California 
 
 -gional 
 
 cility 
 
 1 
 
 Che 
 
 Commandments 
 
 in the 
 
 XX* Century 
 
 Bp Dean hart 
 
 Condon: SkcTfington $> Son 
 34, Southampton Street, Strand, Ul. 
 Publishers to fiis majesty the King 
 
 new York: Cbomas lUhittakcr 
 2 and 3, Bible Rouse 
 
 1905
 
 THE 
 
 X Commandments 
 
 in the 
 
 XXth Century, 
 
 BY 
 
 H. MARTYN HART, D.D., 
 
 DEAN OF ST. JOHN'S CATHEDRAL, DENVER, COLORADO, U.S.A. 
 
 JSonfcon: 
 SKEFFINGTON & SON, 
 
 34, SOUTHAMPTON STREET, STRAND, W.C 
 
 PUBLISHERS TO HIS MAJESTY THE KING. 
 
 THOMAS WHITTAKER 
 
 3 AND 3, BIBLE HOUSE. 
 
 1905.
 
 THE 
 
 X COMMANDMENTS 
 
 in the 
 XXth CENTURY. 
 
 "GOD SPAKE THESE WORDS." 
 
 |HE government of the children of Israel was a 
 Theocracy. God was their King. The officials of 
 the nation were His Ministers. The commands 
 they issued were never given upon their own authority, 
 they were only the mouthpiece of the King ; they said, " Thus 
 said the Lord." 
 
 After they had completely escaped from their Egyptian 
 tyrants, and were fairly on their march to the land God had 
 promised they should inhabit, it was only natural that they 
 should receive from their King a code of laws, by which they 
 should regulate their social intercourse. Hitherto they had 
 been under the governance of Egyptian law ; now they must 
 have laws of their own. It was, therefore, when six weeks 
 after their exodus, they encamped in an open valley at the 
 foot of Mount Horeb, one of the peaks of the range of Sinai, 
 which forms the peninsular dividing the Red Sea at its 
 northern extremity into two forks, that the King promulgated 
 His laws. These laws became known to all after time, 
 as the ' Ten Commandments ' or the ' Ten Words.' 
 
 The mode of proclaiming this law was purposely invested
 
 +$ The X Commandments 
 
 with every possible circumstance of terror, to impress upon 
 the people the majesty of the Most High, and the vastness of 
 the power which could enforce the keeping of the law, or 
 punish it's infraction. The mountain burned with fire ; thick 
 clouds and darkness shrouded its top; then a mighty voice, 
 which the narrator compares to the sound of a trumpet 
 "loud and long," spake, in their vernacular, these ten 
 Commands. So terrible was the sight, that even Moses 
 "exceedingly quaked and feared"; we need not wonder, 
 therefore, that the frightened people prayed that the awful 
 demonstration should cease, and that their leader should act 
 as a mediator, and receive from their Divine King whatever 
 He vouchsafed to communicate. Moses, therefore, having 
 fenced off the approaches to the slopes of the mountains, lest 
 the people should venture to draw near, and suffer for their 
 temerity ; ascended, accompanied only by his minister Joshua, 
 to ' meet God in the mount.' He was in the Divine presence 
 " forty," that is " many," days, and when he rejoined Joshua, 
 nearer the foot of the mountain, he held in his hands two 
 tables of stone, upon each side of which, in writing cut into 
 the stone, was engraved the Ten Commandments. 
 
 During his prolonged absence the people became impatient ; 
 and supposing he had perished in the awful convulsions which 
 still were in progress about the mountain top, they prevailed 
 upon Aaron to make a golden calf; in semblance of the bull 
 Apis, the chief god of the Egypt they had just left. This they 
 considered as representative of Jehovah, and this visible symbol 
 of the unseen God they elected should be their leader instead 
 of Moses, who was no more. This image they dedicated by a 
 lewd and shameless feast, disregarding all the injunctions to 
 serve a spiritual God in purity, and reverence, which had 
 so lately been spoken to them by a mighty and intelligent 
 voice. 
 
 4
 
 in the XXth Century. Sfr 
 
 Moses, discovering the cause of ' the voice in the camp/ in 
 dismay and indignation flung out of his hands the tablets he 
 was carrying, and did in actual fact what the sinning 
 people had done morally, broke to pieces the Ten 
 Commandments. 
 
 At the bidding of God he again ascended the mount and 
 received a second time the tables of the law. These he 
 brought safely to the camp, and they were finally deposited in 
 the Ark of the Covenant. What became of them when 
 Nebuchadnezzar destroyed Solomon's temple is not known. 
 By that time they had been committed to writing, and were 
 known by all the people, so that the loss of the original tables 
 was no doubt allowed by God, lest, as they did with the brazen 
 serpent, the people should treat them first with profound 
 reverence, then with superstition, and finally sacrifice to them 
 with idolatrous worship. 
 
 That the Ten Commandments were thus communicated 
 from a Divine source, and were not the production of Moses 
 himself, or the outcome of any human process of develop- 
 ment; is evident from the fact that at no time has any 
 civilisation possessed such a code of morality. We know 
 something of the moral standards of the Egyptians of that 
 period, we have their idea of righteousness in their ' Book of 
 the Dead,' and it is impossible that Moses, ' learned in all 
 the learning of the Egyptians,' could have gained his inspira- 
 tion from that source; neither could his own people, who 
 had been slaves, crushed under a galling and debasing 
 bondage, have risen to any moral advancement. Their 
 history tells us they had not; much less could they 
 have produced a code of laws which have always been 
 immeasurably beyond the practice of the most enlightened 
 civilisation. The Greeks, who, five centuries before Christ, 
 were as far advanced beyond our intellectual standard as 
 5
 
 ug The X Commandments 
 
 we are beyond that of the African negro, never were able 
 to promulgate any moral code at all comparable to these 
 Ten Commandments. 
 
 If, then, the very highest effort of the human intellect has 
 never conceived so perfect a law, where could it have 
 originated except from a Divine source? 
 
 " God spake all these words saying " (Exodus xx. i.). 
 
 I. COMMANDMENT. 
 
 "Thou shalt have no otter gods before Me." 
 
 JF the Almighty Father condescends to make any 
 communication to His -children, as it is only natural 
 that He should, He would have a care that that 
 communication should be conveyed to all coming generations ; 
 for all His children must be equally dear to His heart. 
 
 Now the language in which peoples gradually learn to 
 express themselves must of necessity partake of their various 
 characteristics ; the more flexible and capable the mind of a 
 people the larger the vocabulary of their language and the 
 greater its power of expression. Peoples of a crude civilisa- 
 tion speak a crude language. The Hebrew tongue had no 
 vowels until some centuries after Christ, when a school of 
 Hebraists at Tiberias supplied vowel points. 
 
 It is readily understood that a language whose words are 
 composed entirely of consonants, and the vowels essential to 
 their completion, were to be supplied by individual use, could 
 never express accurate thought. 
 
 But it would be a strange thing indeed if the communica- 
 tion of the Almighty Father to the children of men was only 
 6
 
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 capable of conveyance in the Hebrew tongue ! The revelation 
 dealing with principles was not only committed to language, 
 but it was also enshrined in a wonderfully constructed ritual. 
 This ritual was carefully preserved from alteration, by causing 
 it to be performed only at one place and by the members of 
 one family, separated from the rest of the people and dedicated 
 to priestly service, moreover the whole nation itself was 
 segregated from the rest of men by having imposed upon it 
 social customs, which for ever prevented the children of Israel 
 from mixing with their neighbours. This device to keep their 
 ritual, (which conveyed the Divine revelation), from any 
 possibility of alteration was so effective, that the Jews are even 
 yet a distinct people. " Sifted among the nations," as they 
 always have been, and despite their own endeavours to mix 
 with their neighbours, they, nevertheless, are 'a separated 
 people.' 
 
 Remembering all this, and seeing that the principles which 
 regulate the fellowship of sinful man with his Maker are after 
 all but very few, it is not to be wondered at, that as each 
 generation came upon the stage of life, it received the 
 revelation and expressed it with more or less profundity 
 according to its own capability of thought and language. So 
 that we may say of the whole race what the Evangelist said 
 of the Lord's dealing with the men about Him, " He taught 
 them as they were able to bear it." 
 
 There are depths of understanding of the things of God 
 which even S. Paul, with the most complete language ever 
 invented by man at his command, found himself incapable of 
 expressing ; and yet the far simpler language of the Hebrews 
 conveyed the revelation so efficaciously, that it produced the 
 most religious men of the human race, and gave them such 
 spiritual utterance in their Psalms as has sufficed to express 
 the deepest emotions of men of God ever since. 
 7
 
 g The X Commandments 
 
 In this sense the Words of God are ' life.' They assimilate 
 to themselves proper modes of expression in whatever 
 language they happen to be in use; just as the vitality of 
 wheat will, in any country, build up for itself precisely the 
 same plant ; it finds proper material for the growth of its 
 organism anywhere. So that ' the Ten Words ' in English are 
 just as really the Words of God as the Hebrew words, in 
 which ' the voice of the Lord ' spake them from the top of 
 Sinai. 
 
 For their fuller understanding, the unfolding of their 
 principles and the application of them to the special modes of 
 our life we are justified in scrutinising their words without any 
 reference to their Hebrew originals. 
 
 I. COMMANDMENT; 
 
 "Thou shalt have no other god before Me." 
 
 God is the Saxon for 'good.' This 'first and great 
 commandment,' therefore, says that God is the final good. 
 Our Lord approved of the current explanation of it, in His 
 day, when He said that the lawyer had answered ' rightly ' as 
 he repeated the well-known summary, "Thou shalt love the 
 Lord thy God, with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and 
 with all thy mind." 
 
 Now, love is the resting of the affections ; that upon which 
 our affections rest ; that to which our mind, when not directed 
 by our will, naturally reverts; that which we are fond of 
 thinking about, is what we love. 
 
 And if it is ' of the earth,' a person, a thing, an occupation, 
 
 a gratification, if here we rest and are satisfied, then we are 
 
 breaking the first and great commandment. It does not say, 
 
 that we are not to have any other 'good ' than God; but we 
 
 8
 
 in the XXth Century. S 
 
 are not to place anything on which our affections rest, this side 
 of God, ' before God ' ; that is, that He is our ultimate good ; 
 He forms the goal to which all that is in us trends ; He is our 
 final resting-place. We may enjoy everything, we may love 
 anything, but always with the reservation that it is c in Him ' ; 
 that when it comes that we lose sight of Him, that He no 
 longer occupies a place in our prospect, then we have another 
 ' good,' ' before ' God ; He is eclipsed, He is out of our view, 
 He is no long a factor in our life ; we live life without Him ; 
 we belong to that vast class who are 'without God in the 
 world,' whom at the end He will not know, because they know 
 Him not. They to whom He must say, from the threshold of 
 His home, where all is love and friendship and fellowship 
 ' depart ye cursed (lawless) into Gehenna,' into the place 
 where all that does not assimilate with the life of the City of 
 God is consumed and dissipated. 
 
 The First Commandment therefore, enjoins us to worship 
 the One true God. 
 
 The first step towards its keeping is to be convinced that 
 God is our real and only good; that "in Him we live and 
 move and have our being," and we accept it and recognise it ; 
 therefore we spend our conscious life in the atmosphere of 
 this knowledge ; enjoying what is in keeping with His mind, 
 and refusing what is not in accordance to His will ; having no 
 other good but God. 
 
 S. Augustine, at the beginning of his " Confessions," in 
 almost immortal words, expresses the principle of this First 
 and Great Commandment, "Thou hast created us unto 
 Thyself and our heart finds no rest until it rests in Thee."
 
 The X Commandments 
 
 II. COMMANDMENT. 
 
 " Thou shall not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of 
 anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or 
 that is in the water under the earth. 
 
