TWO 
 RESPONSIVE SERVICES 
 
 IN THE FORM AND SPIRIT OF 
 
 Ube Xttans ant> tbc tten 
 Commanfcments 
 
 FOR USE IN FAMILIES, SCHOOLS, AND CHURCHES 
 WITH 
 
 A COMMENTARY 
 
 STANTON COIT, PH.D. 
 
 LONDON 
 THI WEST LONDON ETHICAL SOCIETY 
 
 THE ETHICAL CHURCH 
 
 46, QUEEN'S ROAD, BATWATER, W. 
 
 1911 
 


 CONTENTS 
 
 INTRODUCTION : 
 
 I. Religious Services in the Family - 3 
 
 II. Services in Ethical Societies- ... u 
 
 A UNIVERSAL LITANY - 23 
 
 TEN WORDS OF THE MORAL LIFE 33 
 
 COMMENTARY : 
 
 I. Literary Adaptation 39 
 
 II. The Letter, the Form, and the Spirit - - 46 
 
 III. The Litany and Modern Life - - 5* 
 
 IV. The Scope and Character of the Com- 
 
 mandments 67 
 
 V. The Ten Words of the Moral Life 82 
 
 VI. The Old Forms Universalised 1U 
 
 240976 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 I. RELIGIOUS SERVICES IN THE FAMILY 
 
 THE phrase " for use in families, 
 schools and churches," which appears 
 upon the title-page of this book, is 
 perhaps deserving of a moment's attention. 
 
 In view of the spread of Modernism and 
 the New Theology among the laity of 
 every denomination in Christendom, I 
 cannot think my hope wholly without 
 foundation that here and there some 
 Congregational, Unitarian, Baptist, or 
 other religious body will welcome the 
 responsive services here published, and, 
 in using them, will find them a refreshing 
 alternative to some of their present forms. 
 
 Schools also are becoming more and more 
 undenominational, in the widest sense of 
 the term. Modern educators are con- 
 sequently in need of rites of ethical 
 
4 'INTRODUCTION 
 
 instruction and inspiration which will 
 neither deny nor affirm the truth of any of 
 the historic schemes of theology. Many 
 a headmaster will recognise in the 
 responsive services contained in this book 
 a special fitness for use at the morning 
 assembly of the school, even if he may 
 not find it expedient immediately to 
 adopt them. 
 
 There are tens of thousands of families 
 where the mother and father are not 
 members of any church, or only nominally 
 so. They agree with the principles of 
 Ethical Societies, but they give no definite 
 instruction in religion and morals to their 
 own children. They cannot conscien- 
 tiously use in the family circle prayers 
 which are evidently addressed to a super- 
 natural agency. They find the old com- 
 mandments wholly distasteful, and the 
 Litany altogether impossible. But they 
 might use regularly both the Litany and 
 the Commandments in the form which I 
 here publish. I would advise, if parents 
 are in doubt as to the wisdom of such a 
 course, that they make the experiment 
 several times tentatively. Let the mother 
 or father lead in the service, and the rest 
 of the family speak the responses. 
 
FAMILY SERVICES 5 
 
 Only when ethical idealism, which is 
 already widespread among adults, begins 
 to act as a cohesive force in the family 
 circle, will it show its full power and 
 beneficence as a redemptive energy. 
 And only after the religion of our day, 
 brought into accord with science and 
 humanism, begins to act as a spiritually 
 unifying principle in home life, can it be 
 expected to draw groups of families to- 
 gether in public worship of the moral 
 ideal and in religious devotion to the 
 cause of the good in the world. 
 
 I should like further to suggest to parents 
 that no other custom of the home could 
 more powerfully and vividly impress 
 children with a sense of the higher meaning 
 and unity of family life than the weekly 
 use by the members of a household of the 
 services here given. 
 
 The essential power of a religious service 
 cannot be realised when it is merely 
 read by a private individual once to 
 himself in the solitude of his own 
 study. The difference in effect between 
 such a reading of such a service and its 
 use by a social group is akin to that which 
 subsists between the private reading of a 
 play of Shakespeare and the actual 
 
6 INTRODUCTION 
 
 performance of it, or the witnessing of its 
 production upon a stage. I cannot here 
 go into this question minutely, but I may 
 refer the reader to my treatment of it in 
 a chapter on "The Psychology of Ritual " 
 in a volume entitled National Idealism 
 and a State Church. Here I need only 
 say that the actual production, so to 
 speak, of a religious ritual penetrates much 
 deeper into the spirit than the performance 
 of an ethical drama. 
 
 The full edifying power, moreover, of 
 a responsive service cannot be felt at 
 the first participation in it. Let us 
 suppose that in a family, the two 
 services which I here recommend are 
 repeated each once a week for a year. 
 That is only fifty-two times in one year. 
 Let us suppose, however, that they are so 
 repeated for eight years. We may assume 
 that children from the age of eight would 
 begin to appreciate the ideas and senti- 
 ments embodied in them, and that for 
 eight years they would progressively, 
 through the weekly repetition, increase in 
 insight, and in emotional and volitional 
 commitment to the ideal principles and 
 purposes set forth. But, to be still more 
 specific, think of a boy's joining, once a 
 
FAMILY SERVICES 7 
 
 week for eight years, with a social group of 
 the persons who are most revered by 
 him, in finishing the sentence which be- 
 gins, " That the time may soon come 
 when men will respect all women," 
 by uttering in unison with the others the 
 words, " By our faith in humanity we 
 hope." It is scarcely conceivable that 
 the boy's respect for women would not 
 have become enlightened and deepened by 
 such a practice. Every day of his 
 adolescent life would have brought home 
 to him the significance of the social 
 principle involved. Or think of a boy's 
 responding once a week with the other 
 members of the family into which he was 
 born, to the words " To have mercy upon 
 all men, and to be kind to every sentient 
 creature," by saying, " Is our high 
 privilege." Again, how could a youth be 
 better prepared for manifesting the larger 
 humanity which modern life requires of 
 us than by joining with others once a week 
 for years in declaring that it is " our high 
 task and privilege " " to show our love 
 for the humanity in every culprit, by 
 visiting upon him no other suffering than 
 is needed to reform him and to protect 
 society " ? Contrast with this the home 
 
8 INTRODUCTION 
 
 influence of another boy where the 
 parents do not express these ideas, either 
 in this or in any equivalent form. 
 
 If it be said that the Litany was not 
 written for children, we must hasten to 
 answer that perhaps the sun and the 
 stars, being so big and incomprehensible, 
 were not made for the eyes and souls of 
 children. It takes a whole lifetime to 
 appreciate the height and depth of the 
 moral law, as it does those of the cosmic 
 order of the physical world. But that is 
 the very reason for beginning young. 
 
