The Decalogue

“And God sjDake all these words, saying, I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt have no other gods before me,” etc. — Exodus xx. 1-17.

If it takes some time to learn, it also takes some time to forget. Before he fell away from God’s friendship, man had enjoyed a wonderful intimacy with his Creator; and as the Lord God used to talk with Adam in the cool of the day, we can easily believe that our first father made attainments in Divine knowledge such as have been vouchsafed to none of his descendants. And setting out of sight those perfections of the Godhead which he had no occasion to know, if asked to name the greatest theologian who has ever lived, we doubt if we should name Calvin or Aquinas, — nay, if we should name even Paul or Moses. For clear and unclouded knowledge, for child-like and familiar intimacy, we are apt to think that no one has yet come near the student and worshipper of Eden: we fancy that

‘Preached before the British Society for the Evangelisation of the Jews.

before Lis fall Adam knew by intuition, and hs the result of affectionate intercourse with Heaven, a great deal which his descendants have not yet been able to recover.

And what he thus learned we have no reason to suppose that he ever afterwards forgot. The Fall banished him from Paradise, but it did not annihilate his memory; and he lived on for nearly a thousand years thereafter, we have every reason to believe, a penitent and a preacher of righteousness. He lived on — that old- world’s Bible — able to tell all that he had learned in the days of innocence, with the addition of that Gospel which had been revealed to him on the day of his mournful exile; and to every conscience-stricken Lamech, to every guileless God-fearing Abel, to every devout and heavenly-minded Enoch throughout successive centuries, he could repeat the things which he had heard and seen, nor need any have felt helplessly benighted who could inquire at such an oracle.

And long after our first father fell asleep, the light still lingered. It was no scanty nor corrupt creed which issued from the Ark, and well had it been for the world had the morning spread upon Mount Ararat gone on, and brightened into perfect day. But it soon began to fade. Men did not like to retain the true God in their knowledge, and it was not long before darkness covered all the earth.

and gross darkness every people. Idolatry was all but universal, and no less universal were the accompanying immoralities and crimes.

At this conjuncture, to save the scanty relics of primeval truth, and to receive and preserve further revelations, the Lord took this method. Water spilt upon the ground cannot be gathered up again. It sinks into the soil. There were tons of it yesterday, but if you go out to fill your pitcher to-day, it all is gone. If you want to preserve the precious element you must prepare a tank or reservoir. You dig a pool, and to prevent it from leaking you line the sides with concrete or with marble closely fitting; and if carefully covered over or buried in the cool heart of the mountain, in such a storehouse it may be kept for years. Exotic flowers or foreign plants, if seeded on the mountain-side or inserted in the meadow amongst the promiscuous herbage growing there, soon get choked and disappear. If you wish to transmit from season to season, or from age to age, the flaming glories of the Cape or the rich fruits of the tropic, you must provide a garden enclosed — you must keep out the weeds and the ruffian weather. And so to preserve truths and lessons for which there was no predisposition in a fallen world, — from which there was rather an aversion in the mind of the promiscuous multitude, the Lord “took in a little piece of holy ground.” He fenced in the

Hebrew nationality, and fitted it for receiving His successive revelations. Within the enclosure of their mountains and the desert surrounding, and within the enclosure still more effectual of their peculiar institutions. He secluded them and walled them in, and made them His own conservatory, — a conservatory where such truths as the unity and sjjirituality of God, mediation, atonement for sin, the promise of Messiah, should survive uninjured, and where should flourish institutions so humane and so holy as the Sabbath and the synagogue, sacrifice and a provision for the poor. The water of life was in danger of being lost if it rained indiscriminate on a besotted world; and so the Most High prepared a reservoir. He dug it deep and lined it carefully. By terrible punishments He weaned the nation from idolatry, and by laws defining their very food, He made them a peculiar people. That ritual was the asphalt or cement with which He lined the reservoir, and then, to make assurance doubly sure, into the inner tank, the iron cistern of a written record pouring the full flood of saving knowledge, He provided for the thirst of all ages. He provided so that in all the coming centuries when the poor and needy cried unto the Lord, they should be able with joy to draw water from the wells of salvation.

