nation in the world is good enough to adopt the standard of the Decalogue, could it have created it, without ever having had any of its educating influence? And if no nation now could do it, how could they who were just liberated from centuries of slavery? But more than this. This Law is high above the attainment of well-trained Christian congregations. Let a minister proclaim the mercy of God in forgiving sin, and his preaching may charm. Let him insist on the demands of God’s righteousness, and while some earnest holy souls will lay it to heart, and humble themselves before God, many will be offended at the enforcement of righteousness. This Law from man? No! it is too good for that. When man is brought face to face with its holy heart-searchingness he hates it! But again. Take the most advanced and holiest Christian you can find. Let him stand in full front of this holy Law— and soon he will be crying out, in agony, “God be merciful to me the sinner!” “But,” it may be said, “are not Christians always preaching up to a higher level than that of their attainments?” But why? Because they feel and know that here is a Law which is infinitely above them, and which proclaims its intrinsic authority, and proves itself Divine. This Law shines by its own light, and is “a lamp unto our feet and a light to our path.” C. C.

The Law and the Ceremonial Institutions of the Old Testament.

The Law, perfect in its character and perpetual in its obligation, formed the groundwork of all the symbolical services afterward imposed; as was distinctly implied in the place chosen for its permanent position. For, as the centre of all Judaism was the Tabernacle, so the centre of this again was the Law—the Ark, which stood enshrined in the Most Holy Place, being made for the sole purpose of keeping the two tables of the covenant. So that the reflection could hardly fail to force itself on all considerate and intelligent worshippers, that the observance of this Law was the great end of the religion then established. And imperfect as those symbolical rites and services were, the members of the Old Covenant were still chiefly dependent upon them for having the character of the Divine Law exhibited to their minds, and its demands kept fresh upon the conscience. It was therefore fit that they should pervade all the more important relations of life, that the Israelite might thus find something in what he ordinarily saw and did—in the very food he ate and the garments he wore—to remind him of the Law of his God, and stimulate him to the cultivation of that righteousness which it was his paramount duty to cherish and exemplify.

Were these things duly considered, another and worthier reason would easily be discovered for the occasional intermingling of the moral and the ceremonial parts of the Mosaic legislation, than what is very commonly assigned. This did not arise from a confounding of the positive and moral, the shadowy and the abiding, as if they stood upon the same level, and no distinction were recognized betwixt them. The position of the Law of the Ten Commandments in the ark of the covenant, to say nothing of the other marks of distinction belonging to it, stood as a perpetual sign before the eyes of the people, that the things there enjoined held immeasurably the highest rank. It is, in truth, the most sublime exaltation of the moral above all material symbols of revelation, or ceremonial forms of worship, to be found in the religious annals of antiquity. In heathendom there is nothing to be compared with it, nor in the after history of the covenant people is there anything that can justly be placed above it. The elevated moral teaching of the prophets is but the reflection, or specific and varied application, of what stood embodied before them in the lofty pattern exhibited in the handwriting of Moses, wherein the ceremonial was appointed only for the sake of the moral, and in a relation of subservience to it. P. F.

Relation of the Law to the Promise.

The Old Testament Church had two covenants connected with her constitution—a covenant of grace as well as of law; and that the covenant of law, as it came last, so it took for granted the provisions of the elder covenant of grace. It was grafted upon this, and grew out of it. Hence, in revealing the terms of the legal covenant, the Lord spake to the Israelites as already their God, from whom they had received life and freedom—proclaimed himself as the God of mercy as well as of holiness—recognized their title to the inheritance as his own sovereign gift to them—thus making it clear to all, that the covenant of law raised itself on the ground of the previous covenant of grace, and sought to carry out this to its legitimate consequences and proper fruits. It was to impart greater solemnity to this revelation of righteousness—to give to its calls of duty a deeper impression and firmer hold upon the conscience—to render it clear and palpable that the things required in it were of most sure and indispensable obligation—it was for such reasons alone that the Law, after being proclaimed from Sinai, was solemnly ratified as a covenant (Ex. 24:3-8). But its having been turned into a covenant did not confer on it a different character from that which belonged to it as a rule of life and conduct, or materially affect the results that sprang either from obedience or disobedience to its demands; nor was any effect contemplated beyond that of adding to its moral weight and deepening its hold upon the conscience. And the very circumstance of its being ratified as a covenant, having God in the relation of a Redeemer for one of the contracting parties, was fraught with comfort and encouragement; since an assurance was thus virtually given, that what God in the one covenant of law required his people to do, he stood pledged in the other covenant of promise with his Divine help to aid them in performing. The blood of the covenant as much involved a Divine obligation to confer the grace to obey, as it bound them to render the obedience.

That this also is the order of God’s procedure with men under the Gospel, nothing but the most prejudiced mind can fail to perceive. Everywhere does God there present himself to his people as in the first instance a giver of life and blessing, and only afterward as an exactor of obedience to his commands. Their obedience, so far from entitling to salvation, can never be acceptably rendered till they have become partakers of the blessings of salvation. These blessings are altogether of grace, and are therefore received through faith. For what is faith but the acceptance of heaven’s grant of salvation, or a trusting in the record in which the grant is conveyed? So that, in the order of each man’s experience, there must be, as is fully brought out in the Epistle to the Romans, first a participation in the mercies of God, and then growing out of this a felt and constraining obligation to run the way of God’s commandments. Men must first become partakers of grace through the channel of God’s own providing. Only when they have done this are they in a condition to please and honor him. Not more certainly is faith without works dead, than all works are dead which do not spring from the living root of faith already implanted in the heart. P. F.

The Law a Schoolmaster, Leading to Christ.

The apostle states (Gal. 3:19) that “the Law was added because of transgressions, till the seed should come to whom the promise was made.” It was added to the provisions secured in the earlier covenant of promise because of the disposition in the hearts of the people to transgress the obligations under which they stood. It had an immediate and direct purpose of restraining the innate tendency to transgression, while it might be said to have the further end in view of preparing the minds of men for that coming seed. It brought the people into contact with the moral character of God, and bound them by covenant sanctions and engagements to make that the standard after which they should endeavor to regulate their conduct. But conscience, enlightened and aroused by the lofty ideal of truth and duty thus presented to it, became but the more sensible of transgressions committed against the righteousness required. Instead of being a witness to which men could appeal in proof of their having fulfilled the high ends for which they have been chosen and redeemed by God, the Law rather did the part of an accuser, testifying against them of broken vows and violated obligations. And thus keeping perpetually alive upon the conscience a sense of guilt, it served to awaken in the hearts of those who really understood its spiritual meaning, a feeling of the need, and a longing expectation of the coming, of him who was to bring in the more perfect state of things, and take away sin by the sacrifice of himself. It was this feature of the Law which the same apostle had more particularly in his eye, when he described it as a “schoolmaster to lead men to Christ,” shutting them up, by its stern requirements and wholesome discipline, to the faith which was afterward to be revealed. And the contrast which he draws in 2 Cor. 3 between the Law and the Gospel, proceeds entirely upon the same ground in reference to the Law; that is, it is viewed simply as a revelation of the perfect righteousness of God, and apart from the covenant of promise with which it was connected, fitted only to inspire fear, or to bring condemnation. He therefore calls it the ministration of condemnation, a letter that killeth, as in Rom. 7:10 he testifies of having found it in his own experience to be unto death: The apostle does not mean to say that this was properly the object for which the Law was given; but that it was an inseparable effect attending it, arising from the perfection of its character as a rule of righteousness, compared with the manifold imperfections and sins of men. And hence it only required spiritual minds, first to make them deeply sensible of their own guilt, and then to awaken in them the desire of something higher and better than was then provided for the true consolation of Israel.

An important connection thus arises between the Law and the Gospel, and both are seen to hold respectively their proper places in the order of the Divine dispensations. “It is true,” as Tholuck has remarked with sound discrimination, “that the New Testament speaks more of grace than of sin; but did it not on this very account presuppose the existence of the Old Covenant with the Law, and a God who is an holy and jealous God, that will not pass by transgression and sin? The Old Covenant was framed for the conviction of sin, the New for the forgiveness of sin. The moral law, which God has written in indelible lines upon the heart of every man, was once also proclaimed with much solemnity from Sinai, that it might be clear that God, who appeared in fire and flame as the revealer of his holy Law, is the same who has imprinted the image of holiness deep in the secret chambers of the bosom. Is not Israel, incessantly resisting with his stiff neck the God of love, until he has always again been reduced to subjection by the God of fiery indignation, an image of proud humanity in its constant warfare against God, who seeks to conquer them by anger and love?” Hence the order of God’s dispensations is substantially also the order of each man’s experience. The sinner must be humbled and bruised by the Law—that is, through the manifestation of God’s righteousness, he must have his conscience aroused to a sense of sin—before he can be brought heartily to acquiesce in the Gospel method of salvation. P. F.

Relation of the Christian to the Law.

When the believer receives Christ as the Lord his righteousness, he is not only justified by grace, but he comes into a state of grace, or gets grace into his heart as a living, reigning, governing principle of life. What, however, is this grace but the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus? And this Spirit is emphatically the Holy Spirit; holiness is the very element of his being, and the essential Law of his working; every desire he breathes, every feeling he awakens, every action he disposes and enables us to perform, is according to godliness. And if only we are sufficiently possessed of this Spirit, and yield ourselves to his direction and control, we no longer need the restraint and discipline of the Law; we are free from it, because we are superior to it. Quickened and led by the Spirit, we of ourselves love and do the things which the Law requires.

Does not nature itself teach substantially the same lesson in its line of things? The child, so long as he is a child, must be subject to the law of his parents; his safety and well-being depend on his being so; he must on every side be hemmed in, checked, and stimulated by that law of his parents, otherwise mischief and destruction will infallibly overtake him. But as he ripens toward manhood he becomes freed from this law, because he no longer needs such external discipline and restraint. He is a law to himself, putting away childish things, and of his own accord acting as the parental authority, had he still been subject to it, would have required and enforced him to do. In a word, the mind has become his from which the parental law proceeded, and he has consequently become independent of its outward prescriptions. And what is it to be under the grace of God’s Spirit, but to have the mind of God?—the mind of him who gave the Law simply as a revelation of what was in his heart respecting the holiness of his people. So that the more they have of the one, the less obviously they need of the other; and if only they were complete in the grace of the Spirit, they should be wholly independent of the bonds and restrictions of the Law. . . . The Law would be of no use to those really under the Spirit if the work of spiritual renovation, which his grace is given to effect, were perfected in us. But since this is far from being the case—since imperfection still cleaves to the child of God, and the flesh, in a greater or less degree, still wars against the Spirit, the outward discipline of the Law can never be safely dispensed with. Even Paul was obliged to confess that he found the flesh lusting against the Spirit, and that though he was ever following after, he was conscious of not having yet attained to the full measure of grace and excellence in Christ. Therefore, for his own quickening and direction, as well as for that of others, he felt it needful to press the demands of law, and to look to the exceeding breadth of its requirements.

Thus there are three different respects in which we still need the Law of God: (1) To keep us under grace, as the source of all our security and blessing. This we are ever apt, through the pride and self-confidence of the flesh, to forget, even though we have already in some measure known it. Therefore the Law must be our schoolmaster, not only to bring us to Christ at the beginning of a Christian life, but also afterward to keep us there, and force continually back upon us the conviction that we must be in all respects the debtors of grace. For when we see what a spirituality and breadth is in the Law of God, how it extends to the thoughts and affections of the heart as well as to our words and actions, and demands, in regard to all, the exercise of an unswerving devoted love, then we are made to feel that the Law, if trusted in as a ground of confidence, must still work wrath, and that, convinced by it as transgressors, we must betake for all peace and consolation to the grace of Christ. Here alone, in his atonement, can we find satisfaction to our consciences; and here alone also, in the strengthening aid of his Spirit, the ability to do the things which the Law requires. (2) The Law, again, is needed to restrain and hold us back from sins which we might be inclined to commit. It is true that in one who is really a subject of grace there can be no habitual inclination to live in sin; for he is God’s workmanship in Christ Jesus, created in him unto good works. But the temptations of the world, and the devices of the spiritual adversary, may often be too much for any measure of grace he has already received, successfully to resist; he may want in certain circumstances the willing and faithful mind either to withstand evil or to prosecute as he should the path of righteousness; and therefore the Law is still placed before him by the Spirit, with its stern prohibitions and awful threatenings to move with fear, whenever love fails to prompt and influence the heart. Thus even the Apostle Paul, with all his zeal and devotedness to the cause of Christ, finds it necessary to place before his view the dreadful possibility of his so far failing in duty as to become a castaway. (3) And the Law is yet again needed to present continually before the eye of the mind a clear representation of the righteousness which, through the grace of the Spirit, believers should be ever striving to attain. While that grace is still imperfect, they are necessarily in danger of entertaining low and defective views of duty; nay, in times of peculiar temptation or undue excitement, they might even mistake the motions of the flesh for the promptings of the Spirit, and under the guise of truth embrace the way of error. But the Law stands before them, with its revelation of righteousness, as a faithful and resplendent mirror, in which they may behold, without any danger of delusion or mistake, the perfect image of that excellence which they should be ever yielding to God. P. F.

From the first, the great revelation of Sinai was designed to work in the mind of the Hebrew a deeper conviction of his sinfulness, and a wider appreciation of what the Divine holiness required of him. It was meant to teach him that the Law of God is searching, pure, and spiritual; that it demands truth in the inward parts; and that it is not possible for unrenewed human nature perfectly to fulfil it. It was meant to bring home to his conscience the sense of failure to stimulate his trust in God’s mercy, and to educate him for the advent of a religion in which external rules should be interpreted by a Spirit of moral life, and the Law be written no more on blocks of stone, but on the tablets of a loving heart. Dykes.

So there it stood, this Law so holy, just, and good, so brief, so plain, so self-commending in its requirements, so majestic in its origin—there it remained; by Jehovah’s finger written on the tablets of stone; by Moses transcribed in the Book of the Covenant; engraven on the minds of the people by the solemnities of so august a promulgation. There that Law remained, a revelation of its Author’s holiness, a preacher of righteousness, a protest against the sins of men, and furnishing a text of tremendous import to every Elijah or Malachi or John the Baptist who came enforcing the claims of God, and appealing to the conscience of his countrymen. There it stood a challenge to the world for fifteen centuries, when at last Christ came. Entering on his mission, one of the first things he did was to resuscitate this Law and expound it all anew. The Sermon on the Mount was a sequel and a supplement to Sinai; but, as befitted the dawn of a more spiritual era, there was no cloud nor voice of trumpet to stun the soul and overwhelm the sense; but it was the simple force of truth, the tremendous power of heart-searching words—words penetrating as Omniscience, and weighty as unchanging righteousness. Then, as in many others of his sermons, the Lord Jesus expounded the Decalogue. From its negative he printed off the positive, and showed how beautiful is the resultant holiness, how blessed is the soul thus brought to harmony with God; and by something more Divine than any rhetoric, by the authority with which he spoke, and by his own sublime separateness from sin, he awakened in his hearers at once a wonder and a wistfulness: “Never man spoke as this man. Oh, that I were like him!” Hamilton.

| Ex. 20 2 I AM the LORD thy God, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. | De. 5 6 I am the LORD thy God, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. | | — | — | | 3 Thou shalt have none other Gods before me. | 7 Thou shalt have none other gods before me. | | 4 Thou shalt not make unto thee 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 earth beneath, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the earth | 8 Thou shalt not make unto thee a graven image, the likeness of any form that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the earth | | 5 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 iniquity of the fathers upon the children, upon the third and upon the fourth generation of them that hate me; and shewing mercy unto thousands, of them that love me and keep my commandments. | 9 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 iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the third and upon the fourth generation of them that hate me; and shewing mercy unto thousands, of them that love me and keep my commandments. |

I am the Lord thy God. Heb. Jehovah thine Elohim. These words may be considered as a preface to the ensuing commandments, embracing a declaration of the grounds on which their authority rests. Bush.—The preparation of the salvation of the world by Israel inevitably required as its starting-point the revelation of this fundamental verity, “I am that I am,” to which the natural intelligence of mankind could not of itself attain. Accordingly God, after having revealed to Moses this sublime idea, inscribed it on Mount Sinai at the head of the national law: “I, Jehovah, am thy God.” The fulfilment of the ancient promises made to Abraham by El Shaddai, the present work entrusted to the ministry of Moses, the future salvation of mankind to be effected by Christ, all rested definitively upon this doctrine, as the entire building, from the lowest to the highest story, rests upon the foundation laid once for all. Godet.—The two grounds or motives on which God required the obedience of the Jews are: that He was “the Lord their God;” and that He had “brought them out of the house of bondage.” These reasons extend to us Christians, no less if not more than they did to the Jews. For we are the “spiritual Israel, and heirs of the promises.” He is the “Lord our God,” by a more excellent covenant than he was theirs. He has brought us out of that slavery, of which the Jews’ Egyptian bondage was but a type. And he has prepared for us an inheritance in heaven, in comparison of which their land of Canaan is of no account. Abp. Wake.

The ground and reason of the Law is not that which underlies all natural law—the obligation of man the creature to God the Creator; but of man redeemed to God the Redeemer. “I am Jehovah, thy God, who brought thee out of the land of Egypt and out of the house of bondage.” And seeing that ye are mine by this double right, and bound to me by every tie of gratitude, I ask this obedient service at thy hands. S. R.—The motive to obedience involved in this miraculous interposition is still more emphatically dwelt upon De 6:20-24, “And when thy son asketh thee in time to come, saying, What mean the testimonies, and the statutes, and the judgments, which the Lord our God hath commanded you? Then thou shalt say unto thy son, We were Pharaoh’s bondmen in Egypt; and the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand: and the Lord showed signs and wonders, great and sore, upon Egypt, upon Pharaoh, and upon all his household, before our eyes: and he brought us out from thence, that he might bring us in, to give us the land which he swore unto our fathers. And the Lord commanded us to do all these statutes, to fear the Lord our God, for our good always, that he might preserve us alive, as it is at this day.” Bush.—Even here, in the Ten Words, grace is the foundation of all. The preface to the Decalogue is the gospel of the grace of God. One of the Rabbinical questions on this preface used to be: “Why did not Jehovah rather proclaim himself as Lord of heaven and earth?” It is easy for us now, in the light of the New Testament, to answer the question which perplexed the rabbis. It is not the greatgreatness, but the goodness of God, and specially his redeeming love, that leads men to repentance, that inclines their hearts to obey all the words of this Law. J. M. G.

The covenant is based upon a merciful deliverance. God gives his Law to his people after their deliverance from Egyptian bondage. It is intended to be a rule of life for those already redeemed. The Gospel precedes the Law—Moses the deliverer precedes Moses the lawgiver; the Lord was first known as the fountain of freedom, and then as the fountain of that Law within whose bounds freedom is to be realized. Edgar.—God speaks to the nation as a whole, establishing a special relation between himself and them, which is founded on his redeeming act, and is reciprocal, requiring that they should be his people, as he is their God. The manifestation in act of his power and of his love precedes the claim for reverence and obedience. This is a universal truth. God gives before he asks us to give. Even in the system, which is eminently “the Law,” the foundation is a Divine act of deliverance, and only when he has won the people for himself by redeeming them from bondage does he call on them for obedience. His rule is built on benefits. He urges no mere right of the mightier, nor cares for service which is not the glad answer of gratitude. The flashing flames which ran as swift heralds before his descending chariot wheels, the quaking mountain, the long-drawn blasts of the trumpet, awed the gathered crowd. But the first articulate words made a tenderer appeal, and sought to found his right to command on his love, and their duty to obey on their gratitude. The great Gospel principle, that the Redeemer is the Lawgiver, and the redeemed are joyful subjects because their hearts are touched with love, underlies the apparently sterner system of the Old Testament. God opens his heart first, and then asks for theirs. A. M.

The Jehovah of the Bible is our Maker unquestionably; our Providence, too; our Legislator and Rewarder and Arbiter. All these, with other characters, does he sustain. He sustains them to all men, and, as common and underlying and natural, they are everywhere taken for granted in Scripture; but the character which is peculiar to the God of revelation, and which it has pleased him throughout the history of revelation to sustain toward selected men, is that of Deliverer or Saviour from evil. Is man in bondage? Jehovah sets him free. Is man assailed by foes, visible and invisible? Jehovah is his defence. Is man sick in soul? Jehovah heals him. Is he under sentence of law? Jehovah redeems him. Is he spiritually dead? Jehovah regenerates. Whatever evil, in brief, his chosen people underlie, the history of revelation is the history of gracious interposition for rescue and deliverance out of it. “I am thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage!” “Thou shalt call his name Jesus: for he shall save his people!” Dykes.

The Law of God, in its holiness, justice, and goodness, is held up to those who have been delivered from the bondage of sin—those who have been released from the spiritual Egypt. It is not so held up to the ungodly—they cannot love it, they cannot see its beauty. The Law of God is given as a rule of life, not as a means of salvation. By the Lord’s telling us that he has already brought us out of Egypt and bondage, he does not say when he gives us the Law, “Do this and live,” but, “Since ye live, do this;” “Since my grace has redeemed you, and you rejoice in the liberty of the children of God, use my Law, the reflection of my perfections, as your beloved guide.” This is the position of the Decalogue to us. In its love and obedience it is only for God’s Israel; for the rest it is simply a monument of condemnation, a token that they are unholy and cannot keep it. The Law comes before the Gospel historically and logically, but the Gospel comes before the Law biographically and practically. The Law is the token and standard of holiness, but the Gospel is the gate to that holiness. Crosby.

The Opening Words God’s Covenanting Words.

The Bible calls the two stone tables the “Tables of the Covenant” and the “Tables of the Testimony.” The words written on those tables are the record and testimony of a twofold covenant between God and his people, rather than the mere record of the commandments of God for the government of his subjects. God’s covenanting words are the opening words on the stone tables of the covenant which he delivered to Moses on Mount Sinai: “I am Jehovah thy God, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.” The very name Jehovah includes the idea of a covenant-making and a covenant-keeping God. The reference to a deliverance already wrought by God for his people is in itself a promise of an abiding readiness to deliver, at any time and always, out of any bondage into which those people may be brought, or may bring themselves. This is the agreement of the party of the first part, in the covenant which is here made and recorded. And all this rests, as an agreement, on the performance, by the party of the second part, of the duties hereinafter specified and promised. Then follows the record, or the testimony, of the specific duties devolving on the people of God in and under this covenant of agreement between God and his people. The promise of God is responded to by the implied promise of his people. His terms of agreement are met by their terms of agreement. And the twofold covenant is complete, as recorded on the stone tables of the covenant, or the stone tables of the testimony of the covenant.

That this was the light in which the tables of the covenant were viewed by ancient Israel, all the course of the Bible narrative would go to show. In the first place, there was a formal acceptance of the terms of the covenant by the people of Israel. When Moses came down from the mount, “and told the people all the words of the Lord, and all the judgments, . . . all the people answered with one voice, and said, All the words which the Lord hath said [as a condition of the covenant] will we do.” And when the first set of stone tables were broken, other tables like them were prepared, “and the Lord said unto Moses, Write thou these words: for after the tenor of these words I have made a covenant with thee and with Israel. . . . And he wrote upon the tables the words of the covenant, the Ten Words.” Then these two “tables of the covenant,” or “tables of the testimony” of agreement, were enclosed in a sacred casket, which was known as the “ark of the covenant,” or the “ark of the testimony;” which was thenceforward guarded as the testimony and proof of the formal union between God and his people in their covenant relation.

To view the words of the Decalogue as arbitrary commandments of God, is to lose sight of their true place in the relation of God and his people. To view them as indicating the obligations of that people under the covenant which secures to them the abiding presence and favor and protection of God, is to bring them into that light where it is seen that “love is the fulfilment of the Law.” It is not enough to call the opening words of the record on the tables of the covenant “the preface to the Ten Commandments,” nor yet to count those words a portion of the first commandment. They are the covenant promise of Jehovah to his people, and there is in them the promise of the Gospel of Jesus Christ—in Jehovah’s covenant assurance of redemption from spiritual bondage. S. S. T.

Engraved by the special exertion of Omnipotence on slabs of rock, these “ten words” were designed to be imperishable. Placed by Divine command in the centre of the most sacred of all symbolic objects, in the most reverent and awful situation within the purview of Divine worship, beneath the mercy-seat, within the ark, in the Holy of Holies, they were thus certified by God, through his ritual and symbolism, as the very centre and foundation of all that relates to that bond between man and his Maker, which we call religion. In the light of all these facts, the titles given to the Decalogue by God in the various passages in which reference is made to it in the general legislation are very important. Taken together, they also are unique. Nothing else in all the circle of symbol or service or prophecy bears two titles. They are “covenant” and “testimony.” Both words are not uncommon. But to only one thing are both applied in common. The Decalogue alone is both covenant and testimony.

These two names for the Decalogue must be taken to illustrate and explain each other. The testimony was a declaration from God of something on which his covenant must rest. The covenant was an assurance from God to that which answered his testimony. The substance or matter of the Decalogue, as between God and mankind, was God’s testimony—his most emphatic, solemn, and unique declaration. As between God and those who reciprocate his declaration and conform to its substance, it was his covenant. What, then, does the testimony testify? What does the covenant pledge? It testifies the Divine ideal of perfect human living. It pledges Divine communion with such an ideal in practice—“I am the Lord my God.” The administrative and ritual Law was added because of transgression. There were none among mankind who answered to that ideal. Hence the testimony, by itself, cut off every man from the covenant. Imperfect men—transgressors—had to be dealt with. Therefore the ritual and statute Law was ordained as a schoolmaster, to teach a sinful people both to expect the advent of a Perfect One, and to comprehend how he would help them, transgressors as they were, to reach God’s ideal, to obtain his eternal adoption. Israel knew that those two stone tables lay immediately under the mercy-seat. The Church also knows that her justification is through the “righteousness” and “obedience” as well as through the sacrificial “blood” of the Perfect One, Jesus Christ. But unlike that ritual and administrative Law, the Decalogue corresponded perfectly with the promise. It was adapted to all nations. Not a tribe of men is known who have not been able to understand the broad terms of its testimony, and to apply it to themselves. As a covenant, it pledges positive and absolute blessedness to those who conform to it. Grey.

First Five Commandments.

The first commandment enjoins that God shall be worshipped and honored as the only God in the universe. The second commandment enjoins that God’s worship and honor shall be a spiritual worship and honor. The third commandment enjoins that God shall be worshipped and honored in sincerity and in truth; for the whole point of that commandment is not that God’s name shall not be taken, but that it shall not be taken insincerely, or as an empty form. The fourth commandment enjoins that God shall be worshipped and honored statedly—one day in seven especially. The fifth commandment enjoins that God shall be worshipped, or reverenced and honored, in his representatives; in the person of all those who represent him in places of rightful authority. And so the first five commandments point upward toward God, defining the scope and limits of his worship; as the worshipping of him solely, spiritually, sincerely, statedly, substitutionally—or in the persons of those who stand for him. S. S. T.

The first and second commandments enjoin the adoration of the one true God, who made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is; who must, therefore, be infinite in power and wisdom and goodness; the object of exclusive adoration; of gratitude for every blessing we enjoy; of fear, for he is a jealous God; and of hope, for he is merciful. They prohibit every species of idolatry, whether by associating false gods with the true or worshipping the true by symbols or images. Commanding not to take the name of God in vain, the third precept enjoins the observance of all outward respect for the Divine authority, as well as the cultivation of inward sentiments and feelings, suited to this outward reverence; and it establishes the obligations of oaths, and, by consequence, of all compacts and deliberate promises; a principle, without which the administration of laws would be impracticable, and the bonds of society must be dissolved. By commanding to keep holy the Sabbath, as the memorial of the creation, the fourth precept establishes the necessity of public worship, and of a stated and outward profession of the truths of religion, as well as of the cultivation of suitable feelings; and it enforces this by a motive, which is equally applicable to all mankind; and which should have taught the Jew that he ought to consider all nations as equally creatures of that Jehovah whom he himself adored; equally subject to His government, and if sincerely obedient, equally entitled to all the privileges His favor could bestow. Graves.

