Chapter XVI: Appendix: II

THE TEN COMMANDMENTS FOR CHRISTIANS

IT has been noticed above in the exposition of St. Matt. v. 21‒48 that different moral principles are brought out by our Lord in His treatment of the different commandments. Thus in His treatment of Commandment VI (vv. 21‒24) the moral requirement is deepened in its application below the act to the words of the lips and the thoughts of the heart. In the treatment of Commandment VII, not only is the outward scope of the sin of adultery enlarged by a stricter law of marriage (vv. 31‒32), but also the deliberate intention of sin is shown to be, without proceeding further, the moral equivalent of the outward act of sin[90] (vv. 27‒28); from the recognition of which principle there follows the need of an augmented moral discipline (vv. 29‒30). In the treatment of Commandment III, starting from the prohibition to violate any oath made in the name of Jehovah (v. 33), our Lord augments the prohibition by forbidding oaths generally (vv. 34‒36), and turns the requirement from the negative to the positive and from the occasional to the universal (v. 37), by simply enjoining truthfulness or sincerity in all utterances.

In His treatment of the prohibition of unrestricted revenge (vv. 38‒42), and the principle of limited love (vv. 43‒48), the same two principles emerge――the transition from negation or prohibition of evil to injunction of positive good, and from the partial or limited duty to the universal and perfect.

These principles admit of general application to each of the commandments. Thus――

I. _Thou shalt have none other gods before_ [or _beside_] _me_. Whatever be the original limitation of this precept, it becomes, and indeed in the teaching of psalmist and prophet which prepared for the Christ had already become, a universal injunction upon men to recognize the one true God in every faculty of their being, in every act and moment of their lives. “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart (or will), with all thy soul (i.e. with thy whole sum of faculties), with all thy mind (or intelligence), and with all thy strength (i.e. with a vigorous and active service).” This includes (1) the recognition of God’s supremacy and fatherhood; the putting Him first in all things; the acknowledgement that our life with all its faculties is a trust to be made the best of, for His honour: (2) humility, considered as the recognition that we are utterly dependent upon God; that our only wisdom and happiness lie in correspondence with Him; that any claim of independence of God, or vanity on account of His gifts entrusted to us, is not only wickedness but folly:[91] (3) the glad acceptance of His disclosure of Himself as Father, Son, and Spirit; the acknowledgement and public confession of His name both in speech, conduct and worship.

II. _Thou shalt not make unto thee a graven image, etc._ This negative commandment becomes the positive injunction to worship God aright, as He has revealed Himself to us, “in spirit and in truth”; or in other words, according to the spirit of the Lord’s Prayer and of the Eucharist, which are of Christ’s institution; or in the spirit of His own worship. This involves earnestness and effort of will in prayer: reasonable method, and use of the body with its faculties or instruments: the action of the intelligence meditating on the word of God so that we may have right ideas about God: systematic prayer for others――the Church, humanity, various classes and individuals――as well as for ourselves: public prayer and private: adoration and thanksgiving, as well as making requests――i.e. a life of worship of which the two hinges are the Eucharist (St. Luke xxii. 19) and secret prayer (St. Matt. vi. 6). This positive injunction involves negatives. Thus though the old prohibition to make any visible representation of God is modified by His incarnation, it still remains a duty which the Church has often neglected to guard against idolatry. It is idolatry to let our worship (1) be directed towards persons lower than God, as mediators, because they seem easier to approach and less awful; or (2) rest upon circumscribed objects so as to imperil the omnipresence of God; or (3) be moulded by false conceptions of God, as when the worth of prayer is estimated by the place where it is offered, or by some measure of length, contrary to the principles expressed in St. John iv. 21 ff., St. Matt. vi. 7.

III. _Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain._ This limited prohibition of perjury becomes the positive and universal injunction of truthfulness, i.e. the injunction to live and therefore to speak as in God’s presence, so that our words represent the reality, so far as we can know it, whether those words be promises, or statements (a) personal, (b) historical or scientific. This duty of truthfulness extends into all regions of life, political, commercial, controversial, as well as the private and domestic sphere, i.e. we are never justified in deceiving others for our own interest or that of our Church or party.[92]

This commandment, as deepened by our Lord, also prohibits all other kinds of speech which by their character ignore the reverence we owe to an omnipresent God, i.e. blasphemous or unmeaning oaths and expressions derogatory to God’s honour, irreverent or “foolish talking and jesting which are not convenient,” etc.

IV. _Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work: but the seventh day is a sabbath unto the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, nor thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: 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._

This commandment lays down three laws for human life.

1. The law of work, which――though the kinds of work are various, as of body, mind, character, spirit, suffering――lies upon all men alike. “If any man will not work, neither let him eat.”

2. The law of rest, like God’s rest. God works, as in creation, redemption, the establishment of the kingdom; and then rests in contemplation of His finished work; see Gen. i. 31, Matt. iii. 17, Rev. xxi. 2: or, as otherwise stated by our Lord (St. John v. 17), God works continually and yet rests in working, as is exemplified in our Lord “semper agens, semper quietus.” Thus man is to share God’s rest, by resting in God (Ps. cxxvii), and the sabbath was intended to help to this end. The sabbath however was a day of rest from physical labour, which only secondarily became a day of worship. The Christian Lord’s day, on the other hand, was originally a day of worship, which became secondarily a day of rest from labour. The primary object of Sunday is that men by taking time and thought for worship should learn the true rest, which is rest in God. The secondary object is that all men equally should have the opportunity for physical rest and recreation. All questions as to Sunday observance are to be judged by their relation to those two objects in their right order.