 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 t and shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love 
 Me, and keep My commandments." 
 
 |HE First Commandment requires us to worship the one 
 true God, the Second that we worship Him in the 
 right way. Selfishness has ever been a prime 
 motive of the human heart, and to gratify self is one of 
 the chief incentives of life. The call to resist the flesh 
 and live after the spirit; to ignore self and follow the 
 perfect Man, Christ Jesus, has ever been the demand of the 
 higher life. One of the most ancient of writers pointed out, 
 that 'there is a spirit in man and the inspiration of the 
 Almighty giveth him understanding ' ; there is ever a voice 
 within, urging every man to resist his passions and live 
 unselfishly, and no man has ever continued to gratify his 
 animal propensities without the reproach of his conscience, 
 and the voice of retribution rising from his damaged 
 reputation or from the consequences of his bodily indulgence. 
 But so strong is the determination to gratify a perverted self, 
 that men have always sought excuses to do that to which the 
 spirit within them objected ; to find excuses to sin. For this 
 purpose they invented the character of the god, who evidently 
 lived in the unseen, and with irresistible power interfered with 
 the lives of men, to suit themselves. Having produced a 
 10
 
 in the XXth Century. & 
 
 deity of their own liking, it was a necessity that in his worship 
 those things should be done which were in keeping with his 
 supposed character ; for what is character but the sum total of 
 what we like and dislike ? 
 
 The energy of idolatry therefore, is the opportunity it gives 
 of letting loose the animal passions, and offering a religious 
 excuse for indulgence. Every system of ancient mythology 
 has had a god of wine, the ritual of whose worship was a 
 drunken orgy; or a Venus, whose priestesses were public 
 prostitutes, and whose temples were houses of ill-fame ; or a 
 god of war where the fires of vengeance, or the lusts of 
 conquest were enflamed and approved. This view of 
 idolatry explains and justifies the well-known saying that no 
 nation's morality can rise above that of the god it worships. 
 
 To keep therefore the children of Israel from any earthly 
 conceptions of the Deity, they were commanded not to 
 embody their ideas in any visible form ; for any such attempt 
 would at once reduce their thoughts of God to an earthly 
 level, and inevitably mix with them the low-lying tendencies of 
 fleshly nature. They were to be a ' holy ' people ; and the 
 word for holy means, 'not of the earth.' 
 
 To encourage this chief end of life's probation, all 
 representations of God were absolutely forbidden. It was 
 only after the very severest chastisement, the unheard of 
 punishment, of taking their whole nation into foreign 
 slavery, that their proneness to idolatry was effectually 
 eradicated. After the Babylonish captivity, no Jew could 
 tolerate an image. Pilate almost provoked a national 
 insurrection by hanging, even in his own house in Jerusalem, 
 shields bearing the effigies of the Emperors. To a Jew of the 
 Christian era the very sight of an image was as shocking as 
 an exhibition of lewdness would be to us. 
 
 It is because Self has its own way in idolatry, that S. Paul 
 ii
 
 *$ The X Commandments 
 
 says, " Covetousness is idolatry," for covetousness is the 
 essence of selfishness, and selfishness is the motive principle 
 of idolatry. 
 
 For us this Commandment to worship the one true God in 
 the right way was expressed by our Lord, when He said to 
 the woman of Sychar, " God is a Spirit, and they that worship 
 Him, must worship Him in Spirit and in Truth." 
 
 To us, of this civilisation, the sin of idolatry offers no 
 temptation. Selfishness attacks us in less gross forms. The 
 cares of this life, the haste of living, the pleasure-seeking 
 habit, the materialism of our atmosphere, the anti-spiritual 
 tendency of scientific thought, expressing itself in the theories 
 of Darwinianism, Evolution, and Higher Criticism ; the open 
 determination of much scientific investigation to account for 
 existing effects by natural causes, all this tends to exclude any 
 reference to a Spiritual Power, and prevents men from having 
 any sensibility of the immanence of a spiritual world. To 
 put ourselves in tune to worship God, to be ' in the Spirit on 
 the Lord's day,' to approach the Majesty Divine with the 
 voices of earth silenced, and with any due appreciation of the 
 service we have come to offer, this is our difficulty in keeping 
 this Commandment. To worship God ' in Spirit,' requires a 
 real intelligent effort. The habit of a less frivolous age, 
 which, in a large portion of Protestant Europe, described the 
 day before the special worship-day as Sonnabend, the 
 preparation day, the evening of Sunday, is well worth recovery. 
 The man who is intent upon 'running the way of the 
 Commandments,' will prepare to worship ; he will go with 
 solemn step ' to the house of God ; his heart will be directed 
 by prayer ; his ear open ; his mind attent. 
 
 To present himself before the Lord will cost him at least 
 as much preparation as if he were to have an audience with 
 an earthly monarch. He knows that prepared soil is just as 
 
 12
 
 in the XXth Century. $ 
 
 essential to the harvest as good seed ; he therefore seeks to 
 prepare himself in order that he may possess the spirit of 
 worship and so keep the Commandment. Again during the 
 process of worship, he is careful not " to offer the sacrifice of 
 fools," uttering with his lips that which his heart does not 
 believe. For our neighbour to speak to us what he did not 
 mean, would brand him as a liar, and cut him off from our 
 intercourse. To worship God "in Truth," must mean that 
 we neither sing hymns nor pray prayers to the sentiment of 
 which we cannot assent with our heart. 
 
 The Roman Catholics omit this Second Commandment from 
 their Catechisms ; and in order to still count ten, they divide 
 the tenth into two, so that with them the ninth is, " Thou 
 shall not covet thy neighbour's wife," and the tenth, "Thou 
 shalt not covet thy neighbour's goods." 
 
 They profess to consider the Second Commandment is an 
 extension of the first, and they justify its omission by the 
 evident fact, that in its abbreviated form " it is more easy to 
 commit to memory and to retain there what is commanded. 
 But if anyone wishes to read this preceptive passage at full 
 length, he will easily find it in our larger Catechisms, not to 
 speak of the Douay Bible at all." {General Introduction to 
 the Sacred Scriptures, by Dr. Dixon, the Archbishop of 
 Armagh, p. 149.) 
 
 In support of their contention that the Commandment we 
 reckon as the Tenth, is in truth two Commandments, Dr. Dixon 
 adds, " Everyone admits that the prohibitions of adultery and 
 theft are two distinct Commandments ; because these acts 
 have distinct and very different objects. Now, to covet the 
 neighbour's wife, is the internal act of adultery ... To covet 
 the neighbour's goods is the internal act of theft. Again, the 
 distinction and difference of objects is as clearly marked in 
 the case of internal acts, as it is in the case of external acts. 
 '3
 
 *$ The X Commandments 
 
 Therefore by the same rule which makes us look upon the 
 prohibitions of adultery and theft as two distinct Command- 
 ments, we ought to look upon the prohibitions against coveting 
 the neighbour's wife and against coveting the neighbour's 
 goods, as two distinct Commandments." 
 
 But as all the Commandments reach back from the act, to 
 the thought of the heart which conceived the act, the Arch- 
 bishop's contention falls to the ground. The Tenth Command- 
 ment is against discontent ; and to prevent any excuse being 
 found in the consent of the neighbour's wife, she is specially 
 enumerated. 
 
 The real reason why the Romanists suppress the Second 
 Commandment of course is, that it forbids the very thing they 
 do; filling their churches with images of Saints, to which 
 they 'bow down.' They protest that in so doing, that 
 worship which belongs to God alone is not offered, never- 
 theless the great mass of worshippers recognise no such 
 impalpable distinction, and it is a matter of ordinary 
 observation, especially in Roman Catholic countries, that 
 they do "bow down and worship them." 
 
 The procession of a jewel-bedecked image of the Virgin, 
 or of a Bambino, is an exhibition of idolatry pure and simple, 
 in open defiance of the prohibition of this Second Com- 
 mandment.
 
 in the XXth Century. 
 
 III. COMMANDMENT. 
 
 "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," 
 
 |N biblical use, Name stands for Character. We 
 mention a man's name and his personality rises 
 before us, and character is the substance of 
 personality. The first petition of the Lord's Prayer is, that 
 we may keep this Commandment. " Hallowed be Thy 
 Character/' beseeches, that if God be our Father we may 
 show ourselves to be His children. The household of the 
 King wears a livery, we have no right to parade in the 
 royal livery, unless we conform to the rules of the palace, 
 and behave ourselves in a way approved of by the King ; in 
 fact are in his service. 
 
 This Commandment is a consequence of one of the laws 
 of life. The nature of any vitality is invariable. Fifty years 
 of further observation has not supported the Darwinian 
 theory with proof. There is no evidence that with lapse of 
 time the nature of any species of animal has changed. The 
 cows that graze in our pastures, low with the same voice, 
 eat in the same way, supply us with milk, precisely as did 
 those that Abel domesticated. The most ancient drawings 
 of animals represent them as we know them to-day. Observa- 
 tion has never given us the slightest reason to suppose that 
 it is possible for any vitality to become permanently altered ; 
 the characteristics of every species of life are invariable, 
 This fact is so recognised, that whenever in some freak there 
 seems to be any variation from the type, the exceptionable 
 15
 
 <$ The X Commandments 
 
 specimen attracts wide notice, and it the animal exhibits 
 habits which are very different from its race, it becomes a 
 monstrosity ; and the natural instinct is to put out of existence 
 a creature which by its very lawlessness has forfeited its right 
 to live. 
 
 The great fact of revelation is, that a new life has been 
 bestowed upon our race; that this new life was imparted 
 to us in virtue of the Incarnation of the Deity ; that because 
 God Himself took upon Him our flesh, therefore under 
 certain conditions men can become " partakers of the Divine 
 nature." The Saviour of men said, " Except a man be born 
 from above he cannot see the Kingdom of God," he has no 
 faculty for comprehending the spiritual life. This new life, 
 because of its origin from the second Adam, came to be 
 called the Christ life ; and he who ' wills ' to possess it, 
 becomes, S. Paul avers, " a new creature." The Bible calls 
 itself ' the Book of this life,' this ' eternal life,' which is not 
 a development from what we already possess, but a bestowal 
 from without \ it is constantly described as ' the gift of God.' 
 Now if this be true, and the proof of it is, that those who 
 come by this sort of vitality, at once exhibit the characteristics 
 of this kind of life, then to claim possession of it and behave 
 contrary to its promptings, is to attempt to pervert the 
 instincts of a special vitality, and to produce a monstrosity. 
 The great difference between this life and any other vitality, 
 lies in its habitat. Ordinary vitality, conveyed by ' the seed,' 
 builds up for itself, out of its environment, an organism to 
 inhabit and through which its instincts may operate. But the 
 Divine life comes into a life already in full action, and whose 
 instincts are alien to those of the new life ; ' The natural man 
 is enmity against God.' These instincts are under the control 
 of the will of the man, he can if he likes, allow the old life 
 to be in the ascendant and indeed to prevent altogether 
 16
 
 in the XXth Century. So 
 
 the growth of the new vitality. If, however, the man lives 
 to the Spirit and not after the flesh, then Christ will be 
 formed in him, that is to say, just as any vitality builds 
 from its environment its own habitation, so the Divine life 
 will, from the nature of the man, build up an habitation of 
 God through the Spirit, 'the body of Christ.' Human 
 nature itself supplies to the c new life ' the necessary elements 
 for building up 'the Body of Christ.' So that this 'new 
 life ' can do that, which is the prime object of all vitality, 
 reproduce its original, and ' Christ is formed in us,' we are 
 4 built up together in Him.' 
 
 Now inasmuch as the Will presides over this process, 
 permitting its accomplishment or thwarting its purpose, 
 therefore this Commandment directs the Will, enjoining 
 the man who accepts the Divine life, numbering himself 
 with the children of God and purporting to be ruled by 
 the divine nature, to have a care that he does not lightly, 
 trivially or ' in vain,' 'assume and maintain such responsibility. 
 That if he ' belongs to Christ ' he is to rule his life according 
 to Christ's service ; he is not to parade in the livery of heaven 
 and behave as a son of Belial. That God will no more 
 count such a monstrosity 'guiltless,' than a man would an 
 animal who violated the laws of its order ; in both cases the 
 very instincts of nature would demand its destruction. 
 