Form of the Commandments, Personal and Negative.

Throughout the Decalogue the address is made in the singular number. This is to render the language in the highest degree emphatic. Every individual to whom this Law comes is as directly and personally addressed as though it had been spoken to him alone. Bash.—In the form in which most of them are conveyed, “Thou shalt not,” we may perceive how God through the Law speaks to a sinful people, which could render submission to his will only by an inward struggle against its own. We see how the main object of the Law was to lead to the knowledge of sin. At the same time, the task is imposed on the people of gathering from everything which is forbidden that which is commanded. Gerl.—Where any sin is forbidden, the opposite duty is implicitly enjoined; and where any duty is enjoined, the opposite sin is implicitly forbidden. Where the highest degree of anything evil is prohibited, whatever is faulty in the same kind, though in a lower degree, is by consequence prohibited. And where one instance of virtuous behavior is commanded, every other that hath the same nature and the same reason for it is understood to be commanded too. What we are expected to abstain from, we are expected to avoid as far as we can all temptations to it and occasions of it; and what we are expected to practise, we are expected to use all fit means that may better enable us to practise it. All that we are bound to do ourselves, we are bound on fitting occasions to exhort and assist others to do, when it belongs to them; and all that we are bound not to do, we are to tempt nobody else to do, but keep them back from it as much as we have opportunity. Abp. Secker.

Man must have a god; but he forms his own god, and he makes it a god after his own image. Instead of forming his own character after the likeness of God, he would fashion a god after his own likeness. At a very early age in the history of the world there was a tendency to carnalize the Divine character by representing it in symbol, in brute symbol, as among the ancient Egyptians; in the more glorious of the inanimate works of God, as among the Persians; and in images of man’s own construction, as among the majority of nations. The very beauty of the works of God stole away men’s minds from the author, and they lifted up an eye, first of reverence and then of worship to the sun and moon and host of heaven, considered by the philosophers as emanations of Deity, and by the multitude as the Deities themselves. Others were more impressed with the heroic and the ancient, and deified the heroes of bygone ages, the renowned warriors of their country, the promoters of the arts and sciences. So strong was this desire to bring down celestial things to the level of terrestrial things, that in the Egyptian mythology heaven was merely a celestial Egypt, watered by a celestial Nile, lightened by a celestial sun, and divided into the same number of gnomes as the earthly country, and each of these the peculiar residence of the God worshipped in the corresponding district of the terrestrial Egypt. . . . “Man has never failed to make a God of his own image, and his various religions have never surpassed himself; for, if by these he imposes on himself acts and privations which he would not otherwise impose, those toils which are of his own choice do not raise him above himself. Hence those religions do not change the principles of his inner life: they subject him to an external away only to leave him free at heart.” (Vinet.) —Our ideas of God thus originating in our own hearts can never be made to rise higher than the fountain from which they have flowed. Hence the need of a revelation from a higher source to make known a God, not after the image of man, but a God after whose image of heavenly descent man may remodel his character, and thereby exalt it to a heavenly elevation and brightness. M’Cosh.

Man’s nature is religious. He instinctively worships some being, whom he regards as God. It is the nature of religious worship to assimilate the character of the worshipper to that of the being worshipped. The objects of worship, everywhere throughout the ancient world, were corrupt and corrupting. In order to man’s moral improvement, he must have a holy object of worship. It is obviously impossible for an imperfect and sinful man to originate the idea of a perfect and sinless god. The gods whom men invented and set up were as imperfect and wicked as themselves; and from the nature of the case, they could not be otherwise. Moses, on the contrary, revealed a holy and a perfect God. How pure, how amiable, how sublime, how transcendently glorious the character with which this God is invested by the Hebrew law-giver! How striking the contrast which his sublime delineation of Jehovah as the Maker, Proprietor, and Sovereign of the universe, invested with every conceivable excellence, presents to the grovelling mythology of the most enlightened portions of the ancient world, in which the objects of religious worship were pictured with the passions and vices of the fierce and licentious chieftains of the primitive ages! The publication of such a theology in such an age, when polytheism had covered the earth with the temples and the altars of its monster gods cannot be satisfactorily accounted for without allowing, and is satisfactorily accounted for by allowing, the truth of the Mosaic history, and the establishment of the Mosaic constitution by Divine authority. E. C. W.

Heathenism was in all its parts a nature-religion, the deification of nature in its entire compass. It saw in the world and nature not merely a manifestation of Godhead, but the very essence and being of nature were regarded in it as identical with the essence and being of Godhead, and as such thrown together: the ultimate foundation of all heathenism is pantheism. Hence the idea of the oneness of the Divine Being, though not absolutely lost, was not that of a personal existence, possessing self-consciousness and self-determination, but an impersonal One, the great It, a neuter abstract, the product of mere speculation, which is at once everything and nothing. Wherever the Deity appeared as a person, it ceased to be one, and resolved itself into an infinite multiplicity. But all these gods were mere personifications of the different powers of nature. From a religion which was so physical in its fundamental character, there could only be developed an ethics which should bear the hue and form of the physical. Above all that is moral rose natural necessity—fate, to which gods and men were alike subject; the highest moral aim for man was to yield an absolute submission to this necessity, and generally to transfuse himself into nature as being identified with Deity, to represent in himself its life, and especially that characteristic of it, perfect harmony, conformity to law and rule. The Mosaic religion, on the other hand, has for its first principle the oneness and absolute spirituality of God. The Godhead is no neuter abstract, no It, but I; Jehovah is altogether a personal God. The whole world, with everything it contains, is his work, the offspring of his own free act, his creation. Viewed as by itself, this world is nothing; he alone is—absolute being. He is in it, indeed, but not as properly one with it; he is infinitely above it, and can clothe himself with it as with a garment, or fold it up and lay it aside as he pleases. Now this God, who reveals and manifests himself through all creation, in carrying into execution his purpose to save and bless all the families of the earth, revealed and manifested himself in an especial manner to one race and people. The centre of this revelation is the word which he spoke to Israel; but this word is his Law, the expression of his perfect holy will. The essential character, therefore, of the special revelation of God is holiness. Its substance is, “Be ye holy, for I am holy.” So that the Mosaic religion is throughout ethical; it always addresses itself to the will of man, and deals with him as a moral being. Everything that God did for Israel, in the manifestations he gave of himself, aims at this as its final end, that Israel should sanctify the name of Jehovah, and thereby be himself sanctified. Bähr.

The idea of God, so far from calling forth in the ancient world the idea of worship, ever stood in antagonism with it. The idol was worshipped because he was not God; God was not worshipped because he was. One small nation alone of all antiquity worshipped God, believed the universal being to be a personal being. This whimsical fancy of that nation, as it appeared in the eyes of the rest, was cherished by it as the most sacred deposit. It was the foundation of its laws and polity; and from this narrow stock this conception was engrafted upon the human race. Mozley.

Thou shalt have none other gods before me. The same reasons which prove that God is prove that there is but one God. And what reason teaches in this matter Scripture everywhere confirms: forbidding us to worship or believe in any other Deity than the one Maker and Ruler of heaven and earth, who hath manifested himself to all men by the works of his hands; to the Patriarchs and Jews in the revelations recorded by Moses and the prophets; and to Christians by his Son our Lord, who, in a way and manner to us inconceivable, is one with the Father, and the Holy Spirit with both. Abp. Secker.

The first commandment, which concerns the acknowledgment of God, forbids the sin of atheists, who acknowledge no God; the sin of such as serve false gods; the sin of such as serve not the true God only, and aright. It also enjoins that we acknowledge but one God; that we have the only true God for our God; which must appear by our loving, fearing, trusting in and obeying Him above all others. Oxford Catechism.

The commandment forbids them to “have any other gods before” Jehovah—that is, not in preference to—such a height of impiety is not alluded to—but in presence of Jehovah, or as it is afterward expressed, with him. For false worship began not with the positive rejection of the true God, but by associating with his worship that of other gods and their images; nay, even images which professed to represent Jehovah himself. This was the sin of Aaron in the matter of the golden calf; we meet it again and again in the history of Israel. P. S.

The form is negative; the intent is positive. They are to know none but God, that they may concentrate all their strength on God. The command is equivalent to this: “Let all your personal, family, social, national life be regulated completely by the commandments of your God. And let this be done from love.” “Is this practicable? Can a man put forth all his strength for God when his energy is absorbed in trade?” “Yes; by regulating his business rightly, as God wills.” “Can a mother put forth all her strength on loving God, when the care of her family is taxing and even straining all her powers?” “Yes; by training her children for God.” And so in each one of life’s tasks. THIS IS SET ON GROUNDS OF TENDER APPEAL. God does not say, “When you love me supremely I will redeem you from Egypt;” but “I have redeemed you, therefore yield me your all.” The religions of man go out to an unrevealed being, if perchance he may be propitiated. Scriptural religion is the response of the heart of man to the revealed love of the Infinite One. Hence the Gospel claim is in substance like the Mosaic, although its form is new and the view we get of Divine love is larger (Rom. 12:1). In both duty is the same: the whole heart of man is demanded for God. But note the advance in light, tenderness, and strength in “the mercies of God;” the “beseeching” tone; the “consecration of a living sacrifice” asked; the reason given, “Your reasonable service.” Here is the difference in the method of the Gospel. C. C.

This first precept is levelled against the allowing of anything else to occupy the place in the heart which God should occupy. This command may be as really broken mentally as by setting up a physical image, or by setting up as an idol something else, or by the conception of another being as God. Nor is the sin of idolidolatry any less prevalent in our age than in the ages when men formally worshipped “gods many and lords many.” The chief difference between the modern and the ancient idolaters is merely in the different phase of thought—the ancients having a greater propensity than the moderns for giving the apprehensions of the mind and the creations of the imagination a visible outward expression. S. R.—The sin against this commandment which we are most in danger of, is giving the glory and honor to any creature which are due to God only. Pride makes a god of self, covetousness makes a god of money, sensuality makes a god of the body; whatever is esteemed and loved, feared or served, delighted in or depended on, more than God, that (whatever it is) we do in effect make a god of. This prohibition includes a precept which is the foundation of the whole Law, that we take the Lord for our God, acknowledge that he is God, accept him for ours, adore him with admiration and humble reverence, and set our affections entirely upon him. H.—Under this prohibition was included every pretence to supernatural power of commerce with supernatural beings, except with God himself in his own ordinances. Hence the severe laws against witchcraft and divination [of which we speak hereafter]. P. S.

This Precept is here Set in the Forefront of Israel’s National Laws.

It was the law for each one’s life. It was the rule for all. In their legislation, the supreme feature was to be the national recognition of God. And even now, yea ever, so far as the legislation of any people is based on righteousness, so far as that legislation recognizes the rights of the Great Supreme, so far as a people are loyal to God, to that extent will there be the surest guarantee for individual, family, social, and national prosperity. And it is owing to the supreme importance of thus launching into the world a nation with God for its Lord and righteousness for its law, that the open transgression of this first commandment was so severely punished, as being a crime against the State as well as a sin against God. C. C.

The first commandment bears in its negative form marks of the condition of the world when it was spoken, and of the strong temptation to polytheism which the Israelites were to resist. But the monotheism, which was here laid at the very foundation of Israel’s national life, parted them by a deep gulf from all the world, and determined their history. The prohibition has little force for us; but the positive command which underlies it is of eternal force. We should rather think of it as a revelation and an invitation than as a mere command. For what is it but the declaration that at the centre of things is throned not a rabble of godlings, nor a stony impersonal somewhat, nor a hypothetical unknowable entity, nor a shadowy abstraction, but a living Person, who can say “me,” and whom we can call “Thou,” and be sure that he hears? No accumulation of finite excellencies, however fair, can satisfy the imagination, which feels after one Being, the personal ideal of all perfectness. The understanding needs one ultimate Cause on which it can rest amid the dance of fleeting phenomena; the heart cannot pour out its love to be shared among many. Only when human nature finds all in one, and that one a living person, the Lover and Friend of all souls, does it fold its wings and rest as a bird after long flight. The first commandment enjoins, or rather blesses, us by showing us that we may cherish supreme affection, worship, trust, self-surrender, aspiration, toward one God. After all, our God is that which we think most precious, for which we are ready to make the greatest sacrifices, which draws our warmest love; which, lost, would leave us desolate; which, possessed, makes us blessed. If we search our hearts with this “candle of the Lord,” we shall find many an idol set up in their dark corners, and be startled to discover how much we need to bring ourselves to be judged and condemned by this commandment. It is the foundation of all human duty. Obedience to it is the condition of peace and blessedness, light and leading for mind, heart, will, affections, desires, hopes, fears, and all the world within, that longs for one living person even when it least knows the meaning of its longings and the reason of its unrest. A. M.

Man can only conceive of the Personal Power who rules above by transferring to him the noblest, and none but the noblest, features of man’s own nature. The spirit in man is nobler than his body. God is a Spirit not representable under any bodily shape. The noblest faculties of the human spirit are these: reason, or the power to perceive truth; conscience, or the power to prefer and choose good over evil; and free will, or the power to originate action. These, therefore, raised to an ideal height, we ascribe to the Divine Being. We adore him as Infallible Reason, Faultless Goodness, and Absolute Sovereign Will. Better than this we cannot do; higher than this we cannot go. Still the question remains: Are we in all this following a reliable or a delusive guide? What is it we are doing? We are virtually finding an image or reflection of our Maker within ourselves. Are we justified in doing so? The question is one which marks the limit beyond which speculation upon Deity cannot go. No answer to it is to be had from nature or reason. From revelation it has received two answers: an answer in word, when God said, “Let Us make man in our likeness!” An answer in fact, when the Son of God was made flesh and we beheld his glory. In him we do possess an image of the Invisible Godhead; an image human and therefore conceivable; yet not an image material or visible to the senses. The flesh even of Jesus profiteth nothing as a representation of the Divine Glory. But the Spirit of Jesus, his words that are Spirit, his acts that discover character, his self-revelation as righteous love—this is the likeness of the perfect Godhead. Having thus an image which we may lawfully and helpfully picture to our own minds, it ought to be an easy thing for us to keep ourselves from idols. We, when we draw nigh to worship, approach the Invisible and Incomprehensible through the Man Christ Jesus. Such as we picture to ourselves the gracious, lowly, and pure Son of Mary, such is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Let us humbly employ, to aid us in our acts of worship, the human character of our Lord. Let us strive toward an ever worthier conception of Jesus himself. Dykes.

Any graven image. All representations of God being false and absolutely contrary to his true likeness, the worship paid by their help or intervention is a lie, consequently an abomination to him; and all actions, gestures, or postures bespeaking religious worship, honor, or reverence to such images is the sin of idolatry. Wogan.—A good man is more an image of God than any painter or engraver can make; but if we give Divine honors to a good man it were idolatry; therefore much more if we give it to an image. Bp. Taylor.

To prevent every evasion, it is added, nor the likeness of any form. This command had the purpose of preventing the religion of Israel from becoming a worship of nature, which first honors God under the form of some creature, and then loses in nature the idea of him, and itself altogether. Gerl.—“The heaven above” refers to the worship of the stars and the sun; “the earth beneath,” to that of man and the beasts of the field; “the waters under the earth,” to aquatic animals—all of these having reference to what Israel had seen in Egypt. C. G. B.

Nor serve them. If they were forbidden to make or to acknowledge by the most casual outward gesture any such images, much less were they to serve them, or unite with those that did, either by offering sacrifice, burning incense, pouring out libations, making vows, building altars, consecrating temples, or any other act of equivalent import. The spirit of this second commandment, like that of the whole Decalogue, is plainly “exceeding broad.” It is undoubtedly implied that in paying our devotion to the true God we are not to employ any image or likeness for the purpose of directing, exciting, or assisting that devotion. Though it were worship designed to terminate in God, yet its being offered through such a medium would divest it of all acceptableness in his sight. God knows the downward and deteriorating tendency of our nature even in its best estate, and he sees that the employment of outward symbols of worship would gradually tend to lower the standard of devout feeling and finally to withdraw the mind from the ultimate spiritual object, and fix it upon the gross sensible medium. We have only to look at the history of the Greek and Latin churches for an abundant confirmation. From crosses and relics they proceeded to images and pictures, not only of God and Christ and the Holy Ghost, but of the virgin and of saints and martyrs without number; until those beings, and the paintings or carvings which represented them, originally designed as mere intercessors and aids to devotion, became to the more ignorant actual objects of worship. Bush.

The first two precepts are in substance: Worship God only, and that only spiritually, in the way of his appointment, as befits the worship of God, who is a Spirit. That such is the point of the second command is seen in De. 4:12, in the rehearsal of the Sinai scene forty years after. For there the intention of the command may be gathered from the reason assigned for its propriety, which is in substance: You saw no manner of similitude even when Jehovah condescended to appear and speak with an audible voice. As he did not appear to you in any shape, so he ought not to be represented by any shape in your mental conceptions of him, and of course then not in any physical similitude of him.

The modern discoveries of the Egyptologists, revealing so fully the ancient Egyptian idolatry under which Israel had lived for centuries, suggest a reason for the specific details, both of the original command—“Any graven image or the likeness of any thing”—and of the repetition in De. 4:16, “The likeness of male or female, the likeness of any beast, winged fowl, or fish, or anything that creepeth.” The idolatry of Egypt, it appears, was not so much a violation of the first command, enjoining the idea of the unity of God, as of the second command, prohibiting any representations of God. “The fundamental doctrine” (of the ancient Egyptians), says Wilkinson, “was the unity of Deity.” But this unity was not represented, and he was known by a sentence or idea, being, as Jamblichus says, “worshipped in silence.” But the attributes of this Deity were represented under positive forms, and hence arose a multiplicity of gods, that engendered idolatry. “In order to specify and convey an impression of these abstract notions to the eyes of men, it was thought necessary to distinguish them by some fixed representation, and the figures of Pthah, Osiris, Amun, Maut, Neith, and other gods and goddesses were invented as various signs of the various attributes of the Deity.” Such was the phase of idolatry under which Israel had served for centuries—a worship of God by graven images, as the tombs and temples of the ancient Egypt of that era show abundantly, and likenesses of things in heaven and things in the earth and things under the earth, for there was scarce an animal, or fowl, or fish, or reptile that did not furnish to that idolatry a similitude under which they worshipped God. There was therefore a very special reason for the particular enumeration in detail of this commandment.

A prevalent error on this whole subject arises in part from the usage of our language in applying the term “idolatry—idolo latria”—indiscriminately to the breach of the first commandment in worshipping false gods, and the breach of the second command in the worship of the true God by images and in the use of visible forms. Out of some such error as to the scope and aim of these two commands severally probably originated the mistake of the Romish Church in classifying these two commands together as but two clauses of the first commandment, and thereby destroying the force of both. In this case the meaning of both together would be, “thou shalt not worship any false god, nor shalt thou worship any image or likeness.” Then by the distinction made between “dowla” and “latria”—homage and worship—the dogma is derived, “thou mayest use the image to aid devotion, but shalt not worship the image itself, but only God through the image.” From this exposition of the scope and aim of this great precept of the Law of God, you will perceive that its chief end is to direct how God is to be worshipped as a spiritual being without the intervention of any representations of him by either of the hands or the imagination., S. R.

A jealous God. The passions of a moral being have their right as well as their wrong use. Hence anger, jealousy, and hatred are ascribed to God, not as passions, but as the feelings of a holy being in regard to that which is evil. M. —Throughout the Scriptures, idolatry is represented as spiritual adultery; hence, condescending to human modes of speech, the displeasure of God is described as jealousy. Jealousy is quick-sighted, deep-seated, swift-footed. An. —He is a “jealous” God. We need not be afraid of the word. It means nothing but what is congruous with the loftiest conception of a loving God. It means that he allows of no rival in our hearts’ affection or in our submission for love’s sake to him. A half trust in God is no trust. How can worship be shared or love be parted out among a pantheon? Our poor hearts ask of one another and get from one another, wherever a man and a woman truly love, just what God asks—“All in all, or not at all.” His jealousy is but infinite love seeking to be known as such, and asking for a whole heart. A. M.

The force of the phrase is perhaps best seen in the words of Moses to Israel when he gave them his parting advice, “for the Lord thy God is a consuming fire, even a jealous God” (De. 4:24), a passage which is quoted and used by the Apostle Paul in the Epistle to the Hebrews, where he is speaking of the future and eternal judgments of the Almighty. We must free the idea from the attachments which we give it from our view of human jealousy. There is no selfishness, no envy, no hatred in God’s jealousy. It is the abundant outflow of his holiness, which, by its own virtue, must either assimilate or destroy everything in the universe. It envelops in its grace, or it drives forth from its purity and from all the blessings which accompany its purity. When we say that God is a jealous God, we say that he is no passive Brahm, like the god of the Hindoos, but that he glows with zeal for all that is pure and good and holy and true, and is ever engaged actively in separating the holy and true from the unholy and false, striving to do it first by mercy, but if man makes that fail, then by the cutting off of his judgments. This character of God is especially alluded to in this second commandment, because this form of sin appeared the most seductive and the most obstinate. Crosby.

An image degrades God and damages men. By it religion reverses its nature, and becomes another clog to keep the soul among the things seen, and an ally of all fleshly inclinations. We know how idolatry seemed to cast a spell over the Israelites from Egypt to Babylon, and how their first relapse into it took place almost before the voice which “spake all these words” had ceased. In its grosser form, we have no temptation to it. But there are other ways of breaking the commandment than setting up an image. All sensuous worship in which the treacherous aid of art is called in to elevate the soul, comes perilously near to contradicting its spirit, if not its letter. The attempt to make of the senses a ladder for the soul to climb to God by, is a great deal more likely to end in the soul’s going down the ladder than up it. The history of public worship in the Christian Church teaches that the less it has to do with such slippery help the better. We need to remember that the God who is a spirit is worshipped “in spirit,” and that outward forms may easily choke and outward aids hinder that worship. A. M. —To picture Him forth by material images is an impossibility. The plausible plea of human nature has always been that material forms serve as aids to worship the Unseen. But the facts of human experience have uniformly disproved this hypothesis. It may cost us severe exertion of mind to lift our souls up to the worship of the true God; yet this very exertion is an unspeakable advantage. Davis.

Effect of the Use of the Crucifix.

It is impossible to preserve a sense of God’s pure spirituality when he is always adored as locally present to the senses in the form of a piece of matter. It is impossible to treat an image as a virtual representative of Deity without assuming that God somehow resembles his representation. The progress of idolatry is therefore downward. So far as it goes, it can be nothing but degrading. It must obscure the essential glory of the Divine nature. Dykes. —It cannot be denied that the image of our Lord Jesus Christ in his dying agony may produce a very powerful impression on the imagination and the heart. In the strength of that impression some find a sufficient justification for the devotional use of the crucifix. They say that the visible form does but call up the emotions which should be created by the sorrows and anguish in which the Divine love was revealed, and by which the sin of the world was atoned for; and that it makes the great sacrifice for human salvation more intensely real and vivid. But inevitably, by laws of association we cannot control, whatever is habitually associated with the creation of religious emotion comes to be invested with an artificial sacredness. The visible symbol is at first a symbol and nothing more; it assists thought; it stirs passion. At length it becomes identified with the God whom it represents. If every day I bow before a crucifix in prayer, if I address it as though it were Christ, though I know it is not, I shall come to feel for it a reverence and love which are of the very essence of idolatry. But there is another objection to this prostration of the soul before the image of the dying Christ. It makes our worship and our prayer unreal. We are adoring a Christ who does not exist. He is not now on the cross, but upon the throne. His agony is past forever. He has risen from the dead, and is at the right hand of God. If we pray to a dying Christ, we are praying not to Christ himself but to a mere remembrance of him. The injury which the crucifix has inflicted on the religious life of Christendom, in encouraging a morbid and unreal devotion, is absolutely incalculable. It has given us a dying Christ instead of a living Christ, a Christ separated from us by many centuries instead of a Christ nigh at hand. Dale.

“They that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth.” God is jealous for truth in his worship. He would have us think of him as glorious in power, wisdom, righteousness, holiness, and love. Our thoughts of God, limited at the best, need not be untrue. But untrue and dishonoring to him they will be if we come at them through the means of any graven image. God is jealous for spirit in his worship. The worship paid to a spiritual Being is nothing if it be not spiritual worship. But in the endless bowings and prostrations, genuflexions, cross-markings, and waving of the body at the word “Jesus,” there is, at least in appearance, a taking for granted that bodily postures are spiritual attitudes. Worship paid through the body will sink to merely bodily worship. When the lofty platform of spiritual worship is quitted, religious service will inevitably lose its meaning. Sense first comes as “an aid to faith,” and then is put in the place of it! C. C.

Still, as at Sinai, is the Most High a jealous God—jealous for the truth of his own nature; jealously concerned, that is, to be truly apprehended by his worshipper and truly represented by the conceptions which we frame of him. As he would not be misrepresented by the pagans’ degrading handiwork, so neither would he suffer injury in our thoughts. Be you therefore jealous for the honor of the Lord God of Hosts. Be careful to sanctify him in your hearts. Be scrupulous to cherish the loftiest idea of his grandeur, holiness, and love. And let all the worship we presume to offer at his footstool be such as becomes the revelation which he has made of his own glory in the person and in the cross of our Lord and Saviour. Dykes.

Visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children. This statement is often represented as not only wanting in equity, but opposed to an express provision of the Israelitish law (De. 24:10; 2 Kings 14:6; 2 Ch. 25:4), and especially to the Divine procedure as declared in Ezek. 18. The same principle, however, is repeated in a connection which shows it to be a feature of the Divine character in its most gracious aspect (Ex. 34:7); and even when that character was urged by Moses in a plea for pardon, this feature is introduced in a way that shows that it was not deemed to be contrary to equity, or even hostile to grace (Nu. 14:18). D. M.—The visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children does not mean that he punishes the innocent children of ungodly or the converted children of unbelieving parents for the sins of the latter; we read the very contrary of this (Ezek. 18:20). The threatening lights only upon those children who walk in their fathers’ footsteps, and “hate the Lord.” C. G. B.

If the children of ungodly men forsake the sins of their fathers, they break the chain of transgression and punishment. God deals with every man personally and directly, according to his own individual status and relation to him (Ezek. 18:19, 20). Even the hereditary consequences, which by natural laws still attach in such cases, as poverty and disgrace inherited from drunken fathers, have an altered aspect in the Divine intention, and in their real effect, where the sufferer is a true child of God (Rom. 8:18). W. H. G.—But where a man is opposed to God, rejecting his truth and salvation, he endorses and supports, and thus becomes responsible for the guilt of his ancestors. The stream of guilt runs down from father to son with accumulating force till it ends in its appropriate judgment. This judgment, so far as it is spiritual and eternal, falls on each sinner in the line, but so far as it is earthly and temporal, it falls on him who brings the sinfulness to the top of the climax—who adds the last drop to the fulness of the cup. Crosby.

It is not meant for a moment that the pious son of an idolatrous father shall be punished for his father’s idolatry. Josiah, the devout son of the idolatrous Amon, was not only exempted from any punishment for his father’s sin, but on the ground of his individual piety the penalty hanging over an idolatrous country was suspended until Josiah should be safe beyond its reach (2 Kings 22 : 16-20). It is only if the third and fourth generations continue haters of God themselves that they will be punished at once for their own sin and the sin of their God-hating or idolatrous ancestor. Hamilton.—The thrice-holy God can never be unjust. The idolatrous spirit would be entailed to children by natural law; hence punishment would culminate in final disaster. The menace was gracious, because, if parents will not abstain from sin for their own sakes, they sometimes will for the sake of their children. The mercy shall be far more ample than the wrath. The anger may be entailed on a few, and that in proportion always to the sin; the mercy shall flow, like a mighty river, to “thousands.” Davies.

