'And God spake all these words, saying, 2. I am the Lord
thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of
Egypt, out of the house of bondage. 3. Thou shalt have
no other gods before me. 4. Thou shalt not make unto
thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing
that is in the heaven above, or that is in the earth
beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: 5.
Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them:
for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the
iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third
and fourth generation of them that hate me; 6. And
shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and
keep my commandments. 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. Remember the
sabbath-day, to keep it holy. 9. Six days shalt thou
labour, and do all thy work: 10. But the seventh day is
the sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do
any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy
man-servant, nor thy maid-servant, nor thy cattle, nor
thy stranger that is within thy gates: 11. For in six
days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all
that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore
the Lord blessed the sabbath-day, and hallowed it.'
--EXODUS xx. 1-11.
An obscure tribe of Egyptian slaves plunges into the desert to hide
from pursuit, and emerges, after forty years, with a code gathered into
'ten words,' so brief, so complete, so intertwining morality and
religion, so free from local or national peculiarities, so close
fitting to fundamental duties, that it is to-day, after more than three
thousand years, authoritative in the most enlightened peoples. The
voice that spoke from Sinai reverberates in all lands. The Old World
had other lawgivers who professed to formulate their precepts by divine
inspiration: they are all fallen silent. But this voice, like the
trumpet on that day, waxes louder and louder as the years roll. Whose
voice was it? The only answer explaining the supreme purity of the
commandments, and their immortal freshness, is found in the first
sentence of this paragraph, 'God spake all these words.'
I. We have first the revelation, which precedes and lays the foundation
for the commandments; 'I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee
out of the land of Egypt.' 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. He is not a hard taskmaster, 'gathering where He has not strawn.'
Even in that 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 men's.
This prelude certainly confines the Decalogue to the people of Israel.
Their deliverance is the ground on which the law is rested, therefore,
plainly, the obligation can be no wider than the benefit. But though we
are not bound to obey any of the Ten Commandments, because they were
given to Israel, they are all, with one exception, demonstrably, a
transcript of laws written on the heart of mankind; and this fact
carries with it a strong presumption that the law of the Sabbath, which
is the exception referred to, should be regarded as not an exception,
but as a statute of the primeval law, witnessed to by conscience,
republished in wondrous precision and completeness in these venerable
precepts. The Ten Commandments are binding on us; but they are not
binding as part, though the fundamental part, of the Jewish law.
Two general observations may be made. One is on the negative character
of the commandments as a whole. Law prohibits because men are sinful.
But prohibitions pre-suppose as their foundation positive commands. We
are forbidden to do something because we are inclined to do it, and
because we ought to do the opposite. Every 'thou shalt not' implies a
deeper 'thou shalt.' The cold negation really rests on the converse
affirmative command.
The second remark on the law as a whole is as to the relation which it
establishes between religion and morality, making the latter a part of
the former, but regarding it as secured only by the prior discharge of
the obligations of the former. Morality is the garb of religion;
religion is the animating principle of morality. The attempts to build
up a theory of ethics without reference to our relations to God, or to
secure the practice of righteousness without such reference, or to
substitute, with a late champion of unbelief, 'the service of man' for
the worship of God, are all condemned by the deeper and simpler wisdom
of this law. Christians should learn the lesson, which the most Jewish
of the New Testament writers had drawn from it, that, 'pure and
undefiled service' of God is the service of man, and should beware of
putting asunder what God has joined so closely.
II. 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. Everywhere but in
that corner among the wild rocks of Sinai, men believed in 'gods many.'
Egypt swarmed with them; and, no doubt, the purity of Abraham's faith
had been sadly tarnished in his sons. We cannot understand the strange
fascination of polytheism. It is a disease of humanity in an earlier
stage than ours. But how strong it was and is, all history shows. All
these many gods were on amicable terms with one another, and ready to
welcome newcomers. But the monotheism, which was here laid at the very
foundation of Israel's national life, parted it by a deep gulf from all
the world, and determined its 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 on as 'Thou,' and be sure that He
hears? No accumulation of finite excellences, 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. No string of goodly pearls will ever
give the merchantman assurance that his quest is complete. 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, towards 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.