 It will help us better to comprehend the wide scope of 
 this Commandment, if we understand what is intimated by 
 the expression " the Lord thy God " ; the character of God 
 especially referred to in this appellation. It is not 'thou 
 shall not take the Name of thy God, in vain,' but of ' the 
 Lord thy God.' Lord is our unfortunate rendering of the 
 word Jehovah. It is a perpetuation of that extreme ritualism 
 which obscured and atrophied the Jewish religion at the 
 time of the Christian era. 'The tradition of the Elders' 
 
 I 7 B
 
 *$ The X Commandments 
 
 had elaborated a system of ritual of a microscopic character ; 
 every possible religious exercise had been overburned with 
 a multitude of minute regulations for its proper observance. 
 They had gradually, in their anxiety to impose reverence, 
 forbidden the very utterance of the distinctive Name of 
 God. Jehovah had come to be called ' the incommunicable 
 Name ' ; no Jew would tread on a piece of paper lest the 
 characters of 'the Name' should be upon it; the High 
 Priest whispered it into the ear of his successor in the dead 
 of the night-time preceding the Day of Atonement, lest its 
 proper pronunciation should be lost ; it was this ' great and 
 awful' Name which the Lord Jesus pronounced when He 
 proclaimed who He was to His captors in the Garden of 
 Gethsemane, and at hearing which 'they went backward' 
 and in mock horror ' fell to the ground.' 
 
 S. Paul declared that to the -Lord Jesus, God had given 
 this Name 'which is above every name.' To escape the 
 necessity of using this great name, the Jews substituted for 
 it, the ordinary term for eminent distinction, ADONAI, of 
 which our word ' Lord ' is the equivalent ; Adonai Bezek, 
 for instance, means the Lord of Bezek. Unfortunately, we 
 have perpetuated this evasion; in 7,600 places in the Old 
 Testament we have Lord instead of Jehovah, and by this 
 substitution we have seriously obscured the sense of the 
 sentences where it occurs. Knowing the stress the Hebrews 
 laid upon the meaning of names, it is more than a conjecture 
 that the use of the various names of God, was determined, 
 not by the unintentional habit of a certain writer, by which 
 use he became distinguished and is now known to Higher 
 Criticism as the 'Jahvist' or the ' Elohist,' but that the 
 occurrence of any of the appellations of the Deity is 
 governed by that side of the character of God, shown forth 
 in that particular dealing. 
 
 18
 
 in the XXth Century. 
 
 The names by which men called the Deity, are exactly 
 those we should expect. The human mind has always had 
 the same construction and has always worked in the same 
 way ; whatever remains we have of ancient literature, we 
 read and deal with as if they were the product of modern 
 writers ; this we can only do upon the supposition that the 
 men of far off times, thought and acted in the same way 
 as ourselves. Men have always recognised the existence of 
 a First Cause ; nothing cannot produce something, and 
 such a something as this marvellous world and its living 
 freight! This First Cause the Hebrews called El an 
 appellation of God which occurs 250 times. 
 
 Now according to the religious tendency of the man, El 
 may, or may not, compel worship. With us there are 
 thousands who admit the necessary existence of El, but 
 who have no disposition to bow down before Him and 
 worship Him. To those who did so worship, He became 
 known as Elohim. How men came to regard the Deity 
 as a plurality, for Elohim is plural, this is not the place to 
 discuss. But Elohim, as is natural, we find to be a very 
 commonly used name of the Deity ; it occurs in the Old 
 Testament 2,500 times, and is rendered by our word 'God.' 
 Occasionally when the writer is thinking of God as his 
 superior, we find Adonai used; and sometimes when His 
 omnipotence is chiefly to be thought of He is called El 
 Shaddai, God Almighty. 
 
 But the characteristic name of God, is Jehovah ; indeed 
 the Old Testament might be said to be the religion of 
 Jehovahism. Now what does Jehovah mean ? 
 
 Speaking as a philologist, Dean Payne Smith, an eminent 
 
 Hebrew scholar, says, "we do not know what Jehovah 
 
 means." But the meaning of a word is never settled by 
 
 its derivation, but by the use made of it. Sometimes the 
 
 19
 
 +$ The X Commandments 
 
 same word comes to bear in common parlance, a very 
 different signification to what it originally had, as the word 
 'prevent'; 'prevent us, O Lord,' means to us exactly the 
 reverse of the sense in which Cranmer used it. To discover 
 the true signification of a word, we must therefore seek 
 it from instances of its use. 
 
 The record of the first time that the great name of God 
 was used, is in the account of the birth of Cain. Our first 
 parents were outside paradise; the light had gone out of 
 their sky; a cold and indefinable dread had settled down 
 upon them ; they no longer heard the voice of the Lord 
 God ; and the bright beings they had companied with were 
 no longer to be seen ; the change which had come by 
 listening to their tempter was tremendous. The longing hope 
 that possessed them, was to regain Paradise; they had a 
 promise which was the one ray -of light in their darkness, 
 'that the seed of the woman should bruise the serpent's 
 head'; the meaning of it was unmistakable, that a being, 
 the woman should produce, would conquer their enemy and 
 restore to them that of which he had robbed them. Then 
 the first baby born into the world arrived. The birth of 
 a baby is even now a startling event, especially to the mother; 
 what effect must the prodigious process have had on our first 
 parents? and what would be the conclusion of Eve as she 
 now understood what was 'the seed of the woman ' ? naturally, 
 that here was the promised deliverer, the Redeemer, the 
 Saviour. She therefore said, "I have gotten a man 
 Jehovah." To interpolate, " I have gotten a man from the 
 Lord," or as the Westminster revisers have done, "by the 
 help 0/the Lord," is only "to darken counsel by words." 
 
 What Eve would naturally say, she said, "I have gotten 
 a man"; for it was evident that the baby was a miniature 
 of Adam, and observation of the growth of other animals 
 20
 
 in the XXth Century. S 
 
 would suggest to her that her baby would grow and become a 
 man, and then that he would overcome their enemy and 
 regain for them their lost estate; she therefore said so. 
 " I have gotten a man Jehovah." 
 
 How she came by the word Jehovah, we need not enquire ; 
 to her the name meant Deliverer. 
 
 That this is the recognised signification of the great Name, 
 is conclusively proved by the opening verses of the Sixth 
 chapter of Exodus. Moses was offering all the objections 
 he could find to accepting the commission to lead out his 
 brethren from their Egyptian bondage. He finally saw a 
 difficulty in representing to the Hebrews, who had sent him ; 
 in other words, by what character he was to declare God 
 to them. "And Elohim spake unto Moses, and said unto 
 him, I am Jehovah; and I appeared unto Abraham, unto 
 Isaac, and unto Jacob, by the name of God Almighty (El 
 Shaddi), but by my name Jehovah I was not known unto 
 them." Which means to say, that as the Patriarchs needed 
 protection, since they fed their ever-increasing flocks and 
 herds in a country already possessed by other people, God 
 revealed Himself to them as their Shield, the Almighty One. 
 Now, however, the children of Israel were in the relentless 
 grasp of the greatest monarch in the world ; their deliverance 
 was wholly impossible, saving by the aid of the Divine Power. 
 This deliverance God had determined upon, and therefore 
 He declared Himself to be Jehovah, the Deliverer, the 
 Redeemer, the Saviour. 
 
 A recognisation of this meaning will always throw much 
 light upon the passage in which Jehovah is purposely 
 used. 
 
 The preface to the Commandments is evidently intended 
 to instigate the keeping of them out of gratitude. " I am 
 Jehovah, thy Elohim, who brought thee out of the land of
 
 $ The X Commandments 
 
 Egypt, the house of bondage." God appeals to them to keep 
 His Commandments, because they are the purchased slaves 
 of a Merciful Master. ' Ye are bought with a price, ye are 
 not your own, therefore ye shall keep the commandments 
 of Jehovah your Elohim.' 
 
 Wherever Jehovah is used this sentiment of gratitude is 
 revived, and there is always present the untold relief, that as 
 God is a great Saviour, He will not cast off for ever those 
 who, although they are conscious of breaking His law, never- 
 theless turn to Him for forgiveness. The purport of the 
 revelation of Himself is with the object of saving ; that side of 
 His character presented to us ' tied and bound with the chain 
 of our sin,' is that of a God whose ' property it is to have 
 mercy and to forgive'; therefore to 'take the Name of 
 Jehovah,' to assume the character of Jehovah, behoves its 
 wearer to live the life of one evjer ready to forgive, and to 
 further salvation. It was for this reason, that after the Lord 
 had given to His disciples an authoritative form of prayer, He 
 returned to this salient feature in the character of the children 
 of the Heavenly Father, "for if ye forgive not men their 
 trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses." 
 
 The Third Commandment, expressed in New Testament 
 language, is, " Take My yoke upon you and learn of Me ; for 
 I am meek and lowly of heart ; and ye shall find rest for your 
 souls." 
 
 It is an impressive and staggering thought, this emblem of 
 being the yoke-fellow of Jesus Christ. The yoke, whose 
 shape suggested that of our capital letter B, was two loops of 
 bent wood, fixed to a cross piece, the heads of the labouring 
 oxen being thrust each through a loop. What a thought 
 to link in such close fellowship, in doing ' the work of God,' 
 Jesus Christ and he who ' takes His Name ' :
 
 in the XXth Century. &* 
 
 11 Fellow-workers with God " ; and he who goes his own 
 way rather than God's way, is ' taking God's name in vain 
 and breaking this Third Commandment. 
 
 IV. COMMANDMENT. 
 
 44 Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy : Six days shalt thou 
 labour and do all thy work : 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 the stranger that is within thy gates : 
 For in six days Jehovah made heaven and earth, the sea, and 
 all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore 
 Jehovah blessed the Sabbath day, and hallowed it." 
 
 | HE principle of the Fourth Commandment is, that at 
 least a seventh of our time is requisite for the 
 education of our spiritual selves, that we may be 
 " meet for the inheritance of the Saints in light." 
 
 Whatever and wherever Heaven may be, it must be the 
 highest state of human attainment. Now no attainment can 
 be secured without long sustained effort. It is all very well 
 to say Christ has procured for us all the great blessings the 
 other world has to offer, but this is conditional upon our 
 'holding fast that which we have'; the 'grace of Christ,' 
 as Article XIII. puts it. This gift of Christ, this new life has 
 to be nurtured and cared for with even more assiduity than 
 our natural life. The oppositions of the flesh, the whole 
 bent of our fallen nature, the subtle malignity of our spiritual 
 enemies, all combine to deprive us of this life. Even such 
 a man as S. Paul, was so conscious of the exceeding
 
 +$ The X Commandments 
 
 difficulty of keeping "in Christ," that he wrote of his un- 
 wearying effort, "I keep under my body and bring it into 
 subjection, lest by any means I should be a castaway"; 
 the original language is far more forcible ; the Apostle uses 
 the diction of an athlete, ' I beat my body black and blue, 
 to keep it in subjection.' 'If we kill the deeds of the 
 body we shall live,' that is, live by the life of Christ in us, 
 but if we live after the flesh we shall die. 'If any man 
 will come after Me,' said the Lord, 'let him ignore self,' 
 so control himself that he is heedless to the voice Self, 
 but is solely governed by what he conceives to be the Will 
 of God. Now to thus ' walk after the Spirit,' needs education 
 and practice. We none of us learned to walk under two 
 years of constant, hourly practice. In this Fourth Command- 
 ment our Maker assures us, that unless we give a seventh 
 of our time to practice ' walking with God,' we shall never 
 live eternity with Him ; for ' can two walk together unless 
 they be agreed ' ? 
 
 God has revealed His nature to us only in the Bible. 
 In every possible mode of conveying ideas, by direct 
 assertion, by poetry, which is indeed the highest form of 
 scientific expression ; by the symbolism of a most sensitive 
 and elaborate ritual ; by parable ; and by the philosophic 
 utterances of such intellects as S. Paul's, He has com- 
 municated to us His nature, and therefore His intentions, 
 and the conditions under which we may live in His 
 presence. We cannot expect to 'know God,' the most 
 transcendent of all knowledge, for ' to know the Father and 
 Jesus Christ whom He hath sent is Eternal Life,' without 
 persistent effort. No one ever mastered an accomplishment 
 without devoting to its study and practice many hours 
 every day. Ask a public performer what time and patience 
 and wearying work is required, before any proficiency was
 
 in the XXth Century. 5 
 
 attained. " Nobody knows, but me and my violin, what 
 it has cost us," said Madame Norman Neruda. 
 