We speak of national judgments and of punishments of whole populations as existing modes of Divine action and as what take place now. But this is in the sense in which we understand the Law when working as a part of God’s natural providence. We do not suppose that the Law is judicial, as punishing the good part of these populations judicially for the sins of the bad, and as guilty of those sins; but only meaning that in these signal calamities the order of nature is made subservient to moral purpose. [In this connection] the law of visitation of sins is regarded as sufficiently fulfilled if God does so connect sin with misery for any wise end, any purpose which is instructive, though not implying anything judicial. Mosby.—The Law of his providence sounds hard, but it is nothing more than stating in plain words the course of the world’s history, which cannot be otherwise if there is to be any bond of human society at all. We hear a great deal in modern language about solidarity and heredity. The teaching of this commandment is simply a statement of the same facts, with the addition that the Lawgiver is visible behind the Law. The consequences of conduct do not lie with the doers. “The evil that men do lives after them.” The generations are so knit together, and the full results of deeds are often so slow growing, that one generation sows and another reaps. Who sowed the seed that fruited in misery, and was gathered in a bitter harvest of horrors and crimes in the French Revolution? Who planted the tree under which the citizens of the United States sit? Did not the seedling come over in the Mayflower? As long as the generations of men are more closely connected than those of sheep or birds, this solemn word must be true. Let us see that we sow no tares to poison our children when we are in our graves. The saying had immediate application to the consequences of idolatry in the history of Israel, and was a forecast of their future. But it is true evermore and everywhere. A. M.

Them that hate me . . . them that love me. The words of the threatening describe the third and fourth generation, on whom the visitation of evil was to fall, as of those that hate God; just as, on the other hand, the mercy which was pledged to thousands was promised as the dowry of those that love him. Such children alone are here concerned who, in the language of Calvin, “imitate the impiety of their progenitors.” In short, the Lord contemplates the existence among his professing worshippers of two entirely different kinds of generations: the one, haters of God, and manifesting their hatred by depraving his worship, and pursuing courses of transgression; the other, lovers of God, and manifesting their love by steadfastly adhering in all dutiful obedience to the way of his holy commandments. To these last, though they should extend to thousands of generations, he would show his mercy, causing it to flow on from age to age in a perennial stream of blessing. But as he is the righteous God, to whom vengeance as well as mercy belongs, the free outpouring of his beneficence upon these could not prevent or prejudice the execution of his justice upon that other class, who were entirely of a different spirit, and merited quite opposite treatment. If children embraced the sinfulness of their parents, with the manifest seal of Heaven’s displeasure on it, as their iniquity would be more aggravated, so its punishment should become more severe; the descending and entailed curse would deepen as it flowed on, increasing with every increase of depravity and corruption, till, the measure of iniquity being filled up, the wrath should fall on them to the uttermost. P. F.

The sanction of the Decalogue is entirely Divine. There is no reference in it to human instrumentality for enforcing its observance. On the contrary, it expressly makes the fear and love of God the foundation of obedience. On the creature’s relation to God as Creator and Redeemer the preamble rests the obligation of all the commandments; love to God is declared to be the keeping of the Law; while the ground of transgression is stated to be hatred of him. With this fully agrees the testimony of Christ and of the apostles. And whatever may be alleged to the contrary, the morality of the Gospel is not different from or superior to that of the Decalogue. D. M.—The more closely we examine these precepts themselves, the more clearly we perceive their spiritual and comprehensive character. That they recognize love as the root of all obedience, and hatred as inseparable from transgression, is plainly intimated in this description of the transgressors and doers of the Law, as “those that hate God” and as “those that love him and keep his commandments.” P. F.

Unto thousands. Unto the thousandth generation. Jehovah’s visitations of chastisement extend to the third and fourth generation, his visitations of mercy to the thousandth—that is, forever. That this is the true rendering seems to follow from De. 7:9. Clark.—Judgment is God’s strange work, while mercy is his delight. Therefore we have here the forceful antithesis—the visiting of the iniquities of fathers upon children to the third and fourth generation, but the showing of mercy unto thousands of generations of them that love and obey. To a Hebrew mind this last clause of the second command would naturally suggest God’s mercies to Abraham, the well-known friend of God, upon whose posterity God was shedding forth his blessings to thousands of generations. So richly does the loving God reward his dutiful and trustful children! So much more grateful to his heart it is to bless even to the thousandth generation than to visit ininquity even so far as to the third and fourth! H. C.

There is an intense interest connected with the expression “them that love me.” It plainly intimates that those who have no other God before the true God, and make no other God beside him, are those who at the same time love him. It proves that the negative quality of not forsaking the true God is understood to imply the positive quality of being faithful to him and loving him. This gives a new character to the whole Decalogue. It now becomes not a mere negative law of righteousness, but a positive law of love. This principle applying to the first two precepts will extend to the whole. M.—The very words “love” and “hate” in their connection here directly intimate that love is the principle at the root of all obedience and right action; and its opposite—hate—is that which lies at the root of transgression and all evil-doing. And this double fact is shown in the simplest analysis of each of the several laws of the second table. Love needs none of these prohibitions. B.—So that the heart may truly be called the alpha and the omega of this wonderful revelation of law: it stands prominently forth at both ends; and had no inspired commentary been given on the full import of the ten words, looking merely to these words themselves, we cannot but perceive that they stretch their demands over the whole range of man’s active operations, and can only be fulfilled by the constant and uninterrupted exercise of love to God and man, in the various regions of the heart, the conversation, and the conduct. P. F.

Ex. 20 7 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. 8, 9 Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour, and 10 do all thy work: but the seventh day is a sabbath

De. 5 11 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. 12 Observe the sabbath day, to keep it holy, as the LORD thy God commanded 13 thee. Six days shalt thou labour, and do 14 all thy work: but the seventh day is a sabbath unto the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor unto the LORD thy God : in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates : for in six 11 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.

thy son, nor thy daughter, nor thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thine ox, nor thine ass, nor any of thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates ; that thy manservant and thy maidservant may rest as well as thou. And thou 15 shalt remember that thou wast a servant in the land of Egypt, and the LORD thy God brought thee out thence by a mighty hand and by a stretched out arm : therefore the LORD thy God commanded thee to keep the sabbath day.

In the first commandment, the solitary object of religious observance has been declared in opposition to false or secondary divinities. In the second, the spirituality of true worship has been vindicated against sensuous methods of conceiving and representing God. It remains to decree the true spirit of worship—the religious awe or reverence inspired by the moral elevation of Jehovah—which lies at the root of genuine piety. This I take to be the inner sense and ultimate scope of the third commandment. Dykes.

The meaning of the prohibition is that the name of Jehovah is not to be invoked or used unadvisedly, lightly, or wantonly, much less to sanction untruth. By the last clause of the verse a connection is established with the previous commandment, where there is mention of the visiting of guilt. The word used is a remarkable one, the root signifying purification by sacrifice : Jehovah will not purify, absolve, reckon as innocent. Alf.—If God has been pleased to discover to us any venerableness in his nature and attributes, we are guilty if we fail to venerate him accordingly. And the name of God in Scripture phraseology is but a compendious sign for all that God has made apparent in human experience of the hidden majesty or goodness of his own nature—in a word, of what Scripture terms his “glory.” Before that manifest glory of the Divine, man’s becoming attitude is one of reverential awe and fear. In this fear or religious veneration lies the indispensable basis of all religion. Destroy that, you destroy the very capacity for worship—nay, for spiritual life itself. Flippancy or contempt for the Divine—is the death of the soul. Dykes.

God is to reign supreme in the heart, to be exclusive in his worship, and to be mentioned always with reverence by the lips. The same holy jealousy which burns against the false worworshipper for the same reason burns against the reckless speaker, where the subject of speech is the almighty and infinite Jehovah. Where there is a want of reverence there is a want of allegiance. So far forth as a subject is disrespectful, he is rebellious ; and all true government, especially the pure and holy government of God, must take cognizance of the rebellion in accordance with holiness and truth. Crosby.

As the object of worship, in this great summary of duties to God, is declared to be God only, and as this God is to be worshipped only spiritually in the way of his appointment, and not by any similitude of man’s choice or humanly devised aids to worship, so it is further declared that God shall ever be regarded with reverence, and his name used only in solemn act of worship. As God is to be worshipped he must be known, as he cannot be known by any similitude or likeness, but only as he reveals himself by names, titles, and declared attributes ; so these names, titles, and attributes, when made known, are to be regarded with special reverence, and only used in the way of worship. And this properly enough, since there must naturally be something in the mode by which he reveals himself to fill the mind with reverent and awful conceptions of his character. Hence the peculiar significance of the phrase—“the name of the Lord,” as used in the Scriptures Among men the name is that by which we distinguish and more or less perfectly describe each other. In a special sense we sometimes take the name of a certain man to represent a scheme or policy or a system of ideas ; and men range themselves under the name of their representative man. So in the revealed word, the name of God is used to denote all those attributes, signs, and acts whereby his moral essence is made known to us—all the manifestations of his nature and purposes whereby his character is made known to men. Thus Moses, when called of God to his high mission, demanded to know by what name he should reveal God to Israel. Hence, throughout the Scripture, the name of God is used in that very peculiar manner, as by David, “Thou hast magnified thy Word above all thy name.” “We will remember the name of the Lord, our God.” The name of God is said to be “holy and reverend.” His name is “loved,” is “great,” is “glorious,” is “magnified;” and Moses says, “What will become of thy great name?” God’s enemies are said to “blaspheme,” to “pollute,” to “despise,” to “dread” his name. The worship of God is defined as “calling upon the name of the Lord.” The terms of salvation are simply, “Whoso shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.” The great initiatory ordinance of gospel worship is baptism, “in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.” Thus the name of God is taken to denote every means by which he has chosen specially to manifest himself.

There is no plainer indication of the tendency to superficial reading of the Scriptures than the notion that this third great precept of the Law means simply to forbid profane swearing. Such a reading of the command overlooks entirely the peculiar significance of “the name of the Lord” in Scripture. Once we comprehend fully this significance, we will more fully appreciate the wonderfully philosophic and comprehensive exposition of this third commandment in our children’s catechism—that this commandment “requires the holy and reverent use of God’s names, titles, attributes, ordinances, words, and works,” and “forbids the profaning or abusing of anything whereby God makes himself known.” S. R.

The third commandment must be so understood as to bring it into line with the two preceding, as of equal breadth, and equally fundamental. It cannot, therefore, be confined to the use of the name of God in oaths, whether false or trivial. No doubt, perjury and profane swearing are included in the sweep of the prohibition; but it reaches far beyond them. The name of God is the declaration of his being and character. We take his name in vain when we speak of him unworthily. Many a glib and formal prayer, many a mechanical or self-glorifying sermon, many an erudite controversy, comes under the lash of this prohibition. Professions of devotion far more fervid than real, confessions in which the conscience is not stricken, orthodox teachings with no throb of life in them, unconscious hypocrisies of worship, and much besides, are gibbeted here. The most vain of all words are those which have become traditional stock-in-trade for religious people, which once expressed deep convictions, and are now a world too wide for the shrivelled faith which wears them. A. M.—All formalism is a sin against this commandment, and all worship founded on and ending only in that which is external is formalism. Ritualism which seeks not edification but aesthetic propriety is formalism. Conformity which comes to church once a week not to worship but to fulfil worldly propriety is formalism. He who has a creed upon his lips without any faith in his heart is taking God’s name in vain. He who, without repentance, faith, and love, taketh and eateth the sacrament, is taking God’s name in vain. Tudor.

It hardly needs noting that blasphemy is included under the ban of this precept. Whosoever cursed God or blasphemed his name was to be stoned. The son of Shelomith blasphemed, and was stoned by the congregation (Lev. 24: 10-16, 23; Nu. 15: 30, 31). B.

Nothing is more easy than to create a laugh by a grotesque association of some frivolity with the grave and solemn words of Holy Scripture. Surely this is profanity of the worst kind. By this Book the religious life of men is quickened and sustained. It contains the highest revelations of himself which God has made to man. It directly addresses the conscience and the heart and all the noblest faculties of our nature, exalting our idea of duty, consoling us in sorrow, redeeming us from sin and despair, and inspiring us with the hope of immortal blessedness and glory. Listening to its words, millions have heard the very voice of God. It is associated with the sanctity of many generations of saints. Such a Book cannot be a fit material for the manufacture of jests. Dale.

This law of the third commandment condemns by implication a great deal which falls very far short of either blasphemy or false oaths. To assume a profession of piety for private ends or from unworthy motives is to break this law. To wear a sacred office without possessing the spirit of it is to break this law. To affect zeal for Divine truth when it is victory for our own party opinions we are aiming at is to break this law. To discharge the offices of worship in public or private in a careless mood with wandering thoughts is to break the law. To jest with holy subjects, to make the Church of God a mere arena for faction, to discuss and dispute over his saving Word as a theme for barren intellectual display, these are acts which break the law. To forget that God rules the world, that all truth whatever is his truth, and that all right action is his will, this would be a breach of this law. To mock at sin, to sneer at principle, to crumble down the edge of responsibility, or to empty of its solemnity either the life or the death of men, all that surely breaks this law. To cherish toward God himself a querulous or a suspicious temper, to affect without sincerity a needless scepticism, to question the wisdom or the kindness of his allotments, to brood moodily over his providence, to pare down to a minimum the large charity of his Gospel, to trust him little, to dread him without cause, and serve him in a bondman’s spirit—are not such things as these breaches of this law? It cannot be enough surely to keep the lips from idle oaths or the flippant speeches of the scorner, unless in our heart of hearts we honor as it deserves the venerableness of the Father’s majesty, trust as it deserves the generous grace of the Son, and welcome as it deserves the holy influence of the Spirit. In brief, keep this law according to the inmost thought or meaning of it, and you will be found to breathe over all the movements of your intellectual and social life just such a tender, reverent, and devout aroma of piety as befits the closet and the secret hour of prayer. Dykes.

The positive side underlying the negative is the requirement that our speech of God shall fit our thought of God, and our thought of him shall fit his name; that our words shall mirror our affections, and our affection be a true reflection of his beauty and sweetness; that cleansed lips shall reverently utter the name above every name, which, after all speech, must remain unspoken; and that we shall feel it to be not the least wonderful or merciful of his condescensions that he “is extolled with our tongues.” A. M.

The Oath, Used Truthfully or Falsely.

The oath properly administered and on proper occasion honors God, as an acknowledgment of his presence, his truth, and his supreme authority. It avows him as the object of our worship, as the Lord of our conscience, and the Judge of our thoughts. Hence the command was, “Thou shalt fear the Lord thy God and serve him, and thou shalt swear by his name,” “He that sweareth in the earth, shall swear by the God of Truth.” S. R.—An oath is, in fact, an act of religious worship, in which God is solemnly called upon to witness the truth of the affirmations made, and to act as punisher of the crime if any perjury is committed. It imports that we acknowledge him to be the infallible searcher of hearts, and the powerful and stern avenger of all falsehood, fraud, and deceit in such a solemn transaction; and no inference can be plainer than that it is the height of irreligion and profanity to interpose that awful name in attestation of anything that is false, fraudulent, or hypocritical. The rule by which such an act is to be governed is expressly given (Jer. 4:2), “Thou shalt swear in truth, in judgment, and in righteousness,” and any deviation from this is an infraction of the precept before us, and though often accounted a trivial offence among men, yet there is scarcely a more atrocious or provoking crime in the sight of the infinitely true and pure and upright Jehovah. Bush.—Perjury is not only a wrong to this or that particular person who suffers by it, but it is treason against human society, subverting at once the foundations of public peace and justice and the private security of every man’s life and fortune. Tillotson.

Profaneness in Speech.

The authority of God is the source of all order, purity, peace, and happiness in the universe. Profanity in a community tends to do away with a reverence for the name, the worship, and authority of the Deity. It is an act of rebellion against the government of God, and an act of desolation upon every human interest protected by a sense of moral responsibility. It is striking at every obligation, human and Divine, because it strikes at the great source of all obligation. That men shall speak truth under the sanction of an oath in courts of justice; that they shall respect the rights of property and be honest in traffic; that parents shall sustain and educate their children, and children shall reverence and obey their parents; that solemn contracts between man shall bind the conscience; that the marriage vow shall be held sacred, and female purity cherished; that men shall obey law, respect each other’s rights—all this is essential to the existence of endurable society. But all these depend on a sense of responsibility, a consciousness of religious obligation. Now, as this sense of obligation has its origin in a fear and reverence for the heart-searching God as the final judge, it is obvious that he who teaches men by example to trifle with the name and authority of God, does all in his power to unhinge and desolate society. Brainerd.

This precept is chiefly violated by the profane use of the name of God on trivial occasions; in familiar discourses, whether it be in mirth or in anger. There are some men who are in the constant habit of interlarding their common discourses with the name of God; generally in the form of swearing, at other times in the language of cursing and execration, without any assignable motive, except it be to give an air of superior spirit and energy to their language. The mention of the Deity is often so introduced as evidently to appear a mere expletive; nor is anything more common than to hear such persons declare they absolutely mean nothing by it. The criminality of taking the Lord’s name in vain is enhanced by the absence of every reasonable temptation. It is not, like many other vices, productive of either pleasure or emolument; it is neither adapted to gratify any natural appetite or passion, nor to facilitate the attainment of a single end which a reasonable creature can be supposed to have in view. It is properly the “superfluity of naughtiness,” and can only be considered as a sort of peppercorn rent, in acknowledgment of the devil’s right of superiority. It is a vice by which no man’s reputation is extended, no man’s fortune is increased, no man’s sensual gratifications are augmented. If we attempt to analyze it, and reduce it to its real motive, we find ourselves at a total loss to discover any other than irreligious ostentation, a desire of convincing the world that its perpetrators are not under the restraint of religious fear. But as this motive is most impious and detestable, so the practice arising from it is not at all requisite for that purpose; since the persons who persist in it may safely leave it to other parts of their character to exonerate them from the suspicion of being fearers of God. They are not so near to the kingdom of God as to be liable to be mistaken for its subjects. R. Hall.

Profaneness can be of no possible use to him who indulges in it, or to any one else. If it were not wicked it would be simply superfluous and ridiculous. As it is, it is, as Robert Hall said, in allusion to feudal times, merely “a peppercorn rent to show that a man belongs to the devil.” So far from giving, as some suppose, assurance of the truth of what is spoken in connection with it, it is the reverse. All observation shows, what might have been inferred without it, that he who will swear will lie. Why not? The practice is scarcely less offensive to a just taste than to a sensitive conscience, and whoever may be guilty of it deserves to be not only condemned and abhorred, but despised. M. H.

Some sins are perpetrated in secret, and wait a final judgment for their disclosure; but profanity is always a patent, social vice; persuading to imitation by example. Some sins are found to be wrong by experience, by inference; but profanity is a direct, bold sin against religion and God. It says the great God need not be reverenced; his laws need not be obeyed; his threatenings may be safely spurned; his worship may be condemned; all interests dependent on a sense of right and wrong may be sacrificed. Brainerd.

The gross vice of profanity—the irreverent use of God’s name in ordinary conversation—in the first place, is a sin which cannot plead the excuse of strong temptation, as most other sins; such as drunkenness or gaming; or lust or dishonesty. These may all put in some plea of temptation; but this sin has no such plea; it is pure wickedness alone. In the second place, nothing is accomplished by it, but it rather works out the reverse of what it seems to be used for—namely, to confirm what the swearer says. It is not the man who swears, but notoriously the man whose “yea is yea and nay, nay,” on whose word everybody most relies—and that very justly—on the principle that a man must first respect himself if he would gain the respect of other men. The very use of an oath to confirm is an implied want of confidence in one’s own reputation for veracity. True self-respect should assume that. Nor has the plea any more force which regards the profane oath as a mere ornament or “figure of speech”—a sort of rhetorical intensity. Such plea the ignorant and debased might urge, who have been educated to no refinement of taste. Or such plea, perhaps, some premature young men might urge, who are ambitious of precocious depravity, and utterly void of every conception of true rhetorical taste. But what a plea for sensible men! Nor is there any apology in the plea of no bad intention or the plea of ignorance. For, even according to the prevalent notions of men, this thoughtless ignorance is a most glaring contempt of God. To have one’s own name bandied about as a byword on the streets, or to hear the name of one’s father, mother, sister, brother rudely called by the vulgar tongues of men, is, of all other insults, the most harrowing. Yet in this case the name of one higher than all—that to every creature of us deserves to be held dearer than all from many a kindness—men thus make light of. S. R.

To excuse the use of oaths by custom is to wash thyself with ink; and to accuse thyself deeper, that thou art long practised in that sin. But if thou wouldest indeed be delivered from it, seek for a due knowledge of the majesty of God, and thence a deep reverence of him in thy heart; and that will certainly help that habituated evil of thy tongue. It will turn thy regardless abuse of that name, by vain oaths and asseverations, into a holy frequent use of it in prayers and praises. Thou wilt not then dare to dishonor that blessed name that saints and angels bless and adore, but will set in with them to bless it. Leighton.

It is enough to make the blood curdle to think of the name of God bandied about as a bauble and plaything of fools. This offence cannot go unpunished. If there be a God, he must vindicate his own majesty and glory. Engrave it upon your minds, fix it in the very depths of your souls, that it is a fearful thing to make light of God. It is the very spirit and essence of all evil, the very core of iniquity. If you could see it as it is, in the naked enormity of its guilt, you would flee from it as from the very pestilence of death. You may sport with the whirlwind and trifle with the storm, you may lay your hand upon the lion’s mane and play with the leopard’s spots, you may go to the very crater of a burning volcano and laugh at the lava which it belches out in thunder, you may trifle with any and everything, but trifle not with God. Let there be one holy thing upon which you dare not lay a profane hand, and let that be the name of God. Thornwell.

The Lord will not hold him guiltless. There was a reason why this threat of punishment was attached to the third commandment. From crimes against reputation, property, and life, society will protect itself. So crimes against physical and social laws, like intemperance, idleness, and profligacy, execute their own penalties, in the sickness, poverty, and disgrace which they bring on the transgressor. But profanity is a sin not primarily against society, not against natural laws, but directly against God. Therefore God takes special cognizance of the profane swearer, and declares that the offender, though tolerated by society and unrebuked by any natural penalties, shall nevertheless meet punishment at the hands of God. Brainerd.

God’s authority is supreme over our speech. The faculty of speech is a noble endowment, and differentiates man from the inferior races. The tongue is a mighty instrument, either for evil or for good. We take God’s name in vain whenever we use it needlessly, flippantly, or in jest. The moral effect upon men is pernicious, corrupting, deadly. The penalty is set forth in negative language, but it is intended to convey deep impression. Others may hold it as a venial sin; not so God. Davies.

Differences in the Records in Exodus and Deuteronomy.

In Deuteronomy (1) the reading is “Observe” instead of “Remember.”

(2) Three new clauses are inserted: “As the LORD thy God hath commanded thee;” “Nor thine ox nor thine ass;” “That thy manservant and thy maidservant may rest as well as thou.”

(3) The reason given for the commandment refers to the deliverance of the Israelites from Egypt, instead of the rest of God after the six works of creation. B.—The only material difference between the Decalogue as given in Deuteronomy and as delivered at Sinai is that in Deuteronomy the reason assigned for the Sabbath is not the rest after creation, but the redemption out of Egypt. This is easily accounted for. It is in keeping with the fact that in Deuteronomy the Law is given not so much as a code for all peoples, as in the form of a covenant between Jehovah and the tribes of Israel. D. F.

In the repetition of these Ten Commandments in De. 5, this deliverance out of Egypt is particularly mentioned as a principal reason for observing the Sabbath. But as that deliverance was only typical of our redemption by Jesus Christ, and as the redemption from eternal misery was of so much greater concern to the world than any temporal deliverance, or even than the creation itself, as well as of greater glory to God, this points out and justifies the reason why our Christian Sabbath is kept upon the day whereon that redemption was wrought and finished—namely, on the day of our great Redeemer’s Resurrection. This was the day of his rest from that noblest of all his works, the redemption of the world, and our deliverance from death. Wogan.

NOTE.—For repetitions of the Sabbath commandment in its special relations to Israel, see Sections 139 and 161. B.

The series of commandments referring to Israel’s relations with God is distinctly progressive from the first to the fourth, which deals with the Sabbath. The fact that it appears here, side by side with these absolutely universal and first principles of religion and worship, clearly shows that the giver of the code regarded it as of equal comprehensiveness. A. M.—On that ancient record of creation with its account of the weekly rest, this fourth commandment expressly plants itself. It does not speak as a law would which for the first time set up a weekly festival before unheard of. It simply calls to the recollection of the people an institution which, like circumcision or like sacrifice, had necessarily slipped out of general public usage under the hard conditions of Egyptian slavery. “Remember the Sabbath day,” it begins; which appears to me to be impossible language if no mortal had ever heard of a Sabbath day before. Dykes.

As soon as God had an organized people to be the depositary of his truth, and a written language for its preservation, he then gave these laws in a formal manner. When we remember that there was no written record at the first, no regular system of codified laws until the time of Moses, the communications up to that time being all verbal and traditional, and that the early history of the world is exceedingly compact, whole centuries in some instances being put upon a single page, we need not be at all astonished that there should be the briefest allusion to, if not entire omission of, any distinct mention of any law concerning the Sabbath. In the first ages God acted more the part of a Father, and in the absence of a written law, and even of a written language, the presumption is that He frequently appeared at different times, and in different ways, and thus made known his will to the Patriarchs on all matters of faith and practice. And if He could so communicate with the Patriarchs on other matters, as he certainly did, why not also on the Sabbath? Stacy.

Ex. 20:8. Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. The implied injunction of the words spoken in Eden was—make it a holy day. God blessed the seventh day and made it holy: now, therefore, remember that original injunction. To remember a previous day made holy, must surely imply a precept setting it apart as holy time. As given here the law of the Sabbath is expanded into its legitimate details. The prohibition of labor is applied to children, to servants, to cattle, and to strangers. Then the reason for the command essentially as given in Eden is reiterated. Noticeably, the statement uses the same Hebrew verbs—“bless” and “sanctify” [or “hallow”]—which are used in Gen. 2:3. It seems plainly implied that God places before men his own example of creative work during six day-periods and of rest from this work on the seventh as a reason or motive for their observance of the Sabbath—one day of rest after six of toil. A secondary consideration is doubtless that by this arrangement the Sabbath would be perpetually suggestive of man’s relation to God as his Infinite Creator and Father. The linking of the Sabbath to God’s creative work and rest would naturally make that work a fact ever present to human thought—blending its influence with the sacredness and with all the employments of this holy day. Man desists from labor. Why? Because God did. After what labor? That of making the heavens and the earth and man. Therefore let man remember God as his Creator and render him the homage of obedience and the homage of adoration, gratitude, and praise. Thus the historic origin of the precept became suggestive of the thoughts, the words, and the Divine worship appropriate to his holy day. H. C.

That the Sabbath is for man is shown: from its primeval origin, from its place in the moral Law, from the respect paid to it by the prophets, from Christ’s defence of it, from its reappearance in the new dispensation in a form adapted to the genius and wants of Christianity, and from its proved adaptation to the constitution of man’s nature. Orr.—The Sabbath, in its origin, was also from the first designed to serve as an emblem of spiritual things—an emblem of the blessed rest which man was called to enjoy in God. But in both respects it stands most nearly on a footing with the ordinance of marriage: both alike owed their institution to the original act and appointment of God; both also took their commencement at the birth of time—in a world unfallen, when, as there was no need for the antitypes of redemption, so no ceremonial types or shadows of these could properly have a place; and both are destined to last till the songs of the redeemed shall have ushered in the glories of a world restored. P. F.

De. 5:12. Observe the Sabbath day. In the time of the legislator an entire rest from the work of daily life was to reign throughout the camp; and it may be conjectured that the people assembled before the altar at the hours of the morning and evening sacrifices for prayer and contemplation, and to listen to the reading of portions of the Divine Law, perhaps from the lips of Moses himself. Clark.—The Old Testament Sabbath was in its deepest import not merely a duty, but also a right to rest in the midst of unrest; a privilege of freedom in earthly bondage. It was not merely a binding statute, but at the same time a gracious release from the accompanying and equally binding command to labor; a memento of the blessed rest of God and the redemption of his people; a gospel, therefore, in the Law. Schaff.

