'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 not kill. 14. Thou shalt not commit
adultery. 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 man-servant, nor
his maid-servant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing
that is thy neighbour's. 18. And all the people saw the
thunderings and the lightnings, and the noise of the
trumpet, and the mountain smoking; and, when the people
saw it, they removed, and stood afar off. 19. And they
said unto Moses, Speak thou with us, and we will hear:
but let not God speak with us, lest we die. 20. And Moses
said unto the people, Fear not: for God is come to prove
you, and that His fear may be before your faces, that ye
sin not. 21. And the people stood afar off: and Moses
drew near unto the thick darkness where God was.'
--EXODUS xx. 12-21.
I. The broad distinction between the two halves of the Decalogue is
that the former deals with man's relations to God, and the latter with
His relations to men. This double division is recognised in the New
Testament summary of 'all the law,' as found in two commandments, and
is probably implied in the two tables on which it was inscribed.
Commentators have been much exercised, however, about how to divide the
commandments between these two parts. The fifth, which is the first in
this division, belongs in substance to the second half, but its form
connects it with the first table. It is like the preceding ones in
having a reason appended, and in naming 'the Lord thy God'; while the
following are all bare, curt prohibitions. The fact seems to be that it
is a transition commandment, and meant to cast special sacredness round
the parental relationship, by paralleling it, in some sense, with that
to God, of which it is a reflection. Other duties to other men stand on
a different level from duties to parents. 'Honour,' which is to be
theirs, is not remote from the reverence due to God. They are, as it
were, His shadows to the child. The fatherhood of God is dimly revealed
in that parting off the commandment from the second table, and
assimilating it in form to the laws of the first.
II. The connection of the two halves of the Decalogue teaches some
important truth. Josephus said a wise thing when he remarked that,
'whereas other legislators had made religion a department of virtue,
Moses made virtue a department of religion.' No theory of morals is
built upon the deepest foundation which does not recognise 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 vigour
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.
III. The order of these human duties is significant. We have, next
after the law of parental reverence, three commandments, which, in a
descending series of importance, forbid crimes against life, marriage,
and property. Then the law passes from deeds to the more subtle, and,
as men think, less grave, offences of the tongue. Next it crosses the
boundary which divides human from divine law, and crimes from sins, to
take cognisance of unspoken and unacted desires. So the order of
progress in the first table is exactly the reverse of that in the
second. There we begin with inward devotion, and travel outwards by
deed and word to the sabbatical institution; here we begin with overt
acts, and travel inwards, through words, to the hidden desire. The end
touches the beginning. For that which we 'covet' is our God; and the
first commandment is only obeyed when our hearts hunger after Him, and
not after earth. The sequence here corresponds to the order of progress
in our knowledge and practice of our human duties. The first thing that
the rudest state of society has to do is to establish some kind of
security for life and property and woman's honour. The worst men know
that much as their duty, however foul may be their lips, and hot their
passions. Then the recognition of the sanctity of the great gift of
speech, and the supreme obligations of veracity, grow upon men as they
get above the earlier stage. Most children pass through a phase when
they tell lies as pastime, and most rude societies and half-moralised
men have a similar epoch. Last of all, when actions have been bridled
and the tongue taught the law of truth, comes the full recognition that
the work is not done till the silent longing of a hungry heart is
stilled, and that unselfish love of our neighbour is only perfect when
we can rejoice in his good and wish none of it for ourselves. The
second table is a chart of moral progress.
IV. The scope of these laws has often been violently stretched so as to
include all human duty; but without tugging at them so as to make them
cover everything, we may note briefly how far they extend. We are
scarcely warranted in taking any of them but the last, as going deeper
than overt acts, for, though our Lord has taught in the Sermon on the
Mount that hatred is murder, and impure desire adultery, that is His
deepening of the commandment. But it is quite fair to bring out the
positive precept which, in each case, underlies the stern, short
prohibition.