 What is more, children may be encour- 
 aged to ask questions, and the answers of 
 the parents may, in true pedagogical 
 method, be an occasion for the presenta- 
 tion of just so much truth as the child 
 will not distort or be repelled by. There 
 is nothing embarrassing or perplexing in 
 any request for explanation that a child 
 may make. I found, for instance, that 
 when, in reading the Bible with my little 
 daughters of ten and eleven years of age, 
 we came across the word " adultery," 
 they asked what that meant. I replied 
 that a man commits adultery when he is 
 not faithful and true to his wife. In the 
 marriage ceremony, I explained, a man 
 
FAMILY SERVICES 9 
 
 makes a vow that he will be faithful and 
 true to the woman he is about to marry, 
 and that he will always live with her and 
 be good to her ; and a woman, when she 
 marries, pledges herself in the same way. 
 But if they break their vow, they commit 
 adultery. I found that this answer was 
 quite satisfying. Children will learn as 
 they grow older that what their parents 
 said to them in this manner was perfectly 
 true ; as acquaintance with life matures, 
 their understanding will merely become 
 more specific. In the same way, parents 
 could meet every question which the Ten 
 Words of the Moral Life here given might 
 prompt the children to ask. Take the 
 clause which I have appended to the 
 seventh commandment : " Neither shalt 
 thou so much as desire anyone whom for 
 the sake of the common life thou shouldst 
 not have." A child might ask what that 
 meant ; but his curiosity would be entirely 
 satisfied if the parent replied, " Some- 
 times one person may like another very 
 much, and want to live with him ; yet it 
 may not be right to do so. This com- 
 mandment says that when it is one's 
 duty not to live with another, then one 
 ought not even to desire to. For if one 
 
io INTRODUCTION 
 
 desires to, one might be tempted to do 
 so." 
 
 I would recommend to parents to have 
 each week at least two such meetings of 
 the family as I have suggested one for 
 the Ten Words of the Moral Life and the 
 other for the Universal Litany. 
 
 The Litany, in its original wording, is 
 the most universally humane, tender, 
 loving, and purifying document ever 
 written ; and I cannot but feel that the 
 qualities and powers of the original are 
 not lost in the version which I have 
 dared to make. As regards the Jewish 
 Decalogue, I am of the opinion that it 
 is the most majestic, strenuous and 
 strengthening utterance that ever eman- 
 ated from a suffering and struggling 
 nation's heart. 
 
II. SERVICES IN ETHICAL SOCIETIES 
 
 The West London Ethical Society, 
 through its Committee, recently decided 
 that into its ceremony for the receiving of 
 new members should be incorporated the 
 following Responsive Service, en titled "Ten 
 Words of the Moral Life." It also deter- 
 mined that at the first Wednesday 
 evening meeting of each month a place 
 should be found for the " Universal 
 Litany." Its decisions, which were made 
 after a number of prolonged conferences, 
 were based upon various reasons. But 
 before specifying these, it may be well to 
 state that the Responsive Services, in their 
 present form, are not the outcome of a 
 sudden or recent thought. More than 
 ten years ago a number of my colleagues 
 in the Ethical Movement assisted me in 
 the attempt to reformulate the Ten 
 Commandments, so as to make them a 
 
 ii 
 
12 INTRODUCTION 
 
 more adequate expression of the social 
 conscience of our day. Several years 
 preceding that, however, I had issued 
 a pamphlet on the Ten Commandments, 
 setting forth the principles which 
 have regulated the adaptation here 
 presented. Then, in 1908, in my volume 
 entitled National Idealism and the Book 
 of Common Prayer, I devoted many pages 
 to an analysis of the Decalogue and the 
 Litany, and suggested certain restate- 
 ments. Since that time, some dozen 
 members of our Societies have sym- 
 pathetically encouraged me, and offered 
 helpful suggestions, as regards both phrase 
 and thought. 
 
 But what were the reasons which 
 prompted the Committee of the West 
 London Ethical Society to adopt 
 Responsive Services as an experiment ? 
 I advisedly use the qualification " as an 
 experiment " ; for, happily, in the present 
 stage of development of the Ethical 
 Movement, we regard no detail in the 
 conduct of our religious meetings as a 
 finality. No phrase, no order of pro- 
 cedure, has become to us inviolable. 
 Happily, also, with us, the sense of the 
 need of experimentation in forms of 
 
ETHICAL SERVICES 13 
 
 religious expression has grown deeper 
 during the last decade. We have an in- 
 creasing sense that, if we continue our 
 experiments, we may, by good luck or 
 inspiration of genius, in the course of a 
 generation or more, devise some few 
 really notable expressions of ethical 
 sentiment which may prove worthy of 
 adoption even by the older Churches. 
 
 The chief reasons which led our Com- 
 mittee to sanction the two services here 
 published were somewhat as follows : 
 
 The items in the procedure which has 
 been in use during the last five or six years 
 at our three meetings a week consist of an 
 organ voluntary, opening words by the 
 leader of the meeting, a canticle sung by 
 the choir and congregation, a declaration 
 of ethical principles by the leader, two 
 minutes of silent meditation, an anthem 
 by the choir, a selection of literature read 
 by the leader, a hymn by the congregation, 
 a discourse, an organ voluntary, during 
 which the collection is taken, an anthem 
 by the choir, an invitation to membership 
 by the leader of the meeting, a hymn by 
 the congregation, and then closing words 
 by the leader. I have intentionally 
 repeated the words " by the leader," in 
 
14 INTRODUCTION 
 
 order to emphasise the general passivity 
 of our congregation, as compared with the 
 active part taken by the official repre- 
 sentative of the Society. The congre- 
 gation's part consists almost exclusively 
 of singing the one canticle and the two 
 hymns, and rising and standing during 
 these. For the remainder, their atti- 
 tude is that of receptivity. It certainly 
 has not been sufficiently one of active 
 participation. It has happened also 
 that the canticles and hymns have 
 perhaps, of all the items in our service, 
 been least expressive of the real message 
 of the Ethical Movement. The question 
 therefore arose, How is it possible for the 
 whole congregation to participate more 
 actively ? One way was to introduce a 
 responsive service. If in answer to some 
 specific statement of the leader of the 
 meeting all the members present took 
 part in an assent, they would, as it were, 
 overtly and publicly pledge themselves 
 to the sentiment contained in the state- 
 ment. If, as in the case of the Litany, 
 the very words of the leader, before they 
 reached the close of a sentence, were 
 caught up by the congregation and brought 
 to a finish, there would be a still greater 
 
ETHICAL SERVICES 15 
 
 commitment and participation on the part 
 of all present. 
 
 Now, in an ethical society, the old- 
 fashioned relation of pastor to flock, of 
 priest to people, does not hold. The 
 leader, at best, is but the spokesman or 
 representative of the entire membership. 
 There is more occasion, therefore, among 
 us than in an ordinary old-fashioned 
 Church for introducing something besides 
 chanting and hymn-singing as a means 
 of expression on the part of the entire 
 congregation. 
 
 We have, moreover, a deepening sense of 
 the common mind and will, the one 
 heart, that beats throughout our fellow- 
 ship. That we then should introduce 
 into our service statements which it had 
 been agreed that the leader of the meeting 
 should utter, and the congregation respond 
 to, would give a sense not only of our 
 democratic equality but also of fraternity 
 and solidarity. 
 