III. The second commandment forbids all representations, whether of the
one God or of false deities. The golden calf, which was a symbol of
Jehovah, is condemned equally with the fair forms that haunted the
Greek Olympus, or the half-bestial shapes of Egyptian mythology. The
reasons for the prohibition may be considered as two,--the
impossibility of setting forth the glory of the Infinite Spirit in any
form, and the certainty that the attempt will sink the worshipper
deeper in the mire of sense. 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. There is a strong current running in England, at all
events, in the direction of bringing in a more artistic, or, as it is
called, a 'less bare,' form of service. 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.
The especial difficulty of obedience to this commandment is marked by
the reason or sanction annexed. That opens a wide field, on which it
would be folly to venture here. There is a glimpse of God's character,
and a statement of a law of His working. 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.
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 sometimes it
is spelled with a final 'e,' to look more philosophical) 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 die 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 go 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.
IV. 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 shrunk faith which wears them.
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.'
V. 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. If we believe that the giver of the code was
God, we seem shut up to the conclusion that, though the Sabbath is a
positive institution, and in so far unlike the preceding commandments,
it is to be taken as not merely a temporary or Jewish ordinance. The
ground on which it is rested here points to the same conclusion. The
version of the Decalogue in Deuteronomy bases it on the Egyptian
deliverance, but this, on the divine rest after creation. As we have
already said, we do not regard the Decalogue as binding on us because
given to Israel; but we do regard it as containing laws universally
binding, which are written by God's finger, not on tables of stone, but
on 'the fleshly tables of the heart.' All the others are admittedly of
this nature. Is not the Sabbath law likewise? It is not, indeed,
inscribed on the conscience, but is the need for it not stamped on the
physical nature? The human organism requires the seventh-day rest,
whether men toil with hand or brain. Historically, it is not true that
the Sabbath was founded by this legislation. The traces of its
observance in Genesis are few and doubtful; but we know from the
inscriptions that the seventh, fourteenth, twenty-first, and
twenty-eighth days of the moon were set apart by the Assyrians, and
scholars can supply other instances. The 'Remember' of this commandment
can scarcely be urged as establishing this, for it may quite as
naturally be explained to mean 'Remember, as each successive seventh
day comes round, to consecrate it.' But apart from that, the law
written on body, mind, and soul says plainly to all men, 'Rest on the
seventh day.' Body and mind need repose; the soul needs quiet communion
with God. No vigorous physical, intellectual, or religious life will
long be kept up, if that need be disregarded. The week was meant to be
given to work, which is blessed and right if done after the pattern of
God's. The Sabbath was meant to lift to a share in His rest, to bring
eternity into time, to renew wasted strength 'by a wise passiveness,'
and to draw hearts dissipated by contact with fleeting tasks back into
the stillness where they can find themselves in fellowship with God.
We have not the Jewish Sabbath, nor is it binding on us. But as men we
ought to rest, and resting, to worship, on one day in the week. The
unwritten law of Christianity, moulding all outward forms by its own
free spirit, gradually, and without premeditation, slid from the
seventh to the first day, as it had clear right to do. It was the day
of Christ's resurrection, probably of His ascension, and of Pentecost.
It is 'the Lord's Day.' In observing it, we unite both the reasons for
the Sabbath given in Exodus and Deuteronomy,--the completion of a
higher creation in the resurrection rest of the Son of God, and the
deliverance from a sorer bondage by a better Moses. The Christian
Sunday and its religious observance are indispensable to the religious
life of individuals and nations. The day of rest is indispensable to
their well-being. Our hard-working millions will bitterly rue their
folly, if they are tempted to cast it away on the plea of obtaining
opportunities for intellectual culture and enjoyment. It is
'The couch of time, care's balm and bay,'
and we shall be wise if we hold fast by it; not because the Jews were
bid to hallow the seventh day, but because we need it for repose, and
we need it for religion.