The fifth commandment shares with the fourth the distinction of being a
positive command. It enjoins 'honour,' not 'love,' partly because, in
olden times, the father was a prince in his house in a sense that has
long since ceased to be true, partly because there was less need to
enjoin the affection which is in some degree instinctive, than the
submission and respect which the children are tempted to withhold,
partly in order to suggest the analogy with reverence to God. A strange
change has passed over the relations of parents and children, even
within a generation. There is more, perhaps, of frank familiar
intercourse, which, no doubt, is an improvement on the old style. But
there is a great deal less of what the commandment enjoins. City life,
education, the general impairing of the idea of authority, which we see
everywhere, have told upon many families; and many a father who, by
indulgence or by too much engrossment in business, lets the children
twitch the reins out of his hands, might lament, as his grown-up
children spurn control, 'If then I be a father, where is mine honour?'
There is no one of the commandments which it is more needful to preach
in England than this.
The promise attached to it has another side of threatening. It is a
plain fact that when the paternal relation is corrupted, a powerful
solvent has been introduced which rapidly tends to disintegrate
society. The most ancient empire in the world today, China, has, amid
many vices and follies, been preserved mainly by the profound reverence
to ancestors which is largely its real working religion. The most
vigorous power in the old world, Rome, owed its iron might not only to
its early simplicity of life and its iron tenacity, but to the strength
of paternal authority and the willingness of filial obedience. No more
serious damage can be inflicted on society or on individuals than the
weakening of the honour paid to fathers and mothers.
'Thou shalt not kill' forbids not only the act of murder, but all that
endangers life. It enjoins all care, diligence, and effort to preserve
it. A man who looks on while another drowns, or who sends a ship out
half manned and overloaded, breaks it as really as a red-handed
murderer. But the commandment was not intended to touch the questions
of capital punishment or of war. These were allowed under the Jewish
code, and cannot therefore be supposed to be prohibited here. How far
either is consistent with the deepest meaning of the law, as expanded
and reconsecrated in Christianity, is another question. Their defenders
have to execute some startling feats of gymnastics to harmonise either
with the New Testament.
'Curus kind o' Christian dooty,
This 'ere cuttin' folks's throats.'
The ground of the commandment is not given, seeing that conscience is
expected to admit its force as soon as stated. But its place at the
head of the second table brings it into connection with the first
commandment, and suggests that man's life is sacred because he is the
image of God. As Christians, we are bound to interpret it on the lines
which Christ has laid down; according to which, hatred is murder, and
love is the fulfilling of this as of all other laws. So Luther's
comprehensive summing up of the duties enjoined may be accepted:
'Patience, gentleness, kindliness, peaceableness, pity, and, of all
things, a sweet, friendly heart, without any hate, anger, bitterness,
toward any, even enemies.'
In like manner, 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 licence of the stage. The opportunities for secret profligacy
in great cities conspire to loosen the bonds of morality. I would
venture to ask public teachers seriously to consider their duty in this
matter, and to seek for opportunities wisely to warn budding youth of
the pitfalls in its path.
What is 'stealing'? 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? We must make all our belts and straps into halters.'
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. All sharp practice in business, the shopkeeper's false
weights and the merchant's equivalents of these, adulterations,
pirating trademarks, imitating a rival's goods, infringing patents, and
the like, however disguised by fine names, are neither more nor less
than stealing. Many a prosperous gentleman says solemnly every Sunday
of his life, 'Incline our hearts to keep this law,' who would have to
live in a much more modest fashion if his prayer were, by any
unfortunate accident, answered.
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 neighbours,' 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 neighbour
is a maul, and a sword, and a sharp arrow.'
But 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 neighbour's goods mine is the
parent of all breaches of neighbourly 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 goods, 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 neighbour's
goods, and you find a man who will break all commandments like a hornet
in a spider's web. Be he a Napoleon, and glorified as a conqueror and
hero, or be he some poor thief in a jail, he has let his covetousness
get the upper hand, and so all wrong-doing is possible. Nor is it only
the second table which covetousness dashes to fragments. It serves the
first in the same fashion; for, as St. Paul puts it, the covetous man
'is an idolater,' and is as incapable of loving God as of loving his
neighbour. 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 what is 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,