3. The law of fellowship. This fellowship of all men (and even of men with beasts) is developed in the New Testament into the principle that each man has a right to equal consideration, that each man counts for one, and nobody for more than one. Cp. above, p. 182.

V. _Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee._ By this “commandment with promise” honour to parents, which is the principle of family life, is made also the basis of national prosperity (cf. Deut. v. 16). It is enlarged in all the “wise sayings” of the Book of Proverbs about family life. It receives its completion in the principle of mutual duty between parents and children, husbands and wives, masters and servants, which are enunciated in such passages as Eph. v. 22‒vi. 9; Col. iii. 18‒iv. 1. It receives a natural extension, so as to include the whole principle of mutual subordination in Church and State: cf. Hebr. xiii. 17; Rom. xiii; 1 Pet. ii. 13‒iii. 7. It involves towards the Church the duty, not only of loyal obedience, but of generous support. “Give to thy mother what thou wouldst allow to ev’ry corporation.”

VI. _Thou shalt do no murder._ This commandment is developed by our Lord so as to prohibit hatred or contempt in thought and word as well as in deed. Translated from the negative into the positive it becomes an injunction to do all that lies in one’s power to promote the life of others, physically and spiritually――to “love thy neighbour as thyself”――and to do this with a good will even towards enemies.

VII. _Thou shalt not commit adultery._ Our Lord deals with this commandment partly by an increased strictness with regard to the marriage law which brings under the head of adultery a number of remarriages after divorce hitherto tolerated under the Jewish system; partly by making the indulged intention to sin equally guilty with the sin itself. On another occasion our Lord gives “adulteries, fornications, lasciviousness,” a conspicuous place among the sins which “proceed out of the heart” or “from within,” as though to emphasize the necessity in regard to this class of sins in particular of cleansing the inner springs of action and feeling. If we make the injunction positive and general instead of negative and partial, we arrive at the “law of liberty,” the duty of subordinating the flesh to the spirit, in respect of eating and drinking, as well as of the sexual passions; and the necessity of self-discipline or fasting as a means to that end (see above, pp. 120 f.).

VIII. _Thou shalt not steal_, converted from the negative into the positive, becomes “Thou shalt labour, working with thine hands the thing that is good, that thou mayest have to give to him that needeth.”[93] It is, in another form, the loving one’s neighbour as oneself: the having the same care for his goods as for one’s own: the same anxiety that he should have proper wages for labour as oneself. From the Christian point of view this commandment is broken, not only by stealing in the ordinary sense, but also (1) by fraudulent dealings in business or trade, whereby our fellow man receives for money given something less, or other, than he had a right to expect: (2) by “sweating” or requiring others to work for inadequate wages: (3) by giving or receiving bribes or, in other ways, defrauding an employer of the best service of the employed: (4) by expecting others to work for us without doing our own fair share of work: (5) by neglecting or inadequately performing the duty of almsgiving. And in our generation we specially need reminding that association in “companies” leaves the moral responsibility for commercial dealings still resting on each member of the company, at least in the form of a duty to vote for directors who will have righteousness in view: to discountenance all unrighteousness as far as possible: to refuse gains for unrighteous dealing, when known. In all cases the Christian must prefer to suffer wrong rather than to do it.

IX. _Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour._ This commandment, converted from the negative――the prohibition of wilful slander――to the positive, becomes an injunction to make the law of love the motive of all our speech, with as tender a regard to others’ reputation as to our own. We may have to speak painful truth against others, to rebuke, to accuse, to punish, etc., but the motive of all speech is to be a deliberate good will.

X. _Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house, etc._ The ten commandments, as has been remarked, began and ended with an injunction bearing not upon the outward conduct, but upon the heart. This one affords no discouragement to our vital instinct of making the best of ourselves, but it bids us have regard to what we can ascertain of the divine intention for ourselves. We are to realize God’s purpose for us, and to desire that every one else should do the same. Thus this commandment prohibits envy or jealousy at another’s success or abilities: discontent with what God has allowed us: ambition properly so called, i.e. the desire to compass greatness, without regard to the will of God. The New Testament even tends to make us personally prefer the humbler to the higher place, and obedience to authority. But, on the other hand, it says all that is possible to encourage a “divine discontent” with the disorder of the world, which is the work of evil wills resisting the will of God, that sort of discontent which makes a man a fellow-worker with Christ for the realization of the kingdom of heaven.

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I have thought this analysis of the ten commandments in their deepest principles, inadequate as it is, might be worth making, partly because I cannot feel altogether satisfied with such as are commonly current,[94] partly because the attempt to make such an analysis deepens in my own mind the conviction that if the ten commandments were not――as our Lord teaches us they were not――perfect, they were none the less, in the truest sense, “the word of God,” for the moral education of His chosen people, and through them of the human race. Their principles are extraordinarily complete and suggestive, and there is no early moral legislation which seems to me to be even comparable to them.