This is a law both of labor and of rest. “Six days shall thou labor” is no less imperative and essential a portion of it than the other portion:

“on the seventh thou shalt not work.” Over the greater part of mankind the primitive law of toil asserts itself vigorously enough. Hunger, cupidity, and the will of the stronger are all grim taskmasters, urging the vast majority of human beings only too inexorably to “eat their bread in the sweat of their face.” It is in the interest of every son of toil that the beneficent Lawgiver would impose a limit upon this law of work by placing at the side of it a law of rest no less authoritative. He fences off a sacred space that he may lay an arrest upon the encroachments of greed. It will always be found, however, that a reasonable obedience to the law of labor is necessary to our full enjoyment of this merciful law of rest which limits it. Idle people, with whom every day is a day of leisure, and ennui the chief of enemies, cannot know what a Sabbath means. Before they can be in a position to observe the day of repose, they must learn to do a week’s work. To all of us who are not incapacitated by disease or old age, the Creator has appointed our work on earth, directing us to that share in the variegated field of human activity which belongs to us, partly by our special aptitudes, and partly by our providential circumstances. It is no less his will than it is for our own interest, that we should discharge our appointed task diligently and faithfully during six days out of seven. Whatever be the function by which, under the complicated arrangements of a highly-civilized State, we serve the community, and by service earn an honest living—in fulfilling that function we are keeping the fourth commandment. It is a commandment which, like the rest, was graven deep on the constitution of the world before it was written upon tables of stone. Dykes.

A Sabbath to Jehovah thy God. That is, the Sabbath appointed by and consecrated to the Lord thy God; the Sabbath in which God asserts a special interest, which he peculiarly claims as his own, and which we cannot refuse to sanctify to him without being guilty of a kind of sacrilege, and appropriating to ourselves what properly belongs to another. In accordance with this phraseology, we find it said, “Ye shall keep my Sabbath.” Bush.—Unquestionably God assumed to himself the seventh day, and consecrated it when he finished the creation of the world, that he might keep his worshippers entirely free from all other cares while they were employed in meditating on the beauty, excellence, and splendor of his works. Civ.

The Sabbath is God’s day. He has given it his own holy name. “The Sabbath of the Lord thy God” he calls it in this commandment to the human race, and the Holy Spirit calls it “the Lord’s day” in the New Testament. This fact shows us that its rightful observance must have regard to our right relation to God. The soul must be turned Godward. Worship becomes most appropriate, and with it the study of God’s character and will as given us in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. No Sabbath-keeping is a right observance that does not thus recognize the day as God’s day, that does not bring the soul into the positive and active contemplation of God and his Word. Crosby.

The Sabbath was to be kept by being sanctified. This means that it was to be consecrated to God to be used as he had appointed. The sanctification of any object “always goes back to an act of the Divine will, to Divine election and institution. In other words, it is always a state in which the creature [or institute] is bound to God by the appointment of God himself.” The sanctification of the Sabbath, accordingly, was the consecration of that day to the Lord, to be observed as he had enjoined—that is, as a day of rest from all servile work and ordinary occupations. Man had to “release his soul and body from all their burdens, with all the professions and pursuits of ordinary life, only in order to gather himself together again in God with greater purity and fewer disturbing elements, and renew in him the might of his own better powers.” (Ewald.)—In the Sabbath institute, therefore, lies the basis of spiritual worship and pious service in Israel. W. L. A.

To sanctify in the first instance is simply to set apart from a common to a sacred use. The tithes, the first-born, the first-fruits, and the tabernacle, with all its appurtenances, were all sanctified in this sense, that they were set apart for sacred uses. So the people of Israel were also sanctified in the same sense, that they were separated from all the other nations of the earth, as the peculiar people of the Lord. It is only in this sense that God can sanctify the Sabbath. He has sanctified the day simply in the sense that he has separated it from all the rest, that men may devote it to holy purposes. This leads to a second meaning of the Word, which is to treat as holy that which has been thus separated and consecrated; and for the reason that the consecration makes it the peculiar property of the Lord, and as such must be reverenced. Stacy.

The Sabbath is not man-made but heaven-born; an outgrowth of God’s wisdom and love for his offspring man—for that one of all his creatures whom only God “made in his own image.” “God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it; because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made.” “Blessed and sanctified”—not as to himself but as to man—i.e., not to make the day a blessing to himself but a blessing to man; not to make the day holy to himself but holy as to man. It was a day for man to keep holy and a day laden with blessings for man on condition of his sacredly observing it in its true spirit and intent. In accord with this view are our Saviour’s words, “The Sabbath was made for man”—to become a blessing for man, one of the great and sure channels of mercy from the Great Father to his obedient children. Thus the Sabbath was instituted for man when the race existed in Adam and Eve alone—one of the institutions revealed from God and enjoined in Eden—good for man before his fall, and surely not less needful to the race fallen than to the race sinless. Let it be distinctly considered that this Sabbath was instituted with no limitations of time or race or nation—not for Eden alone; not for the race before their fall only—to become defunct when man began to sin; not for the Jews alone to be only a Jewish national observance and to become obsolete when the ceremonials of Judaism “waxed old and vanished away.” It was indeed prescribed anew to the Hebrew nation and enforced with new sanctions, especially by his obligations to his covenant-keeping God for national deliverance from Egyptian bondage; but this weighs not a feather against the doctrine that the Sabbath was made for man. While the Sabbath obligation, thus heightened by new mercies, might be said to become more sacred and obligatory upon the Jewish nation, this fact could by no means make the day less sacred to the Gentiles of every land and of all time. As sustaining scripturally this argument for the Divine appointment of the Sabbath for the race of mankind, let it be noted that the seven-day division of time is unquestionably traceable to this primeval institution. Unlike the day, the month, and the year, it is a division of time which comes not of nature, but directly from God. H. C.

Perpetuity of the Sabbath.

There would be no place for a discussion of the Sabbath as merely a Jewish ordinance but for the failure of man to perceive the identity of the Church in all ages and the true nature of the significance of the Sinai ordinances as a covenant with the Church of God in that age as representing the Church of all ages. Thus said Moses to another generation forty years afterward, “The Lord our God made a covenant with us at Horeb.” “The Lord made this covenant not with our fathers (only), but with us; even us who are here all alive this day.” And the martyr Stephen, fifteen hundred years after, declared, “Our fathers received the lively oracles to give unto us.” And if “the Church in the wilderness,” as Stephen calls it, and which, as Paul declares, “tempted Christ in the wilderness,” was thus the same Church in idea and in fact, and represented thus the Church of this age, and all ages in the covenant at Sinai, where is there any place for these elaborate distinctions between what is merely Jewish and limited, and what is universal and moral in the Law given to the Church? For the purpose of the Law was as a rule of life to convince of sin, that sinners may be led to seek deliverance from sin through the atoning sacrifice. That great purpose was in reference to all ages alike. S. R.

The single saying of our Saviour that “The Sabbath was made for man” puts both the institution itself as originally given and the mode of its observance on a new basis as they are related to our minds. It gives us the reason for the command, and so the principle for the regulation of its observance. The Sabbath ceases to stand before us as a positive institution merely, but bases its claims upon its bearing upon human welfare. It is implied in the words of Christ that, if the day itself rightly observed would not promote the well-being of man, then it is to be abrogated, and that there is to be nothing in the mode of its observance that is not subservient to the same end. But while this is true, it is also true that Christ said no word tending to abrogate the Law of the Sabbath. On the contrary, his words imply, rather directly affirm, that the Sabbath is for the race—for man as man—and so of universal and perpetual obligation. What he did was to give us a principle for the interpretation and application of the Law, limited in its flexibility only by the end of the Law. He gave us a principle instead of a rule. In this view of it the law of the Sabbath is for man, just as the law of the family or of property is; and if the fourth commandment is to hold its place with the others, it must do it as regulating, as each of the others do, one of the great elements and relations that are essential to human well-being. And this is precisely what it does. The fourth commandment is God’s statute in regard to the element of time, as the fifth is in regard to the family, the sixth in regard to life, the seventh in regard to purity, the eighth in regard to property, and the ninth in regard to truth. Let these elements be rightly adjusted, and give us in connection with them the worship of God and freedom from a covetous disposition which are provided for in the other four commandments, and we say that we have everything required for the best condition of the individual and of society. “The Law of the Lord is perfect.” Nothing can be omitted; nothing need be added. M. H.

As the day was once sanctified and once blessed—once set up as a memorial of his resting and a symbol of his authority, and we nowhere find a repeal of the act—the interpretation clearly is, that when he said “blessed,” he meant always blessed, and when he said “hallowed,” he meant always hallowed, even to the end of time. And if the sanctification and blessing have never been revoked, and never can be, because the ground of the same is in the Creator himself and not the creature, then its perpetuity is established beyond all question, it being in the very nature of things wholly ineradicable from the works of God or hopes of men. And furthermore, that as all this was done at the beginning, this rest was not intended to be the peculiar property of any one nation or people, but even as the sun, moon, and stars, and all the other original works of the Creator, and his own example also, designed to be the common inheritance of the race, and therefore to continue to the end of time. Stacy.

In the Book of Genesis the mention of this institution closes the history of the creation. An institution of this antiquity and importance could derive no part of its sanctity from the authority of the Mosaic Law; and the abrogation of that Law no more releases the worshippers of God from a rational observation of a Sabbath than it cancels the injunction of filial piety, or the prohibitions of theft and murder, adultery, calumny, and avarice. The worship of the Christian Church is properly to be considered as a restoration of the Patriarchal in its primitive simplicity and purity; and of the Patriarchal worship the Sabbath was the noblest, and perhaps the simplest rite. Bp. Horsley.—There was much of Jewish observance swept away with the ruin of the national institutions, because there was much designed for a temporary purpose, and which fell into disuse among the worshippers of God after that purpose was accomplished. These observances, however, have no place whatever in that great record of duty which was graven on the tables of stone, and placed within the holy of holies, under the mercy-seat. But the Law of the Sabbath stands within this record, of which all the other duties are of such general and such imperishable character; consequently, it still retains all the authority of a perpetual and immutable obligation. Chalmers.

The ground on which the obligation to keep the Sabbath is based in the command, is the most universal in its bearing that could possibly be conceived. “Thou shalt remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy; for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested on the seventh day.” There is manifestly nothing Jewish here; nothing connected with individual interests or even national history. The grand fact out of which the precept is made to grow, is of equal significance to the whole world; and why should not the precept be the same, of which it forms the basis? God’s method of procedure in creating the visible heavens and earth, produced as the formal reason for instituting a distinctive, temporary Jewish ordinance! Could it be possible to conceive a more “lame and impotent conclusion”? And this, too, in the most compact piece of legislation in existence! It seems, indeed, as if God, in the appointment of this Law, had taken special precautions against the attempts which he foresaw would be made to get rid of the institution, and that on this account he laid its foundations first in the original framework and constitution of nature. The Law, as a whole, and certain also of its precepts, he was pleased to enforce by considerations drawn from his dealings toward Israel, and the peculiar relations which he now held to them. But when he comes to impose the obligation of the Sabbath, he rises far beyond any consideration of a special kind, or any passing event of history. He ascends to primeval time, and, standing as on the platform of the newly-created world, dates from thence the commencement and the ordination of a perpetually recurring day of rest. Since the Lord has thus honored the fourth commandment above the others, by laying for it a foundation so singularly broad and deep, is it yet to be held in its obligation and import the narrowest of them all? P. F.

Its Relation to the Family and to Society.

In its adaptability to the necessities of the family the divinity of this institution clearly and strikingly appears. In the economy of God, the family is made the very foundation element of all society, the structural basis of

Church and State, and the fountain-spring of all government and rule. Whatever, therefore, builds up the interest of the family is also building up all the interests of humanity, whether intellectual, social, political, or religious. Now, there is nothing that seems so well adapted to this purpose, nothing so well suited to the wants of the family, as this weekly reunion. It gives an opportunity for quiet social communion and intercourse which no other day can so well afford. It furnishes a time for parental instruction and training, and also spiritual improvement and heavenly communion, which no other can give. The Sabbath and the family are but the necessary complements of each other. And in the perfect adaptation of the one to the other we very clearly see the unmistakable tracings of a Divine hand. Stacy.

The Sabbath and the family were instituted in Paradise—these only, and they naturally support each other. Where there is no Sabbath, the domestic relations are not held sacred, and where the domestic relations are not held sacred, there is no Sabbath. Let but these two institutions, the family and the religious Sabbath, be sustained in their integrity and every interest of the individual and of the family will be secured. . . . As it is through the fourth and fifth commandments that there is a connection between the two tables of the Divine Law, so it is through the Sabbath that a Divine influence passes into the family, and through that into society. This is the Divine order—the Sabbath and the family mutually supporting each other; and God, through them, working out a perfect society. It remains to the Christian and the patriot to accept this order, and work together with him. M. H.

The merciful design of the sabbatical institution is especially manifest in the express reference to manservant and maidservant, to the stranger and even to the beast of burden, and in passages where the Sabbath and all the festival days are represented as days of joy and refreshment. Here we discern the connection of the Sabbath with the original Eden of innocence, as well as with the future Eden of redemption, when the groaning creation shall be freed from subjection to vanity, and brought into the glorious liberty of the children of God. This sweet kernel of the Gospel, hid beneath the shell of the Old Testament Law, reached its perfect growth in Christ. Hence he calls himself also in this sense the Lord of the Sabbath, as conversely Sunday is called his day. For Christ he become the end of the Law by fulful-filling it. He is our peace, our rest from all the anxious works of the Law, the refreshment of all the weary and heavy laden. Schaff.

The Sabbath may be considered in its influence on the powers of our nature exhausted through six days of anxiety and toil; in the necessity which is laid in our very constitution by the Author of our being for periodical seasons of relaxation and repose; in its influence on the intellect of an individual or a people by its directing the attention to topics adapted to elevate and expand the soul; in the aid which it furnishes to the magistrate in promoting the observance of law; in its influence on neighborhoods and families in promoting social feeling, and refined intercourse; in its bearing on the civil liberties of a nation, and in its indispensable necessity in preparing for the life to come. Arguments might be accumulated on these topics which would satisfy any reasonable mind of the value and importance of the Sabbath. . . . Without a Sabbath our public institutions designed to promote and perpetuate religion would cease; our Sabbath schools would be disbanded; family instruction would soon come to an end; the sanctuaries would be closed; the ministry dismissed and discarded; the current of worldly affairs would be unbroken; plans of evil would meet with no interruption; and all the means of grace would be at once arrested. Christians might meet at irregular and distant intervals for prayer and praise; but the number of such meetings would rapidly decrease, and soon the last vestige of Christianity would disappear. The books containing its defence would be forgotten, and the Bible cease to be read with interest or gratitude. Barnes.

Change from Seventh Day to the First.

The resurrection of Christ symbolizes our deliverance from bondage, and our new creation into a higher spiritual life; and so grandly expressive is this symbol, that the day of the week has been changed to correspond with it. But the period of time to be observed as a Sabbath is altogether secondary; whether it be the seventh day or the first day is of minor importance. The essential point is the setting apart for sacred observances of a seventh portion of time; and the prime reason is as old as man, and universal as mankind. J. P. T.—The spirit of the Law is complied with no matter what particular seventh is observed. The example of God, which is the foundation of the Law, requires only a seventh, not any particular seventh; and that example is strictly followed by the inhabitants of the Pacific isles, though living in sight of each other, and observing different days, the one observing one day and the other the day following. There was a special reason for the change of day. The sun of Judaism was now setting, and a new and more glorious era beginning to dawn. The shadow was about to give place to the substance—the type to the anti-type. As everything peculiarly Jewish was about to be removed, it was eminently proper that there should be a change of day as well as of dispensation. As the day was first employed to signalize the resting of the Creator from his first work—the work of creation—and as he had now finished his second and even greater work of redemption, and had entered upon a second rest, it seems peculiarly appropriate that this new purpose should be engrafted upon it, so that, without in the least interfering with its original purpose and design, it might also ever stand as a lasting memorial of the resurrection of our Lord and Saviour.

The true reason for the silence of the New Testament respecting the change is the fact, that as the Church was in its transition state from Judaism to a purer Christianity, any unnecessary condemnation of the Jewish Sabbath or emphasizing of the Lord’s day would only have awakened needless prejudice, especially as the difference between the two was so slight. And that transition was gradual. Nowhere in actual fact can the boundary line be distinctly drawn between the old and new dispensations. At no time was the peremptory order issued for the expulsion of Judaism. The one dispensation imperceptibly glided into the other, as the night into the day. Hence the continued observance for a long time of both the seventh and first days of the week. The infant Church was left in this, as many other things, to adapt itself to the new order of things as circumstances demanded. Anything, therefore, like a forced order would have been unwise and hurtful. And further, the obedience was so universal and general, the reverential observance so continuous, as to render the repetition altogether unnecessary. If any law was more deeply imbedded in the mind of a Jew than another, it was this law of the Sabbath. Stacy.

The change of day from the last to the first day of the week was necessary not merely, as Horsley states, to distinguish Christian from Jew, but also to distinguish Sabbath from Sabbath—a Sabbath growing up amid symbolical institutions which insensibly imparted to it a spirit of outward ritualism, and a Sabbath much more distinguished by spiritual employment and active energy, both in doing and receiving good. Such a change in its character was clearly indicated by our Lord in those miracles of healing which he purposely performed on the Sabbath, that his followers might now see their calling to use the opportunities presented on the day of bodily rest to minister to the temporal or spiritual necessities of those around them. And in fitting correspondence with this, the day chosen for the Christian Sabbath was the first day of the week, the day on which Christ rose from the dead that he might enter into the rest of God, after having finished the glorious work of redemption. But that rest, how to be employed? Not in vacant repose, but in an incessant, holy activity, in directing the affairs of his mediatorial kingdom and diffusing the inestimable blessings he had purchased for men. P. F.

The religious side of the Hebrew Sabbath, though abolished so far as the observance of Jewish rites is concerned, was at once taken up by the Christian Church; and Christians have, as we well know, by meeting for worship on the first day, recognized the principle of a world’s rest-day, and have used it for the higher purposes of the kingdom of heaven. And now to us the Lord’s day is our day of rest from earthly toil; the day of hallowed calm; of richest memory; of united worship; of mutual recognition of our common relationship to one God and Saviour; of spiritual training; of holiest service for the Master; of sublimest outlook. C. C.

Keeping of the Sabbath.

How the Sabbath must be kept must be determined in part from its origin, but chiefly from its end. As associated with great and joyful events in the past, the Sabbath is of the nature of a festival, and should be a day of joy. As calling us to cease from the toil imposed by the primeval curse, and to lay aside its soiled garments, the Sabbath is a day of release and of refreshment. As pointing to a rest of holy activity, in which the curse of toil shall be wholly lifted from us, the Sabbath is a day of delightful anticipation and of earnest preparation. To one acquainted with its origin and sympathizing with its end, the whole tone and aspect of the day must be bright, and its spirit free; but the manner of keeping the day, its duties and employments, must be mainly determined by its end. Is the end of the Sabbath religious? Then it is to be kept holy. Then are we to bring ourselves by every method of his appointment into immediate and conscious relation to God as a holy God, and our end will be the promotion of holiness in ourselves and others. Holiness is the supreme end. So far as that will be promoted by physical rest and “bodily exercise,” by study, or art, or social intercourse, or communion with nature, these will be in place, but no farther. “The Sabbath was made for man,” and whatever labor or service his good may require us to perform on that day, we are to do—all works of necessity and mercy. But we are to remember that it was made for man especially as a religious being, and as his great need is conformity to God, if the Sabbath be not so kept as to promote that, it fails of its chief end. It fails to be properly a Sabbath. But let it be kept so as to promote this end, and every inferior good will follow. There will be physical rest. There will be that study of the Word of God and that meditation which give light and depth to the intellect. There will be sacred song, with so much of art as higher ends may demand or permit. There will be that family worship which hallows the home, and that public and social worship which at once humbles and exalts men, and brings them together as one family before God. Man will have sympathy with nature, not merely as expressing the natural attributes of God, but as the basis and frame-work, and in some of its aspects, the silent prophecy of a higher moral and Christian system. All this he will have under the law of limitation, and in addition, the limitless good that comes from conformity to God, and direct communication with him. Such a law of the Sabbath is as precise as can be given and not keep men children, or make them machines. M. H.

The only external duty clearly commanded by God in the universal commandment of the Sabbath is abstinence from our usual occupations. Our labor and work are to be done in the six days, and abruptly given up on the Sabbath. That much was an absolute necessity to a true Sabbath keeping, but beyond that the Bible tells us nothing. The outer law of the Sabbath to the Christian is simply to abstain from the ordinary daily labor; the inner law of the Sabbath is to keep it holy. Like all the other commandments, it is solely and intensely personal, and its keeping and breaking can only be known to one’s own soul and to God, who seeth the heart. It has an external and visible part, as have the convocation of saints, and baptism, and the Lord’s Supper, and the reading of the Word, but it also has its internal and invisible part, which is its heart and marrow; and here the right observance of the Sabbath must begin. Let us, then, give the Sabbath its full value to our souls by the especial and assiduous cultivation of spiritual knowledge and affections. Let us make the Sabbath a cheerful day, as Phariseeism does not, and a holy day, as worldliness does not. Its observance is an injunction, most precise and most solemn, of our God. Obedience will enrich us with unspeakable blessings, and disobedience will entail upon us grievous woes. Crosby.

Nowhere undertake to draw a line between works of necessity and mercy and those which are not. In a few exceptional cases there may be doubt and uncertainty, just as in any other department of Christian ethics; but, as a general thing, there is abundance of light to guide those who are willing to be guided. Stacy.

Liberty, variety, spontaneity in the employments and recreations suitable to this festal day will prevent the listlessness or weariness which uniformly results from a forced sameness of occupation or protracted strain of attention. Especially should innocent tendencies toward variety, novelty, and lightness be indulged to the utmost bounds of propriety. In social converse, it is not so much the subject that is to be regulated, as the aspect in which it is viewed and the mode in which it is discussed. Almost any topic of history or science or every-day experience may form the ground of remark in harmony, or not out of harmony, with the truth of God and the day of his rest. Such conversation, on ordinary topics familiar to the mind and level to the capacity of the social circle, as will awaken attention, and give the thoughts a good direction and a healthy impulse, is incomparably better than poverty of thought, dearth of ideas, apathy of spirit, and consciousness of constraint, all of which are in sheer antagonism with the notion and design of the Sabbath. And there is a special advantage in admitting the themes of daily life into the tissue of our Sabbath talking, as they are thereby consecrated in our minds. M.

Let each of us lay this well to heart that our Sabbaths are a gift from our kind Father of quite unspeakable value. Used in the best way, they do make stepping-stones for our feet to walk to heaven by. They open to us at the wayside so many oratories and Bethel-like retreats where we may refresh our jaded spiritual nature, cultivate closer acquaintance with Christ, offer to God a less hurried praise, clear ourselves from the dust of time, re-examine the foundations of our confidence, scrutinize our motives, repair our faults, and revive our drooping ardor in the task of self-discipline for eternal bliss. To make the very best of such costly possibilities—fifty-two of them in the year’s round—how infinitely is that to be desired for such Christians as we are, far behind in grace, and battling with conditions adverse to holiness! To lose our Sabbaths and all they might bring to us—can anything replace a loss like that? Dykes.

Summary Conclusions.

If the Sabbatic law was a part of the original plan; if it was stamped upon the creation at the beginning, and given traditionally and orally to our first parents and the Patriarchs of old; if not given for the first time, but simply renewed unto Israel in the wilderness in a written and permanent form; if it formed no part whatever of the Levitical Law, and was simply united temporarily with the political code, entering into union with it only as the other nine, or as the principles of morality enter into the political constitution of any country, so that the after dissolution of the Jewish nationality did not affect it any more than the destruction of any Christian government would destroy the morality incorporated in its constitution; if it was not only unrepealed, but wholly unrepealable in its very nature, belonging to the field of morals, and not of ceremony—being the “Law of the Lord,” and not “the Law of Moses”—having for its foundation the immutable acts of an immutable God, and for its sanction the unchanging example of that same unchanging God; if its claims are everywhere recognized in the Scriptures, and so interwreathed and intertwined in its history, its laws, its prophecy, its promises and threatenings, its blessings and maledictions, that to root it out is simply to upheave and disjoint the whole; if it was the type of nothing in Canaan, and therefore not fulfilled there, nor yet the type of anything in the kingdom of Christ, and therefore not fulfilled there; and if it was not of the nature of a type at all, but simply the firstfruits of the heavenly rest, and as such must ever continue to stand as a prophecy and pledge until that rest is entered;—if this be its character and nature, its origin and destiny, it must be infinitely exalted above all the mutations of earth. And if it survived such a terrible upheaval as the overthrow of Judaism, then there can be nothing else to check its onward march to the end of time. Stacy.

We deem the law of the Sabbath to have been fully entitled to a place in the standing revelation of God’s will concerning man’s duty, and to have formed no exception to the perfection and completeness of the Law; because,

first, there is in such an institution, when properly observed, a sublime act of holiness. The whole rational creation standing still, as it were, on every seventh day as it returns, and looking up to its God—what could more strikingly proclaim in all men’s ears that they have a common Lord and Master in heaven? Secondly, because it is an institution of mercy. In perfect harmony with the Gospel, it breathes good-will and kindness to men. It brings, as Coleridge well expressed it, fifty-two spring days every year to this toilsome world; and may justly be regarded as a sweet remnant of paradise, mitigating the now inevitable burdens of life, and connecting the region of bliss that has been lost with the still brighter glory that is to come. As in the former aspect there is love to God, so here there is love to man. Lastly, we uphold its title to a place in the permanent revelation of God’s will to man, because of its eminent use and absolute necessity to promote men’s higher interests. Religion cannot properly exist without it, and is always found to thrive as the spiritual duties of the day of God are attended to and discharged. P. F.

I must not only say, but plead while I live in this world, and leave this testimony to the present and future ages, that if ever I have seen anything of the ways and worship of God wherein the power of religion or godliness hath been expressed—anything that hath represented the holiness of the Gospel and the Author of it—anything that looked like a prelude to the everlasting Sabbath and rest with God, which we aim through grace to come unto—it hath been there and with them, where and among whom, the Lord’s day hath been held in highest esteem and a strict observation of it attended to, as an ordinance of our Lord Jesus Christ. The remembrance of their ministry, their walk and conversation, their faith and love, who in this nation have most zealously pleaded for, and have been in their persons, families, parishes, or churches the most strict observers of this day, will be precious to them that fear the Lord while the sun and moon endure. Let these things be despised by those who are otherwise minded; to me they are of great weight and importance. Owen.

What an accumulation of testimony in favor of the Sabbath! How immovably fixed are its foundations! How indelibly stamped its footprints; stamped upon the original creation; stamped upon the entire course of Jewish history; stamped upon every page of Scripture, its history, its prophecy, its legislation, its symbolism; stamped upon the traditions of the world; stamped upon the nature and constitution of man; everywhere written, everywhere seen, everywhere needed, everywhere found! And surely he who has undertaken its overthrow is engaged in a work of the most gigantic proportions, with which the old Titanic war, or the projected scheme of the Babel builders, sink into utter insignificance. It is but an effort to thwart the purpose of God, to overthrow his counsels, to arrest his work, to abolish his example, to annul his blessing, to revoke his sanctification, and mar his rest, as well as ignore the constitutional requirements and necessities of man. It is but to run the plough-share through the entire Scriptures, and to upturn all its symbolism, its morality, its prophecy. It is to tear up all the associations and precious memories of the past, to root out all the accumulated traditions of ages, and to make creation a problem, and life itself a mysterious blank! As well undertake to blot out the sun from its place in the firmament, or pluck some one of the stars from the coronal of night, or lift the ocean from its coral bed, or stay the chariot wheel of time in its onward march, as the elimination of this ordinance from the schemes of creation and redemption. An institution so deeply and securely laid, so firmly and immovably fixed in the purposes, plans, and works of God, as well as in the lives and hopes of men, is but a simple necessity, and must and will live forever.