 A second reason, although of a negative 
 nature, why the West London Ethical 
 Society decided to experiment in the 
 direction of adopting responsive services, 
 was because it felt there was no danger 
 of our ever falling into the monotonous 
 B 
 
16 INTRODUCTION 
 
 uniformity of repetition prevalent in the 
 Anglican Church. We all, to a man, 
 hate an unimaginative and paralysing 
 frequency of iteration of the same phrases. 
 How remote we are from such a danger, 
 however, is shown by the fact that we 
 have decided to use the Litany here 
 published only ten times among the 
 129 regular services annually held at the 
 Ethical Church. Ten times a year to 
 repeat the same thing, if it be a good 
 thing, is not much none too often. A 
 man repeats oftener than that a poem 
 that he loves, because he loves it, and 
 because he knows psychologically that 
 there must not be too long an interval, 
 or its beauty and meaning will fade from 
 his mind. 
 
 As regards the other service, since we 
 welcome new members only three times 
 a year, we shall use it only so often ; and 
 since its repetition takes somewhat less 
 than four minutes, it means that in any 
 365 days we shall devote only some twelve 
 minutes to the repetition of a form which 
 we believe to present the main outlines 
 of the common duties of man. We feel 
 no occasion for endless reiteration of the 
 same phrases, as there is no limit to what 
 
ETHICAL SERVICES 17 
 
 can be done in the way of embodying 
 definite sentiments in fresh forms. 
 
 Unless our creative energy ebbs, more- 
 over, we shall be able even to invent quite 
 other kinds of congregational expression 
 than that of the responsive service. I 
 have long entertained the belief, based 
 upon experience in ethical classes for 
 children, that speaking in unison by a 
 whole congregation may be developed far 
 more than in mere responses, such as 
 those in the Litany, the Ten Command- 
 ments, and the alternate saying of the 
 Psalms as practised in some churches. 
 It would be possible for all the members 
 of a society to say together not only the 
 responses but the whole body of the 
 Litany and the Commandments. Beauti- 
 ful and expressive of the unity of spirit 
 of a group, where each is both leader and 
 led, is the saying in unison, although 
 without any hint of intonation or chanting, 
 of the principles upon which all agree ; 
 for in a society of intelligent persons 
 accustomed to meet often, the inflection 
 of voice, the cadence, the pauses, may 
 harmoniously blend. Just as song in 
 common reinforces the emotion that 
 sways all alike, so does clearly articulate 
 
i8 INTRODUCTION 
 
 and sincere speech in unison give to each 
 present a vivid sense of the unified vision 
 and will which characterise the group as 
 a whole, and constitute its sanity and 
 strength. 
 
 But there was another and a deeper 
 reason for our adoption of these revised 
 forms of the Litany and the Decalogue. 
 Whoever studies the statements of prin- 
 ciples and aims published by our society, 
 will observe, if he notes closely, that, 
 while we speak of the good life, we do 
 not directly specify its contents. Our 
 statements of principles and aims are 
 purely formal, to use the technical 
 ethical expression. Two persons may 
 include, under the term " goodness," 
 two diametrically opposite views of what 
 ought to be done. Our principles do not 
 sufficiently express our convictions con- 
 cerning the inviolability of life, of property, 
 of monogamy, of the State as opposed 
 to anarchy, of truth, and of what we 
 consider the supreme object of religious 
 reverence. But anyone reading the two 
 responsive services here published will 
 discover that they definitely commit a 
 society using them to a multitude of 
 special duties and virtues. 
 
ETHICAL SERVICES 19 
 
 In specifying these, however, no new 
 departure in the attitude of Ethical 
 Societies has been made. It is only that 
 that which was formerly implicit is now 
 rendered explicit. There has always been 
 among us an almost universal consensus 
 of opinion as to the contents of the 
 moral life. It went without saying 
 that we did not believe in murder, or 
 adultery, or theft, or lying. Our very 
 use of Sunday as the day for two religious 
 services shows that we recognise the ethical 
 significance of the established day of 
 rest. The adoption, therefore, of the Ten 
 Commandments in the form here presented 
 indicates an advance in expression only. 
 Every point of moral judgment contained 
 in these two responsive services has often 
 been presented in our statements of 
 ethical principles, in our hymns, canticles, 
 and invitations to membership, and in 
 the opening and closing words which we 
 have used. 
 
 I am voicing the sentiment of our 
 members in general when I say that 
 it is necessary for an ethical society 
 to make it unequivocal that it stands 
 not only for the formal categories of 
 duty, virtue, responsibility, justice, and 
 
2O INTRODUCTION 
 
 the like, but also for a definite body of 
 very particular duties. It is true that we 
 revere the idea of duty, but, far more, that 
 we stand for particular and urgent trends 
 of social service and of self-control. Now, 
 these aspects of the moral life are clearly 
 and comprehensively set forth in the 
 two services here published. 
 
A 
 
 UNIVERSAL 
 LITANY 
 
A UNIVERSAL LITANY* 
 
 THAT we have been delivered from un- 
 told evils, by the self-sacrifice, courage 
 and wisdom of countless men and women, 
 We gratefully acknowledge. 
 
 That we may be spared to render like 
 service in our day ; and that we may escape 
 the censure of the just, 
 
 Is the deep yearning of our hearts. 
 
 That our offences and the offences of our 
 forefathers may not be remembered by 
 anyone against us ; nor vengeance of our 
 sins taken, 
 
 We ask for mercy from our fellow-men. 
 
 From all evil and mischief ; from sin, 
 from the crafts and assaults of malicious 
 persons and liars ; from the wrath of the 
 good, and from unrelenting condem- 
 nation, 
 
 We call upon all men to save us. 
 
 * The Responses, which are italicised, may be sung. 
 
24 A UNIVERSAL 
 
 From all prejudice of class, sect and 
 nationality ; from all pride, vainglory and 
 hypocrisy ; from envy, hatred and malice, 
 and all uncharitableness, 
 
 We call upon all men to save us. 
 
 From drunkenness, gluttony and lust, 
 and all other deadly sin ; from the deceits 
 of vanity and appetite, and the plots of 
 tempters and mischief-makers, 
 
 We call upon all men to save us. 
 
 From lightning and tempest ; from 
 plague, pestilence and famine ; from battle 
 and murder, and from unprepared-for 
 death, 
 
 Man by his foresight and mercy shall save us. 
 
 From all sedition, privy conspiracy and 
 rebellion ; from all false doctrine, heresy 
 and schism ; from hardness of heart and 
 contempt for good counsel and duty, 
 
 Man by his wisdom and mercy shall save us. 
 
 In all time of our wealth ; in all time of 
 our tribulation ; in every day of judgment, 
 and in the hour of death, 
 
 Give us humility , peace and strength. 
 