 Prayer and the study of the Word, which are the two 
 subjects of this spiritual education, are within the reach 
 and capability of everybody. Prayer is the only agent by 
 which communication with the spiritual world is established 
 and maintained. 'While I live I breathe,' is the vital 
 condition of every living animal ; and ' while I live I pray,' 
 is the vital condition of every Christian; 'Prayer is the 
 Christian's vital breath ' ; and although the Christian heart 
 'prays without ceasing,' prays even in the busy times of 
 worldly occupation, still there must be stated times of 
 practice, or the praying habit cannot be established and 
 maintained. Moreover, ' no man liveth to himself,' we are 
 mysteriously bound together in the bundle of life. Nations, 
 generations, families have communal life which has its 
 rewards and punishments ; we may not be able to com- 
 prehend how the individual can have strict justice meted 
 out to him, while the race is being dealt with, but it is 
 evident that somehow and somewhere the individual life, 
 which is the unit of the communal life, and contributes its 
 atom to the whole account, has its individual account to 
 render, and yet that the communal life also has its place 
 and function. 
 
 'Are God and nature then at strife, 
 That nature lends such evil dreams 
 So careful of the type she seems, 
 So careless of the single life'? 
 
 Public worship, the communal act, is as essential to 
 God's people as private worship; and for Public worship 
 there must be stated times. 
 
 The very first page of human history bears witness to 
 2 5
 
 + The X Commandments 
 
 the establishment of public worship, and the necessary 
 institution of the Sabbath Day for that purpose. 
 
 The third verse of the fourth chapter of Genesis 
 narrates that, "In process of time," Cain and Abel met 
 for worship ; the margin reads, " In the end of days," 
 this can but mean on the last day of the week; the 
 brothers came to the same place, at the same time, upon 
 the same day, for the same purpose. Moreover, there is 
 nothing said of this being a singular instance ; it reads 
 as if it were the regular custom, and it has this special 
 narration, because in this instance Cain departed from the 
 usual course, and brought ' of the fruit of the ground ' 
 for his offering, instead of the required 'firstling of the 
 flock.' 
 
 The appalling consequences of his wilful disobedience 
 indicate the depravity into which human nature had already 
 sunk. 
 
 It required as much self-discipline for the first members 
 of our race to ' prepare to meet their God ' as it does 
 for us ; and for that purpose a Divine decree had set apart 
 one seventh of their time, a day upon which, by a common 
 requirement, ordinary work should be suspended, that it 
 might be possible for the community to assemble to render 
 a public worship, in which the sympathy of numbers would 
 stimulate the flagging service of the lukewarm or indifferent, 
 and be " a witness," whose recurring testimony should weekly 
 preach of ' the things that accompany salvation.' 
 
 There is something in 'the seventh' which matches our 
 make-up. Seven means, throughout the Bible, perfection, 
 completion. Moses, as a Seer, saw six great scenes of the 
 process of Creation, each view being bounded by periods 
 of darkness, he naturally, in transcribing what he had 
 witnessed, could only say, "The evening was and the 
 26
 
 in the XXth Century. + 
 
 morning was one day." There was a time when men 
 supposed this to assert that God actually created the world in 
 six days of twenty-four hours each. But the opening paragraph 
 of Genesis describes not what actually occurred, but what 
 Moses witnessed. The creation of fish-life, for example, 
 is not even mentioned ', and how enormous must have been that 
 life, if, as appears to be the case, our supplies of coal 
 oil come from beds of fossilized fish. Not being able to 
 see into the water, the Seer does not even notice the 
 creation of this, the greatest province of the animal kingdom ; 
 the great Saurians, which being amphibious, he saw and noted. 
 Why commentators have not asked, what is the usual way 
 by which revelation of material structures is communicated ? 
 and been led to a reply, that the Seers were men who saw 
 the unseen and communicated the revelation to less gifted 
 people, is not a little to be wondered at. Moses saw the 
 scenes of Creation, and described what he saw in a com- 
 munication, which the science of our day is beginning to 
 understand. The days were not periods of twenty-four 
 hours; no one supposes that the Judgment Day is to be 
 of that duration ; and, indeed, as the nebulous cloud from 
 which our system condensed did not arrive at its present 
 size, so forming our Sun, until the fourth day, there could 
 have been, strictly speaking, no marking of time for the 
 earth until more than half the Creative week had 
 passed; this alone indicates that 'day' can only mean 
 ' period.' 
 
 It is very possible that the six periods, as seen by 
 Moses, are indicative of the times necessary for the 
 production of ' a new heaven and a new earth, wherein 
 dwelleth righteousness,' by the interplay of those processes 
 of natural forces of which the scientific world has taken 
 some account; and that a parallel is here stated, that in 
 27
 
 +$ The X Commandments 
 
 the working days of the week, the attrition of society, and 
 the constant opportunities of probation, at which those 
 decisions are required, by which character is made, will 
 lead into a consummation of harmony, wherein all forces 
 become finally balanced, and thus an equilibrium is 
 established which is described as Rest. 
 
 In our spiritual life we have to pass through a similar 
 state of unbalance, wherein we are 'working out our own 
 salvation with fear and trembling.' It is described in the 
 Bible as a warfare, a veritable agony, wherein the flesh 
 " warreth against the Spirit ; " and God declares that we 
 shall need a seventh of our time to tend the growth 
 and nutriment of our spiritual forces, in order that they 
 may not be overborne in the struggle, and we make 
 shipwreck of our faith. 
 
 He is a wise man who admits that our Maker knows 
 what is requisite for us, and obeys Him. We have a right 
 to believe that any man who honestly uses a seventh of 
 his time therein to educate his soul, by prayer and the 
 study of God's Word, by putting into practice in his 
 daily life the lessons he thus learns, will assuredly ' enter 
 the Kingdom of Heaven ' ; and that he who refuses to 
 keep holy the Sabbath Day, doing upon that day his own 
 pleasure and thinking his own thoughts ; that that man will 
 no more attain Everlasting life, than he would acquire 
 an accomplishment without any adequate effort, or come 
 by the highest type of education without any definite 
 study. 
 
 They are wise, who 'keep holy the Sabbath Day,' who 
 carefully reserve that day for the purposes of religious 
 improvement, for prayer, study of the Word, and the 
 exercise of public worship. The Sabbath was indeed 
 ' made for man,' but he who refuses its legitimate use 
 28
 
 in the XXth Century. S 
 
 and declines 'to practise its principle, cannot expect to 
 enjoy 'the Sabbath that remaineth for the people of 
 God'; as there is no royal road to learning, so there is 
 no Sabbath over there, without a Sabbath-keeping here. 
 It is not a law of the Jewish dispensation, but the 
 expression of a moral necessity, a condition of spiritual 
 growth. It was imposed upon the race, not upon a small 
 nation only. Men kept the Sabbath day at the gates of 
 a lost Paradise, and it was therefore that the Jews were 
 urged " to remember/' to keep it holy. It was a command 
 to strictly enforce a law which was already in force, and 
 not the legalising of a novel institution. 
 
 The first judicial execution under the Theocracy was of 
 the man who 'broke the Sabbath Day.' The Children of 
 Israel exemplified in their institutions and history those 
 principles which are in force in the Kingdom of God; 
 it was therefore that great emphasis was laid upon the 
 keeping of the Sabbath Day, because it is the expression 
 of the absolute necessity of spiritual education, the process 
 of sanctification. The significance of it is fully stated 
 in Exodus xxxi. 12-18. "Verily my Sabbaths ye shall 
 keep : for it is a sign between me and you throughout 
 your generations; that ye may know that I am Jehovah 
 that doth sanctify you. Ye shall keep the Sabbath therefore ; 
 for it is holy unto you : every one that defileth it shall 
 surely be put to death : for whosoever doeth any work 
 therein, that soul shall be cut off from among his people. 
 
 Six days may work be done; but in the seventh is the 
 Sabbath of rest, holiness to Jehovah : whosoever doeth 
 any work in the Sabbath Day, he shall surely be put to 
 death. 
 
 Wherefore the Children of Israel shall keep the Sabbath, 
 to observe the Sabbath throughout their generations, for 
 29
 
 -a-; The X Commandments 
 
 a perpetual covenant. It is a sign between me and the 
 Children of Israel for ever: for in six days Jehovah made 
 heaven and earth, and on the seventh day He rested and 
 was refreshed." 
 
 V. COMMANDMENT. 
 
 " Honour thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long upon 
 the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee." 
 
 | HIS commandment enjoins Humility. S. Augustine 
 said there were three steps to Heaven, " Humility, 
 Humility, Humility."' The reason is quite clear. 
 What is it keeps people out of Heaven? not sin! for Jesus 
 Christ hath taken away the sin of the world. He tasted 
 death in the place of every man. He is the Saviour of 
 the world. Then why is it all men are not saved ? The 
 Lord Himself gave us the reason when He said, "Ye will 
 not to come unto Me that ye might have life." They who 
 will not come and surrender themselves to Christ, body, 
 soul, and spirit, are withheld by their Pride. Pride is the 
 soul of Self, and the condition of accepting Christ is an 
 ignoring of Self; self renunciation is the first step to belief 
 in Christ. 
 
 "If any man will come after Me let him ignore self, 
 take up his cross daily, and follow Me"; and it is Pride 
 which prevents the great mass of men from complying. 
 When the Lord Jesus was preparing His disciples for 
 what was about to happen, that He Himself was soon 
 'to go away' and that His place would be taken by 
 30
 
 in the XXth Century. S 
 
 the Holy Ghost, whom He would send, He stated that 
 the chief undertaking of the present Spiritual Ruler of 
 God's Kingdom on earth, would be ' to convince the 
 world of sin,' 'to bring the world to the point with 
 regard to sin,' to offer another rendering. He would not 
 do this, as we might naturally suppose, by quickening 
 the conscience of men, and so facing them with their 
 deeds and shortcomings, that they could not but 
 recognise their offences; but the sin of the world 
 the Holy Ghost declares is, because they will not 
 believe on Jesus Christ. " When He is come He will 
 convince the world of sin, because they believe not on 
 Me," said the Lord Jesus. Unbelief is what keeps men 
 out of Heaven, not sin, and pride is the sole cause of 
 unbelief. Well may the Book say, "A proud heart is 
 an abomination unto Jehovah " ; for it is a heart that 
 spurns the yearning love of His salvation. It wounds 
 Him in the most sensitive part of His nature His Love. 
 All the untold stories of His mercy, gathered together 
 at the enormous cost of the Incarnation, and the sacrifice 
 of the death of His Son, and offered ' without money 
 and without price ' to dying men, all this wealth of salvation 
 the pride of men disdains and refuses. What strange and 
 touching lamentation sobs in the cry, "all day long have 
 I stretched forth my hands to a rebellious and a gainsaying 
 people." Pride is the incentive of rebellion and wags 
 the tongue of impudence. 
 
 Is it any wonder that one of the 'Ten Words,' should 
 deal with the chief detriment of our race, and give us 
 a command, by the obeying of which we might break 
 our pride and reduce ourselves into a state of humility? 
 How can God dwell with the proud who withstands 
 interference, and whose one desire is to have his own 
 3'
 
 *$ The X '''Commandments 
 
 way and not yield to the Will of Another? It is wcnder- 
 ful, indeed, to hear Him say, "I am the High and 
 lofty One that inhabiteth Eternity, I dwell with Him that 
 is of a contrite and a humble spirit"; but it is evident 
 that our only possible heaven is when all are actuated 
 by one will, and that will the best All the vexations of 
 life are due to the adverse wills of other people clashing 
 with what we desire. The one perfect Man declared, "I 
 seek not mine own will, but the Will of Him that sent 
 Me," "In the volume of the Book," throughout the 
 whole history of My life, "it is written of Me, I delight 
 to do Thy will, O my God"; and at the very end of 
 His career, when the deep cup of His suffering was put 
 into His hand to drink, with a tremendous effort to 
 overcome a shrinking nature, He took it with the declara- 
 tion, " Not My will but Thine be done." 
 