The grand conclusion is irresistible, that the Christian Sabbath is a Divine institution, ordained by the Creator himself, and intended alike for all nations, kindreds, tongues, and people that dwell upon the earth to the end of time, and as such to be most scrupulously guarded and defended! Stacy.

Ex. 20 12 Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee.

13. Thou shalt do no murder.

14. Thou shalt not commit adultery.

De. 5 16 Honour thy father and thy mother, as the LORD thy God commanded thee: that thy days may be long, and that it may go well with thee, upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee.

17. Thou shalt do no murder.

18. Neither shalt thou commit adultery.

The Last Five Commandments.

What crime is there against person or property, against a man’s life or his honor, against his virtue or his good name, which they do not forbid? What interest of man leave unprotected? The framework of laws in a nation is the work of ages, but here the whole is compressed into a space so small that it could be written on a man’s hand. Different nations have obtained their rights at the price of great sacrifices—rights which are summed up in certain great charters, such as the Magna Charta of England and the Declaration of Independence of America. As these contain the principles of universal liberty, so does this second table of the Law contain the principles of universal justice. If it were obeyed, there is not an act of injustice which could find a place among men. Who can measure the germinating power of a great principle of justice—how it multiplies itself in its application to different countries and races, adapting itself to all times and climes, to all the relations of men as they may change to the end of the world? Whence had Moses this wisdom? He was “learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians,” but he did not find it there, for a part of his code is aimed directly at the idolatries which were universal in Egypt. Where, then, did he get his inspiration? This is for those who are fond of pointing out the mistakes of Moses to answer. They seem not to reflect that when they have exhausted their small stock of wit on the supernatural proofs of his Divine mission, and have thus disposed, as they imagine, of the miracles of Moses, they leave the great miracle untouched: it is the Law itself. They have explained the lightnings and the thunderings; let them explain the Law. That remains a great fact in history, harder and more unyielding than the granite dome of Mount Sinai itself. Where did Moses get that Law? Those who, while they disparage the Bible, are ready to do honor to all other religions, to their founders and their sacred books, would willingly ascribe it to Buddha, whose five commandments so nearly correspond to the second table of the Law. Nor would it daunt them in the least that it would oblige them to follow those commandments of Buddha from India across the whole breadth of Asia; but unfortunately Moses lived and died more than eight hundred years before Buddha was born! The ingenuity of unbelief must devise some other explanation. It is enough for us, as we come down from the Mount, to accept reverently the assurance that the Law which Moses gave to the Hebrews was written with the finger of God on tables of stone. Field.

In all these commandments (this is particularly observable if we compare heathen laws with them) every duty is regarded directly as in reference to God, and proceeds from the relationship toward him. Gerl.—Since these commandments are the code of essential morality for all times and for every generation—since there is nothing in them (considered as a rule of life) which has ever been abrogated, or is susceptible of abrogation—since they are not a series of arbitrary rules made by the discretion of the Almighty, but are based upon the eternal relations subsisting between God and man, between man and his brother; it follows that every precept which they inculcate (whether directly or by implication) must be part of the essence of true religion—must have a profound import, and one which we can only trifle with at the peril of our souls. E. M. G.

Next to the reverence which we owe to our Maker, is that which we owe to those who are, in another sense, the authors of our being, and so to the command to worship God follows “Honor thy father and thy mother” This consecrates the family relation. “Honor” includes love, reverence, and obedience—a trinity of virtues, out of which flowers and blossoms all that is most beautiful in human character. Field.

The Word of God always puts honor upon the institution of the family. Both the moral and the civil code given to the Israelites in the wilderness guarded this sacred institution. Under the peculiar constitution of the Jewish nation, as a people separated from other nations, their origin, their religion, and their institutions, the interests of property, inheritance in a tribe, the distinction of nationality, pride of ancestry, and the hope of an illustrious posterity, combined to give honor and sacredness to the family. J. P. T.

The fifth commandment does not speak of man’s relations to those who are alongside of him, or on the same plane with himself; but it treats of his proper attitude toward those who are over him as God’s representatives—in the family, in the Church, or in the State; for the very term “father and mother” was, and is, inclusive, in Oriental speech, of all those who are “ordained of God” as the “powers that be”—by birth, by civil or ecclesiastical station, or by attainments of age or of wisdom. Hence the fifth commandment points upward as surely as does the first commandment, and as do the intervening three; and herein it differs from the five commandments which follow it, all of which point outward, on the common plane of a common manhood. S. S. T.

The fifth commandment (to honor our parents) forms a transition from the first to the second table—the first table detailing our duties toward God; the second those toward man. But our duty to our parents is higher than that toward men generally; indeed, in a certain sense is Divine, just as the relationship to an earthly father symbolizes that to our Father in heaven. Hence the command is to honor, whereas our duty to men only requires us to love them. A. E.—Parents, as God’s representatives, are here invested with an honor above all other men; for while we are to “love” our neighbor, we are commanded to “honor” our parents. They are to be regarded not as persons who are for a time to nourish and foster their children, but as persons who administer an office from God, command in his name—as persons from whom children are to receive the first impression of the governance of the Lord of the world and the Father of men. Gerl.

Of the variety of elements gathered up with admirable skill under this single word “honor,” three stand out conspicuous: respect, obedience, affection. . . . Filial obedience behooves to be implicit, prompt, unquestioning, and cheerful, based on confidence in the Lawgiver, neither extorted by fear nor bribed by hope of reward. Filial affection must be won by parental affection. It is the parents earliest and surest key to the reverence, confidence, and submission of the child—that instructive love which begins to burn so soon in speechless infancy, utters itself with touching unreserve in guileless childhood, and is often the only way to rule the wayward will of boyhood. It survives adolescence. It survives the formation of new ties and the growth of younger loves. It survives life’s manifold storms and changes. It survives the old age of parents, their dotage, decay, and death. Dykes.

The relation of parent and child carries with it that which no external power can create and which no external power can destroy. There is in the very order of things a subtle influence, which gives to authority its responsible privilege and to obedience its tender dignity. And this truth of the eternal majesty of authority, of the eternal loveliness of reverent obedience, commended to us in our childhood, is not the least precious part of our social heritage. It has hitherto been hallowed and guarded in our homes, and if we take it into our hearts consciously, gladly, thoughtfully, as it is open before our eyes, we shall soon discover how it interprets other relations of life which can be regarded in their true aspect only in the light of Fatherhood. Westcott.

For a time the parent stands in the place of God to the child. Before the child knows who God is, or whether there be any God, the parent is to him a personal reality. Hence only as he learns to honor father and mother will he be prepared to honor God as his Heavenly Father and transfer to him the obedience he has learned to render to the earthly parents. Piers m.—The disposition and conduct required in us toward our parents is the same in kind as that required toward God. Filial reverence is the first germ of true religion. Hence the promises of reward are akin. The family institution is the foundation of the political fabric. The health and well-being of home is the fount of national prosperity. Davies.

The sentiment of honor toward the parent, expressing itself in outward act according to the changing relation of parent and child in the progress of the child toward maturity, would hold the parent and child in perpetual harmony, and would secure to both every end contemplated by the parental relation. The child that honors his father and mother will render them implicit obedience in his early years. If, as his power and right of self-control are increased, it should become his duty to differ in any respect from the parent, or even to disobey him, as in rare and exceptional cases it may be, the spirit of the Law will still be preserved, and all will be done that can be with a good conscience to meet not only the commands, but the feelings and the wishes of the parent. The temper expressed by this word “honor” is precisely that which is needed to fit the child for his duties toward God and toward society as represented by government. This spirit, extending itself from the parental relation into all others, permeating the character, becomes a fountain of courtesy, and makes the difference between a people reverent, mutually respectful, and capable of self-control, and an irreverent, reckless, profane mass of individuals incapable of self-government, and sure to inaugurate, sooner or later, in the name of liberty, a state of society compared with which despotism would be a blessing. So long as children honor their parents in the land, there will be piety toward God and freedom in the State; but if these fountains be corrupted, whatever form governments may assume, men will fall off from their allegiance to God, and the spirit and benefits of freedom will depart. M. H.

The germ of society is the family, and the family is sustained only as the authority and rule of the heads of the house are upheld and respected. The command, then, to honor parents may be justly regarded as asserting the foundation of all social ordinances and arrangements. Where parents are not honored, a flaw lies at the basis, and the stability of the entire social fabric is endangered. W. L. A.

And thy mother. The didactic parts of the Old Testament, such as the Book of Proverbs, urge reverence for the mother equally with the father. No finer picture of wifely duty can be found in literature than “the words that King Lemuel’s mother taught him.” Christianity inherited this noble tradition of reverence for woman from its mother, Judaism; and the Divine seal that has been forever set upon the uniform teaching of Scripture on this head is this august word of command from Sinai, which enjoins upon every man to revere the mother who bore him. Dykes.

The “father” and “mother” are distinctly specified to indicate that they are equal in authority, and therefore equally entitled to “honor.” This honor naturally resolves itself into reverence for the authors of our being, gratitude for the nameless blessings of home, docility to the patient and persevering educators of our infant minds, and obedience to the commands of our natural superiors. The patriarch was father, priest, prophet, and king in his household or clan. In the more complex arrangements of nations and empires the magistrate and the priest came out into prominence and influence as distinct orders, and even the teacher sometimes asserted a standing and a rank for himself in the social scale. But all these subdivisions of authority find their origin and standard in the parental relation and the fifth commandment. This commandment enforces all lawful authority. M.

This honor carries with it obedience as well as due respect. Such honor is vital to the happiness and the value of the family relation. Without it no foundation can ever be laid for a useful and worthy after-life. It should not be overlooked that the earliest training of the infant mind Godward should begin with cultivating the honor and obedience due to father and mother. Through all the earliest developments of the infant and youthful mind, the parent is to the child in the place of God. The same qualities of character, the same obedience, respect, and deference, which God requires toward himself are to be first implanted and developed in the mind toward the human parent. Failing of their due development in this antecedent relation, they are almost certain never to be developed toward God: a fatal defect in character is fastened upon the child; a cast of mind is determined which but too surely ends in hopeless ruin. It is noticeable that this very association of ideas, uniting the homage due to parentage and years with the honor due to God, appears in the Mosaic Law (Lev. 19:32): “Thou shalt rise up before the hoary head and honor the face of the old man; and fear thy God: I am the Lord.” H. C.—Obedience, with reverential regard, is the very rivet which holds the family together. Every other fault can better be tolerated in a child than disobedience or disrespect. From this sin spring most legitimately and fruitfully all other forms of filial iniquity and family distress. Cosby.

Obedience: its nature and basis. So far as control may be necessary, the parent has a right to control the child physically and by force. Such control in very early years he is bound to exercise. Subsequently he has a right to command, and the child is under obligation to obey. This is properly government—the control of one intelligent and moral being by the expressed will of another. On the one side there is a command, on the other there is obedience. And by obedience is not meant conformity to the will of the parent on the ground of perceived reasons aside from that will. It is one thing to appeal to the reason of a child, showing him the reasons why we wish or command him to do a particular act, so that he may do it not on the ground of the command, but of the reasons; and it is quite another thing to give the command without reasons, and to be obeyed simply on the ground of the command. Of these only the last is obedience. To obey is to do the will of another, simply on the ground that it is his will. Now it is just this obedience to which the parent has a right, and which the child is bound to yield. But, you will ask, is not the child a rational creature, and is not his reason to be appealed to? Yes, his reason is to be appealed to; but in so far as he is under government in distinction from influence, that reason is to be exercised, not in an attempt to comprehend the reasons by which the will of the parent is determined, which would be to put himself upon an equality with him, but in comprehending the reasons for confidence or faith in the parent. The child, the subject, the being governed, may not know the reason of the command, but he knows that he who gives it is wise and good, and he feels that it is the most rational thing he can do to believe a proposition simply because he says it, and to do an act simply because he commands it.

As this rational faith is the sole principle of government aside from fear or force, it becomes us to examine it well as needed in this relation of parent and child, where we first find the need of it. In early life children need to be controlled wholly by their parents, and they are to be so guided that they may pass gradually from that control to a perfect independence of them, and to a wise course of action under the government of God. In this subjection and control there is to be no shade of degradation, no slavish fear, but only a control made necessary by the condition of the child, I will not say to the fulfilment of its destiny, but to the attainment of its end. Such control will be reached by a subjection in perfect faith, both of the understanding and the will of the child to the understanding and will of the parent, and in no other way. This will be government; it will be subjection; but it will be government by one qualified both by wisdom and by love to govern; it will be submitted to in the recognition and full faith of this wisdom and love, and can therefore have in it nothing misleading or degrading. If the parent be what he should be, the end will thus be reached perfectly. If he be not wholly what he should be, such subjection will still be generally right and best. But if the parent become disqualified by vice or imbecility to direct the child to his end, then the civil law may interfere, or the child may himself seek other protection and guidance. M. H.

This is the law of subordination to legitimate authority; a law which guards the order of society, first in the family, and next in the State. As Paul reminds us in one of his epistles, every family upon earth derives its name from that one Father above, whose all-embracing fatherhood is the basis and the model for human paternity. His fatherhood is the original and typical instance after which the tie of earthly parents to their offspring has been modelled, that thereby we might more easily learn to call him “Abba!” “Our Father who art in heaven!” Think how closely your earthly parent takes after that Divine Father, whose sacred title he wears. In the mysterious origination of a new life, derived yet separate; in the no less mysterious communication of personal qualities, begetting as on in his own likeness; in the responsibility that sits on him to nurture, provide for, and educate his child; in the power and authority which belongs to parents to legislate for their children, and to enforce their legislation by penalty and reward; in the peculiarly strong love which nature inspires into parental bosoms, and in the unlimited sacrifices which such love can prompt; in all this consider how closely human parenthood resembles heavenly, and you will come to see how our early subjection to father and mother is God’s way of practically training us into religion. We learn our duties toward God by first learning to honor and obey them. However far afield society may develop itself as it grows away from its base, it must continue true to the end of time that every community is but an aggregate of households; that the family is the social unit; and that the principles of social order—authority in the ruler, subordination in the governed—look back forever to the home as their birthplace and their nursery. The magistrate is a greater father to his people, armed with some share of that Divine claim upon obedience and respect which our parents first asserted over our infant minds. It is in the home, accordingly, that insubordination will commence. Enfeeble parental authority, teach the child disrespect, and what safeguard have you for the State? When parents fail to make themselves revered; when the marriage tie is too easily dissolved or rashly broken; when children are humored into premature assertion of their own will; when reverence for gray hairs as such is ridiculed as weak or old-fashioned; when, in short, by symptoms like these it has become apparent that the ancient conceit of venerable authority on the one side and of deferential subordination on the other, which used to bind the family home into a stable and sacred institution, has corroded away beneath the breath of modern individualism, who can doubt that society has lost its most precious corner-stone, and is fast coming into danger of disintegration or collapse? Dykes.

Many are the passages in the Word of God which speak of or refer to the duty of children to their parents—e.g., Ex. 21:15, 17; Lev. 19:3; 20:9; De. 21:18-21; 27:16; Ps. 78:5-8; Prov. 10:1; 13:1; 20:20; 23:22; 30:17; Jer. 35:18; Ezek. 22:7; Matt. 15:4-9; Col. 3:20. It is worthy of careful noting, that when God would launch forth into the world a new national life, he lays great stress on the recognition of and regard to family sacredness. At the outset of the redemption from Egypt, family life was specially hallowed (cf. Ex. 12:24-27; 13:8, 9). The covenant of circumcision handed down from Abraham was to be observed. Children were to be sealed as the Lord’s, and brought up in his fear. That is here assumed. It was the understood law. And now, when a moral code for the nation and for the world for all time is to be laid down, the very next precept to those relating immediately to the honor due to God himself, is this—“Honor thy father and thy mother.” Not, indeed, that they were to render them a blind obedience, for see Ezek. 20:18, 19. If the parents were bad, the best honor the children can render them is to become better than they were. So that we may note in passing, that the commandment recognizes it as incumbent on parents to see that their lives and rules are such as their children can honor, and that their precepts accord with those of the Father of spirits. C. C.

Parents stand to their children in the relation of representatives of the Divine. They represent God as the source of their offspring’s life; they have a share of God’s authority, and ought to exercise it; but much more ought they to represent God to their children in his unwearied beneficence, his tender care, his exalted rectitude, his forgiving love. Orr.—Let parental rule be a copy from God’s own government—kind without blindness; merciful and gracious, forgiving transgression, yet not clearing the guilty; not spoiling by soft indulgence, and yet withholding no good thing when there is no good reason; insisting on obedience, yet always open to the cry of the repentant. Where there go hand in hand a mother’s love, tender, self-denying, inextinguishable, and a father’s, wise, firm, and far-seeing, the best natural foundation is laid for piety; and he who has learned to honor such a father and mother has many helps and advantages for loving, trusting, and revering the God whom he has not seen. Hamilton.

The Promise of the Fifth Commandment.

In Deuteronomy we find the promise expanded. It has the additional words, “as the Lord thy God hath commanded thee,” and also, “and that it may go well with thee.” So that the two together read thus, “Honor thy father and thy mother, as the Lord thy God hath commanded thee, that thy days may be prolonged, and that it may go well with thee, in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.” The former of these two phrases adds to the solemnity and emphasis of the commandment, the latter to the point and power of the promise. It is as if God said, “Honor thy father and thy mother—this is no human expedient, but a Divine order, founded in eternal truth; and in the obedience of this command thou shalt prolong thy life, not in wretchedness and evil, but in a true and continual prosperity.” Crosby.

Read as a guarantee of long life to the individual, the reward of filial obedience may or may not be granted in this world. But read as a promise addressed to the people of Israel in their collective capacity, there is no question but it proclaims a political and social fact. The nation whose homes are godly, orderly, and happy, whose successive generations are linked together by holy ligaments of love and respect from child to parent, that nation possesses the surest safeguard for prosperity and permanence. Dyke. — The reference of Moses is to the weal of the nation as well as to that of the home. The downfall of Israel’s glory is attributed to two evils: neglect of Sabbaths, and making light of father and mother. No nation can prosper without purity in the home. C. C.

That this promise had respect to the chosen people, to whom God was about to give the land of Canaan, is unquestionable; and to them it was doubtless made in a national as well as in an individual character. It was a pledge on the part of God that if they evinced a strict obedience to this command, he would grant them, as a people, a long continuance in their own land in despite of all the attempts of their enemies to conquer and dispossess them. This seems to be confirmed by the parallel language of De. 4:26, 33, 40, and Ch. 32:46, 47. And when God threatens the nation with being carried captive out of their own land for their sins, he mentions this among other procuring causes of their calamities, the not honoring their parents (Ezek. 22:7, 12, 15). But the apostle (Eph. 6:2, 3) cites this commandment as if the promise still held good under the Christian dispensation, and this fact is doubtless to be accounted for by supposing that the spirit, the principle, of the promise is still acted upon under the moral government of Jehovah. Bush. — Obedience to God’s Law still secures the promise of the life that now is, as well as of that which is to come. Not, of course, that the saints are always prosperous in this world; were this the case, saintship would be a very mercenary business. But other things being equal, the tendency of obedience is to present as well as future well-being. God makes no promise, but threatening, to the disobedient. Edgar.

A special blessing rests on the man who shows his parents due respect. There is also a natural connection between the virtue and the promise. Respect for parents is the root at once of reverence for God and of respect for the rights of others. Hence the place of the commandment in the Decalogue. It engenders self-respect, and forms the will to habits of obedience. It is favorable to the stability, good order, and general morals of society. It therefore conduces to health, longevity, and a diffusion of the comforts of life, furnishing alike the outward and the inward conditions necessary for success. Orr. — The observance of this rule is the best possible preparation for serving our generation according to the will of God. He who is a blessing in the home will never be a curse out of it! The habits of self-restraint, of courtesy, of respect to superiors, well learned and practised at home, will not be thrown off when outside its walls. C. C.

It was a comfortable thing for anie man to beholde how two great roomes of Westminsterhall were taken up, one with the sonne, the other with the father, which hath as yet never bene heard of before or since, the sonne, Sir Thomas More, to be Lord Chancellor, and the father, Sir John More, to be one of the ancientest Judges of the King’s Bench, if not the eldest of all; for now he was neare ninety years old. Yea, what a gratefull spectacle was it, to see the sonne aske the father’s blessing everie day upon his knees, before he sat in his own seate, a thing expressing rare humilitie, exemplar obedience, and submissive pietie. More’s Life of Sir Thomas More.

In the enactments of the second table there is a progression from the outward to the inward. First, sins of deed are prohibited, such as murder, adultery, and theft; then sins of word, such as injury of a neighbor’s good name by false testimony; and finally, sins of the heart, which do not come into open manifestation, such as covetousness and evil desire. W. L. A.—Each command not only condemns the extreme crime which it expressly prohibits, but every inferior offence of the same kind and every mode of conduct leading to such transgression. It also enjoins the opposite conduct and the cultivation of opposite dispositions. This principle of interpretation is suggested in the Law itself, which concludes with a command touching the desires and dispositions of the soul—“Thou shalt not covet.” So in the subsequent inspired commentary on the Law, as David: “Thy Law is exceeding broad, searching to the thoughts and intents of the heart;” “the Law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul.” This principle is settled beyond question by our Saviour’s Divine commentary on this Law in the Sermon on the Mount. The very aim of this sermon is to give us an insight into the wide reach and deep spiritual meaning of these Ten Commandments, clearing them of the crusting over which had taken place by the traditions of unspiritual teachers. And it must be admitted by every intelligent student who has no foregone conclusion to make good, that the great aim of the Sermon on the Mount is to bring out distinctly the full import of the original Law of the Ten Commandments, rather than to introduce any new legislation. How profound the conception of this Law of God by the eloquent Hooker: “If we could say we are not guilty of anything at all in our own consciences, should we therefore plead not guilty in the presence of our judge? If our hands did never offer violence to our brethren, a bloody thought doth prove us murderers before him; if we had never opened our mouths to utter any scandalous, offensive, or hurtful word, the cry of our secret cogitations is heard in the ears of God. If we did not commit the evils which we daily and hourly do commit, either in deeds, words, or thoughts, yet in the good things that we do, how many defects are intermingled!” S. R.

The Hebrew expression is the appropriate one for intentional killing of another with malicious purpose. The true reason for this prohibition is expressed (Gen. 9:6)—viz., because our neighbor is the image of God; with which must be joined what is there said—because our neighbor is our brother. And it follows naturally, from the reason on which this prohibition is built, that it is equally commanded, that “the preservation of our brother should be to us as our own.” Whatever assails his life, assails ours: his well-doing is ours. Gerl.

This commandment protects life, and is against all endeavors that endanger the life. As there is no object expressed, it prohibits suicide as well as homicide. It also forbids violence, passion, lust, intemperance in eating or drinking, or anything that tends to shorten life. M.—God does not ask us to kill ourselves in his service. The sixth commandment refers to our own lives as well as to those of others, and if we can carry out our business only by overdrawing the capital of our strength, it is plain that we should abridge our trade at almost any sacrifice, and seek a larger measure of rest. Our bones are not iron, our sinews are not brass, our brains are not inexhaustible; we need regular intervals of quiet, and we may be sure that we are disobeying God if we overdrive ourselves. It is easier to ruin one’s constitution than it is to build it up again, and there is as real sin in overtasking our energies, as in over-indulgence in repose. W. M. T.

The sixth commandment concerns our own and our neighbor’s life; “thou shalt not do anything hurtful or injurious to the health, ease, and life of thy own body, or any other person’s, unjustly.” It does not forbid killing in lawful war, or in our own necessary defence, or the magistrates’ putting offenders to death, for those things tend to the preserving of life; but it forbids all malice and hatred to the person of any (for he that hateth his brother is a murderer), and all personal revenge arising therefrom; also all rash anger upon sudden provocations, and hurt said or done, or aimed to be done, in passion; of this our Saviour expounds this commandment (Matt. 5:22). And, as that which is worst of all, it forbids persecution, laying wait for the blood of the innocent and excellent ones of the earth. H.

Killing is not murder, not forbidden of God when the act occurs in the execution of justice for a suitable offence, and by a lawful magistrate; the killing of an enemy in a just war; the killing of another for the necessary defence of a man’s own life; to which, under the Law, were added some other cases, with which we are not concerned now under the Gospel. Abp. Wake.

This command forbids the taking of human life from passionate vindictiveness. It forbids any carelessness by which the life or weal of our neighbor would be risked (Ex. 21 : 28, 29). Wherever human life is risked by insufficient precaution, there is a breach of the sixth commandment. It forbids that indifference in our life to the power of example which would put a stumbling-block or an occasion to fall in a brother’s way (see Matt. 18 : 1-3 ; Rom. 15 : 5). If by careless living we “destroy” him for whom Christ died, we are breakers of this Law. It forbids dislike and hatred to our brother, and also a selfish isolation and neglect of him (1 John 2 : 9-11 ; 3 : 14, 15). If we even refrain from helping our brother in difficulty or trial, we are guilty (Prov. 24 : 11, 12 ; Is. 58 : 6, 7). We may “kill” by withholding the help which might save! It requires, therefore, the cultivation of that kindly spirit of genial benevolence, which would seek in every way to promote the gladness and safety of the society in which we move, and of men at large. C. C.

The right to life may be so forfeited that others may have the right to take it away. This may be done by attempting the life of another. The right to take life in defending life is recognized by the laws of all countries and by all persons, except a few extreme non-resistants. The right to life may be forfeited by resisting the officers of the law. If officers of the law are resisted in its execution, they have a right, as a last resort, to take life. The right to life is forfeited by murder—that is, by taking life with malice aforethought. The death penalty was early authorized and demanded by the Bible, not from cruelty, but on the very ground of the sacredness of human life. “Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed, for in the image of God made he man.” The estimate placed by a lawgiver upon any right can be measured only by the penalty by which he guards it ; and as death is the highest possible penalty, they who impose this show the highest possible estimate of the value of life. That is a sophism by which those who reject this penalty would persuade themselves or the community that in so doing they are more humane than others, or set a higher value on human life. It is the reverse.

But the right to take life can depend upon no estimate of its value by us. It must come either directly or indirectly from God—directly by revelation, and indirectly from its necessity to the ends of government. Government is from God, and has thus a right to do what is essential to its own being and ends ; and if the security which is its great end can be attained only by the death of those who would destroy it, then society may put them to death. Society has thus the right, and must judge how far, in the varying phases of civilization and Christianity, it may be necessary to use it. M. H.

Ah, the human heart, even in the best of us, is a nest where scorpions breed too easily ; and out of the dark deeps of our unloving nature there will rear themselves on provocation such ugly hell-born births as bitterness, envy, wrath, malice, and revenge. But “whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer.” To give houseroom to such hateful passions, dally with them, or let them nestle in the secret thoughts, is to take the first step that leads to malicious mischief, violence, and murder. Surely love alone, love like God’s, can be the perfect keeping of this commandment. Let the love which is prepared rather to give life, if need be, in order to save life (like Christ), supplant the devil’s hate, which scruples not to sacrifice to one’s private ends, in its monstrous self-idolatry, the welfare or the very existence of other men. Above that negative commandment of Sinai putting its bridle hand—a hand how weak!—on the ebullitions of selfish passion and horrid spite, write this noble lesson of Calvary, which is Heaven’s own inversion of our malice, “We ought rather to lay down our lives for the brethren.” Dykes.

Thou shalt not commit adultery. In this seventh commandment, which concerns man’s chastity, are forbidden adulterous or lascivious thoughts, looks, attire, words, and acts of adultery and fornication, as also unlawful marriages. In the same commandment are enjoined chastity and modesty in thoughts, behavior, and apparel, as also sobriety and vigilance. Oxf. Cat.—This seventh command is far broader in spirit than the letter would indicate. It condemns all impurity of every kind, it forbids us to let the lower self run off with the higher, and, like the preceding commands, though negative in form it is positive in substance. It bids us : (1) Let our own nature be duly honored and self-respect be diligently cultivated. (2) Observe toward others that self-same respect which we owe to ourselves, on the same ground, and for the Lord Jesus Christ’s sake. The art of “bridling the whole body” is one of the most important in a life of godliness. C. C.