As the Lord said to Israel (Ex. xix. 5), “If ye will obey my voice and keep my covenant, ye shall be a peculiar treasure to me above all people: ye shall be unto me a kingdom of priests, and a holy nation:” a sacred community, a sacerdotal society, a kingdom of priests. And as “the priest’s lips should keep knowledge,” it was to be Israel’s function to receive and preserve the lively oracles; — they were to be in an attitude evermore to learn God’s will, and they were to be careful to maintain in the midst of a forgetful world His worship and His way.

In connexion with the Life and Times of Moses we have so far traced the process by which the Most High prepared the peculiar people. Amidst bondage and abuse we have seen the chosen family grow into a mighty multitude; and now, rescued by the outstretched arm of Jehovah, torn from the grasp of Pharaoh, and sped through the trough of the sundered sea, we find that rescued multitude beginning to realize its distinct and independent nationality. Fifty days have passed since that night so memorable when the fiery pillar gave the sign and showed the path to the marching million, and now conducted into the very depths of the desert, and prepared by such miracles as the manna and the smitten rock, the people were ready to receive the first, and, in its accompaniments, the most stupendous of all the revelations.

‘No scene could be more suitable. Enclasped between the two arms of the Erythrean Gulf is that enormous labyrinth of dry valleys and desolate mountains into the midst of which the wanderers now had penetrated, — a region new to them, but not unknown to their leader, for in that same Horeb he had fed the flock of Jethro, and there at the burning bush he had received his great commission. And we can easily imagine what a strange and solemn region it would be to Israel, — come away from the Nile, broad and overbrimming, to these ravines, down which nothing flowed but rivers of hot air; from the loud streets and stirring lanes of Goshen and Memphis to that listening silence which seemed to await the voice of the Eternal, and those lofty peaks which, relieved by no verdure, and interrupted by no life, carried the eye that rested on them straight up to heaven. If it be the perfection of a place of worship to have nothing to distract the mind, there could be nothing more stern and still than this inland solitude, with its granite pinnacles soaring up nine thousand feet into the firmament, — an Alpine skeleton, a Tyrol or Savoy, with its forests and its snows torn off and its lakes dried wp, — the ruins of a world.

So awful was the sanctuary, so sublime the pulpit to which Jehovah led His people, that they might hear His memorable sermon and receive the statute-book of heaven. After two days of solemn preparation, the tMrd morning dawned, and Sinai was lost in clouds, and as from around the dark pavilion the flame-like ministers went out and in, and an aerial trumpet mingled with the crashing thunder, the voice began, “I am the Lord thy God who have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage: Thou shalt have no other gods before me;” and proceeded till all the emphatic words were spoken, which, afterwards graven on stone by God’s own finger, are still recognised by Christian, Jew, and Moslem as the basis of all religion and all morals — the great standard of right and wrong, — the Ten Commandments. On this code we have but a few remarks to offer.

1. The Decalogue is unique. God gave to the Israelites many other statutes and ordinances, but these others He gave by the hand of the lawgiver — silently and in personal communion imparted them to Moses, and by Moses they were conveyed to the people. But when the ten commandments were spoken, Moses himself was on the plain and on a level with the rest of the congregation. And although they were afterwards consigned to stone tablets, so terrible was the voice of the Eternal — so like to dissolve their quaking frames as thrill after thrill it cut and hewed the fleshly tables of their hearts — that they said to Moses,” Speak thou with

US, and we will hear; but let not God speak with us, lest we die.” Both as spoken by God’s own voice, and as written on the rock by God’s own finger, these commands stand forth alone — their supreme importance sufficiently betokened by their prominence in the forefront of all the rest, and by their promulgation so directly and entirely Dildne.