 Humility is the sacrifice of our own will, and to gain 
 humility we must practice obedience. As in the rest of 
 the Commandments which concern our duty to our neigh- 
 bour, that example of the strongest expression of the 
 principle is stated, obedience to our parents : in that most 
 natural act of obedience all other obedience is included. 
 And the obedience itself is only a constituent part of what 
 the law requires; we are to honour. We honour those 
 whom we admit to be far superior to ourselves, and it 
 naturally follows that if we honour we shall obey. 
 
 There is no difficulty in the little child so honouring 
 and obeying. To the little child no one is greater and 
 more to be loved than its father and mother. But when 
 years of discretion come, and comparisons are made, when 
 the patent faults of the parents cannot be unobserved, 
 when the father comes home drunk, and the mother loses 
 her temper, and worse, then to honour becomes impossible ; 
 32
 
 In the XXth Century, fo 
 
 how then to keep this Commandment becomes a problem 
 of the most difficult solution. 
 
 The only way in which it is possible, is to look upon 
 the faults of the parents as excrescences on the character, 
 and not that character we are required to honour. Many 
 a parent recognises this position. What drunkard ever 
 advises his son to copy his intemperance. How invariably 
 will the irreligious send the children to Sunday school. 
 How assiduously does the mother hide from the children 
 the faults of the father, and makes excuses for that which 
 she knows cannot be justified; and why? because the 
 faults she would not have considered to be a part of that 
 character which the children should love and honour. And 
 on the other hand, how this requirement, that the children 
 should honour, acts as a mighty restraint ; many a father 
 and mother would be very different to what they are, if it 
 were not for the presence of the children. 
 
 Instances may occur when the commands of a parent 
 cannot be conscientiously obeyed; when appeal must be 
 taken to the higher court of the Father of all, and if 
 the decision be adverse to the earthly parent's direction, 
 then obedience must be rendered to God, and the com- 
 mand of the parent must be disregarded as coming from 
 that part of the character which is abnormal, and not 
 belonging to the natural and godly disposition which a 
 child has a right to expect in its parent, and which 
 alone this Fifth Commandment requires it to honour. 
 
 The catechism well expands the limits of this obedience, 
 as it says the principle of this Commandment requires us, 
 " to submit ourselves lowly and reverently to all our betters." 
 And who are our ' betters ' ? To the person who thoroughly 
 'knows himself,' everybody is his 'better.' Dr. Pusey was 
 one of the saintliest of men, and yet he withheld him- 
 33 c
 
 * The X Commandments 
 
 self from Confession, in which he believed, because he 
 could not bring himself to pollute the mind of any friend 
 of his with the outpouring his confession would entail ; 
 S. Paul does not use a mere flourish of rhetoric when he 
 wrote from his Roman prison to Timothy, that he was 
 " the chief of sinners " ; he believed every man better than 
 himself. 
 
 What a practice in obedience to behave ourselves lowly 
 and reverently to everybody. How our humility would 
 deepen and our natures soften, if only we would live this 
 Commandment. How impossible would be a disagreeable 
 act, an unkind word, a hasty censure ! 
 
 What courtesy would mark our intercourse. What eager 
 service would accompany our steps. What a loving, charm- 
 ing community would that be, where humility was the 
 characteristic of its people, and each one treated his neigh- 
 bour with reverence and honour ! 
 
 So full of heavenly life is the direction of the Fifth 
 Commandment. 
 
 There is still a further benefit attached to this Command- 
 ment, the keeping of it ' is profitable for this life, as well 
 as for that which is to come ' ; this is ' the first command- 
 ment with promise,' as S. Paul points out, indeed he 
 might have said, it is the only commandment to whose 
 observance a promise is appended. 
 
 "Honour thy father and thy mother, that thy days may 
 be long upon the land which Jehovah thy God giveth thee." 
 
 Because the experience of the parents, how best to live 
 life, must be ample for the direction of the children to 
 make the most of life. And to live a long and undis- 
 turbed life 'upon the land,' is the best life the book 
 of God knows. God made the country, man made the 
 cities; the Bible saints were all countrymen. In the eyes 
 34
 
 in the XXth Century. $ 
 
 of the town-folk of Jerusalem it was one of the offences of 
 the Lord that he was from the country. "From whence 
 hath this man letters"? they asked with a sneer. He had 
 no University degree, He was a countryman; a Roman 
 would have called Him a pagan. The men whom He 
 chose for His Apostles, and to whom He committed the 
 gospel to propagate, were all countrymen. It may not 
 seem to us moderns, with whom the drift is towards city 
 life to the desertion of the country, to be any valuable 
 promise that we shall live 'long upon the land;' but our 
 best interests are not furthered by city life, and our tastes 
 have become more or less vitiated; it would be far better 
 for us all if we prized our country-life more than we do. 
 As we look round for instances of the realisation of this 
 promise, the Chinese naturally occur to us. No people 
 were ever possessed by such filial reverence. Confucian- 
 ism has imbued them with an obedience to their parents 
 that we Westerners can little understand ; and what is the 
 consequence ? They have indeed lived ' long upon the land.' 
 They attained (and still possess) their civilisation, centuries 
 before the Anglo-Saxons had emerged from the crucible of 
 fluxing peoples. It is true that they are stagnant and non- 
 progressive, but they are content ; and after all, the highest 
 reach of true ambition is to be able to say with, perhaps 
 the greatest man who ever lived, at any rate, with the man 
 who has had more influence on his race than any other, 
 "I have learned in whatsoever state I am to be content." 
 Humility lies at the bottom of contentment. 
 
 35
 
 The X Commandments 
 
 VI. COMMANDMENT. 
 
 Thou shalt not kill." 
 
 JHE Commandment against bad temper. 
 
 Murder is the final reach of ungovernable temper 
 so the Sixth Commandment runs over the whole 
 course of the turbulent torrent, from the final cataract back to 
 the gushing spring. 
 
 It is evident, 'ye know,' writes the Apostle, 'that no 
 murderer hath the eternal life, abiding in him,' because ' the 
 eternal life' must have controlled him, and prevented him 
 from laying violent hands either upon himself or another ; and 
 if a man should reach such an ungovernable condition as to 
 take life, then it is a sure indication, that ' the eternal life ' 
 could not have been in that man. 
 
 ' The eternal life ' may be in a man, and long struggle to 
 exist, and manage to live side by side with a bad temper, but 
 it must have been driven from its occupancy if the temper 
 rises so high as to commit murder. 
 
 Who then knows that by indulging his bad temper, whether 
 1 the eternal life ' is not being driven from its hold, and that it 
 may not finally depart ? this consideration alone would urge us 
 to bring under a bad temper and cure it. But for the sake of 
 those we love best, for the sake of the peace of home-life, for 
 the sake of 'adorning the doctrine of Jesus Christ,' a bad 
 temper ought to be overcome. 
 
 For misery-producing, and happiness-destroying power, bad 
 temper is supreme. It wipes the bloom off childhood; it 
 mars the attraction of the home ; it drives away that restful 
 peace, where the jaded faculties have a right to seek
 
 in the XXth Century. $ 
 
 refreshment ; it casts the ferment of anxiety into the family- 
 life, and disturbs the serenity of that household atmosphere 
 where calm and fragrance ought to reign. And yet, this vice 
 of the virtuous, is condoned, and to say, ' Oh ! she has a 
 bad temper,' is considered quite enough excuse for its 
 lamentable exhibition. 
 
 Whereas no immorality, no wastefulness of living and no 
 dishonesty, which eludes the jail, can produce as much 
 unhappiness as bad temper ; and yet society, even if it shuns 
 close contact with a bad-tempered member, condones it and 
 deems it no bar to social standing and reception. 
 
 To have no temper is to have a boneless, nerveless 
 character. There is such a thing as righteous anger. Even 
 our Lord "looked round about Him with anger; being 
 indignant at the hardness of their hearts." Every complete 
 character must have an element of temper, but bad temper, 
 is uncontrolled temper. It is a slur upon the reputation, if 
 the temper is not under control ; and it is a mark of 
 advancement in the Christian course how completely, or 
 incompletely, the temper is under control. 
 
 It is all nonsense to say it is impossible to overcome 
 temper. It must be overcome; how can bad temper enter 
 the Kingdom of God ? How can bad temper be said ' to 
 follow ' Him, that is ' meek and lowly in heart,' and whose 
 ' voice was not heard in the streets.' If every time the hot 
 word rises to the lip, the inward monitor cried, ' Thou shalt do 
 no murder,' the temper would subside. 
 
 Robert Hall, who before his conversion, was noted for his 
 fits of ungovernable rage, whenever he found the old besetting 
 sin was upon him, would pray, " O Lamb of God, save me," 
 and he used to say, the thought of the lamb, with which 
 animal it is impossible to associate temper, would relieve him 
 from the paroxysm. It is said Julius Caesar made it a rule, 
 37
 
 4> The X Commandments 
 
 when tempted to answer angrily, to repeat the alphabet before 
 he ventured his reply. One well-known Christian Minister 
 noticed that people in a bad temper raised their voice, he 
 therefore resolved to always speak softly, and he found that 
 this simple expedient gave him control until the habit was 
 established. 
 
 Bad temper is an indication that pride still occupies the 
 heart. The bubble that rises to the surface of the stagnant 
 pool, is a sure sign that some decay is going on at the bottom. 
 If we had no pride, who could offend us ? Pride is the root 
 of self-conceit; it is the hurting of our self-conceit which 
 arouses our temper. If we had no self-consequence we 
 should have no temper which could be excited by outside 
 attack. If we knew ourselves as God and the holy Angels 
 know us, we should have no pride ; so that a right estimate of 
 ourselves is an antidote to bad' temper. John Bradford, the 
 first martyr of bloody Mary's reign, saw a culprit in the cart 
 on his way to Tyburn to be hung, and was heard to say, 
 " There goes John Bradford, but for the Grace of God." We 
 none of us have a right to boast or 'think anything as of 
 ourselves> for our sufficiency is of God'; 'then where is 
 boasting? is it excluded?' 
 
 Be down deep enough in the dust of self-humiliation, and 
 the spark of bad temper can never be struck out of us. 
 Whatever may be sajd of us, can never be bad enough in 
 our own estimation ; and the self-knowledge will silence 
 
 retaliation. 
 But this Commandment has its active as well as its passive 
 
 injunction. We are not only ' not to kill,' but we are to do 
 
 what in us lies to preserve life. 
 
 S. John says, that a man who hates his brother is a 
 
 murderer, and that the converse is true, that a man who does 
 
 not love is a man who hates. " He that loveth not his brother 
 38
 
 in the XXth Century. ^ 
 
 abideth in death," and he applies this dictum to everyday 
 practice and continues, " whoso hath this world's good, and 
 seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his bowels of 
 compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in 
 him?" 
 
 Few people suspect that philanthropic effort is enjoined by 
 the Sixth Commandment ; that they who go along life, unwilling 
 to help others, are breaking this far-reaching injunction. How 
 true it is, that the Bible is like a crystal, the whole mass is made 
 up of particles of precisely the same shape ; place the most 
 minute atom under microscopic examination, and it at once 
 reveals its identity and declares that it belongs to the large 
 crystal. 
 
 That when Jesus Christ 'went about doing good,' and 
 commanded us ' to follow the blessed steps of His most holy 
 life,' He was but re-stating the command He uttered with 
 superhuman emphasis to his people at Sinai "Thou shalt 
 not kill." There are those who tell us, that the law 
 is abrogated and the Gospel reigns. 
 
 Disraeli, when taunted with being a Jew, well replied, " Yes, 
 I am a Jew ; but a completed Jew." The Gospel is in the 
 Law, as the oak is in the acorn; the Gospel is not an 
 addition, or another revelation, but the expansion and 
 completion of the Law. 
 