We should be as much afraid of that which defiles the body as of that which destroys it. This commandment forbids all acts of uncleanness, with all those fleshly lusts which produce those acts, and war against the soul, and all those practices which cherish and excite those fleshly lusts, as looking, in order to lust, which Christ tells us is forbidden in this commandment (Matt. 5:28). H.—It belongs to the narrowness of the Law in the time of nonage to understand under adultery in the Old Testament only an offence with a wife—not that of a husband with an unmarried woman. In the rude sensual view taken of marriage, the crime of the wife appeared of so much more heinous character, as the consequences for the family were more important. But Christ shows what is to be understood by adultery, by referring to the original institution of marriage; and explaining that every breach of the marriage-contract, as well as every unchaste act, was either itself adultery, or prepared the way to adultery. In this prohibition also is contained the command to hold marriage as sacred. And the reason of the prohibition is this—that marriage, as the creation of the woman out of the man shows, is a union of the whole life, for the training up of the images of God, the heirs of his kingdom, and shadows forth the union of love betwixt God and his creatures. Hence all that follows this union is a continual exercise of love, humility, patience, and hope. All this the command of marriage tells us. Gerl.

While the sanctity of the marriage relation is the first object aimed to be secured by this precept, it points its prohibition at the same time against everything that is contrary to the spirit and ends of that institution, whether in thought, word, or deed. And as marriage is the sole and exclusive provision made by the Creator to meet the demands of that part of our nature which the seventh commandment contemplates, every species of sensual commerce between the sexes except that which comes under its sanction, is doubtless to be viewed as a violation of this precept, as also everything that goes by legitimate tendency to produce it. All the arts and blandishments resorted to by the seducer; all the looks, motions, modes of dress, and verbal insinuations which go to provoke the passions and make way for criminal indulgence; all writing, reading, publishing, vending, or circulating obscene books; all exposing or lustfully contemplating indecent pictures or statues, partake more or less of the guilt of violating the seventh commandment. We have only to glance at the pages of the sacred volume to perceive that sins against the law of chastity are more frequently forbidden, more fearfully threatened, and marked by more decisive tokens of the Divine reprobation than perhaps those of any other part of the Decalogue. Not only is adultery the name under which Jehovah stigmatizes the sin of idolatrous apostasy from him, but fornication and uncleanness are found in almost every black catalogue of crime in the Scriptures. Bush.

However it may be accounted for, the criminal intercourse of the sexes corrupts and depraves the mind and moral character more than any single species of vice whatsoever. That ready perception of guilt, that prompt and decisive resolution against it, which constitutes a virtuous character, is seldom found in persons addicted to these indulgences. They prepare an easy admission for every sin that seeks it; are in low life usually the first stage in men’s progress to the most desperate villainies: and in high life to that lamented dissoluteness of principle, which manifests itself in a profligacy of public conduct and a contempt of the obligations of religion and of moral probity. Add to this that habits of libertinism incapacitate and indispose the mind for all intellectual, moral, and religious pleasures, which is a great loss to any man’s happiness. Paley.

Obedience to the law of chastity is a duty to the community. From the time of Sodom, sins of licentiousness have been the chief cause of the corruption and downfall of nations. There is no ruin and degradation like that which these sins bring upon the woman, and there is no general debasement like that of a great city deeply infected with this class of vices, and those that inevitably accompany them. If men could be brought to obey the laws of God in regard to chastity and marriage, and also in regard to narcotic and intoxicating substances, laws written not only in his Word, but in their physical and moral nature, the great obstacle to the intellectual and moral improvement of the race would be removed. Abstinence from these is not virtue. It may give greater skill to fraud, or more power to ambition, but it is a condition of virtue. It is in connection with these sins that man is capable of degrading himself below the brutes; and through them what is called civilization—that is, skill in literature and the arts, and in producing the elegancies and luxuries of life, may coexist with a state of society to which the savage state would be infinitely preferable. Certainly every one owes it to society to do what he can to relieve it from this incubus. In combating this class of sins in ourselves the proper point to guard is the imagination and the thoughts. This is the citadel. With this sufficiently guarded, we may go anywhere and be subject to any form of outward temptation, for “to the pure all things are pure.” But few only can go thus. Against no class of sins do we more need to put up the petition: “Lead us not into temptation.” We need to guard the senses, especially as temptation may come through them in the guise of the fine arts, which have often been of great efficiency in corrupting a people. M. H.

The seventh commandment sanctifies wedded life, and is the first step in that true reverence of woman which marked the Jewish people through all their history, and was in such contrast to her position in all other ancient societies. Purity in all the relations of the sexes, the control of passion, the reverence for marriage, are subjects difficult to speak of in public. But modern society sorely needs some plain speaking on these subjects—abundance of bread and idleness, facilities for divorce, the filth which newspapers lay down on every breakfast-table, the insidious sensuality of much fiction and art, the license of the stage. The opportunities for secret profligacy in great cities conspire to loosen the bonds of morality. A. M.

Society is sacred because the individual man is sacred; and as there is an image of God in every man, so there is a symbol and type of the heavenly family in human society, and its bonds of blood, affinity, and friendship have a Divine element in them. Society is no more man-made than is man himself man made, and he who dares to set at naught its holy bonds in act or in heart is an enemy to God and truth. The man who reads licentious novels, or indulges in lascivious dancing, or countenances the nudities of so-called art, in life, image, or picture, when God made and gave clothes to man and woman, thus sets himself against God and undermines the structure of holiness which God himself has built for our good and his own glory. Crosby.

A due reverence for the sacredness of human nature will impart sanctity to the marriage tie. Marriage is God’s holy ordinance. It is not a sacrament in the same sense in which baptism and the Lord’s Supper are. Neither is it merely a civil contract, as is sometimes shockingly said. It is a union of two in the closest ties of nature, based on an affinity of spirit which leads each to see in the other what each most admires. It is a union of spirit in the Lord (if it be all that it should be); each one of the two ceases to live in and for himself or herself, and begins practically to unlearn selfishness by living for the other, and thus the reciprocal outgoing of affection is a formative action of spirit, and tends to the very noblest culture of life. C. C.

Marriage is the mother of the world, preserves kingdoms, and fills cities and churches and heaven itself. Divine in its institution, sacred in its union, holy in the mystery, “honorable among all men,” and religious in its employments and ends, it is advantage to the societies of men, and it is “holiness to the Lord.” Jeremy Taylor.

Men and women alike are children of God, created in his image, heirs of glory, honor, and immortality. For both, the highest end of existence is not to secure in this transient life ease, reputation, distinction, but to be true to the moral instincts of their nature, and to that Divine Law of which those instincts are the voice and the expression. Whatever impairs, in either, an incorruptible fidelity to conscience, or obscures the fair vision of ideal perfection, can claim no Divine sanction, and is perilous to the interests of the race. Only let us not forget that our perfection is to be sought not in isolation but in fellowship, and that we are members one of another. Whatever may be the characteristic perfection of man and whatever the characteristic perfection of woman, neither will ever be attained unless both man and woman remember that God made them both, first for himself, and then for each other. Dale.

The idea of marriage, the basis of the family, is the typical completeness of our individual incompleteness. Marriage is not simply a relation of contract, established to secure the orderly transmission of special rights in due succession, but the sacred fulfilment of life. Man or woman alone represents only half of the powers and capacities and feelings of humanity. And no real approach can be made to the consummation of our common nature by any attempt on the part of woman to cultivate those elements in it which are characteristic of man, or on the part of man to make his own that which is truly womanly. Such attempts only impoverish the race. Nothing less than the union of man and woman in their developed diversity gives us the image of a perfect human being, and raises our thoughts to a higher existence than that of our divided personalities. At the same time, each of the natures thus joined together strengthens, elevates, purifies the other, not by the assertion of its own supremacy, not by the communication of its own peculiarities, but by the rendering of its appropriate service. The husband grows more manly, the wife grows more womanly, as they realize each in the other the possession of that which they severally need and yet cannot provide from within themselves. Westcott.

The State at its widest is no more than a congeries of households; and the link of the household is wedlock. No community can be more orderly, healthy, rich, or happy than the sum of the families which compose it. Besides, the continuity of the State depends on the influences of the home, the due education of children, the peaceful and legitimate succession of each new generation to the possessions and responsibilities of the last. For all these things, marriage is the sole security. It alone guarantees that each natural family group, united by kindred, shall likewise constitute a well-knit social group—the unit of the community. It alone provides that parental responsibilities shall be recognized, at least, if not discharged. It alone secures the right of woman to maintenance, and of offspring to their patrimony. It alone, when loyally kept, excludes the evils of disputed succession, and the burden of children left upon the State without any natural protector. So obvious has all this appeared to the wisdom of the past, that in every civilized community over the entire human family, breach of wedlock has been treated either as a civil crime or a civil injury; and in the older and simpler communities it used to be severely, sometimes savagely, punished. These things deserve to be weighed at a time like this, when a disposition is widely shown, both in Europe and America, to make the marriage tie more loose than heretofore, to facilitate divorce, and to speculate upon every point connected with this institution in a doctrinaire spirit.

The union of true husband and wife in holy wedlock involves a crowd of complex elements, many of which touch the spiritual nature. It assumes a “marriage of true minds;” for that is not an ideal marriage which is not first a union of soul before the “twain become one flesh.” It reposes upon mutual esteem. It presupposes common tastes and establishes a most perfect system of common interests. It is, to begin with, a friendship, although the closest of all friendships. It leads to a noble dependence of weakness upon strength, and a chivalrous guardianship of strength over weakness. It asks for a self-renunciation on the part of each to the welfare of the other, which is the very perfection of disinterested love. It engages principle and honor to sustain mere inclination, and raises what would otherwise be the passion of an hour into a permanent devotion. By means of all this, the nobler social and moral emotions are enlisted in the service of “love,” so that there emerges that lofty ideal of chaste wedded affection in which lies the chief poetry of common lives. For is it not a commonplace that the pure affection between man and woman is the one force able to kindle into romance the dullest of human beings, and turn prosaic people, when the need arises, into heroes and heroines? Dykes.

We are not made to live alone. Even our communion with God must be through the fulness of life. All the anarchy and half the social errors by which we are troubled spring from placing the individual, the self, at the centre of all things. No view can be more flagrantly false. It is impossible to resolve the world into a multitude of isolated men. It is impossible to picture in imagination even one isolated man. A man who had grown up alone would not be a man. When we come into being we are sons. When we first begin to act we have been necessarily in some degree disciplined and educated. To the last what we have inherited immeasurably outweighs what we have acquired. Man in a word is made by and made for fellowship. The family and not the individual is the unit of mankind. This fact is the foundation of human life to which we must look for the broad lines of its harmonious structure. And we shall not look in vain. For the family exhibits in the simplest and most unquestionable types the laws of dependence and trust, of authority and obedience, of obligation and helpfulness by which every form of true activity is regulated. The family enables us to feel that the destination of all our labors, the crown of all our joys, the lightening of all our sorrows, the use of all our endowments is social. In the family love makes service, as it ought to be, its own reward, and transforms suffering into gladness. In the family, as has been nobly said, living for others becomes the strict corollary of the patent fact that we live by others. In the family we learn to set aside the conception of right, and to place in its stead the conception of duty, which alone can give stable peace to peoples or to men. The family, indeed, is not only an expression of Divine Law. It is under the conditions of earth, in some sense a reflection of the Divine nature. Every family, every fatherhood, derives that in virtue of which it is from the One Father. We must therefore strive with reverent patience to enter into the meaning of the family, if we desire to understand the Divine conditions of our life. As we do this we shall see that a perfect family includes three primary relations—those of husband and wife, of parents and child, of brothers and sisters. And these three relations reveal the essential laws of human fellowship. They are, if

I may be permitted to use the phrase, the original sacraments of society. They reveal to us the inherent incompleteness of the individual life completed in a typical union—that is, the idea of marriage. They reveal to us the correlative responsibilities of government and devotion hallowed by love—that is, the idea of fatherhood. They reveal to us the inalienable ties of a common nature in the direct connection of blood—that is, the idea of brotherhood. Westcott.

Ex. 20 15 Thou shalt not steal. 16 Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour. 17 Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is thy neighbour’s.

De. 5 19 Neither shalt thou steal. 20 Neither shalt thou bear false witness against thy neighbour. 21 Neither shalt thou covet thy neighbour’s wife; neither shalt thou desire thy neighbour’s house, his field, or his manservant, or his maidservant, his ox, or his ass, or anything that is thy neighbour’s.

Thou shalt not steal. In this eighth commandment, which concerns man’s goods, are forbidden these sins: (1) Covetous desires. (2) Bribery. (3) Withholding other men’s dues. (4) Defrauding, or deceitful stealth. (5) Oppression, or violent robbery. (6) Sacrilege, or robbing of God. In the same commandment are enjoined these duties: (1) To give to all their dues. (2) To live in a lawful calling. (3) To be diligent in that calling. (4) To restore that which hath been stolen. (5) To give charitably to the poor. (6) To avoid the company of the breakers of this law. Oxf. Cat.—In Lev. 19:13 this commandment reads: “Thou shalt not defraud thy neighbor, nor rob him.” The kinds of dishonesty included in it are: (1) Overreaching our neighbor in dealing; (2) defrauding him of his just due; (3) purloining, or secretly and by cunning getting his property; (4) extortion, or wresting it from him by taking advantage of his ignorance, weakness, or need. Tudor.

The scope of the commandment is to secure the right of property. It prescribes the mode in which love to our neighbor is to operate in this respect. While God is the great Proprietor, the ultimate Lord and Disposer of all things, he has established a constitution of things by virtue of which every man is not only entitled himself to the products of his own labor, but authorized also to make it over or bequeath it to his posterity or heirs. Bush.—That which a man possesses is lent to him by God; all true ownership is in God’s hands. It was he who promised and lent the land of Canaan to Israel; it was he who divided it among the tribes; and even now it is he who distributes to every one according as he wills; for this reason we ought all the more to be satisfied with what God allots to us, and ought all the less to seek to lay hold of our neighbor’s substance. By so doing we not only impair the love and respect due to a neighbor, but, what is worse, invade the rights of God. C. G. B.

This command forbids us to rob ourselves of what we have by sinful spending, or of the use and comfort of it by sinful sparing; and to rob others by removing the ancient landmarks, invading our neighbor’s rights, taking his goods from his person, or house, or field, forcibly or clandestinely, overreaching in bargains, not restoring what is borrowed or found, withholding just debts, rents, or wages; and it forbids us to rob the public in the coin or revenue, or that which is dedicated to the service of religion. H.—The essence of dishonesty is the possessing ourselves of that which rightfully belongs to another. This may be done in an almost infinite variety of ways. Fraudulent bargains which impose on the ignorant, the credulous, or the necessitous; contracting debts which one is unable to pay; extortion and exorbitant gain; controlling the markets by stratagem, and thus obtaining inordinate prices for one’s commodities; entering into combinations unduly to raise or to depress wages; taking unjust advantage of insolvent laws; exacting usurious interest for money; unnecessary subsistence on charity; evading the duties and taxes imposed by government, or in any way defrauding the public, whether by embezzling its treasures or encroaching upon its domain; using false weights and measures; removing landmarks; keeping back the wages of servants and hirelings; withholding restitution for former wrongs; refusing, when able, to pay debts from which we have obtained a legal release—all these are violations of the eighth commandment, and as such falling under the special condemnation of heaven. A slight consideration of the spirit of this precept will show that it reaches also beyond outward acts, and prohibits inordinate love of the world, covetousness, and the pride of life; that it requires industry, frugality, sobriety, submission to God’s providence—in a word, a disposition to do to all others, in respect to worldly property, as we would that they should do to us. Bush.

Not only are those thieves who secretly steal the property of others, but those also who seek for gain from the loss of others, accumulate wealth by unlawful practices, and are more devoted to their private advantage than to equity. We know under how many coverings men bury their misdeeds; and also how they convert them into praise by false pretexts. Craft is called prudence; and he is spoken of as provident and circumspect who cleverly overreaches others, takes in the simple, and oppresses the poor. But though the world boasts of vices as if they were virtues, and all freely excuse themselves in sin, God wipes away all this gloss when he pronounces all unjust means of gain to be so many thefts. An affirmative precept is connected with this prohibition; because, even if we abstain from all wrong-doing, we do not therefore satisfy God, who has laid mankind under mutual obligation to each other, that they may seek to benefit, care for, and succor their neighbors. Wherefore, in order that we may not be condemned as thieves by God, we must endeavor, as far as possible, that every one should safely keep what he possesses, and that our neighbor’s advantage should be promoted no less than our own. Cde.—As Luther says,

“It is the smallest part of the thieves that are hung. If we are to hang them all, where shall we get rope enough?” Theft is the taking or keeping what is not “mine.” But what do we mean by “mine”? Communists tell us that “property is theft.” But that is the exaggeration of the scriptural teaching that all property is trust property, that possessions are “mine” on conditions and for purposes, that I cannot “do what I will with mine own,” but am a steward, set to dispense it to those who want. The Christian doctrine of stewardship extends this commandment over much ground which we seldom think of as affected by it. Besides, all sharp practice in business, the shopkeeper’s false weights and the merchant’s equivalents of these, adulterations, pirating trade-marks, imitating a rival’s goods, infringing patents, and the like, however disguised by fine names, are neither more nor less than stealing. A. M.

The right of a man to his own may be violated in one or other of three ways: First, by violence; second, by fraud; and third, by wilful damage, interfering with the benefits or enjoyment of the property. It is under the middle head, or fraud, that modern violations of the property right have become systematic, widespread, and almost incurable. Against a simple act of robbery or theft, criminal law was always a tolerable protection. But ingenuity, inspired by cupidity and stimulated by competition in business, has let loose upon us in these times a prolific brood of frauds, which, like the Egyptian plague, are everywhere about us, and against which neither the State nor the citizen has yet devised adequate safeguards. In a commercial community such crimes as peculation, or embezzlement, forgery, breach of trust, and the like may be expected to abound. It is so obviously for the interest of the trader to guard himself against these forms of dishonesty in his employés, that one may suppose them to be usually discovered, as we know them to be severely punished. The young clerk, therefore, or shopman who feels himself tempted to cheat his master by false entries or other contrivances for concealing a fraud, must be quite well aware that he is running a grave risk of ruin, as well as committing a crime. Unhappily, the same fear for detection and its consequences does not operate to restrain the fraudulent manufacturer or shopkeeper or merchant; since in their case the sanction of a trade usage has been cast over prevalent forms of fraud; and forms of fraud which trade usage has once sanctioned not only appear almost innocent, but even when detected entail little disgrace, and rarely any criminal prosecution. With regard to all abuses of trade—the false announcements, the misnamed goods, the short measure, the adulterated quality, the artificial concert to trade only in the trader’s interest, and the monopoly to sustain prices, as well as the camards let loose to facilitate operations in the money market—with regard to all such descriptions of commercial fraud, however condoned by usage, it is high time that honest men spoke their minds and called them by their plain English names; because there are thousands of men, upright-minded and on the whole willing to deal fairly, who cloak from themselves the real character of such transactions by the employment of specious words. Call them swindles, frauds, lies, or cheats, and men will be afraid of them. Call them “trade practices,” the “way of business,” or the “custom of the house,” and men adopt them with an easy conscience. It needs to be said and repeated in very loud tones by all honest people, that everything which takes a penny out of A’s pocket under a false or mistaken impression, created by B on purpose to get the penny into his own, is a fraud and a theft in morals, whatever it may be in law. Surely a good deal might be done to purge trade of its scandals and restore to it a healthier and more upright character, if honorable men would, at least, set their faces against “shady” and questionable usages, would band together to discourage puffing and trickery, and would try, in their own private business, to deal candidly with the buyer as well as prudently for themselves. Dykes.

That God has instituted the right of private property this commandment clearly shows. Without this right to use and dispose of their own, men could not live together in society, and civilization would be impossible; and without civilization Christianity would be impossible. Tudor.—Property, as men are constituted, is a necessity of social weal. It is the social law of the institution of property, Divine yet natural, yea, natural because Divine, the existence of which is here assumed, and the recognition of which is here enjoined: in the barest and most elementary form, it is true, yet in the very form best according with the circumstances under which it was given; in a negative form, too, like the other commands, but yet with a positive intent. C. C.

If property is a Divine institution founded on a Divine idea, protected by Divine sanctions, then in the use of it God should be remembered, and those whom God has intrusted to our pity and our care. The rights of property were never intended to carry the moral right to refuse assistance to the miserable and destitute. It is one of their incidental moral advantages that they render it possible to manifest in a thousand beautiful and gracious forms the spirit of charity. Dale.

Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor. The same probity and uprightness which the former command requires in all our transactions and intercourse with our neighbor, are here required in our language or testimony for or against him. Be truthful, speak the truth, act truthfully; this is the sum of the eighth and ninth commandments. Every lie, however great the temptation to it, every intentional deception of our neighbor, is forbidden, and strict and thorough ingenuousness inculcated as a duty. C. G. B.

This commandment refers to speech, enjoins truth, and is directed against falsehood. It covers the same ground as the preceding three; as falsehood may imperil life, chastity, or property. It assumes its darkest form when the falsehood is uttered avowedly in the presence of God, who searches the heart, and will bring every word into judgment. M.—This command is connected with every one of the three which precede it. For neither the lives of men, nor their happiness in the nearest relation of life, nor their possessions and properties could ever be secure, if they were left exposed to those injuries of a licentious tongue which are here prohibited. This commandment, therefore, was intended partly to strengthen the foregoing ones; and partly, also, to make provision for every person’s just character on its own account; as well as for the sake of consequences. Abp. Secker.

This forbids (1) Speaking falsely in any matter, lying, equivocating, and any way devising and designing to deceive our neighbor. (2) Speaking unjustly against our neighbor, to the prejudice of his reputation; and (3)—which involves the guilt of both these offences—Bearing false witness against him, laying to his charge things that he knows not, either judicially, upon oath, by which the third commandment and the sixth or eighth, as well as this, are broken; or extra-judicially, in common converse, slandering, backbiting, talebearing, aggravating what is done amiss, and making it worse than it is, and any way endeavoring to raise our own reputation upon the ruin of our neighbor’s. H.—The ninth commandment includes: (1) False witness in a court of justice or perjury; (2) detraction and evil speaking in society; (3)

lying Its positive side demands absolute truthfulness. Tudor.—In the same commandment are enjoined these duties, which maintain veracity and charity: (1) To love and speak the truth. (2) To preserve our own reputation. (3) Seasonably to vindicate ourselves and our innocent neighbors. Oxf. Catechism.

This precept constitutes the law of love as it respects our neighbor’s—that is, every other man’s, good name. And as one of the principal ways in which his interest in this respect may be injured is by having false witness borne against him in courts of justice, this is made the leading and primary point of the prohibition. Lying in this form is denominated “perjury,” and so far as this sin is concerned, the ninth commandment is closely related to the third, which forbids the taking of God’s name in vain, as is always done in a false oath. The difference between them lies in this, that in the third perjury is condemned as a gross impiety toward God, irrespective of any wrong done thereby to our neighbor; while in this prohibition the head and front of the offending is the false and injurious charge preferred against our neighbor. This is a more heinous crime than common extra-judicial falsehood, inasmuch as it is usually more deliberate, and by the sentence to which it leads often involves in itself the guilt of robbery and murder, as well as that of calumny. Accordingly, we find the purport of this commandment otherwise, yet very emphatically expressed (Lev. 19:16), “Thou shalt not go up and down as a tale-bearer among thy people; neither shalt thou stand against the blood of thy neighbor.” That is, thou art not to stand as a false witness against thy neighbor, whereby his blood, his life, might be endangered. But if we are not permitted to injure our neighbor by bearing false witness against him, so neither are we to procure or encourage it in others. Consequently, the suborning false witnesses is hereby condemned; and it plainly behoves legal counsel in managing the causes of their clients to guard against a virtual perversion of the truth that shall amount to a bearing of false witness; nor should the verdict of inspiration be forgotten, that “he that justifieth the wicked, and he that condemneth the just, are both alike an abomination unto the Lord.” And not only false witness in a court, but false statements in common discourse, false promises, whether deliberate or careless, exaggerations and high colorings of facts, equivocation and deceit by word or sign, hypocritical professions and compliments, together with slandering, backbiting, tale-bearing, circulating malicious reports, imputing evil designs, or making injurious representations without sufficient proof, are all direct infractions of the spirit of this command. These are all obvious methods of working ill to our neighbor, of prejudicing his reputation, and injuring or destroying his usefulness and his peace, and consequently cannot consist with the law of love. Bush.

False witness is not only given in court. The sins of the tongue against the law of love are more subtle and common than those of act. “Come, let us enjoy ourselves, and abuse our neighbors,” is the real meaning of many an invitation to social intercourse. If some fairy could treat our newspapers as the Russian censors do, and erase all the lies about the opposite side which they report and coin, how many blank columns there would be! If all the words of ill-natured calumny, of uncharitable construction of their friends, which people speak could be made inaudible, what stretches of silence would open out in much animated talk! “A man that beareth false witness against his neighbor is a maul, and a sword, and a sharp arrow.” A. M.—The office of the tongue is to bless. Slander is guilty, because it contradicts this; yet even in slander itself, perversion as it is, the interest of man in man is still distinguishable. What is it but perverted interest which makes the acts, and words, and thoughts of his brethren, even in their evil, a matter of such strange delight? Remember, therefore, this contradicts your nature and destiny; to speak ill of others makes you a monster in God’s world; get the habit of slander, and then there is not a stream which bubbles fresh from the heart of nature, there is not a tree that silently brings forth its genial fruit in its appointed season, which does not rebuke and proclaim you an anomaly in God’s world. F. W. R.

Suppressing the truth when known, by which a person may be defrauded of his property or his good name, or lie under injuries or disabilities which a discovery of the truth would have prevented, is also a crime against this law. He who bears a false testimony against or belies even the devil himself comes under the curse of this law, because his testimony is false. By the term neighbor any human being is intended, whether he rank among our enemies or friends. A. C.

We have no right to give our mere inferences from what we know about the conduct or principles of others as though they were facts. We have no right to spread an injurious report merely because somebody brought it to us. It is a crime to pass bad money as well as to coin it. We shall have to give account not only of the deeds done in the body, but of the words which we have spoken, and which are often more significant than actions. Words spoken carelessly, in heat of temper, in envy, jealousy, and malice—we shall some day know what hopes they have blighted, what evil passions they have provoked, to what sin and to what enduring misery they have given the occasion. Life and death are in the power of the tongue. By our words we wound as with a sword not the bodies, but the spiritual nature of men; by our words we may bind up the broken-hearted, and soothe and quiet and charm to peace the bitterest agony of the soul. “By thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned.” Dale.

This law of the ninth commandment certainly covers the right of every person to have the truth told about him, if we speak of him at all; nor is its spirit observed unless we tell even the truth in a kindly, not in a hostile temper. For so fine are the gradations betwixt a fair and a colored or exaggerated statement, even of facts, that we cannot be trusted not to misrepresent our brother, unless we speak of him uniformly in the spirit of charity. Morally, therefore, this offence of detraction or defamation covers a wide region of human speech and has many degrees. I defame my neighbor, for example, if I repeat anything to his dispraise which is not strictly true, or which I do not know to be strictly true. I also defame my neighbor if I relate anything to his discredit which is true, but which it is no business of mine to relate, or which, being told, can serve no good purpose. I defame my neighbor if, when I am called upon to bear of him an evil report, I make the worst of it, being angry, or dwell on it with a malicious pleasure, or aggravate without need the mischief which the recital of it may produce. Nothing can be more certain than that every one of these acts constitutes an injury against my neighbor; and yet, judged by this standard, who of us does not injure his neighbor continually? For the conscience, even of many estimable Christian people, is very lax on this side of duty. We must learn to love all sorts of truth; not merely truth of motive, but truth in fact and truth in opinion; that in nothing our word may go beyond our thought, nor our thought beyond our knowledge of the fact. I do not desire, of course, to banish from human speech the language of feeling or of imagination, with its tinted lights as of cathedral windows. Only when we deal with grave questions of truth—of the highest truth above all— let it be soberly, eschewing prejudice and passion, courting the white light of exactest purest veracity. Dykes.