2. Then the Decalogue is marked by wonderful simplicity and brevity. The second, third, and fourth commandments go into some detail, but like the rest each of them can easily be condensed into a single sentence; so that they will merit the old Talmudic name, The Ten Words, — Words so plain that he who runs may read, so portable that he who forgets everything besides may easily remember them; and thus a wonderful contrast to our human legislation — to our British statute-book, for instance, which it would need an elephant to carry and an (Edipus to interpret, and which is so ingeniously complicated that the most conscientious are continually transgressing it, and rogues are constantly surprised by finding that they have unintentionally fulfilled it.

3. These ten words are as comprehensive as they are brief and authoritative. The first table is religious, and the second is moral. The first table fixes the right object of worship — the one supreme, self-existent Jehovah, — the right mode, direct and without the intervention of images, — the right spirit, reverently and with godly fear. The second or ethical table is the protector of life of person, of property, of character, and as the rest sufficiently cover the outward conduct, it closes the series with one which reaches the thoughts and intents of the heart, — Thou shalt not covet.

On the several precepts it is impossible to expatiate; but a remark may be useful regarding two or three points.

In the second commandment we have a reason annexed: “Bow not to idols; 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, and showing mercy unto thousands [of generations] of them that love me.” To some this threatening sounds severe and arbitrary; but we fancy that their misgiving arises mainly from a misconception. It is not meant for a moment that the pious son of an idolatrous father shall be punished for his father’s idolatry; for in such a case (to use the language of Plutarch) “the punishment destined for the race is cut off by the son passing over from the family of vice to that of virtue.” Thus Josiah, the devout son of the idolatrous Amon, was not only exempted from any punishment for his father’s sin, but on the

Quoted by Kaliscli.

ground of his individual piety the penalty hanging over an idolatrous country was suspended until Josiah should be safe beyond its reach: “Behold, I will bring evil on this place (saith the Lord), because they have forsaken nie, and have burnt incense unto other gods; but because thine own heart was tender, and thou hast humbled thyself before the Lord, behold, therefore, I will gather thee unto thy fathers in peace; and thine eyes shall not see the evil which I will bring upon this place.” 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.

This is all that is said, but even if it had said a little more could we not still understand it? Can we alter the constitution of human nature? Dare we complain of the course of Providence? In that constitution is not the parental or transmissive principle so deeply embedded that we shall never get it out? and in the course of that Providence is not good on the one hand and misery on the other continually flowing through this parental channel? And do you not feel justified in continually making appeals of this nature: —” My good friend, if you have no regard for yourself, think of your family. You are living without religion, and at this rate

1 2 Kings xxii. 16-20. Q your children are likely to grow up reckless and irreligious also; your boy is already mimicking your oaths. Your fierce passions are reappearing in your child. Your tippling will be transmitted, and with it the rags and wretchedness, even unto the third and fourth generation of them who like yourself love liquor and abuse themselves with strong drink. And do not say that it is hard in God to punish the poor innocents. If they are innocents God will not punish them; but it is you who are doubly doing it. Now that they are comparatively innocent, you are punishing them by throwing away your good name — a legacy better than any gold you could have left them; and you are punishing them by squandering their comforts, and you are doing infinitely worse. You are not only a bad father yourself, but by ruining their principles and corrupting their morals you are doing all that you can to deprive them of the fatherhood of God. By making them bad, you are ruining their prospects for either world. Have you no heart? have you no pity for your own? by bringing them up in idolatry, in Sabbath-breaking and dishonesty, will you put them out of the pale of that mercy which is abundant enough for a thousand generations? will you put them within sweep of that law which, when the sin is inherited, sends also the penalty, and thus have your own crime perpetuated and your iniquity visited in children like-minded to the third and fourth generation? “So that, rightly understood, we can see in the words nothing harsh or unkind. The fifth commandment concludes with a promise, — that second commandment concludes with a warning, — not a mere threatening, but a warning which includes both threatening and promise. “Honour thy parents,” says the one, “that thy days may be long.” “Be loyal to thy God,” says the other, “that it may be well not only with thyself, but with thy children after thee:” and if there be any difference, it is a purer and wider affection — a more extended self-love to which the second commandment addresses its appeal.