 Not to do all that in us lies to preserve life, is to kill ; not 
 to put forth every effort to ameliorate the hard lot of those 
 with whom we are brought into neighbourhood, is to ' hate our 
 brother,' and " he that hateth his brother is a murderer," and 
 breaks this Sixth Commandment. 
 
 39
 
 The X Commandments 
 
 VII. COMMANDMENT. 
 
 "Thou shall not commit adultery.'* 
 
 |HE Commandment which enjoins self-control. 
 
 All the creatures of God are good. All the 
 desires of the body are right and proper in their 
 right time, place and measure. 
 
 Every appetite has our Maker stimulated with pleasure, in 
 order that we may enjoy that which is necessary to our 
 living. 
 
 How different it might have been : 
 
 Why should not the light have given the eye pain ? Why 
 should not the cravings of hunger only been appeased at the 
 cost of the difficulty and agony of swallowing ? Why should 
 taste have created gratification ? Why should we not rather 
 have eaten food without distinction, or even been compelled 
 by necessity to eat that which was actually unpalatable ? We 
 were not consulted as to whether we would or would not 
 undertake the pleasures and pains of existence ; and we 
 might have found ourselves in an order of creation not 
 arranged for our pleasure, with illimitable prospects of glory in 
 an endless life ; and if such had been our lot we should have 
 been helpless to prevent our fate. 
 
 But as it is the processes of our physical existence are all 
 endued with the capability of ministering to us infinite 
 pleasure. 
 
 The Jews of the Bible times indeed, believed that the 
 organs of the body were the apparatus which caused the 
 sensations. The heart emitted affection ; the bowels 
 40
 
 in the XXth Century. S 
 
 compassion ; the reins, the kidneys, the passions. So that 
 when the Psalmist writes, "Jehovah trieth the heart and 
 the reins," he means to say, that the affections and lusts are 
 noted by the Creator whether they are being put to their 
 proper uses or not. The distinctive difference between man 
 and the rest of the animals is, that while animals are actuated 
 by instinct, man governs his life by intelligence. 
 
 Instinct appears to be the result of intelligence so placed in 
 the thinking organ of the animal, that when exigencies of 
 existence demand action in any given direction, the thought 
 comes out impressed with the modus operand*, best fitted for 
 the accomplishment of the desired intention. 
 
 Take for instance the cell building of the honey bee. The 
 problem is, what shall be the size and shape of a cell, to 
 contain the honey, which can be built the strongest and with 
 least expenditure of wax. That problem can be solved 
 mathematically ; and the answer is, an hexagonal prism whose 
 sides shall incline to each other at certain angles. Now it is 
 evident that some mind, that works in the same way as ours, 
 solved that problem, and so fixed the result in the thinking 
 apparatus of the bee, that when prompted by certain desires 
 the insect began to build its cell, it used the result of the 
 calculation without itself being able to follow the process by 
 which it was reached. 
 
 Instinct is final : it leaves the animal no option ; as each 
 succeeding generation comes into life, the experience of the 
 passing generation is never placed at the disposal of the 
 following ; birds never improve their nests ; creatures never 
 alter their habits. Not so men ; their desires are under the 
 direction and control of their wills, and while animals only use 
 their appetites to stimulate the legitimate use of their organs, 
 and desist when satiety is reached or when the act is 
 accomplished, man is called upon to regulate his own
 
 < The X Commandments 
 
 appetites and to decide when he has had enough for 
 himself. 
 
 So with him it is a question of self-control. His experience 
 tells him when he ought to desist and when he has indulged 
 as far as necessity requires. 
 
 To acquire self-control is evidently one of the chief purposes 
 of life's probation ; so to regulate the appetites as exactly to 
 fulfil their legitimate uses ; so to gratify desire only so far as 
 nature demands for the well-being of the body ; to sleep, to 
 eat, to relax, the quantity exactly required for health, is the 
 aim of every right-living person. 
 
 This Commandment singles out that license, which is the 
 most violent and unredeemable instance of want of moral 
 control, and through it condemns all license. 
 
 The detriment not only lies in the ill worked upon our 
 neighbour and the wrong done to the innocent, but as ' the 
 flesh warreth against the spirit,' and fleshly indulgence weakens 
 spiritual character ; as ' the carnal mind is enmity against 
 God,' the lusts of the flesh are to be abjured and abstained 
 from by all the children of God, as hateful to Him, and 
 detrimental to the acquirement of that 'holiness, without 
 which no man shall see the Lord.' 
 
 Seeing, then, that any single fleshly appetite indulged in to 
 excess will kill the soul, it is imperative to watch the 
 beginnings of sin. What is right and lawful at the proper 
 time becomes wrong and sinful if permitted out of season. 
 What may be quite legitimate in proper quantity becomes 
 wrong and sinful when taken in excess. 
 
 Every desire of the flesh, every inclination common to us 
 and the animals, require the curbing of a determined and well- 
 instructed hand. To indulge the body in any of its inclina- 
 tions is breaking this Seventh Commandment. 
 
 To sleep too much, to eat too much, to dress too much, to 
 42
 
 in the XXth Century, fa 
 
 seek too much amusement, to spend too much money on self, 
 all is perilously straining the bounds of this Commandment. 
 Constitutions differ ; hard and fast rules cannot be applicable 
 to everybody ; each conscience knows ' the sin which doth so 
 easily beset it,' and where most to curb desire, and avoid 
 opportunity of indulgence. Fasting has ever been advocated 
 for keeping down the risings of the flesh ; even John Wesley 
 said that a man would no more go to heaven without fasting 
 than he would without praying. 
 
 It has been the experience of all people who specially 
 sought God's presence that it was necessary to fast, to so 
 subdue the flesh that the spirit might find wings for the 
 upward flight. The Lord fasted before He met the Tempter ; 
 the disciples fasted before they prayed in common ; and 
 fasting is the frequent exercise of men determined to walk by 
 the Spirit and not according to the flesh; it is a great aid 
 to self-control, and a great assistance in keeping this 
 Commandment. 
 
 But that class of desire, which nowadays is known by ' lust,' 
 and which culminates in the great sin condemned in the 
 Commandment, has a striking characteristic. We may talk 
 about every other sort of indulgence without exciting the 
 desire to indulge, but not so with lust ; to think about it, to 
 talk about it, is to excite and lead us into temptation. 
 Therefore this Commandment forbids us to look at indecent 
 pictures, to read impure books, to see immoral plays, to even 
 glance at suggestive sights, to listen to filthy stories, and ' evil 
 communications ' ; to mix in loose company, to dress 
 immodestly, and to allow the thoughts to dwell upon any 
 subjects which have any connection with such sin. 
 
 It is true that ' to the pure all things are pure,' and although 
 shameful thoughts are injected at times into everybody's mind, 
 and even upon the most serious occasions, and in the most 
 43
 
 +$ The X Commandments 
 
 sacred places, still if the Lord knows they are not ' of us,' that 
 they are foreign to our habit, and are distressing, He will not 
 reckon them to our account. And when we are so invaded, 
 and find ourselves concerned with unholy imaginings, a sharp 
 blow, a sudden pain, will usually frighten off the foul bird, or 
 inasmuch as our will can determine what we shall think about, 
 the repetition of a text and the compelling of the mind to 
 consider it, will rid us of the unwelcome intrusion. 
 
 Well may we constantly pray, " Create in me a clean heart, 
 O God, and cleanse Thou me from my secret faults." 
 
 There is still a smaller rill which flows into the great current 
 of this Commandment and increases its volume : it is the sin 
 of impatience. The Commandment forbids that, which it is 
 quite right to have at the proper time and under proper 
 conditions. 
 
 To be impatient is to fret for that now, which will 
 legitimately be ours in the future; therefore impatience 
 partakes of the nature of the sin the Seventh Commandment 
 forbids. 
 
 It is one of the ways of ' killing the flesh ' to constantly 
 practice patience; every day offers a thousand opportunities 
 of ' being patient,' and every time we succeed we strengthen 
 the habit and give ourselves more capability of resisting the 
 great occasion. 
 
 In one sense it is true to say that impatience is the sin this 
 Commandment condemns, because the man who cannot be 
 patient has no real hand over himself; he cannot control 
 himself, and as no chain is stronger than its weakest link, 
 the cable of his resistance will part at that defective place 
 whenever the strain of a great temptation to indulge 
 besets him. 
 
 Patience is the mother of self-control ; to be able to wait, 
 is to see the salvation of the Lord. 
 44
 
 in the XXth Century. 
 
 VIII. COMMANDMENT. 
 
 Thou shalt not steal." 
 
 SPENDS the rights of property and requires us to 
 be true and just in all our dealings.' 
 
 Money is the epitome of the material side of life ; 
 it represents in a portable form the product of life's acquisi- 
 tions. Just as energy is differently distributed, some having it 
 in greater measure than others, so is 'the power to get 
 wealth'; some have the money-getting faculty, some have it 
 not, or, at any rate, in a very small degree. 
 
 Nevertheless, as our civilisation has survived the early stage, 
 when men traded by barter, and money has come to be the 
 mode of payment for work done, money nowadays represents 
 the energy of life. 
 
 We have, therefore, no more right to deal recklessly or 
 dishonestly with money than we have with life. 
 
 To rob a man of his money is to take from him somewhat 
 of his life. Considering this, it is easy to see the wide scope 
 of this Commandment. We have to deal as honestly with our 
 energies as with the money those energies procure. 
 
 1 No man liveth unto himself ' ; we all serve one another ; 
 and to render any service short of our best is giving that 
 short weight and that short measure which is ' an abomination 
 unto the Lord.' 
 
 The school-boy or the school-girl who is inattentive, who 
 
 does not bend the whole of their energies to the work in hand, 
 
 who dawdles at the lesson, and wastes time, is stealing. 
 
 Somebody is paying for all the energy represented by the 
 
 45
 
 $ The X Commandments 
 
 school-house, the books, the teacher, and if the pupil does 
 not use to the full the opportunity thus afforded there is 
 waste; the pupil is dealing dishonestly, and is breaking this 
 Eighth Commandment. 
 
 The domestic who comes down later than the rules of the 
 house require, and to which she agreed when she took service ; 
 who dusts the room less thoroughly than she might ; who 
 handles the furniture and crockery roughly, thereby damaging 
 it; 'takes her time' in answering the ring of the door-bell, 
 thereby wasting the time of the caller ; who is not as tidy in 
 her dress as she might be, but is apt to say, ' that is good 
 enough ' ; who is not as careful as possible with the provender 
 of the house, and is not alert to devise plans of economy ; 
 who stays out beyond her allotted time, or uses the time for 
 which she is paid for her own. purposes, is dishonest, and 
 breaks this Eighth Commandment. The shop or office 
 employee who ' comes late ' and ' goes early,' or who, being 
 prevented from doing this by the time-registering machine, does 
 slowly what is to be done and renders something short of the 
 best ; who serves a friend a little m >re liberally, and ' favours ' 
 one of their own family ; who takes advantage of a customer's 
 ignorance to palm off an inferior article, or deliberately tells 
 what is false to induce a sale ; who is not forward to please, 
 but shows irritation or displeasure at even the unconscionable 
 trouble a provoking customer gives, and thereby injures 
 the popularity of the store, is breaking this Eighth Com- 
 mandment. 
 
 In this following matter every man must be settled in his 
 own conscience, for 'every man hath his proper gift of 
 God, one after this manner and another after that ' ; the 
 characteristic of our age is amusement. The demand and the 
 supply react on each other until amusement has come to be 
 regarded as an essential to life. If under the pressure of 
 46
 
 in the XXth Century. 5 
 
 ' fleshly appetite,' or because of ' the fashion of this world,' 
 money is spent on amusement out of due proportion, then 
 that which represents the energy of life is being dissipated ; 
 something is being given for nothing; the true recipient is 
 being defrauded, dishonesty is being done, and the Eighth 
 Commandment broken. 
 