“Wherefore,” says the apostle, “putting away all lying, speak every man the truth with his neighbor.” “Lie not one to another, seeing that ye have put off the old man with his deeds.” Thus, too, in the Levitical code, “Ye shall not steal, neither deal falsely, neither lie one to another.” Thus also, to “walk uprightly, to work righteousness, and to speak the truth in his heart,” are the first lineaments in the good man’s character as portrayed by the Psalmist (Ps. 15:2). Now if this requirement of universal truthfulness be not contained in the ninth commandment, it is not embraced at all in the Decalogue; and it is scarcely to be supposed that a sin which is everywhere spoken of with the most marked abhorrence, and one of which it is said that those who are characteristically guilty of it “shall have their part in the lake that burneth with fire and brimstone,” and that “whatsoever worketh abomination or maketh a lie” shall be excluded from the holy city, is not intended to be expressly forbidden in the perfect Law of God. Bush.

As the sixth commandment throws a guard around human life, the seventh around purity, the eighth around the rights of property and labor, so this ninth throws a shield over every man’s reputation. A stern “Thou shalt not injure thy neighbor’s fair name” is one of the mandates of Sinai, issued amid thunder and fire! . . . Truth is ever to mark our speech. The true in thought is to be aimed at, in order that there may be truth, absolute truth, on the tongue. No “pious frauds” are allowable. Love is to rule. While a supreme regard to truth will guard us from violating it consciously, a due cultivation of the spirit of love will guard us from forming those harsh judgments of others which might lead us to violate truth unconsciously by misjudging their actions. Where truth and love reign, there will be self-restraint. A check will be put on unkind feeling of every sort. “Love beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.” C. C.

Thou shalt not covet. Deuteronomy transposes “thy neighbor’s house” and “thy neighbor’s wife;” it inserts “his field,” and it makes the two parts of the commandment more distinct by the use of a different verb in the imperative mood in each. The verb rendered desire is the same that is rendered covet in Exodus, but the one here rendered covet is a different one. Clark.

The special objects here enumerated are not exhaustive, but only representative of a large class. The last clause denotes the wide range from which the enumerated objects are taken as specimens. The house, the wife, the servants, the cattle, represent the four principal departments of a man’s earthly establishment—namely, his material possessions, his family, his household, and his “live-stock.” They illustrate and tend to define the comprehensive phrase, “anything that is thy neighbor’s.” Crosby.

This last commandment is the guard and security of all the preceding ones. For our actions will never be right habitually till our desires are so. Or if they could, our Maker demands the whole man, as he surely well may; nor till that is devoted to him are we “meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light.” Abp. Scker.—This commandment stamps the seal of divinity upon the Mosaical code, of which the Decalogue is the summary. No such restriction is to be found in the Ordinances of Lycurgus, or Solon, the Twelve Tables, or the Institutes of Justinian; because the thoughts and desires of the heart are not cognizable by human tribunals. This was a case reserved for Him alone, who both can and will “bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good or evil” (Eccl. 12:14), because he is a discoverer “of the thoughts and intents of the heart” (1 Sam. 16:7; Heb. 4:12). The Law, therefore, “was our schoolmaster to bring us to Christ;” who has commented on the tenth commandment in particular (Matt 5:28, 30), and who inculcates obedience to all his laws from an inward principle: requiring us to “show the work of the Law written in our hearts” (Rom. 2:15). Hales.

This precept aims to regulate the heart, out of which, says our Saviour, “proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies.” By forbidding the indulgence of all inordinate desires, it mounts up to the fountain-head, from whence flow the manifold evils forbidden in the Decalogue. Bush.—This commandment refers back to all the commandments of the second table, and indirectly also to those of the first, in as far as these presuppose the others; and every sin against our neighbor is, at the same time, a coveting, or speaking, or acting against God, the holy Lawgiver. This commandment lays hold of sin by the root, and exhibits even the evil inclination as an inwardly-perpetrated actactual sin. It shows, too, in how spiritual a sense the preceding commandments are to be understood, and that not merely murder and the deadly blow, but hatred and envy; not merely fornication and adultery, but even lewd desires and thoughts and looks; not merely robbery and theft, but even avarice and covetousness; not merely bold and shameless lying, but even inward disingenuousness, are a sin against God. In the heart lies the root of all evil. C. G. B.

In this tenth article no new department of human conduct nor any fresh relationship existing in society is touched upon. We have had laws vindicating marriage rights and parental authority, laws regulating public worship, laws protecting property and person and reputation. Each added “word” opened up some new region of social life. But the tenth annexes no additional province of that sort. So far as it specifies your neighbor’s wife, it overlaps the seventh commandment. So far as it enumerates his items of property—house, field, or cattle—it repeats the eighth. What is new about it is not the matter with which it deals, but its introspective and deeper handling of the matter. It tells us that he is not a chaste man, though he commit no adultery, who desires another man’s wife; nor he an honest man, though he keep his hand back from theft, who desires another’s goods. If this be true of the seventh and eighth articles of the code, must it not be true of them all? Adding no fresh province to the area which the Law covers, this profound word, “Thou shalt not covet,” has yet in effect doubled the whole Law; because it has swept within its survey the hidden as well as the outer life—every movement of the mind no less than the actions of the body. When our Lord, therefore, in his Sermon on the Mount, would deepen and spiritualize the shallow rules of ethics current among his contemporaries, he does so by applying to every department of morals the principle of the tenth commandment. The truth is that illicit conduct always has its root in illicit desire. It is one and the same moral (or immoral) state which begins with a secret suggestion of evil, burns on through the stage of indulged imagination, of longing and dalliance with opportunity, till it consummates itself at length in the criminal deed. As James traces for us in a sentence the genealogy of evil, when he says, “The lust, when it hath conceived, beareth sin; and the sin, when it is full grown, bringeth forth death,” so does James’ Lord trace a continuity of development betwixt the angry temper and the murderous stroke; betwixt the lascivious glance and the broken vow of wedlock; betwixt the deceit that palters with the phrase and the perjurer’s oath. What is this but the teaching of the tenth commandment “writ large?” Dykes.

The very end for which Christ came into the world was to redeem us from selfishness, to reveal to us the infinite love of God, and to restore us to God’s image. The last of the Ten Commandments, “Thou shalt not covet,” touches the characteristic precept of the new Law, “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” This perfect love, the spring of all individual virtue, is the only sure and effective remedy for all social and political disorders. It is in the victory of the Christian faith, and in that alone, that I see any hope for the rescue of mankind from the sorrows and confusion and conflicts which make human life so desolate. It is man himself that requires to be changed. No change in the mere external organization of society will redeem him from the evil passions which are the root of all his miseries. The redemption is to be wrought by the supernatural power of Christ. Dale.

This command forbids: (1) Desire after lower good to the neglect of the higher. (2) Desire after improper objects. (3) Desire after lawful objects carried to an improper degree. (4) Desire to gain any object in an improper manner. (5) Any desire after what belongs to another, which is inconsistent with the rule, “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” It forbids, too: (6) Discontent with the allotments of Divine providence. A discontented spirit is but one form of covetousness, albeit it is a very unamiable one. We are not to be envious of another’s possessions, nor for a moment to allow the wish, if our neighbor is rich and we are poor, that his wealth and our poverty should change hands. On the other hand, there is to be a thankful content with the mercies we possess, and a joy in our neighbor’s joy if he has more than we have. So far from wishing to gain advantage at another’s cost, we are to rejoice in another’s good as really as if it were our own. So runs the precept (Rom. 12:15). It is much easier to “weep with them that weep,” than it is to “rejoice with them that do rejoice.” Our obedience to this precept is not complete till we can “weep” or “rejoice” with others with equal readiness. In a word, the tenth commandment requires entire unselfishness. “Love is the fulfilling of the Law.” C. C.

Even the other commandments cannot be fulfilled by an external obedience only. “Thou shalt not kill” includes likewise, Thou shalt not be angry, shalt not hate, as the seed of the evil; and so on with the rest. But it is a matter of great moment to observe that here the evil desire is itself expressly declared to be a sin, not only inasmuch as it leads or can lead to an act, but also simply in itself. Envy, which grudges another man his life, the impure desire, the greediness of gain, the inward insincerity—even though they should not be strong enough to break out into acts, or should be hindered by circumstances from doing so—are sins. There is no such thing as an involuntary bad thought. All such spring from the ground of a corrupt heart. They proceed from the inward desire to be free from God’s laws, and to follow their own desire or vainglory. Even the evil thoughts and desires which are roused in us by outward circumstances or inspired by the devil, are sparks which fall continually on prepared tinder. This last commandment is really the key-stone of the whole law of the Ten Commandments, and so Paul quotes it (Rom. 7:7) as the main idea of all that is prohibited. Gerl.—It does not merely speak to the eye, and say, thou shalt not look covetously. It does not merely speak to the hand, and say, thou shalt not grasp covetously; thou shalt not steal: the Law had said this before. But, instead of waiting for the eye and the hand to do this, it goes in to the heart—“for out of the heart proceedeth covetousness”—and it says to the heart, “thou shalt not covet.” And hence saith the apostle, “I had not known the sinfulness of inordinate desire if the Law had not said, Thou shalt not covet.” It lays its fiery finger upon the first movement of covetousness, and brands it as a sin. Harris.

The improper desire is the root of all evil. It can seldom be reached by human legislation. But it is open to the Searcher of hearts. The intent is that which, in the last resort, determines the moral character of the act. This last “word” is, therefore, the interpreting clause of the whole Decalogue. It raises the code immeasurably above every code of man who looketh on the outward appearance of conduct, and at once renders it worthy of the Lord who looketh on the heart. Covetousness here includes envy, malice, and every other selfish or unholy state of the feelings. M.—If I allow evil desire a harbor in my heart, my standard of morality will be lowered, I shall grow reckless, shall care less for what is holy and just and good, shall neglect duties generally, and in this way conform my life to the evil desire which, like persistent leaven, will leaven the whole lump. Sin in the desire is sin in the man—the entire man; so that the harm done by coveting what is not our own is just the harm done by sin when welcomed to the heart. It is spiritual corruption. Crosby.

The closing law of motive—or law against evil desire—plainly transcends the bounds of civil legislation. It could proceed only from One who was greater than any earthly sovereign. By entering the hidden domain of motive, it speaks not to the citizen merely, but to the man. Moreover, it serves to fling a surprising light backward upon all the preceding laws. It puts in our hand a new key by which to read them. It serves to hint that underneath the concrete prohibitions of the rest there lay deeper and more spiritual principles; so that they were not really kept when kept only in the letter. In this last statute, forbidding not overt act, but inward desire, we find a basis laid for that deeper theory of Mosaism which was long afterward worked out from his own experience by Paul. In how many Hebrews’ bosoms, as in his, did that law which said “Thou shalt not covet,” fan to flame the slumbering ashes of sinful desire! To how many did it come, as to him, reviving sin, and therefore slaying self-righteous conceit by laying bare the helplessness of the carnal nature and its inherent antagonism to the holy and perfect Law of God? Dykes.

Deed and word will not be right unless the heart be right; and the heart will be wrong unless it be purged of the bitter black drop of covetousness. The desire to make my neighbor’s good mine is the parent of all breaches of neighborly duty, even as its converse “love” is the fulfilling of it all; for such desire implies that I am ruled by selfishness, and that I would willingly deprive another of good, for my own gratification. Such a temper, like a wild boar among vineyards, will trample down all the rich clusters in order to slake its own thirst. Find a man who yields to his desires after his neighbor’s goods, and you find a man who will break all commandments like a hornet in a spider’s web. Nor is it only the second table which covetousness dashes to fragments. It serves the first in the same fashion; for, as Paul puts it, the covetous man “is an idolater,” and is as incapable of loving God as of loving his neighbor. This final commandment, overleaping the boundary between conduct and character, and carrying the light of duty into the dark places of the heart, where deeds are fashioned, sets the whole flock of bats and twilight-loving creatures in agitation. It does the main work of the Law, in compelling us to search our hearts, and in convincing of sin. It is the converse of the thought that all the Law is contained in love; for it closes the list of sins with one which begets them all, and points us away from actions and words which are its children to selfish desire, as in itself the transgression of all the Law, whether it be that which prescribes our relations to God, or that which enjoins our duties to man. A. M.

This last commandment brings us back to the first. We started with God and we end with God. We find that if our true relation with God be maintained, then all other relations will adjust themselves rightly, and that our duty to our neighbor is founded on our duty to God. This thought, as taught in God’s Word, will dissipate any hopes we may have formed from human schemes of philanthropy and social progress. Crosby.

The tenth and last commandment is by the Church of Rome divided into two, to keep up the number after joining the first and second into one, contrary to ancient authority, Jewish and Christian. How the mistake was originally made, is hard to say; but undoubtedly they retain and defend it the more earnestly, in order to pass over the second commandment as only part of the first, without any distinct meaning of its own. The two commandments plainly relate to different things; the first appointing that the object of our worship be the only true God; the second that we worship not Him under any visible resemblance or form. It is plain, therefore, that these two ought not to be thus joined and confounded. And that the tenth ought not to be divided is equally evident: for it is one single prohibition of all unjust desires. And if reckoning up the several prohibited objects of desire makes it more than one commandment, for the same reason it will be more than two. Abp. Secker.

Why should I be backward to vow my obedience to the laws of God? Are they anything else but a method of living well and wisely, free from fears and injury? They teach me to conduct myself so that I may win the favor of God and good men, and be safe in the best and happy in the worst condition. I cannot wish a greater felicity than to be meek and patient, grateful and contented, temperate and industrious, just and bountiful, to converse with God, rejoice with angels, to imitate the saints, follow the blessed Jesus, and to seek everlasting joy. God requires nothing impossible, unjust, or unreasonable. I bind myself to that which my judgment and my conscience tell me it is fit and expedient for me to do, although it had never been commanded. It is no more than that which all the wisest and best men, the friends of God and the favorites of heaven, have done with the greatest delight and pleasure, and therefore is the proof of a generous and noble spirit. God is the best of all masters; he covers the infirmities and strengthens the weaknesses of his servants. Can I fail to please him who excites the desire and enables for the performance; who makes the way familiar and easy, pleasant and inviting, and yet, where there is a hearty endeavor, doth make many abatements and accept the will for the deed; who begins his assistances early, and continues them till he hath perfected this excellent work? Then, looking unto Jesus, the purchaser of pardon and the giver of all grace, and humbly invoking the help of the Holy Spirit, I cry, Lord, write all these laws in my heart! Comber.

The mere imperative of the Almighty cannot purify a corrupt heart; and all the penalties of Sinai, although they may drive back the overflow of lawlessness in action, will never dry up the fountain of lawless desire. I may for various reasons do so much violence to myself as to curb my propensities and withhold my hand from wrong; but I cannot help secretly liking the pleasant naughtiness which is congenial to my perverted taste. For this deep, sore fault—laid bare to me by the tenth commandment—there is no radical cure save one. It is the cure prescribed by Christ: “Ye must be born again;” prescribed by him, and wrought by him, too: “As many as receive him, to them gave he the right to become children of God.” “Whoever is begotten of God doeth no sin.” Let this law of the tenth commandment do its appointed work upon you. Let it convict you of possessing an evil heart which cannot cease from sin, a heart that will not like what God commands. Let it shut you up to the necessity of a new birth. Let it force you to accept of cleansing for the past through the blood of Christ, and for the future to depend for strength to conquer lust upon the quickening and in habitation of the Spirit of Holiness, who is also the Spirit of Love. Then, when you abide in God, and God abides in you, you will walk in love, and love will be the fulfilment of this and of every law. Dykes.

MORAL LAW: TWO ESSENTIAL PRINCIPLES OF ITS REQUIREMENTS. FIRST, WITH REFERENCE TO CHARACTER, HOLINESS, OR LIKENESS TO GOD. SECOND, WITH REFERENCE TO THE ACTUATING FORCE OF THE LIFE, SUPREME LOVE TO GOD AND UNSELFISH LOVE TO MAN.

Ex. 20 18 And all the people saw the thunderings, and the lightnings, and the voice of the trumpet, and the mountain smoking : and when the people saw it, they trembled, 19 and stood afar off. And they said unto Moses, Speak thou with us, and we will 20 hear : but let not God speak with us, lest we die. And Moses said unto the people, Fear not : for God is come to prove you, and that his fear may be before you, that 21 ye sin not. And the people stood afar off, and Moses drew near unto the thick darkness where God was. De. 5 4 The LORD spake with you face to face in the mount out of the midst of the fire (I 5 stood between the LORD and you at that time, to shew you the word of the LORD : for ye were afraid because of the fire, and went not up into the mount ;) 23 And it came to pass, when ye heard the voice out of the midst of the darkness, while the mountain did burn with fire, that ye came near unto me, even all the heads 24 of your tribes, and your elders ; and ye said, Behold, the LORD our God hath shewed us his glory and his greatness, and we have heard his voice out of the midst of the 25 fire : we have seen this day that God doth speak with man, and he liveth. Now therefore why should we die ? for this great fire will consume us : if we hear the 26 voice of the LORD our God any more, then we shall die. For who is there of all flesh, that hath heard the voice of the living God speaking out of the midst of the fire, as 27 we have, and lived ? Go thou near, and hear all that the LORD our God shall say : and speak thou unto us all that the LORD our God shall speak unto thee ; and we will 28 hear it, and do it. And the LORD heard the voice of your words, when ye spake unto me ; and the LORD said unto me, I have heard the voice of the words of this people, which they have spoken unto thee : they have well said all that they have 29 spoken. Oh that there were such an heart in them, that they would fear me, and keep all my commandments always, that it might be well with them, and with their 30 children for ever ! Go say to them, Return ye to your tents. But as for thee, stand 31 thou here by me, and I will speak unto thee all the commandment, and the statutes, and the judgements, which thou shalt teach them, that they may do them in the land which I give them to possess it.

Ex. 20 : 18-21. This narrative is amplified in De. 5 : 23-31. The people had realized the terrors of the voice of Jehovah in the utterance of the ten words of the testimony, and they feared for their lives. Though Moses encouraged them, they were permitted to withdraw and to stand afar off, at their tent doors (see De. 5 : 30). Clark.—They were to learn by experience that however near Jehovah might draw to them, they were not in a condition to draw near to Jehovah, but still needed a mediator to act on their behalf. In the terrors of Sinai there was a representation of the terrors which the holiness of God always has to an unholy man ; in other words, of the terrors of the Law toward the sinner by whom it has been transgressed. But even in the midst of the terrors of Sinai there was a manifestation of mercy as well ; for the fire of holiness did not appear uncovered, but hidden in a thick, black cloud; and even unholy Israel learned that day, “that God may talk with man, and man remain alive” (De. 5 : 24). K.

The element of terror which prevailed in the revelation given on Sinai was the true type of the aspect of the Law to the mind of sinful man. Pure and holy in itself, it became “death,” when proposed as the condition of life; and its great purpose was to reveal to self-righteous man “the exceeding sinfulness of sin,” that he might be led to receive the grace of God in Christ. Thus the clouds of Sinai did not exhibit, but concealed, the true glory of Jehovah. P. S.—The mountain of Sinai shows, and God through the mountain, what the heart feels when the Law is laid open to it and it is touched by the judgment of God. Like as the Israelites saw lightning, thunder, smoke, earthquake, so that their heart stood still as if they should now die—they had no other image than death before their eyes—so also does a heart left to itself regard God as an executioner and jailer. None other than Christ can raise it up, whom I must know as a friend and brother, and be able to say to God, “Lord, I know no one, neither in heaven nor on earth, in whom I may have consolation and confidence than thyself through Christ.” Luther.

Christians need no longer stand far off in fear, like Israel at the foot of Horeb, there entreating that he may no longer speak to them, and with the secret fear within their heart that he who has seen God shall die. We have already seen God in the face of his beloved Son, yet our life is preserved; and the voice of God, and not of man, is ever calling us, like Moses, to draw near to him. No tables of stone are put into our hands, but God is still establishing his covenant with us and with our seed forever more; and his Law is written by the Holy Ghost upon the mind when its regeneration is begun. No barrier prevents approach to his high throne; in Christ we may draw near with confidence, by faith in him. Wherever there is any supplication made, the Father in Christ is there, as near his children as he was to Moses while he prayed; yea, more, wherever in your heart you seek the face of the Infinite, be it in midst of toil and weariness, or on the bed of rest—in midst of nature’s calm repose, or in the busy whirl of worldly things—in every place the Eternal One himself is near, ready to address kind words of comfort to your soul. All true believers, priests; and every priest called to draw near with as much confidence as Moses did: such is the joyful message which the Gospel brings. Van O.

Once God tried the expedient of speaking to the children of men immediately, but it was found that they could not bear it, it rather drove men from God than brought them to him, and, as it proved in the issue, though it terrified them it did not deter them from idolatry, for soon after this they worshipped the golden calf; let us therefore rest satisfied with the instructions given us by the Scriptures and the ministry; for if we believe not them, neither should we be persuaded though God should speak to us in thunder and lightning, as he did from Mount Sinai; here that matter was determined. H.

UPON THE PEOPLE’S REQUEST, APPROVED BY GOD, MOSES IS APPOINTED MEDIATOR (De. 5 : 27-31).

De. 5 : 27, 28. Moses calls attention to the fact that it was on their own entreaty that he had taken on him to be the channel of communication between God and them. God approved (verse 28) the request of the people, because it showed a feeling of their own unworthiness to enter into direct communion with God. The terrors of Sinai had done their work. They had awakened the consciousness of sin. Espin.

Jehovah approved of the people’s words; and Moses was solemnly appointed by both parties, and recognized henceforth as the mediator of the covenant. In this capacity he receives Jehovah’s further commands. K.—Moses stood between God and them, at the foot of the mount, and carried messages between them both for the settling of the preliminaries, and for the exchanging of the ratifications. Herein Moses was a type of Christ, who stands between God and man, to show us the Word of the Lord: a blessed Day’s-Man, that has laid his hand upon us both, so that we may both hear from God and speak to him, without trembling. H.

The whole scope and design of the occurrence show that no soul can possibly approach this holy and terrible being but through a mediator; and this is the use made of this whole transaction by the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews (ch. 12 : 18-24). A. C.—The standing of a redeemed people was shown even at Mount Sinai to be not of legal merit, but of grace. When the tribes of Israel fell back in fear at the foot of the mount, Moses drew near in their behalf as a mediator. When they sinned and provoked the Lord to wrath, Moses pleaded for them—significant type of the mediator of the New Covenant, who ever lives to make intercession for us. D. F.

In his perfect self-abnegation, in his patience and courage, in the unwearied fervor of his intercessions, in his unswerving fidelity, zeal, and devotion, Moses illustrated the true ideal of a mediator. B.—Moses was to them more than ever man was to a nation—their deliverer from the most crushing bondage, their leader through the most terrible scenes, wielding in their behalf the highest powers of nature and gifts of the soul—their lawgiver, their prophet, their advocate with God. In every strait they fled to Moses and found in him sympathy and relief. In all their waywardness and rebellion his heart never turned from them. Long ere he died, his self-devotion and magnanimity had found fitting acknowledgment, and he had taken a place never approached by any other. Ker.

Moses was the greatest servant of the Lord in the Old Testament, both in respect to his nearer intercourse with the Lord, to his clear and comprehensive revelation, and the greatness of the acts performed by him. The Founder of the new and eternal covenant (of whom Moses was a type) is alone worthy of greater honor than he (Heb. 3 : 3). Gerl.—God knew him face to face, and so he knew God. He saw more of the glory of God than any (at least) of the Old Testament saints ever did. He had more free and frequent access to God, and was spoken to not in dreams and visions and slumberings on the bed, but when he was awake and standing before the cherubims. By Moses God gave the Law, and moulded and formed the Jewish Church; by the other prophets he only sent particular reproofs, directions, and predictions. The last of the prophets concludes with a charge to remember the Law of Moses (Mal. 4 : 4). Christ himself often appealed to the writings of Moses, and vouched him for a witness, as one that saw his day at a distance and spake of him. But as far as the other prophets came short of him, our Lord Jesus went beyond him; his doctrine more excellent, his miracles more illustrious, and his communion with his Father more intimate, for he had lain in his bosom from eternity, and by him God does now in these last days speak to us. The history of Moses leaves him buried in the plains of Moab, and concludes with the period of his government; but the history of our Saviour leaves him sitting at the right hand of the Majesty on high, and we are assured that of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end. The apostle, in his Epistle to the Hebrews, largely proves the pre-eminence of Christ above Moses, as a good reason why we that are Christians should be obedient, faithful, and constant to that holy religion which we make profession of. God, by his grace, make us all so! H.

Where shall we find equal disinterestedness to that which Moses manifested? Without earthly reward of any sort, so far as we can see, he lived for forty years, not to serve himself, but to serve the tribes; and he did so out of regard to Jehovah. Even when he had it in his offer to be made himself the founder of a great nation if he would give up pleading their cause, he nobly refused to turn against them; and he grounded his refusal on his solicitude for the honor of the Lord himself. So we find that his piety was the source of his disinterested patriotism. W. M. T.—All that is told of him indicates a withdrawal of himself, a preference of the cause of his nation to his own interests, which makes him the most complete example of Jewish patriotism. He joins his countrymen in their degrading servitude. He forgets himself to avenge their wrongs. He desires that his brother may take the lead instead of himself. He wishes that not he only, but all the nation, were gifted alike: “Enviest thou for my sake?” When the offer is made that the people should be destroyed, and that he should be made “a great nation,” he prays that they may be forgiven—“if not, blot me, I pray thee, out of thy book which thou hast written.” His sons were not raised to honor. The leadership of the people passed, after his death to another tribe. In the books which bear his name, Abraham, and not himself, appears as the real father of the nation. In spite of his great pre-eminence, they are never “the children of Moses.” P. S.

What was the motive of such a life? Who can explain the inward and all-moving force? We must wait for the key-word until we come to the most eloquent epistle in the New Testament. How is Moses accounted for by the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews? “By faith Moses—.” Faith could find a way through the wilderness; faith could build a sanctuary in the desert; faith could carry a great household of rebellious children through dangerous places; faith could see Canaan with closed eyes, and awaken imagination to sing to adequate music the delights of that promised country. J. P.

No one can study the history of Moses without learning that the head-springs of true greatness and efficiency lie far away up out of the sight of one’s fellows, and are to be filled and fed by lonely studyings and solitary musings, communings with one’s own heart, with God, with nature, and with all those questions which any education worthy of the name suggests. The noblest life is thus the outcome of that of which no biographer can take cognizance. It is true of it, as the Psalmist says of the body, that it is “made in secret;” and the consolation of each earnest worker is that, though for the time he may seem to himself to be groping blindly like one in the dark, God has been superintending and shaping all, so that at length he can say, “Thine eyes did see it, while yet imperfect; and in thy book it was all written, what days it should be fashioned, while as yet there was none of it.”

How clearly does all this appear in Moses! Each of the two former sections of his life gave its own contribution to the last, with its glorious time of harvest and achievement. His eighty years of preparation, though little is said about them, were not lost; for, when he came to his life-work, that lifted into itself and utilized everything that had gone before. As the eloquent Bishop Wilberforce has said, “The sage, learned in all Egyptian lore; the great soul, mighty in word and deed; the deep philosophic intellect, furnished with all transmitted wisdom, trained in all school subtleties, practised by the oft-handling of State affairs, ripened into mellowness by solitude, nature, and self-converse—these remained; but on them all had passed a mighty change, . . . transmuting the earthly into the heavenly, raising the intellectual into the spiritual, making the man of power into the man of God, the noble, philosophic patriot into the prophet of the Lord.” W. M. T.