LITANY 25 
 
 That all nations may work together in 
 unity, peace and concord for the relief of 
 man's estate, 
 
 We beseech them to heed our entreaty. 
 
 That those to whom the will of the 
 people has entrusted the government of 
 our land may deal justly with all nations, 
 
 We beseech them to heed our entreaty. 
 
 That our King may be strengthened and 
 kept in devotion to the nation's welfare ; 
 and that his heart may be ruled by love 
 of justice and by respect for the liberty 
 of all men, 
 
 We confidently hope. 
 
 That our Prime Minister ; the members 
 of the Cabinet and Houses of Parliament ; 
 and all persons having authority in our 
 Civil Service and our Army and Navy, may 
 be endued with the spirit of humanity, 
 wisdom and humility, 
 
 We entreat them to open their hearts. 
 
 That all magistrates and interpreters of 
 the law may execute justice and maintain 
 truth, 
 
 We beseech them to heed our entreaty. 
 
26 A UNIVERSAL 
 
 That all physicians and other guardians 
 of our bodily and mental life, by their 
 knowledge, skill and devotion, may ensure 
 to our people the blessings of health, 
 We confidently hope. 
 
 That all who labour with their hands ; 
 all controllers of industry, finance, and 
 the public Press ; and all thinkers and 
 discoverers, artists and inventors, may 
 find their motive in the doing of good, 
 and not in personal gain, 
 
 We beseech them to heed our entreaty. 
 
 To help in hastening the time when all 
 preventable poverty, untimely mortality 
 and excessive toil shall have ceased ; and 
 when all avoidable causes of injury to 
 life and health, to happiness and character 
 shall have been removed, 
 
 Is our high task and privilege. 
 
 That in our time the Christian, Jewish, 
 and Mohammedan Churches, and all the 
 other religious denominations in the world, 
 may conform their sacraments, doctrines 
 and governments to the dictates of human 
 reason, science and conscience, 
 
 We beseech them to heed our entreaty. 
 
LITANY 27 
 
 That all ministers of religion, and all 
 teachers, may devoutly study the laws of 
 the universe in which we live ; and that 
 both by word and deed they may set forth 
 the principles of humanity and justice, 
 
 We beseech them to heed our entreaty. 
 
 That all our people may increase in 
 readiness to investigate truth, both new 
 and old, and receive it with pure affection ; 
 so that they may bring forth the fruits of 
 wisdom, 
 
 We beseech them to heed, our entreaty. 
 
 That the time may soon come when all 
 men and women will understand and 
 revere the responsibilities of fatherhood 
 and motherhood, 
 
 By our faith in mankind we hope. 
 
 That all fathers and mothers may merci- 
 fully give heed to the individual nature 
 and limitations of each child born to them, 
 
 In our love for mankind we plead. 
 
 That the time may soon come when all 
 husbands and wives will together live for 
 the common good ; and not each for 
 
28 A UNIVERSAL 
 
 themselves ; ; nor merely for each other ; 
 nor for their "children only, 
 
 By our faith in mankind we hope. 
 
 That the time may soon come when men 
 will respect all women ; and when women 
 will be accorded every opportunity of 
 citizenship, yet will not the less revere their 
 womanhood, 
 
 By our faith in mankind we hope. 
 
 That in our hearts we may love and 
 dread Righteousness, and diligently live 
 after its commandments, 
 
 We reverently desire. 
 
 To lead into the way of truth all such as 
 have erred and are deceived, 
 
 Is our high task and privilege. 
 
 To strengthen such as do stand ; comfort 
 and help the weak-hearted ; raise up them 
 that fall ; and finally beat down all malice 
 and falsehood under our feet, 
 
 Is our high task and privilege. 
 
 To succour, help and comfort all that are 
 in danger, necessity and tribulation, 
 
 Is our high task and privilege. 
 
LITANY 29 
 
 To minister to the needs of all women 
 with child, and all sick persons and young 
 children, 
 
 Is our high task and privilege. 
 
 To show our love for the humanity in 
 every culprit, by visiting upon him no 
 other suffering than is needed to reform 
 him and to protect society, 
 
 Is our high task and privilege. 
 
 To love and provide for fatherless and 
 motherless children ; and tenderly minister 
 to all that are desolate and oppressed, 
 Is our high task and privilege. 
 
 To have mercy upon all men ; and to j be 
 kind to every sentient creature, 
 Is our high privilege. 
 
 To forgive our enemies, persecutors and 
 slanderers, and to turn their hearts, 
 Is our high privilege. 
 
 That we may feel true repentance ; 
 forgive one another's sins, negligences and 
 ignorances ; and be endued with power to 
 amend our lives according to ' the prin- 
 ciples of unselfish love, 
 
 Is the deep yearning of our hearts. 
 
 So be it now and for ever. 
 
TEN WORDS 
 
 OF 
 THE MORAL LIFE 
 
TEN WORDS OF THE MORAL LIFE* 
 
 EACH one of us hears the voice of Duty 
 saying within him : 
 
 I am the supreme judge of men and of 
 gods ; thou shalt exalt nothing above me. 
 
 May no one lead us into temptation; but 
 all men help us to keep this law. 
 
 Thou shalt not make a god of pleasure, 
 wealth or station ; neither shalt thou wor- 
 ship any being, even though infinite in 
 power, save for its human wisdom and 
 goodness ; for I, the indwelling Power of 
 Righteousness, visit the sins of the fathers, 
 through transmission of life and by the 
 words and acts of kinsmen and neighbours, 
 upon the children unto the third and fourth 
 generation of them that hate me, and in all 
 these ways show mercy unto thousands in 
 
 The Response-!, which are italicised, may be sung. 
 
 33 
 
34 TEN WORDS 
 
 them that love me and keep my command- 
 ments. 
 
 May no one lead us into temptation ; but 
 all men help us to keep this law. 
 
 Thou shalt not use words that signify 
 any form of righteousness or unrighteous- 
 ness, either cynically or in levity ; for they 
 who so use such words weaken the common 
 reverence for Righteousness. 
 
 May no one lead us into temptation ; but 
 all men help us to keep this law. 
 
 Remember to keep sacred to meditation 
 upon the higher destinies of man the one 
 day in seven set apart by the community 
 to that end. Six days shalt thou give to 
 labour and recreation ; but the seventh is 
 the sabbath of Ideal Humanity. 
 
 May no one lead us into temptation ; but 
 all men help us to keep this law. 
 
 Honour thy father and thy mother, that 
 thou mayest preserve to thyself and trans- 
 mit to thy children the high tradition of 
 the world, thus securing length of days 
 unto thy family and thy nation. 
 
 May no one lead us into temptation ; but 
 all men help us to keep this law. 
 
OF THE MORAL LIFE 35 
 
 Thou shalt do no murder ; neither shalt 
 thou inflict any injury, either of mind or 
 body, upon thyself or any other sentient 
 creature, except the good of all shall 
 require it. 
 
 May no one lead, us into temptation but 
 all men help us to keep this law. 
 