A wonderful code! and a wonderful occasion! —

“The terrors of that awful day, though past, Have on the tide of time some glory cast;”

and it is impossible to calculate the impressions and impulses wdiich date from that hour of awe and wonder. As the people witnessed the thunderings and the lightnings and the noise of the trumpet, and listened to the proclamation, “I am the Lord thy God, who brought thee out of Egypt,” there remained no doubt in any mind. In every fibre of their frame they felt and knew that Israel’s God was present, and all their bones could say,” Who

1 Joanna Baillie.

is like unto thee, 0 Lord?” Thou art Lord of heaven and earth, and there is none besides. And all infirmities, all idolatrous backslidings notwithstanding, of that great impression neither they nor their children ever rid themselves entirely. A sensation as of Sinai is in the heart of Israel still; and it has been a great thing for the world that through all these three thousand years there has existed in the midst of the nations — amidst pagan polytheism and papal idolatry — a race of monotheists and spiritual worshippers — a race witnessing for the unity and inconceivable majesty of the Most High.

An occasion to which we, my friends, are particularly indebted; for, as an eloquent Israelite has remarked, “The life and property of England are protected by the laws of Sinai. The hard-working people of England are secured a day of rest in every week by the laws of Sinai.” -^ And more than that: for all the rest of Revelation, and all the subsequent Hebrew history rotate round Sinai. The heroine of Jewish warriors and the inspiration of Jewish minstrels were equally animated by the first and great command; and as the same writer adds, “As an exponent of the mysteries of the human heart, as a soother of the troubled spirit, to whose harp do the people of England fly for

1 Disraeli’s Tancred.

sympathy and solace? Is it to Byron or Wordsworth, or even the myriad-minded Shakespeare? No; the most popular poet in England is the sweet singer of Israel, and by no other race except his own has his odes been so often sung. It was ’ the sword of the liOrd and of Gideon’ that won for England its boasted liberties; and the Scotch achieved their religious freedom, chanting upon their hill-sides the same canticles which cheered the heart of Judah amid their glens.”

Thus the commands were given, and thus on adamantine tablets they survived — a standard of righteousness universal and everlasting. But alas! though the Law is holy, man is weak and sinful, and if a perpetual restraint to evil, that law has also been to the most strenuous obedience among the children of men a standing reproof, a perpetual despair. With its concluding prohibition of evil desires, and with that love to God and our neighbour which is confessedly its necessary pervading spirit, no man has ever gone to God and said, “I have kept it all. My case is complete. Are there any more commands, for in thought, word, and deed I have perfectly obeyed the Ten V But like David, and Isaiah, and Jeremiah, in the saintliest men self-knowledge has extorted the confession, “Woe is me, for I am a man of unclean lips 1 My very righteousness is filthy rags. 0 God, enter not into judgment with thy servant: for in thy sight shall no man living be justified.”

So stood the law for fifteen centuries — a monitor, a reprover, a mirror, into which, on the great day of atonement, pride might look and see the grey hairs in its goodness, the blemishes in its best obedience. There it stood for fifteen centuries a challenge to mankind — a sword which none could wield, a trumpet which none could sound, armour which, if any one could wear and walk in it, the gates of heaven would open to him of their own accord.