 The temptation to spend more money than circumstances 
 justify, on amusement, or dress, or ' doing as other people do,' 
 is ever present to all classes. But if more expense is incurred 
 than there is a reasonable expectation of meeting, and bills 
 are run up which cannot be paid in the immediate future, 
 dishonesty is 'plainly done, tradespeople are robbed, and they 
 in turn are tempted to be dishonest, by distributing the loss 
 amongst their honest customers, who are thereby made to pay 
 more than they ought, to supplement the dishonesty of the 
 delinquents. 
 
 And if it be true, that money represents ' value received,' 
 all that class of ' gratuities,' which now permeates every 
 species of employment and goes under the general denomina- 
 tion of ' Graft,' is a dishonest getting of money. The whole 
 fabric of society is honey-combed with bribery and corruption. 
 Tradespeople are victimised and compelled to bribe the 
 servants of their customers to keep their trade. The extent 
 to which this system of depredation has gone, is little 
 suspected. A London gentleman had reason to suspect 
 his cook was receiving ' commissions.' He sent for her, 
 and proposed that her wages should be raised, so that she 
 need not so be bribed ; he asked her to let him know in 
 a couple of days, what would be the amount. She returned 
 to give him notice. She had been with the family twelve 
 years, and was therefore under no little obligation to her 
 employer. Upon being urged by him, she finally admitted 
 that the commissions she received from the tradespeople 
 47
 
 *$ The X Commandments 
 
 supplying his very large establishment, amounted to ^300 a 
 year ! 
 
 Every public official, from the policeman to the Governor 
 of the State has constantly the opportunity to 'take a gift 
 to blind his eyes withal.' A noted soprano, who has long 
 been my friend, was asked ^500 by a London agent to give 
 her an opportunity to be heard, when she first arrived. I 
 have known, and experienced, the insolence and inattention 
 of the butler of a large country house I was visiting, because 
 I had not 'tipped ' him sufficiently on a previous occasion. 
 
 Every reader can supply numberless instances of this form 
 of widespread dishonesty. 
 
 Usury is, taking advantage of a man's position to extort. 
 The usurer breaks this Eighth Commandment, because he 
 does not give the honest value for what he sells, but demands 
 an exorbitant price for that which the buyer, perforce his 
 circumstances, is compelled to have. The best mind of the 
 community stigmatizes as the thieving of usurers those 
 transactions of trusts, whereby the vendors of oil, or cattle 
 or properties, are compelled by the power of combination 
 to part with what they have, at ruinous prices. 
 
 Money has a moral, as well as a legal value ; and money 
 which is possessed by the methods of the usurer, is stolen 
 money, denied by immorality and as such can never 
 knowingly be used with the expectation of a blessing. No 
 usurer can ' stand in the hill of the Lord ' ; for he does not 
 ' keep His Commandments.' 
 
 This question of honest money being only that for which 
 is given ' value received,' is widespread in its application. 
 It constantly occurs in professional undertakings, where skill 
 and acumen are necessary to success, and for the use of 
 which payment is arbitrary, that charges are made which will 
 not bear measuring with any standard of honesty. 
 48
 
 in the XXth Century, fc 
 
 'To his own Master,' every lawyer, every doctor, every 
 professional man, ' standeth or falleth ' ; he knows whether 
 he is giving ' value received ' for his fee, or whether he is 
 taking advantage of the circumstances to make an exorbitant 
 charge. 
 
 It is better to err on the side of generosity, and unselfish- 
 ness, to gather riches for the kingdom of Heaven, than to 
 accumulate wealth, which when weighed in the balances of 
 Eternal justice will be found to have been gotten by 
 dishonesty, by breaking the Eighth Commandment. 
 
 It is the application of this axiom, that honestly gotten 
 money is only that for which some equivalent has been 
 given, which condemns gambling in all its forms. 
 
 The street gamin who tosses up his penny ; the better on 
 the race-course ; the frequenter of the policy-shop ; the man 
 that takes a ' flyer,' not considering the worth of his invest- 
 ment ; the regular gambler, with cards, or bridge, whist, or 
 roulette, or any other game of pure chance, is one who 
 breaks the spirit of this Eighth Commandment. 
 
 The gambler is dishonest because he deals with the 
 epitome of life recklessly and flippantly, whereas a value 
 received, ought always to justify the exchange of money. 
 
 But this Commandment has its God-ward side. Malachi 
 speaks of 'robbing God,' and declares, that refusing to pay 
 tithes and offerings, is defrauding God. 
 
 We all must admit, that we have nothing of ourselves ; 
 that all that we are and all that we have, is given to us 
 by our Maker; that the Lord gave and the Lord can take 
 away. We have, therefore, nothing but a life interest in 
 what we possess. 
 
 And for the loan of what we enjoy, reason would, that we 
 pay rent. It would be a strange thing, if the Almighty 
 Father, who equipped the animals with instinct to enable
 
 + The X Commandments 
 
 them to exist, should not have instructed our first parents 
 how best to live life. If he had not done so, before they 
 could have gathered sufficient experience they must have 
 perished; to provide three meals a day does not give much 
 time for experiment. And then there was their existence 
 beyond this world to be prepared for. 
 
 We therefore find in the opening chapter of the history 
 of our race, the evidences that men knew how to prepare 
 animal and vegetable food ; that in sacrifice, they understood 
 the way of salvation by the death of the Lamb of God ; 
 that the Institution of the Sabbath Day, gave them time and 
 opportunity for spiritual education ; and that all the difficulties 
 which must arise from men living in community, would be 
 met by the payment of tithe. The institution of this tax 
 on life, is apparent, from the proper rendering of the seventh 
 verse of the fourth chapter of Genesis, the Septuagint 
 preserves what must have been the original. " If thou hast 
 sacrificed aright, but hast not divided aright, hast thou not 
 sinned ? " Cain had not only brought a wrong sacrifice, 
 and probably justified himself in so doing by asserting that 
 he had no lamb, and had brought the best of what he had, 
 but he had not brought the right quantity of his week's 
 gathering ' thou hast not divided aright.' This explains 
 the meaning of the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews, 
 where he says " Abel offered (not a more excellent, but) a 
 larger sacrifice than Cain." For many centuries the 
 suppression of tithe was called 'The sin of Cain.' 
 
 That tithe was the presentation of the tenth of all increase 
 need not here be proved. 
 
 If tithe were made income tax by law, it would be found 
 
 that every town would have enough in the public purse to 
 
 support it's churches, it's hospitals, it's schools, it's charitable 
 
 societies and institutions, and twice as much again, to relieve 
 
 5
 
 in the XXth Century. S 
 
 every social disability, to lift all oppressive burdens, and 
 take from every member of the community all reason for 
 grumbling at the lot of their life. The payment of tithe is 
 really the panacea for all social discontent. 
 
 It is one of the fundamental laws of our social life, that 
 men shall pay a tenth of what they make, as a rent for their 
 use of the agencies of life; and if that proportion of their 
 income they do not give for the sustaining of the public 
 worship of God, the propagation of the Gospel, and the 
 amelioration of the distress of humanity they are ' robbing 
 God,' and breaking the Eighth Commandment. 
 
 So wide and far-reaching are the applications of the 
 principle of honesty ; a due respecting of the property of 
 others. 
 
 And S. Paul's practical application is not a little startling 
 and yet in keeping with what has just been advanced. 
 
 " Let him that stole, steal no more, but rather let him 
 work honestly with his hands, that he may have (not a 
 fortune to leave behind him, for the newspapers to comment 
 on, but that he may have) to give to him that needeth." 
 
 IX. COMMANDMENT. 
 
 1 Thou shall not bear false witness against thy neighbour." 
 
 | HE Commandment which requires a strict and 
 accurate use of language; for "by our words 
 we shall be justified and by our words we 
 shall be condemned." 
 
 5 1
 
 * The X Commandments 
 
 It is not a little remarkable how difficult, and therefore 
 how rare, is the use of accurate language; how difficult 
 it really is, so to convey sentiment, that the thought of 
 one mind shall be exactly conveyed to another. 
 
 This disability of language is well illustrated in the 
 making of laws. An Act of Parliament is thrice submitted 
 to the Commons, and thrice to the House of Lords, every 
 word of it is canvassed, finally it becomes law, and then 
 the keenest and most trained minds in the kingdom are 
 empowered to say what the law means, and how it is to 
 be interpreted; and very frequently the judges themselves 
 differ in their opinion of its construction. 
 
 Is it any wonder, then, that the transmission of information 
 or opinion by ordinary people is a constant source of mis- 
 understanding and mischief? Our Lord well knew our 
 incapability of accurate speech ; He therefore advised his 
 people to restrict their conversation to a simple affirmation 
 or denial. "Let your speech be, Yes, yes, No, no, for 
 whatsoever is more cometh of evil"; that is, that untruth 
 will of a certainty find its way into any prolonged con- 
 versation. Now this proclivity would be harmless if 
 everybody's mind was kindly inclined; but such is the 
 depravity of our nature, that we are invariably attracted 
 to evil ; badness has always a fascination for us. It may 
 possibly be true that a wrong and vicious act is readily 
 stated, and the simplicity of the telling of it lends to 
 it something of its popularity; a good deed, with its 
 atmosphere of sympathy and its length of doing, needs 
 an extended recital, and is not always easily described. The 
 newspaper, therefore, records a dozen acts of wickedness 
 to one of goodness. 
 
 But there is a far deeper cause for our sympathy with 
 evil than the ease and readiness of its recital; we know
 
 in the XXth Century. S 
 
 our own baseness, and we are gratified to learn that our 
 neighbours are no better than we are. The general dis- 
 position is, to reduce society down to a common low 
 level, and not to raise it to a higher plane of moral living. 
 So that in it's passage, a piece of harmless gossip so 
 gathers an evil taint, that it soon becomes damaging to 
 the character of the persons concerned. 
 
 When the Lord Himself was regulating the social life of 
 the people of whom He had taken especial charge, He 
 commanded, " Thou shalt not go up and down as a tale- 
 bearer among My people"; and He prohibited gossip by 
 one of the Ten Commandments. 
 
 This Ninth Commandment forbids gossip. 
 
 It is no wonder that so casual, so common, so unavoidable 
 a thing as the interchange of gossip, the tittle-tattle of 
 neighbours, should be condemned by God Himself, when 
 we realise how the envies, hatreds, bickerings, quarrels, 
 and social disturbances of a community are invariably due 
 to gossip, which in its transmission has become charged 
 with untruth and made hurtful. 
 
 Whoever is intent on keeping this Commandment, will 
 never relate a piece of gossip which savours of unkindness 
 or contains anything injurious to character or reputation. 
 
 If the piece of news is of sufficient interest, and will, 
 because of its interest, permeate the neighbourhood, then 
 before the servant of the Lord repeats it, Solomon's direction 
 will be followed, " Debate thy cause with thy neighbour 
 himself"; trace the story to its origin, and take the 
 trouble to have the circumstances truthfully stated, if they 
 must be repeated. And do your part to keep true to fact 
 the gossip of your neighbourhood; for to know of wrong 
 and not to attempt to right it, is to become a party to 
 the offence and "to stand in the way of sinners."
 
 $ The X Commandments 
 
 If, however, the piece of gossip is intentionally falsified, 
 it becomes a lie. 
 
 A lie is that which is communicated, whether by word 
 or act, which originates in an intention to deceive. A 
 communication may be innocently made which is untrue ; 
 but when it is made with the knowledge of it's untruth 
 it becomes a lie. 
 
 An excuse, which is a secondary reason given to hide 
 the actual reason, need not necessarily have the base 
 character of a lie. 
 
 When the Lord commissioned Samuel to anoint David, 
 had Saul known of his intention, in his jealous fury he 
 would have killed him ; Jehovah Himself, therefore, directed 
 Samuel to go to Bethlehem with the ostensible purpose of 
 holding a religious service, and thus secrete from Saul 
 the real object of his going. The surprise of the men of the 
 city shows that the visit was unusual and unexpected ; and 
 it was not till the feast was ready, which was always an 
 accompaniment of a sacrifice, that the purport of the 
 Seer's intention was disclosed. 
 