 Thou shalt not commit adultery ; 
 neither shalt thou so much as desire any- 
 one whom, for the sake of the common life, 
 thou shouldst not have. 
 
 May no one lead us into temptation ; but 
 all men help us to keep this law. 
 
 Thou shalt not steal ; neither shalt thou 
 take or keep anything which the general 
 welfare requires that others should have. 
 
 May no one lead us into temptation ; but 
 all men help us to keep this law. 
 
 Thou shalt not bear false witness against 
 thy neighbour ; neither shalt thou mis- 
 represent or withhold from him any fact 
 or any conviction of thine own which it 
 were best for the social life that he should 
 know. 
 
 May no one lead us into temptation ; but 
 all men help us to keep this law. 
 
36 TEN WORDS OF LIFE 
 
 Thou shalt not covet anything which 
 another owns ; neither shalt thou so much 
 as desire to get or keep anything which it 
 were best for the community that others 
 should possess. 
 
 May no one lead us into temptation ; but 
 all men help us to keep this law. May we 
 also lead none into temptation, but help 
 all to keep these laws. Forgive us our tres- 
 passes against you, all ye our fellow-men, 
 as we forgive you your trespasses against 
 us ; and strengthen us, that we may show 
 forth these laws not only with our lips but 
 in our lives. 
 
 So be it now and for ever. 
 
COMMENTARY 
 
COMMENTARY 
 I. LITERARY ADAPTATION 
 
 MANY persons of delicate and refined 
 taste in literature profess an abhorrence 
 of anything like an adaptation to modern 
 requirements of a venerable document 
 like the Decalogue or the Litany. In 
 order to express their horror of it, they 
 speak of such an adaptation as a parody. 
 But these sensitive and devout worshippers 
 of the old betray a lamentable literary 
 and historic ignorance. The Decalogue 
 itself, as found in Deuteronomy, is nothing 
 more and nothing less than an adaptation 
 of an earlier Decalogue, and that also 
 arose in a similar way. Even the Lord's 
 Prayer is a parody if parody be synony- 
 mous with adaptation. 
 
 Again, if every new version of an old 
 liturgical form is to be thus branded, how 
 
 39 
 
40 COMMENTARY 
 
 shall the Anglican Prayer Book escape 
 censure ? What was it but a modification 
 of Roman Catholic forms ? And, to pass to 
 so-called secular literature, many of the 
 plays of Shakespeare are simply reconstruc- 
 tions by him of old dramatic materials. 
 Likewise Chaucer and Milton, and not a 
 few of the other greatest masters of 
 English poetry and prose, have so plainly 
 appropriated materials already at hand 
 that, if they have not been condemned 
 as parodists, it is only because the still 
 worse epithet of plagiarist has been ap- 
 plied to them. 
 
 The real question is not as to the right 
 of adapting materials long in use, but only 
 as to whether, in any particular case, the 
 adaptation is an improvement. 
 
 In the case of religious documents, 
 however, the test as to whether they be 
 improvements cannot be simply a literary 
 one. The main question is : Does the 
 adaptation serve the needs of our time 
 better than the old form ? Does it quicken 
 conscience more effectually ? Does it 
 direct more unerringly to the path of 
 duty and give a wider reach to selfless 
 sympathy ? 
 
LITERARY ADAPTATION 41 
 
 It must further be remembered that 
 he who dares to adapt existing liturgical 
 forms is probably quite aware that he 
 risks the censure of parody. He would 
 not offer his adaptation to the public if 
 he did not believe that it would prove a 
 better instrument of moral edification. 
 
 It must also be borne in mind that even 
 a perfect adaptation of an old liturgy, 
 made in order to bring it up-to-date, 
 would be liable, the first time it was heard, 
 to sound grotesque, to appear out of 
 taste, and possibly, to some, even comic. 
 In such a case, therefore, critics who 
 value their ultimate reputation would do 
 well not to trust their first impression. 
 They should wait until they have grown 
 familiar with the new form. Our sense 
 of the comic, when it is aroused by what 
 is to us a novelty, is no proof that a thing 
 is really grotesque. The ludicrous, more 
 than any other emotion, depends upon 
 the subjective mood of the moment. 
 How often the dress of a foreigner, the 
 first time it is seen, strikes us as pre- 
 posterous and absurd, and yet, after six 
 months of familiarity, is seen to be full 
 of aesthetic charm ! Many a time, an 
 
42 COMMENTARY 
 
 anecdote affects us as highly amusing 
 until some occurrence in our own intimate 
 experience changes our emotional attitude 
 towards it into one of tragic horror. Even 
 a funeral might, without offence, be made 
 the subject of anecdotal wit ; and then 
 some bereavement of our own might 
 cause the very thought of the anecdote to 
 seem like sacrilege. And how often do 
 we find that some religious custom or 
 practice, which at first excited our con- 
 tempt or resentment, upon closer acquain- 
 tance with its meaning or effects, begins 
 to win our heart's deference and even 
 reverence ! Many of the more respectable 
 classes of society at first thus resented 
 the tactics of the Salvation Army. But 
 when the results of its work became 
 appreciated, not a few of the very 
 persons who had scoffed, now encouraged 
 and supported the new methods. Let 
 those, then, who are moved to resent my 
 adaptations of the Decalogue and the 
 Litany suspend judgment for a time. 
 
 It should be realised that true piety 
 towards documents like the Decalogue 
 and Litany consists in so modifying 
 them upon occasion that they shall 
 
LITERARY ADAPTATION 43 
 
 continue for ever to serve the human 
 need that first produced them. To 
 let them become obsolete, simply be- 
 cause their letter is no longer applicable 
 to modem circumstances and knowledge, 
 is to show a lack of reverence for them. 
 To value them simply because of their 
 historical or archaeological quaintness is 
 to degrade them ; it allows them to be- 
 come the mere toys of pedants and 
 intellectual idlers. Real love of them 
 requires that they be brought continually 
 up to date. Their spirit demands the 
 renewing of the mere letter. 
 
 And now a word may not be out of place 
 addressed to those who on the very opposite 
 ground find adaptations distasteful. More 
 than a few who have wholly broken 
 connection with the historic Church 
 count it a desecration of their present 
 religious sentiments that anyone should 
 attempt to express these in any of the 
 phrases and literary forms associated with 
 supernaturalistic beliefs. They say, " For 
 the new wine, new wine-skins." To 
 which I would retort, " Are you so certain 
 that all your wine is new ? " And, what 
 is still more to the point, is it true that 
 
44 COMMENTARY 
 
 any of the phrases or literary structures 
 which I have drawn from the Decalogue 
 and the Litany are perished wine-skins ? 
 If they be, then I stand rightly under 
 condemnation. But, again I ask, is it 
 ethical is it rational to allow one's 
 subjective repulsion to the old super- 
 naturalistic beliefs to extend itself so as 
 to include any purely human and natural 
 means of expression which in great part 
 always did serve a purely human and 
 natural end ? 
 
