'It shall be for a sign unto thee upon thine hand, and
for a memorial between thine eyes, that the Lord's law
may be in thy mouth.'--EXODUS xiii. 9.
The question may be asked, whether this command is to be taken
metaphorically or literally. No doubt the remembrance of the great
deliverance was intrusted to acts. Besides the annual Passover feasts,
inscriptions on the door-posts and fringes on the dress were appointed
for this purpose. And the Jews from a very early period, certainly
before our Lord's time, wore phylacteries fastened, as this and other
places prescribe, on the left arm and on the forehead, and alleged
these words as the commandment which they therein obeyed. But it seems
more probable that the meaning is metaphorical, and that what is
enjoined is rather a constant remembrance of the great deliverance, and
a constant regulation of the practical life by it. For what is it that
is to be 'a sign'? It is the Passover feast. And the 'therefore' of the
next verse seems to say that keeping this ordinance in its season is
the fulfilment of this precept. Besides, the expression 'for a sign,'
'for a memorial,' may just as well mean 'it shall serve as,' or 'it
shall be like,' as 'you shall wear.' So I think we must say that this
is a figure, not a fact; the enjoining of an object for thought and a
motive for life, not of a formal observance. And it is very
characteristic of the Jew, and of the universal tendency to harden and
lower religion into outward rites, that a command so wide and profound
was supposed to be kept by fastening little boxes with four slips of
parchment containing extracts from the Pentateuch on arm and forehead.
Jewish rabbis are not the only people who treat God's law like that.
Even if literal, the injunction is for the purpose of remembering.
Taking that meaning, then, the text sets forth principles that apply
quite as much to us. You will observe 'hand,' 'eyes,' 'mouth'; the
symbols of practice, knowledge, expression; work, thought, and word.
Observe also that there is a slight change in construction in the three
clauses; the two former are to be done in order that the latter may
come to pass. Then the memorial of the great deliverance is to be 'on
the hand' and 'before the eyes,' in order that 'the Lord's law' may be
'in the mouth.' Keeping these points in view--
I. God's great deliverance should be constantly before our thoughts. It
is more than an accident that both Judaism and Christianity should
begin with a great act of deliverance; that that act of deliverance
should constitute a community, and that a memorial rite should be the
centre of the ritual of both. The Lord's Supper historically took the
place of the Passover. It was instituted at the Passover and instead of
it. It is precisely the same in design, a memorial feast appointed to
keep up the vivid remembrance of the historical fact to which
redemption is traced; and not only to keep up its remembrance, but to
proclaim the importance of extending that remembrance through all life.
Notice the peculiarity of both the Jewish and the Christian rite, that
the centre point of both is a historical fact, a redeeming act. Judaism
and Christianity are the only religions in regard to which this is true
to anything like the same extent or in the same way. Christianity as a
revelation is not so much the utterance in words of great religious
thoughts as the history of a life and a death, a fact wrought upon the
earth, which is at once the means of revelation and the means of
redemption. This is a feature unshared by other religions.
This characteristic determines the principal object of our religious
thought. The true object for religious thought is Christ, and His life
and death.
All religious truth flows from and is wrapped up in that: _e.g._
theology, or the nature of God; anthropology, or the nature of man;
soteriology, morality, etc. All truth for the individual and for the
race has its source in God's great redeeming act. Religious emotion is
best fed at this source, _e.g._ thankfulness, wonder, love: all these
transcendent feelings which are melted together in adoration. Here is
where they are kindled. You cannot pump them up, or bring them into
existence by willing, or scourge yourself into them, any more than you
can make a seed grow by pulling at the germ with a pair of pincers, but
this gives the warmth and moisture which make it germinate.
The clear perception of this truth is valuable, as correcting false
tendencies in religion, _e.g._ the tendency to be much occupied with
the derived truths, and to think of them almost to the exclusion of the
great fact from which they come; the tendency to substitute melancholy
self-inspection for objective facts; the tendency to run out into mere
feeling.
The command requires of us a habitual occupation of mind with the great
deliverance.
And the habitual presence of this thought will be best secured by
specific times of occupation with it. Let every Christian practise the
habit of meditation, which in an age of so many books, newspapers, and
the distractions of our busy modern life, is apt to become obsolete.