 You receive an invitation to a reception ; you know 
 that bridge whist will be played for money. Your refusal 
 to play will be some reflection upon your hostess and her 
 guests. Rather than publicly criticise and condemn their 
 conduct, and offer an uncalled-for judgment, you send an 
 excuse, and you are perfectly justified in so doing. 
 
 Or, in the company to which you are invited there are 
 to be present certain divorced persons, or persons whom 
 it is the bounden duty of a decent neighbourhood to 
 discountenance. You have no warrant to criticise the 
 action of the hostess in selecting her guests, you are not 
 compelled to attend, so you very properly send an excuse. 
 Or, you are solicited to take shares, or accept some post 
 54
 
 in the XXth Century. So 
 
 in a company of whose enterprise and business methods 
 you cannot approve; you are not asked for your opinion, 
 to give it would be to unnecessarily offend ; you excuse 
 yourself. 
 
 But if your excuse is a falsehood, it must be labelled 
 a lie. There are no white lies, they are all black. There 
 is no conceivable set of circumstances which would justify 
 the telling of a lie. Thousands of martyrs, now glorified 
 before the Throne of God, might have saved their lives, 
 and lost their souls, by casting a pinch of frankincense 
 upon the small altar in the court-room; but in doing that 
 trivial act they would have lied unto their own souls, even 
 if they did not deceive the judge. The schoolboy who 
 pretends that the exercise he hands in is his own doing ; the 
 schoolgirl who gets somebody to write an excuse for her 
 absence, or is doing one thing when she knows the 
 teacher thinks she is doing another; the boy who hides, 
 by various excuses, from his parents that he has been in 
 places and company they will not approve ; the shopman 
 who gives a false character to the goods he is selling, 
 and states wrongly their history or original price ; the man 
 who contracts to do work in a certain way, and then uses 
 an inferior material, or does it less substantially; all who 
 pretend to do or be something they are not, and do so 
 intentionally, wilfully, and persistently, all such are liars, 
 and break the Ninth Commandment. 
 
 The perjurer is the worst of liars and the blackest, 
 because after calling God to witness that he is speaking 
 ' the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth,' 
 he deliberately lies. It is no wonder that the heart which 
 holds a lie is counted impure, that liars are shunned and 
 despised; and if it can be only 'the pure in heart who 
 see God,' then there can be for liars only that doom whereby, 
 55
 
 *$ The X Commandments 
 
 in human language, is conveyed the fact that the refuse 
 of the City of God is to be consumed out of existence ; 
 for it is written, "All liars shall have their part in the 
 lake of fire, which is the Second Death." 
 
 " Search me, O God, and try my heart, and see if there 
 be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way 
 everlasting, for Thy Name's sake." 
 
 X. COMMANDMENT. 
 
 "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 hi ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is thy neighbour's." 
 
 JHIS is the Commandment which gave to S. Paul 
 the key wherewith to unlock the treasury of the 
 law. 
 
 When writing to the Philippians he recounted his religious 
 advantages, and amongst other of his privileges, he said : 
 " Touching the righteousness which is in the law, blameless." 
 A very wonderful thing for a man of his honesty and 
 capability of introspection to be able to say, that he was 
 not conscious he had ever done a wrong thing. Then how 
 came it to pass that at the end of his life, when writing to 
 his son Timothy, from his Roman prison, he penned that 
 notable verse : " This is a faithful saying and worthy of all 
 acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save 
 sinners, of whom I am chief"? What was it that caused 
 him to so completely change his opinion? Where did the 
 fresh light come from which showed him, what he once 
 56
 
 in the XXth Century. + 
 
 was unable to see, that ' all his righteousness was but filthy 
 rags,' unclean, disgusting ? 
 
 We find the solution in Romans vii. 7. 
 
 He there says : " I had not known sin, except the law had 
 said, ' Thou shall not covet.' " 
 
 As he was meditating upon this last Commandment, he was 
 led to notice that this Command had only to do with the 
 mind ; we do not covet with the body. Then why should 
 not the other Commandments also be regnant in the mental 
 area, and have to do ' with the thoughts and intents of the 
 heart'? Taught by the spirit, he at once concluded that 
 they had; and he readily perceived, that so far from being 
 ' blameless as touching the law,' that although he had never 
 done any of the ' last things ' condemned by the Ten Words, 
 yet he had daily transgressed the principles they were issued 
 to conserve. The law did for him what God intended it 
 should do for us all; the law killed him, it slew his self- 
 righteousness, it took the life out of his self-confidence ; 
 and as he lay helpless and hopeless in the dust of his 
 earthliness, it 'led him to Christ,' the Saviour of the 
 lost. 
 
 "And what the law could not do, in that it was weak 
 through the flesh, God sending His own Son, in the likeness of 
 sinful flesh and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh," for 
 "He bore our sins in His own Body to the tree," that 
 "having taken away sin by the sacrifice of Himself, we 
 might become the righteousness of God in Him." 
 
 This Commandment does not forbid us to desire what 
 our neighbour has which is better than what we have ; to 
 do this would be to arrest development and stay progress. 
 
 But if the sight of our neighbour's possession makes us 
 discontented with our lot, then we break this Command. 
 
 It is the Command of God that we should be content ; 
 57
 
 $ The X Commandments 
 
 and S. Paul had attained the habit of its keeping when he 
 wrote, " I have learned in whatsoever state I am, to be 
 content." Not that in any state he was willing to rest 
 there and abide, for he was always 'pressing on' that he 
 ' might attain,' but it was not discontent with his condition 
 which spurred him forward, but it was the prospect ahead 
 which allured him. This is the command of the Giver of 
 all Good not to Grumble, and whoever does grumble breaks 
 this last of the ' Ten Words.' 
 
 What a host of people, as God looks down upon the 
 children of men, does He hear grumbling. And what a 
 sorry, disagreeable set of folk they are! How they make 
 creak the wheels of daily life ; how they spread dissatisfaction 
 and discontent ; how they take the edge off happy existence 
 and sap life of its health and zest. The child that grumbles 
 at its food ; the boy who grumbles at going to school ; the 
 girl who grumbles because she is asked to ' mind the baby ' ; 
 the young man who grumbles at his work and can see no 
 good in doing the daily task j the young miss who grumbles 
 at her dress, and is not satisfied with what her parents 
 can afford ; the father who grumbles at the little household 
 discomforts, and pours his sourness upon the family table ; 
 the mother who grumbles at the burden of the household 
 cares; they all break this Commandment. And still the 
 Heavenly Father goes on pouring the blessed sunshine, ' upon 
 the evil and upon the good,' upon the grateful and the 
 thankless alike ! 
 
 Let the hand of Judgment be placed upon the Grumbler's 
 mouth ; and let the word of discontent have its utterance 
 arrested by the remembrance, that if we all had our just 
 deserts, if we all had given to us with the same measure 
 that we mete withal, how different would be our lot! Be 
 content ; learn to praise God in the fires, and to sing songs 
 58
 
 in the XXth Century. S* 
 
 in the night ; then will the recording Angel have few entries 
 to make of our breaking this Tenth Commandment. 
 
 Even with this imperfect application of these God-giving 
 rules of morality, how ' weak is the flesh ' to run the way 
 of the Commandments, and how ever upon our lips should 
 be the Kyrie Eleison : 
 
 " Lord, have mercy upon us, and write all these thy laws 
 in our hearts ; we beseech Thee." 
 
 LET us PRAY. 
 
 O Almightly Lord, and everlasting God, vouchsafe, we 
 beseech Thee, to direct, sanctify, and govern, both our hearts 
 and bodies, in the ways of Thy laws, and in the works of 
 Thy commandments ; that, through Thy most mighty pro- 
 tection, both here and ever, we may be preserved in body 
 and soul; through our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. 
 Amen. 
 
 A CONCLUSION. 
 
 JEEING that these Ten Commandments are the only 
 fixed rules of morality we possess, what an extra- 
 ordinary thing it is that they should not find a place 
 in the public-school curriculum. Morality is not innate; 
 children must be taught it, and children can only be taught 
 by rule. 
 
 However ' religious teaching ' may be a bone of contention 
 
 for fear of ecclesiastical bias, it is more than remarkable that any 
 
 public-school system of education, while perforce excluding 
 
 'religious teaching,' should not have retained these rules of 
 
 59
 
 o$ The X Commandments 
 
 morality. There is no ecclesiasticism in the Ten Command- 
 ments. One would think it was a common-sense observation 
 that if a generation is to be trained to be moral it should 
 have been grounded in the rules of morality in its earliest 
 days. 
 
 The continuous increase of crime must be due in no 
 small measure to this strange lack of definite moral 
 teaching. 
 
 We have an experimtntum cntcis which proves definitely 
 that this is the case. 
 
 Twenty years ago the French secularised their common 
 school system of education; the Ten Commandments and 
 everything biblical was forbidden to be taught. From 
 that day the morality of the French people has been 
 deteriorating. 
 
 In 1886 there were in Paris 5,606 prisoners under sixteen 
 years of age ; in 1888 there were 7,051. M. Guillot, one of 
 the best-known French judges, called public attention to the 
 fact that the increase in juvenile crime was, beyond doubt, 
 coincident with the secularization of the schools. 
 
 While M. Gustave Mace, the then head of the police, wrote 
 of the change as "a reform that was conceived wrongly, 
 . . . . an immense risk is run when, without any 
 preparation, without even having chosen a substitute for the 
 prescribed instruction, all fear (he is referring to religious fear) 
 is removed from the children." 
 
 In no better words can the evil of a purely secular 
 education be stated than as this astute head of a celebrated 
 police force wrote. " Notwithstanding their desire to please 
 their contemporaries and themselves, the philosophers must, 
 if they are conscientious, confess that our modern education 
 has not been without disastrous effects on the masses. The 
 materialistic school is rapidly gaining ground, and the 
 60
 
 in the XXth Century, fo 
 
 intelligence cultivated at the expense of the heart is producing 
 startling results." 
 
 M. de Fallen, the Minister of Education, in delivering 
 himself upon the same subject, gives an admirable definition 
 of education. 
 
 "The purport of education is," he writes, "to aspire 
 to train a child to the yoke of discipline and obedience, 
 to create in him a principle of energy which shall enable 
 him to resist his passions ; accept of his own free will 
 the law of labour and duty, and contract habits of order 
 and regularity. To do this, unless the force be derived from 
 religion^ is to attempt an impossible task." 
 
 It is usual in America to charge the steady increase of 
 crime to the account of the stream of immigation. But here 
 in France all the conditions remained unaltered, saving the 
 one, the exclusion of religious teaching, which is but an 
 extension and application of the rules of morality. 
 
 And we are left withqut any doubt that the materialistic 
 condition of France, which is a wonder unto all men, is due 
 to the exclusion of any religious training from the public 
 education. 
 
 It could not be otherwise ; unless people are taught definitely 
 how can they be expected to practise morality ? 
 
 Measured by the standards of M. de Fallon's definition, the 
 public school system in America is a failure ! 
 
 The moral fibre of the nation has, under its tutelage, 
 steadily deteriorated. 
 
 In 1850 there was one criminal to every 3,442 of the population. 
 1860 1,647 
 
 1870 1,021 
 
 >i 1880 837 
 
 ii 1890 715 
 
 1905 there is 300
 
 < The X Commandments 
 
 There were not less than 10,000 murders in the United 
 States last year, 1904, and an equal number of suicides, and 
 what is most deplorable, the suicides of women and children 
 are on the increase. 
 
 One death in every sixty-five is either a murder or a 
 suicide. 
 
 In 1899 there were in Chicago 17,300 prisoners under 
 sixteen, whilst the Judge of the Juvenile Court in Denver 
 says that out of a generation of 10,000 boys, 2,000 have 
 been in jail ! 
 
 Crime is increasing in England and in Scotland ; it 
 cannot be otherwise, for to attempt to educate in morality 
 " without the force be derived from religion is an impossible 
 
 task/- 
 Let the Ten Commandments be taught 
 daily in every grade of public schools. 
 
 Janold ana Sons, Ltd., Printers, The Empire Press, Norwich.
 
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