 When ethical societies first began to 
 hold meetings on Sundays, many who 
 were extreme opponents of supernatural- 
 ism in religion declared that we were only 
 imitating, and that, to show our difference, 
 we should meet only on weekdays. Similar 
 protests were made when we introduced 
 congregational singing, and especially if 
 we used any tune which had been sung 
 in the churches. But such opposition to 
 adaptation needs only to be stated to be 
 refuted. Only those who deliberately take 
 their stand on the ground of blind feeling 
 and prejudice can consistently justify 
 their hatred of anything which in any 
 
LITERARY ADAPTATION 45 
 
 way reminds them of the long, long ages 
 of human idealism which elapsed before 
 man began to discriminate between the 
 natural and the supernatural, or thought 
 of rejecting the theory that events some- 
 times happen without any natural cause. 
 Persons who in their love of novelty 
 find adaptation repellent, perhaps betray, 
 more than they realise, their own lack of 
 drill in history. A disciplined historic 
 sense delights in seeing the old living on 
 and supporting and reinforcing the new. 
 Perhaps also there is a deficiency of 
 training in statesmanship among those 
 innovators in religion who would discard 
 any human device simply because it had 
 been invented or appropriated by super- 
 naturalists. If humanistic idealism is 
 ever to supplant supernaturalism in 
 religion, it will be by stressing the con- 
 tinuity of history, not by breaking with 
 man's higher emotional associations. 
 
II. THE LETTER, THE FORM, AND THE 
 SPIRIT 
 
 I invite the reader, while following this 
 defence of the foregoing adaptations of 
 the Decalogue and the Litany, to bear 
 in mind the distinction not only between 
 letter and spirit, but also between letter 
 and form. No one will deny that the 
 spirit of a document may continue to be 
 as living and urgent as ever, although the 
 letter may be dead. But few realise that 
 to confine the spirit within the dead letter 
 is to render it speechless ; they seem not to 
 see that deadness of letter means nothing 
 else than that the words no longer achieve 
 their original purpose. And still fewer 
 students of literature realise that the 
 form as well as the spirit may be alive 
 after the letter is dead. For the form is 
 not the same as the letter. The dialogue, 
 for instance, is a literary form ; the epic 
 another ; so also the classic drama and 
 
 46 
 
LETTER, FORM, SPIRIT 47 
 
 the sonnet. Although all the material 
 hitherto cast into these forms had become 
 no longer applicable to modern life, yet the 
 same spirit that devised the structures 
 might, when discarding the specific 
 contents of the old forms, pour new 
 meanings into the selfsame moulds. 
 
 Now, in my opinion, the responsive 
 form of religious service, and what I 
 should call the commandment form, em- 
 bodying injunctions aphoristically, possess 
 an indestructible utility and beauty. 
 
 My contention, therefore, is that anyone 
 wishing to do an educational service in 
 our time like that of the men who of old 
 first constructed and afterwards appro- 
 priated for fresh material the Decalogue 
 and Litany, would inevitably preserve 
 these old structures. Nor would a desire 
 so to do emanate merely from a feeling of 
 respect for that which is antique or 
 venerable from age. It might arise wholly 
 from insight into the demands of our 
 day. Even were the old forms quite 
 forgotten, the old spirit, alive to-day, 
 might create them anew. 
 
 It is clear, then, that to use the old 
 forms in the old spirit, and fill them with 
 
48 COMMENTARY 
 
 modern instances, is not to imitate nor 
 to borrow them. One cannot be said to 
 borrow what is already one's own ; and 
 the enduring forms are surely the rightful 
 patrimony of all who need them. On the 
 other hand, to discard them is to waste 
 one's heritage ; while to invent sub- 
 stitutes that are not so good, for mere 
 innovation's sake, is to dissipate one's 
 energy and to betray a decline in taste 
 and character. 
 
 The commandment form was not the 
 product of transient and accidental causes 
 in the life of the Jewish tribe, but was 
 due to vital relationships in it, which 
 still subsist to-day in every nation of the 
 world. It has not become obsolete with the 
 discarding of supernatural sanctions to 
 morality. The community still dictates 
 to the individual. And because con- 
 science itself is, and always will be, 
 clothed with the authority of an ideal 
 community, men will always hear com- 
 mandments issuing from within their own 
 souls. 
 
 We may say that it is the general will 
 of humanity that decrees the command- 
 ments ; but it must be clearly borne in 
 
LETTER, FORM, SPIRIT 49 
 
 mind that this general will is not to be 
 mistaken for positive public opinion. 
 It is not the actual community that utters 
 the imperative which we hear in con- 
 science ; it is that ideal community 
 which lurks at the heart of customs and 
 laws, and has become the inward motive 
 of our own free moral agency. 
 
 The responsive form of religious service 
 can never become obsolete, because it 
 grows out of the relation between the 
 idealistic trend in history, which is the 
 unifying will of society, and the sub- 
 jective wills of the individuals who ac- 
 knowledge the social good as constituting 
 the higher law of their own nature. In 
 responsive services the leader speaks as 
 the representative of the community in 
 its totality ; the various members of the 
 congregation answer in their individual 
 capacities. It is quite true that of old 
 the leader of a religious community 
 represented, or was believed to represent, 
 the supernatural. But with the falling 
 away of belief in the supernaturalistic 
 interpretation of the priest, there is no 
 weakening of the communal significance 
 of the father or mother in the family, or 
 
50 COMMENTARY 
 
 of the teacher in the school, or the preacher 
 in the religious community. The chosen 
 representative of any group of human 
 beings becomes, by the very fact that 
 he is chosen, differentiated from any 
 private individual. The latter can speak 
 only for himself ; the former is vested 
 with a peculiar communal office. 
 
 It will be noted that in my responses 
 to the commandments have been in- 
 corporated one phrase from the Lord's 
 Prayer and another from a response to 
 the Commandments in the Anglican 
 Communion Service. " May no one lead 
 us into temptation " is a deliberate 
 adaptation of the phrase "Lead us not 
 into temptation." How slight the verbal 
 change, and yet what a world-deep revolu- 
 tion in thought ! It indicates the advance 
 from inert reliance (if the customary inter- 
 pretation be accepted) upon a superhuman 
 deliverer to direct and active trust in 
 human beings, that they will protect us 
 even from ourselves. Likewise the 
 transition from " Incline our hearts to 
 keep this law " to " May all men help us 
 to keep this law " seems slight indeed ; 
 yet it marks the whole difference between 
 
LETTER, FORM, SPIRIT 51 
 
 the prostration characteristic of the old 
 superhumanism and the interdependence 
 among equals which distinguishes demo- 
 cratic and scientific humanism. 
 
