Crime in Germ

Thou shalt not kill. — Exodus xx. 13.

Out of the heart proceedeth murders. — Matt. xv. 19.

Thou shalt not steal. — Exodus xx. 15.

Out of the heart proceedeth thefts. — Matt. xv. 19.

Thou shalt not bear false witness. — Exodus xx. 16.

Out of the heart proceedeth false witness. — Matt. xv. 19.

As addressed to a Christian congregation, these commands would seem to be out of place. Taken broadly, in their ordinary sense, we are glad to believe that we need no such exhortations. No man here ever committed murder; no man here may have ever picked a pocket, or forced a lock feloniously; no man here may have committed legal perjury. Having, therefore, escaped these vulgarities of crime, why should we study the merest elements of morality? These commands would form excellent texts for a prison chaplain, who has around him the very outcasts of society.

but surely not for a Christian preacher who addresses the most established respectability of the age — the respectability of distinct Christian profession. What if, after all we be convicted of the very crimes which we shudder to mention? What if there be a murder which belongs strictly to a region which lies beyond the clutches of the law? What if there be a theft of the tongue, as well as of the hand? What if in daily talk we commit perjury in the court of God? It is only possible to some people, to get a clear idea of the spirituality of Gods law, by moving backwards, step by step, from broad, vulgar, detestable crimes, to the passion which inspired them, and from the passion to the secret unspoken motive, which is, in the sight of God, the crime itself. Thou shalt not hill; ‘’ ^’ Out of the heart proceed murders.’’^ ‘^’^Thou shalt not steal;’’ “Out of the heart proceed thefts.” Thou shalt not bear false witness; ““Out of the heart proceedeth false witness.” When is a man a thief? When he is in the act of picking your lock, or not until he has quite got into your house? Or was he a thief even a point before he came to the lock? Say, for example, when he took up his tools in his own house? Or even a point before that? When, in the secrecy of his own heart he resolved to rob you? Not until he tooh your property was he a social thief; but he was a spiritual thief the moment he resolved to take it. Human law takes notice of ads, not of dispositions; God’s law determines everything by the motive or purpose which leads to action.

I. ‘^ Thou shalt not kill.’’^ Killing is not mere bloodshedding. Anger ivitliout cause is murder. Opjpression of the iveaJc is murder. Depriving a man of the means of getting a livelihood, to gratify revenge j is murder. ‘^ Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer.^’

II. “Thou shalt not steal.’’ A man may rob Godj as well as his neighbour. He who wastes his employer’s time is a thief. He who witholds just praise is a thief (Social: Literary). He who detracts from the just honour of his fellow-man is a thief. (^’’He who filches from me my good name robs me of that which not enriches him, but makes me poor indeed.”) He who vowSj and does not pay, is a thief.

III. ^’’Thou shalt not bear false witness.” False witness is lying. But what is lying? You may repeat the very words of a speaker, and yet mis-report him! How? By putting upon his words an emphasis not his own. You infuse into the emphasis your own passion or purpose. The luords are his, the tone is yours! (Take the words — ‘“‘’When I come, I will come with a rod;” they may be spoken with tenderness and reluctance; they may also be so emphasised as to denote pettishness or even vengeance.) He who tells an incomjylete tale involving the reputation of another, bears false witness. So does he (negatively) who lacks courage to defend an injured man, for whom he could say a word of explanation.

Now, strange as it may seem, the three crimes of which we have been speaking are spiritually similar, and almost identical. He who kills, steals life; he who steals life is prepared to bear false witness j he who bears false witness both steals and kills.

As, therefore, sin is, in the sight of God, a question of the heart, and not merely a question of the ha7ids, there arises an inquiry of the keenest practical interest: — How are ive to reach the disease which is consuming our sjoiritual life? We cannot reach it. Is it, then, never to be reached? When we put this question in earnest, we are prepared to hear the glorious gospel. So long as we think we can wash the evil off our hands in any one of the worlds rivers, we do not feel our want of a gospel. That want is felt only in proportion to our conviction that sin is in our very souls, that it penetrates every fibre, and poisons every spring and energy of our being.

Seeing what is meant by the spirituality of sin, we shall feel our need of divine help. Nay more than

/leZp: God must undertake the whole case for us. He lias done so. See the Cross! There is a Sacrifice which touches sin before sin comes into action, — touches it in the hearty — touches it as a germ. Then see the ministry of the Holy Ghost! That ministry operates upon the very life of life, upon the first pulsation and breathings of our spiritual nature. We have only to see ourselves as we really are, to see our need of the Sacrifice, and our dependence upon the Spirit.