There it stood, and there it would still be standing, a mere protest and reproach, had not the Lawgiver Himself become the Law-fulfiller. But at last that Son was given to our human family, whose name is AVonderful, the Counsellor, the Mighty God! In the guise of our mortality He brought to our extremity the help of Heaven, and going up to the Decalogue and brushing off the dust of ages, He read it all anew. “Think not that I am come to destroy the Law,” He said; “I am come not to destroy, but to fulfil.” And forthwith He began. To every precept rendering heartfelt homage. He presented wdthal a complete obedience: — in His own emphatic words, fulfilling. Where others read only prohibition. He read requirement, and their negative He relieved and brought up into the positive. “Do no murder,” was with Him “Be meek, be merciful, be magnanimous;” and from the time that, in saving lives and healing sickness, He struck the first note, till, in “Father, forgive them,” He breathed forth His spirit, responsive to the sixth command; He sounded the entire diapason, and showed Himself a true law-fulfiUer. “Keep holy the Sabbath,” was with Him not merely “Sit still and do nothing,” but, in order to keep holy the Sabbath, He filled it up with heaven, and by healing broken hearts, by curing life -long lazars, by filling sinful spirits with thoughts benign and beautiful. He secured for the Lord of the Sabbath new love, and for the day itself new sanctity. And so all throughout, till over-against the two tables of requirement arose a life of fulfilment — on the one side a holy law, on the other a holy history — on the one side a precept as perfect as the God from whom it came, on the other side an obedience as perfect as we could wish our own to have been.

And now, brethren of the House of Israel, we have much for which to thank you. To you belong “the giving of the law and the promises.” In the hand of God you have been the benefactors of the human family. The substructures of our faith rest upon your Bible. We sing your Psalms; we believe your Prophets; as the rule of our conduct we recite your Ten Commandments. The heaven to which we aspire is the heaven of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. At the same time we frankly confess that we have no hope of reaching it through our own holiness. Do not twit us, as well you may, by saying, “So mncli the better for you, because you have none.” If it come to that, may it not go hard with the strictest Jew? Another scene awaits us more awful than even that morning at Sinai, and as, before God’s nearing sanctity, dust and ashes feel like to die, the least sinful might be thankful to say to some Moses, “Speak thou for us,” and might give the world for some passport to heaven other than his personal purity.

Such a passport we who are Christians believe that we have found, and for it we own ourselves indebted to One who was not the less a member of your nation, because we believe Him to have been a great deal more. According to our view, Messiah has not only offered a sacrifice for sins, but He has magnified the law and made it honourable. As the representative of His people, and on their behalf. He has fulfilled all righteousness, and with that righteousness His Divine Father is well pleased. We owe much to Moses, but we owe more to Messiah. Moses handed down from God to your fathers a law right but rigid, and said, Do this and live; but Messiah handed up to God, on behalf of His people, a perfect obedience, and from God He hands down to His people in return a pardon all complete, and says, Take this and live. Moses led your fathers to the fenced and flaming skirts of Sinai, but Messiah leads us to the feet of His Father and our Father, and teaches us to saw, “Our Father who art in heaven.” Such happiness as we have we owe it all to One whom, according to the flesh, we owe to you. By a singular combination of circumstances, the most of you have been led to repudiate His claims, although to our minds He is the glory of Israel, and that all- important Personage, for the sake of whom your nation has received and still maintains its mysterious and unprecedented existence. But, forgive me for saying it, you are wrong; your position is a false one; for the facts of history and the facts of consciousness are both against you, We respectfully urge you to examine for yourselves, and as the result of candid inquiry we can only anticipate one conclusion. From that conclusion your minds at this moment revolt; but if it should prove, as we predict, you will eventually wonder at your own repugnance. And amongst other results, besides making the Bible a book true, beautiful, and significant beyond all that it has ever been before, one happy effect will be to give the Decalogue a look no longer threatening and penal, but friendly and propitious. Finding in the Lawgiver the Law-fulfiller, the commandment will acquire a new character, and you will find accomplished that promise of the Lord by Ezekiel, “A new heart will I give you, and a new spirit will I put wdthin you; and I will cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments, and do them.”