 The form of response embodied in the 
 Litany is peculiar. The implied relation 
 of the leader to the congregation is not 
 simply that of the communal will to the 
 individual purpose of each member, or 
 merely the relation of a spokesman to 
 those who follow. The taking-up by the 
 congregation of each sentence which the 
 leader has begun, and the finishing of it 
 in unison, indicates that as the meaning 
 becomes clear to the congregation, their 
 own conviction and intensity of feeling 
 will not allow them to wait in silence to 
 the end ; so they, as it were, take the 
 words out of their spokesman's mouth and 
 bring the sentence to its period. Such a 
 form is appropriate and beautiful in the 
 case of any intense sentiment, or of an 
 unwonted depth of faith or sympathy. 
 The mood of the Church Litany is of this 
 order ; and the adaptation which I here 
 submit leaves intact the fundamental 
 emotions involved and expressed in it. 
 
 I have said that both the form and the 
 
52 COMMENTARY 
 
 spirit of the Litany are imperishable, and 
 that the perishing of the letter has been 
 due to changes in the circumstances of 
 modern life and in our conception of the 
 relation of the universe to our ideals. 
 We do not believe that supplications to 
 an intelligent Will behind the forces of 
 outward nature cause such a Will to 
 interrupt the uniformity in the sequences 
 of our experience. The scientifically 
 disciplined imagination is offended by the 
 notion that any appeal to a super- 
 human intelligence will cause that in- 
 telligence to intervene directly on our 
 behalf by providing us with wealth, 
 health, or anything else. But all modern 
 experience proves to us that supplica- 
 tions to the Human Will, in a thousand 
 ways that we had not before realised, and 
 to an extent hitherto undreamt of, do 
 occasion changes in the course of nature 
 which would not have taken place except 
 for the intervention of man's scientific 
 prevision and humane purpose. 
 
 Yet it is not in man only that we trust. 
 When we cease from all expectation of 
 miracles, we rest in a fuller, deeper, and 
 more abiding confidence and thankfulness 
 
LETTER, FORM, SPIRIT 53 
 
 upon the regularities and inevitabilities 
 of outward Nature, upon her unity, her 
 uniformity, her accessibility, and her 
 readiness to yield up her secrets when we 
 pursue certain methods of investigation 
 and experiment. Modern science gives us 
 good reason for reposing in nature as if 
 the everlasting arms of an infinite mother 
 were underneath us, without once requiring 
 us to presuppose that nature is animated 
 by a self-conscious, intelligent volition, 
 over and above that of the wills of men 
 and the Will of Man 
 
III. THE LITANY AND MODERN LIFE 
 
 With our eyes upon those circumstances 
 of our life which did not exist when the 
 Litany was written, and with our minds 
 disciplined by the modern conception 
 of the relation of the universe to the 
 actualisation of our ideals, it is possible 
 for us in no mere patchwork manner to 
 modify the Litany, and to make of it a 
 supple and powerful instrument of ethical 
 religion. 
 
 As one instance of my own attempt to 
 appropriate to the needs of our day the 
 form and spirit of the Litany, compare 
 the adaptation here given with that por- 
 tion of the original where it says 
 
 That it may please thee to preserve 
 all that travel by land or by water, 
 all women labouring of child, all sick 
 persons and young children, and to 
 
 54 
 
LITANY AND LIFE 55 
 
 show thy pity upon all prisoners and 
 captives, 
 
 We beseech thee to hear us, good Lord. 
 
 We notice, in the first place, that the 
 specific reference to the dangers of travel 
 by land and by water harks back to a 
 far past age. There is no longer any 
 special danger to travellers from thieves 
 and murderers ; and it is maintained by 
 statisticians that a man is as safe from 
 accident to-day, when travelling by rail 
 or by steamship, as when lying in his own 
 bed. There are exceptional dangers, to 
 be sure, in motoring and aeroplaning, but 
 there is no necessity, as yet, constraining 
 us to such enterprises. The phrase, 
 accordingly, " to preserve all that travel 
 by land or by water " may very well fall 
 away. 
 
 As regards the supplication on behalf 
 of " all women labouring of child," our 
 conscience and solicitude are now by 
 no means narrowed to the immediate 
 crisis of childbirth. Humane effort 
 aims at guarding all expectant mothers, 
 especially of the poorer classes, from in- 
 sufficient and unsuitable nourishment, 
 
56 COMMENTARY 
 
 from overwork, and from worry and 
 dread. A supplication, therefore, that the 
 needs of all women with child shall be 
 administered to, would be an expression 
 of the real aspiration and active energy of 
 modern effort. And if to the case of such 
 women was added that of all sick persons 
 and young children, the whole supplica- 
 tion would express a real social need and 
 purpose. 
 
 But it is incongruous with our modern 
 sense of personal human responsibility 
 that we should beseech an outside Lord 
 to fulfil our desire that women with child, 
 all sick persons and young children, should 
 be properly provided for. What we feel 
 is that it is our high task and privilege 
 to do this thing ourselves. Even if a 
 superhuman deity might do it, we should 
 not wish him to usurp our right of human 
 service. Instead of the old supplication, 
 then, let the Church of the future say 
 
 To minister to the needs of all 
 women with child, all sick persons 
 and young children, 
 
 Is our high task and 'privilege. 
 In the whole of the old Litany there 
 
LITANY AND LIFE 57 
 
 is no more beautiful and tenderly 
 pathetic supplication than that con- 
 tained in the clause in which God 
 is asked to show his pity upon all 
 prisoners and captives. But the modern 
 sense of the fitness of things is not that 
 the Creator should show his, but that 
 we should show our pity ; and for a 
 century and a half there has been a growing 
 determination to do so. More than this, 
 we now know in what kind of treatment 
 our pity should manifest itself. We have 
 made the moral discovery that no other 
 suffering should be inflicted upon criminals 
 or delinquents of any kind than is necessary 
 to reform and to deter. Nor does the 
 word " pity " exactly embody the new 
 sentiment towards the criminal. On the 
 part of good men and women there is a 
 deep sense of identity with wrongdoers 
 a sense more intimate, mystical, humble, 
 and self-accusing than pity. According 
 to Sir John Seeley, the finest human love 
 is not merely love for the race, nor pre- 
 cisely love for the individual ; it is rather 
 love for the humanity in the individual 
 man. This profound interpretation of 
 the modern philanthropic spirit might 
 
58 COMMENTARY 
 
 well be allowed expression in the Litany 
 of the Church of the future. For these 
 reasons, I have so changed the clause as 
 to make it read 
 
 To show our love for the humanity 
 in every culprit, by visiting upon 
 him no other suffering than is 
 needed to reform him and to protect 
 society, 
 
 Is our high task and privilege. 
 
 Now, before passing to another instance 
 of justifiable adaptation, let me ask : 
 Are the emendations just cited a parody, 
 a burlesque ? Are they comic, are they 
 out of taste ? Is the only alternative to 
 perpetuating the dead letter of the old 
 clause to discard the clause altogether ? 
 
 As a second instance of occasion for 
 amending the Litany, take the part where 
 it says 
 
 That it may please thee to rule and 
 govern thy holy Church universal in 
 the right way, 
 
 We beseech thee to hear us, good Lord. 
 