This Moses, humble in refusing so great a service; resigned in undertaking, faithful in discharging, unwearied in fulfilling it; vigilant in governing his people, resolute in correcting them; ardent in loving them, and patient in bearing with them; the intercessor for them with the God whom they provoked, this Moses—such and so great a man—we love, and admire, and, so far as may be, imitate. Augustine.

THE BOOK OF THE COVENANT: INTRODUCTION (Ex. 20:22-26); THE JUDGMENTS (Ex. 21:1 to 23:19); CONCLUSION—PROMISES AND WARNINGS (Ex. 23:20-33).

Ex. 20 22 And the LORD said unto Moses, Thus thou shalt say unto the children of Israel, 23 Ye yourselves have seen that I have talked with you from heaven. Ye shall not make other 24 gods with me; gods of silver, or gods of gold, ye shall not make unto you. An altar of earth thou shalt make unto me, and shalt sacrifice thereon thy burnt offerings, and thy peace offerings, thy sheep, and thine oxen: in every place where I record my name I will come unto 25 thee and I will bless thee. And if thou make me an altar of stone, thou shalt not build it of 26 hewn stones: for if thou lift up thy tool upon it, thou hast polluted it. Neither shalt thou go up by steps unto mine altar, that thy nakedness be not discovered thereon.

21 1 Now these are the judgments which thou shalt set before them.

[The “judgments” embrace Ex. 21:2-23:19.]

23 20 Behold, I send an angel before thee, to keep thee by the way, and to bring thee into 21 the place which I have prepared. Take ye heed of him, and hearken unto his voice; pro- 22 voke him not: for he will not pardon your transgression; for my name is in him. But if thou shalt indeed hearken unto his voice, and do all that I speak; then I will be an enemy 23 unto thine enemies, and an adversary unto thine adversaries. For mine angel shall go before thee, and bring thee in unto the Amorite, and the Hittite, and the Perizzite, and the Canaan- 24 ite, the Hivite, and the Jebusite: and I will cut them off. Thou shalt not bow down to their gods, nor serve them, nor do after their works: but thou shalt utterly overthrow them, and 25 break in pieces their pillars. And ye shall serve the LORD your God, and he shall bless thy 26 bread, and thy water; and I will take sickness away from the midst of thee. There shall 27 none cast her young, nor be barren, in thy land: the number of thy days I will fulfil. I will send my terror before thee, and will discomfit all the people to whom thou shalt come, and I 28 will make all thine enemies turn their backs unto thee. And I will send the hornet before 29 thee, which shall drive out the Hivite, the Canaanite, and the Hittite, from before thee. I will not drive them out from before thee in one year; lest the land become desolate, and the 30 beast of the field multiply against thee. By little and little I will drive them out from before 31 thee, until thou be increased, and inherit the land. And I will set thy border from the Red Sea even unto the sea of the Philistines, and from the wilderness unto the River: for I will deliver the inhabitants of the land into your hand; and thou shalt drive them out before 32 thee. Thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor with their gods. They shall not dwell

33 in thy land, lest they make thee sin against me : for if thou serve their gods, it will surely be a snare unto thee.

At the earnest cry of the people, Moses had been appointed as mediator between Jehovah and Israel. And now, as the next duty in order, came the ratification of that covenant, whose conditions had been proposed by God himself to his people in the Ten Commandments. But before the people could intelligently pledge themselves to fulfil these conditions, it was necessary that some more specific directions should be given respecting their worship of God and their conduct toward each other. Hence, we have in these chapters (20 : 22 to 23 : 33) an outlined summary of the more important injunctions and ordinances, given to Moses in “the thick darkness where God was” (20 : 21). These “words and judgments” (21 : 1) consist mainly of precepts respecting the true spirit and method of worship and the solemn commemorative feasts, and laws bearing upon personal rights and duties in various civil and social relations, and upon injuries or wrongs incident to these relations. These specific instructions and statutes were in effect practical applications of the Ten Commandments, and so served as a sufficient preliminary exposition of those commandments. In their selection they fully and fairly interpreted the spirit and character of the whole subsequent legislation. Thus they were fitted to their design in furnishing a fuller basis for more intelligent action in the solemn ceremonial now impending, the formal ratification of Jehovah’s covenant with his people.

[NOTE.—As the great body of these statutes (Ex. 21 : 2 to 23 : 19), specifically termed “the judgments,” are subsequently re-enjoined with greater fulness, it accords with our plan to defer a detailed exposition to their orderly place in the general arrangement.] B.

In Ex. 24 : 4 it is said, “Moses wrote all the words of the Lord ;” and, verse 7, “He took the book of the covenant.”

The book written by Moses and called the book of the covenant, because the great covenant at Sinai was made upon the basis of it (24 : 8), is also called the greater book of the covenant in order to distinguish it from the little book of the covenant (Ex. 34 : 27). This book contained “all the words and all the judgments” (21 : 1) which had just been given to Moses in the mount (24 : 3). “The words” certainly embrace Ex. 20 : 22-26 and 23 : 20-33, the Introduction and Conclusion of the book. Some have maintained that the ten words of the tables should likewise be included. “The judgments” embrace 21-23 : 19, in accordance with the title 21 : 1 : “These are the judgments which thou shalt set before them.” Briggs.

The context seems to make it clear that we may identify this series with what was written by Moses in the book called the book of the covenant, and read by him in the audience of the people (see 24 : 4, 7). There has been a difference of opinion as to the compass of matter contained in this book. But the weight of authority is in favor of its comprising the last five verses of ch. 20, with ch. 21, 22, 23. In whatever way these laws may have originated, as they are here brought together, they are clearly enforced by Jehovah as conditions of conduct for the covenanted people. Clark.—Whether the book of the covenant contained the Decalogue or not, there can be no question that it was understood to rest upon the tables of stone as its rock foundation. But “the book of the covenant,” as distinguished from the tables of stone, begins with these words in the twenty-second verse of the twentieth chapter : “Ye have seen that I have talked with you from heaven ;” and extends to the close of the twenty-third chapter. J. M. G.

In the book of the covenant, drawn up as the preliminary basis of the union to be cemented between Jehovah and Israel, it would have been clearly out of place to introduce in detail the whole ceremonial of worship which was subsequently established as the outgrowth and proper expression of this union. Accordingly it comprises first and mainly regulations regarding the relation of man to man, conceived in the spirit of the religion of Jehovah, and then in the briefest possible compass directions respecting firstlings and first-fruits, the Sabbath and the annual feasts—that is to say, oblations and sacred times, as the culminations of that outward and formal service in which the people’s homage toward God was to manifest itself. W. H. G.—The difference between the first group of laws (which is found in the book of the covenant) and the subsequent groups which were based upon it is this : the former laid down the conditions on which the covenant was to be concluded, and the basis of the theocratical constitution ; the latter contained their further development, especially in a liturgical point of view. The first group related to such departments of life as embraced the most general and fundamental features of the theocratical commonwealth. It contained laws that equally affected the whole nation and every individual belonging to it; whereas the following groups related to more special departments of life and worship, and contained commandments, the observance of which depended upon the sanctuary which was not yet erected, and the existence of a priesthood that had not yet been instituted. K.

Nothing could be more appropriate as the commencement of the book of the covenant than these regulations for public worship, Clark.—They contain a general outline of the mode of worship, especially guarding its purity and simplicity. The outline was afterward to be filled up in the elaborate ritual of the tabernacle and its services; but in the book of the covenant there were only the leading principles which were to govern and guide the people in their acts of worship. J. M. G.

22. The Lord said unto Moses.** There can be little doubt that this verse contains the ground and reason of the prohibition in the next; but the exact chain of sequence which connects the two together is not perfectly obvious from the face of the narrative. But upon referring to the parallel passage (De. 4 : 14-16), where a more detailed account is given, we seem to be furnished with a clew to the connection. “And the Lord commanded me at that time to teach you statutes and judgments, that ye might do them in the land whither ye go over to possess it. Take ye therefore good heed unto yourselves (for ye saw no manner of similitude on the day that the Lord spake unto you in Horeb out of the midst of the fire); lest ye corrupt yourselves, and make you a graven image, the similitude of any figure, the likeness of male or female.” Bush.—23. He had given them sufficient demonstration of his presence among them; they needed not to make images of him, as if he were absent. Besides, they had only seen that he talked with them, they had seen no manner of similitude, so that they could not make any image of God; and his manifesting himself to them only by a voice, plainly showed them that they must not make any such image, but keep up their communion with God by his Word. H.

24. An Altar.** The prohibition to make any image of God is designed to introduce the permission or injunction to make an altar to him. The only outward thing in the salvation of the soul is the atonement. The necessity of propitiation is accordingly symbolized in the altar. The mercy of God needs no type, and has its place in the proclamation on Sinai. The propitiation, which makes way for his mercy to the penitent sinner by satisfying his justice, has its type in the altar and the sacrifice thereon. This special provision for the salvation of sinners, though it would be out of place in the ten words, yet forms the main substance of all that is shadowed forth in the whole ceremonial Law. It, therefore, comes in here as the necessary antecedent of all acceptable approaching to God and walking with him. The word altar connects Moses and the people of Israel with Noah and his rescued family. M.—In all places where I record my name. Wherever I am worshipped, whether in the open wilderness, at the tabernacle, the temple, the synagogues, or elsewhere, I will come unto thee, and bless thee. These words are precisely the same in signification with those of our Lord, For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them. And as it was Jesus who was the angel that spoke to them in the wilderness (Acts 7 : 38), from the same mouth this promise in the Law and that in the Gospel proceeded. A. C.—So that wherever God’s people meet in his name to worship him, he will be in the midst of them; he will honor them with his presence, and reward them with the gifts of his grace; there he will come unto them, and will bless them, and more than this we need not desire for the beautifying of our solemn assemblies. H.

This command prescribes the material out of which the Divine altar should be constructed, the earth, the natural soil of the ground. It mentions the two kinds of sacrifices, both primitive and pre-Mosaic, which might be made upon it: whole burnt-offerings and peace-offerings. Many different altars are contemplated. These places for the erection of altars were indicated by Divine selection. The recording of the Divine name is such a selection. This was done in the olden times by Theophanies. The Deuteronomic expression 12 : 5, is “which Jehovah will choose to put his name there;” and 12 : 11, to cause his name to dwell there. 25. The native rock or natural stones were allowed for use in altar building as well as the natural soil of the ground, only they must remain in their natural condition. No tool could be used upon them. Briggs.

I understand this of the altars, which either in the desert or elsewhere should be built, before the choice of the perpetual place had been manifested to them. God would have them built of earth that they might fall down of themselves, and that no trace of them might remain after the departure of the people; but if stones were used, he forbade their being fitted together in a permanent structure, but would have them thrown rough and unpolished into a heap, lest their appearance should entice posterity to superstition. Cule.—The heathens, who imitated the rites of the true God in their idolatrous worship, made their altars very high; whence they derived their name altaria, altars—i.e., very high or elevated places; which they built thus partly through pride and vainglory, and partly that their gods might the better hear them. Hence also the high places or idolatrous altars, so often and so severely condemned in the Holy Scriptures. God therefore ordered His altars to be made, (1) either of simple turf, that there might be no unnecessary expense, and that they might be no incentives to idolatry from their costly or curious structure, or (2) of unhewn stone, that no images of animals or of the celestial bodies might be sculptured on them, as was the case among the idolaters, and especially among the Egyptians, as several of their ancient altars which remain to the present day amply testify; which altars themselves and the images carved on them became in process of time incentives to idolatry, and even objects of worship. A. C.

The altar in the fore-court of the tabernacle was made of wood, with wooden staves overlaid with brass, the interior of the framework being filled with earth. The altar in Solomon’s temple was entirely of brass (2 Ch. 4:1). After the captivity, and in the time of the Maccabees, as we learn (1 Mac. 4:45, 47), the altar in the temple was of unhewn stones, probably because, without express Divine command, they did not wish to depart from the command here given. The same was the case with the altar in Herod’s temple. Properly every altar ought to have been made of earth, and the wood or brass plates were only the framework into which the earth was heaped. If it was made of stones, these must be unhewn, that they might resemble earth as much as possible. Gerl.

26. The sanctity of the altar was also maintained by the prohibition of any exposure of the person there, even such as might arise in the use of stairs. Briggs.

THE JUDGMENTS (Ex. 20:2 TO EX. 23:19).

Ex. 21:1. These are the judgments. The next division contains “the judgments,” as they are called, regulating the civil relations to each other of the members of the Hebrew commonwealth (21:1-23:19).

These judgments stood related to the second table of the Law, just as the regulations concerning the worship of the altar stood related to the first. It is to be remembered also that these “judgments,” and those of the same kind which afterward were added as occasion arose, are to be distinguished from the moral law, not only as applying to the State rather than to the individual, but also as local and temporary in their nature, representing not what was ideally best, but only what was then practically possible in the direction of that which was best. Some very superficial people criticise them as if they were intended for the nineteenth century! The Decalogue was, and is, intrinsically perfect; the “judgments” were adapted to the circumstances and wants of Israel at the time. And it would be a good thing if reformers of modern times would always remember the same wise and necessary distinction, between that which is ideally perfect and that which alone may be practically possible. Still further it is to be remembered, that these judgments were suitable to “the Theocracy” of Israel; and hence those are entirely wrong who attempt to use them as precedents for general legislation in the limited monarchies and republican governments, and otherwise entirely altered circumstances, of modern times. Yet if we could only compare these “judgments” with the laws and customs of the nations around, we should see by force of contrast how exceedingly pure, wise, just, and humane they are; and especially where private relations are dealt with, we have touches which would not shame the New Testament itself, however much they may in another sense shame us, as for instance (Ex. 23:4, 5): “If thou meet thy enemy’s ox or his ass going astray, thou shalt surely bring it back to him again. If thou see the ass of him that hateth thee lying under his burden, and wouldest forbear to help him, thou shalt surely help with him.” The third division of the book of the covenant has to do with matters which relate neither to worship exclusively, nor to civil relations exclusively, but to both. These are the Sabbath year, the Sabbath day, and the yearly festivals (23:10-19). As for the Sabbath year and the festivals, they will come up again in the fuller details which were given from the tabernacle and recorded in Leviticus. And as for the Sabbath day, we may simply remark the significance of its presence herein the book of the covenant, as well as in the Decalogue, indicating that while in its principle it belongs to universal and unchangeable law, in its letter it formed part of that national covenant which was merged in the new and better covenant of the later age. J. M. G.

“The judgments” next communicated to Moses determined, first, the civil and social position of all in Israel relatively to each other (Ex. 21:1-23:12), and then their religious position relatively to the Lord (23:13-19). The Divine legislation begins, as assuredly none other ever did, not at the topmost but at the lowest rung of society. It declares in the first place the personal rights of such individuals as are in a state of dependence—male (21:2-6) and female slaves (verses 7-11). This is done not only with a sacred regard for the rights of the person, but with a delicacy, kindness, and strictness beyond any code ever framed on this subject. If slavery was still tolerated, as a thing existent, its real principle, that of making men chattels and property, was struck at the root, and the institution became, by its safeguards and provisions, quite other from what it has been among any nation, whether ancient or modern.

Then follow “judgments” guarding life (verses 12-14), with crimes against which, the maltreatment and the cursing of parents (verses 15, 17), and man-stealing (verse 16), are put on a level. It is the sanctity of life, in itself, in its origin, and in its free possession, which is here in question, and the punishment awarded to such crimes is neither intended as warning nor as correction, but strictly as punishment—that is, as retribution. From the protection of life the Law passes to that of the body against all injuries, whether by man (verses 18-27) or by beast (verses 28-32). The principle here is, so far as possible, compensation, coupled with punishment in grave offences.

Next, the safety of property is secured. But before entering upon it, the Divine Law protects also the life of a beast. Property is dealt with under various aspects. First we have the theft of cattle—the most important to guard against among an agricultural people—a different kind of protection being wisely allowed to owners by day and by night (22:1-4). Then, damage to fields or their produce is considered (verses 5, 6). After that, loss or damage of what had been intrusted for safe keeping (verses 7-15), and along with it loss of honor (verses 16, 17) are dealt with.

The statutes which follow (verses 18-30) are quite different in character from those which had preceded. They are beyond the province of ordinary civil legislation, and concern Israel as being specially the people of God. As such they express what Jehovah expects from his own people, bound to him by covenant. As before, the series of statutes begins by interdicting what is contrary to the God-consecrated character of the nation. Thus, at the outset all magic is exterminated (verse 18), and with it all unnatural crimes (verse 19), and idolatrous practices (verse 20). In short, as before in worship, so now in life, heathenism, its powers, its vileness, and its corruptions are swept aside. On the other hand, in opposition to all national exclusiveness, the stranger (though not the strange god) is to be kindly welcomed (verse 21); widows and the fatherless are not to be “humiliated” (verses 22-24); those in temporary need not to be vexed by usury (verses 25-27); God as the supreme Lawgiver is not to be reviled, nor yet are those appointed to rule under him to be cursed (verse 28); the tribute due to the Lord as King is to be cheerfully given (verses 29, 30); and the holy dignity of his people not to be profaned even in their daily habits (verse 31). Again, nothing that is untrue, unloving, or unjust is to be said, done, or attempted (23:1-3), and that not merely in public dealings, but personal dislike is not to influence conduct. On the contrary, all loving help is to be given even to an enemy in time of need (verses 4, 5); the poor and persecuted are not to be unjustly dealt with; no bribe is to be taken, “for the gift maketh open eyes blind, and perverteth the causes of the righteous,” and the same rule is to apply to the stranger as to Israel (verses 6-9). Finally in this connection, the seventh year’s and the seventh day’s rest are referred to, not so much in their religious character as in their bearing upon the poor and the workers (verses 10-12).

Passing from the statutes fixing the civil and social position of all in Israel to their religious position relatively to Jehovah, we have first of all an injunction of the three great annual feasts. Although strictly religious festivals, they are here viewed, primarily, not in their symbolical and typical meaning (which is universal and eternal), but in their national bearing: the Paschal feast as that of Israel’s deliverance from Egypt, the feast of weeks as that “of harvest, the first-fruit of thy labors,” and the feast of tabernacles as that of final “ingathering” (verses 14-17). Of the three ordinances which now follow (verses 18, 19), the first refers to the Paschal sacrifice (comp. Ex. 12:15, 20; 13:7; 34:25), and the second to the feast of first-fruits or of weeks. A. E.

Promises and Warnings (Ex. 23:20-33).

These verses form the conclusion of the book of the covenant. They contain promises of the constant presence and guidance of Jehovah (verses 20-22), of the driving out of the nations of the Canaanites by degrees (23-30), and of the subsequent enlargement of Hebrew dominion (verse 31). But these promises are accompanied by solemn exhortations and threatenings (cf. 34:10-17), where similar promises and warnings are prefixed to the shorter compendium of Law which was written down after the renewal of the tables. Clark.—The demands of Jehovah, which are imposed upon the people in the book of the covenant, are followed by the promises of Jehovah, or the covenant obligations which Jehovah imposed upon himself. K.—The closing division of the book contains those PROMISES which set forth the Divine part in the covenant—promises of angelic guidance, victory, national prosperity, and greatness—accompanied, however, with cautions against disobedience, and against yielding to the temptation of forsaking the God of Israel for other gods. J. M. G.

These exhortations and promises at the conclusion of the book of the covenant are to be compared with those brief ones in the introduction to the little book of the covenant (34:11-13), also with the fuller conclusion of the section of the priest’s code called the code of sanctity (Lev. 26), and the blessings and curses of the Deuteronomic code (De. 27:30). The peculiarity of this code as distinguished from the others is the emphasis here laid upon the Malakh, the angel of the Divine presence, the Theophanic angel. The priest’s code uses instead of the Theophany (Lev. 26:11 sq.). “And I will give my tabernacle in your midst and I myself will not reject you, and I will walk about in your midst and become your God and ye shall become my people.” Briggs.

20-22. Behold, I send an angel before thee.** The Angel who is meant in this special promise of grace, who was to lead Israel, whom they are to obey as if he were God himself, and whom they cannot resist with impunity, who has power to pardon or retain their transgressions, in whom is the Name—i.e., the being and majesty—of God, cannot possibly be any other than the Revealer of the Godhead, in whom He personally exists; the Angel who brought Israel forth out of Egypt (Nu. 20:16); the Captain of the Lord’s host (Josh. 5:14); the Presence of the Lord (Ex. 33:14); the Angel of his presence (Isa. 63:9); the Messenger of the covenant (Mal. 3:1). C. G. B.—He is no created angel, but a form of the Divine presence, bearing the name of Jehovah, as in ch.

13:21, and clothed with his attributes, and indeed identified in action (verse 22) with him: for it is not said, “he will be an enemy,” etc., but “I will be,” as equivalent: and (23) the way in which this will be shown is by his going before thee, and his cutting off the nations. And (24, ff.) this obedience to him will be shown by utter separation from those nations and their idolatry. Alf.

He will not pardon your transgressions. Were he either man or angel, it need not be said, He will not pardon your transgressions; for neither man nor angel could do it. My name is in him. The Jehovah dwells in him—in him dwelt all the fulness of the Godhead bodily; and because of this he could pardon or punish. A. C.—Everywhere throughout this great system of Law, we find Jehovah appealing to his own name as significant of a special and tender relation, and as containing associations fitted to affect the hearts of his people. Mice Whorter.—God will send an Angel before the people whom Israel is to obey: he will be angry with them if they transgress: he has the power of forgiveness. All this is declared in the expression, “My name is in him.” In the person of this Angel, God goes before, and with, his people. God declares (ch. 33:2, 3), he will not go up with the people, “lest he consume them in the way;” but he will send an angel before them. Between these two angels, therefore, a great difference must exist. In the one is God’s name—i.e., his whole revealed being: whoever displeases him, displeases God himself; so likewise he forgives in God’s name, without the mediation of any other. The other, on the contrary, is a subordinate servant of God: an offence committed by Israel against him is not directly against God himself, but against a creature. In the place before us, Scripture speaks therefore of a messenger of the Lord equal to the uncreated God, whose acts are the acts of God himself. Geel.

23. The nations here mentioned are those only that inhabited the land strictly called the land of Canaan, lying between the Jordan and the Great Sea (see Nu. 34:2; cf. Ex. 34:11). I will cut them off. It has been too absolutely taken for granted that it was the Divine will that the inhabitants of Canaan should be utterly exterminated. We know that, as a matter of fact, great numbers of the Canaanite families lived on, and intermarried with the Israelites (see Judges 1:2, with such cases as those of the Sidonians, of Araunah, of Uriah, of the family of Rahab, etc.). The national existence of the Canaanites was indeed to be utterly destroyed, every trace of their idolatries was to be blotted out, no social intercourse was to be held with them while they served other gods, nor were alliances of any kind to be formed with them. These commands are emphatically repeated and expanded in Deuteronomy (7; 12:1-4, 29-31). They were often broken by the Israelites, who had to suffer for their transgression (Nu. 33:55; Judges 2:3). But it is alike contrary to the spirit of the Divine Law, and to the facts bearing on the subject scattered in the history, to suppose that any obstacle was put in the way of well-disposed individuals of the denounced nations who left their sins and were willing to join the service of Jehovah. The Law, as it was addressed to the Israelites, never forgets the stranger (rather, the foreigner) who had voluntarily come within their gates. The spiritual blessings of the covenant were always open to those who sincerely and earnestly desired to possess them. Clark.

30. Though God could easily have destroyed the Canaanites at once, though he could have crowned his people with immediate and decisive victory, yet he chose rather to do it, as he informs them by Moses, “by little and little.” He adopted this method to exercise more fully their faith and patience. “I will not drive them out from before thee in one year, lest the land become desolate, and the beasts of the field multiply against thee. By little and little will I drive them out from before thee, until thou be increased, and inherit the land.” For wise and mysterious ends, in like manner, he permits his Church to attain but a gradual victory. It is by slow degrees, and by a long succession of conflicts, that conquest is achieved: the force of the enemy is gradually weakened, and it is long ere the Church is permitted completely to rest from its toils. R. Hall.

31. And I will set thy bounds. He confirms here the covenant which he had made with Abraham in somewhat different words. More briefly had it been said to Abraham, “Unto thy seed have I given this land, from the river of Egypt unto the great river, the river Euphrates” (Gen. 15:18). Here the four cardinal points of the compass are enumerated, and, instead of the Nile, the other sea is mentioned. Calv.—The boundaries of the promised land are here indicated. The “wilderness” is that of Etham and Shur. The “river” is the Phrat. The extent of territory within these bounds cannot be less than 490 miles by 100, and therefore four or five times the area of Palestine proper. It is to be remembered that these promises are here made conditional on obedience; and therefore their fulfilment was in some degree modified by the subsequent conduct of the people. And thou shall drive them out before thee. This is the injunction laid on Israel as the executioner of the judgment of God. In verse 32 the second injunction is to make no covenant with the people or their idols. M.

31. In verse 23 the limits of the land of Canaan, strictly so called, are indicated; to this, when the Israelites were about to take possession of it, were added the regions of Gilead and Bashan on the east side of the Jordan (Nu. 32:33-42; Josh. 13:29-32). These two portions made up the Holy Land, of which the limits were recognized, with inconsiderable variations, till the final overthrow of the Jewish polity. But in this verse the utmost extent of Hebrew dominion, as it existed in the time of David and Solomon, is set forth. The kingdom then reached to Eloth and Ezion-geber on the Ælanitic Gulf of the Red Sea (1 Kings 9:26), and to Tiphsah on the “River”—that is, the river Euphrates (1 Kings 4:24), having for its western boundary “the Sea of the Philistines”—that is, the Mediterranean, and for its southern boundary “the desert”—that is, the wildernesses of Shur and Paran (cf. Gen. 15:18; De. 1:7; 11:24; Josh. 1:4). Clark.—From the desert unto the river. From the desert of Arabia to the river Euphrates. Thus 1 Kings 4:21, “And Solomon reigned over all kingdoms from the river to the land of the Philistines”—i.e., the river Euphrates. Bush.—I will set thy bounds from the Red Sea—on the southeast—even unto the sea of the Philistines—the Mediterranean on the northwest—and from the desert of Arabia, or the wilderness of Shur, on the west—to the river, the Euphrates, on the northeast. Or, in general terms, from the Euphrates on the east to the Mediterranean Sea on the west; and from Mount Libanus on the north to the Red Sea and the Nile on the south. This promise was not completely fulfilled till the days of David and Solomon. The general disobedience of the people before this time prevented a more speedy accomplishment; and their disobedience afterward caused them to lose the possession. A. C.

SOLEMN RATIFICATION OF THE COVENANT, BY SPRINKLING OF SACRIFICIAL BLOOD UPON ALTAR AND PEOPLE. THIS COVENANT THE CENTRAL POINT OF THE PENTATEUCH, AND BASIS OF ITS INTERNAL UNITY. LAW AND PROPHECY IN THEIR RELATION TO THE COVENANTS.

Lev. 26:1. Ye shall make you no idols. Heb. nothings, vanities. The import of the original is things of nought, in allusion to which the apostle says, “We know that an idol is nothing in the world.” Graven image. Heb. pesel, anything hewed or sculptured out of wood or stone. Pillar. Either a single stone, or a pile of stones reared and consecrated to religious purposes. Bush.

De. 16:21. Thou shalt not plant—i.e., place or set up, an Asherah of any kind of tree. The Asherah was an idol of wood in the form of a pillar, usually placed by the side of the altars of Baal. It was the symbol of Astarte, the great Canaanitish goddess, the companion and revealer of Baal. The two are usually associated in the Old Testament. W. L. A.

De. 12:29-32. Hebrew worship was to be in all respects a protest against surrounding idolatry. They were not only to carry out a policy of destruction, in sweeping from the land every vestige of ancient heathen worship, but were to avoid everything like imitation of it. Theirs was a new nationality, a new deliverance, a new faith, and it must be a new kind of worship, corresponding in its purity to the holiness of Jehovah. The Divine rules were to be precisely adhered to. They might not be swerved from, either by addition or diminution. C. C.

Idolaters, Enticers, False Prophets, and Wonder-Workers to be Put to Death, and Idolatrous Cities Destroyed.