 And with this let us connect the supplica- 
 tion 
 
LITANY AND LIFE 59 
 
 That it may please thee to illumin- 
 ate all bishops, priests, and deacons 
 with true knowledge and under- 
 standing of thy Word, 
 
 We beseech tbee to hear us, good Lord. 
 
 As we look out upon modern circum- 
 stance, and as we remember that the 
 function of the Church always was, or 
 ought to have been, to act as the ethical 
 school or university of all the people of 
 a nation, we have a sense that these 
 supplications of the old Litany have to- 
 day become so obsolete as to be grotesque. 
 The condition of the Church to-day, and 
 of the moral education of the masses of 
 the people in our awakening democracy, 
 is such that the first of these two suppli- 
 cations ought to ask that the churches 
 shall reform themselves ; for until they 
 do, there is no such thing as a holy Church 
 universal, except in idea and ideal. The 
 Church to-day is a travesty of what it 
 ought to be. There should, therefore, be 
 a prayer in the Litany asking the Churches 
 to bring their sacraments, doctrines, and 
 methods of government into conformity 
 with the spirit of social democracy and 
 
60 COMMENTARY 
 
 with the results of humane science and 
 critical philosophy. 
 
 It is, moreover, absurdly provincial, 
 now that East and West are linked up 
 into intercommunication of all kinds, 
 that we should think only of the Church 
 of Christendom as the teacher of social 
 righteousness, who herself needs to be 
 taught. Our supplication must embrace 
 Mohammedanism, Judaism, and all the 
 religious cults of the East. Yet there is 
 as great occasion for us to plead for the 
 reform of Christianity as for the reform 
 of any of the great religions of the world. 
 They are all essentially obsolete in the 
 conception of the universe which they 
 presuppose, and in the circumstances of 
 social life and duty which they imply as 
 existing. They are all pre-democratic 
 and pre-scientific. What more crushing 
 indictment could be brought against 
 them ? 
 
 And what could be more naive than to 
 supplicate that it may please God to 
 illuminate all bishops, priests, and deacons 
 as if to-day these were the only or the 
 most important preachers of social 
 righteousness ! Every teacher of any 
 
LITANY AND LIFE 61 
 
 subject in any school is, even by pro- 
 fession, and must be, a teacher of right- 
 eousness ; and, by virtue of the spiritual 
 discipline of the school, a priest of the 
 Most High. All fathers and mothers, by 
 virtue of their responsibilities, are in the 
 same position. So is every journalist or 
 other writer who has a share in moulding 
 the moral judgments of men and creating 
 public opinion. All these, besides the 
 Church's officials, should be embraced 
 in this clause of the Litany. 
 
 And concerning what do they all need 
 to be illuminated ? The Litany says, 
 " With knowledge and understanding of 
 thy Word " undoubtedly meaning there- 
 by the Bible, or (if not that) the personality 
 of Jesus Christ as revealed in the Bible 
 and in the Church. Without denying our 
 need of illumination concerning these 
 subjects, we have a profound sense of the 
 impossibility of being contented with so 
 narrow an enlightenment. Teachers of 
 religion are in dire need of knowledge and 
 understanding of the laws of the universe 
 including man as well as nature in 
 which we live, and of which both the Bible 
 and Jesus Christ himself are but parts. 
 
62 COMMENTARY 
 
 If we concede that knowledge and 
 understanding of " thy Word " would 
 prove an adequate illumination, it must 
 be because we mean by the expression 
 " thy Word " the universal principles of 
 the right life. It is these that all leaders 
 of thought and life must set forth in their 
 preaching and living. But when such is 
 our meaning, we must adopt the language 
 of universal ethics, which is acceptable 
 to persons of every speculative creed, as 
 well as to all who have rejected the old 
 dogmas and traditions. 
 
 Let us likewise test the supplication, 
 that it may please God to give to all his 
 people increase of grace to hear meekly 
 his Word. The lack of readiness to hear 
 meekly the message of the Bible is a very 
 small part of a far more radical and 
 universal shortcoming. The Bible is not 
 the only revelation that it is important 
 for the people to hear meekly ; and 
 hearing is not the first duty in this 
 direction. There must be an increase of 
 willingness to investigate at first hand all 
 the fundamental experiences and obli- 
 gations of life. Our Litany should 
 pointedly enjoin a readiness to in- 
 
LITANY AND LIFE 63 
 
 vestigate truth ; and, because truths 
 not sanctified by age and not yet 
 glorified by social prestige are especially 
 liable to be disregarded, it ought plainly 
 to insist upon the duty of welcoming new 
 truths as well as those long ago dis- 
 covered and established. 
 
 In die prayers for the personnel of the 
 Government of England, the pre-eminence 
 given in the Litany to the Royal Family 
 is quite disproportionate, now that the 
 sovereign will of the people has assumed 
 the power of veto formerly vested in the 
 monarch. In nothing is the Litany more 
 out of date than in its omission of all 
 reference to the sovereign will of the 
 people. The whole nation is now ulti- 
 mately responsible for the existence 
 and political character of the Kingship, 
 of the House of Lords, and of the Com- 
 mons. The Anglican Litany approximately 
 fitted the age in which it was formulated ; 
 but for the Church of England to refuse 
 to revise it now is to cast discredit 
 upon the Church and weaken the national 
 character. 
 
 In justification of other adaptations 
 and insertions which I have made, but 
 
64 COMMENTARY 
 
 which need not here be specified, let me 
 remind the reader that whole continents 
 of hope and duty have arisen above the 
 sea-level of ancient ethics and religion in 
 the 300 years since the Anglican Litany 
 was constructed. There is, consequently, 
 no hint in it of the new respect for 
 woman on the part of the finer sort of men, 
 and not a word that would tend to spread 
 this respect throughout all classes of 
 society, until it should become a universal 
 mark of modern manhood. Nor is there 
 any hint in the Litany of the new self- 
 respect of women, or of the social revolu- 
 tion which that self-respect is initiating. 
 
 The Litany, moreover, contains no word 
 of protest against the prevalence of the 
 selfishness of husbands towards wives and 
 of wives towards husbands ; yet there is 
 no more prolific source of personal misery 
 on earth than this. Nor is a word of 
 protest uttered against that grand 
 ego'isme a deux in which husband and wife 
 live to each other alone, vitiating their 
 own love, and depriving society of their 
 combined power to redeem the world. 
 
 Nor does even a syllable of the old 
 Litany brand the widely prevalent, anti- 
 
LITANY AND LIFE 65 
 
 social family exclusiveness, according to 
 which the mother and father live and work 
 almost wholly for the education and social 
 advancement of their own offspring, ex- 
 ploiting all social opportunities, but never 
 once heeding the claims of mankind at 
 large. 
 
 One searches in vain also, throughout 
 the letter of the Litany, for any recogni- 
 tion of the responsibilities, so lightly 
 assumed by most men and women, of 
 paternity and maternity. There are 
 modern humanists who have maintained 
 that these responsibilities should be set 
 forth by all teachers and preachers of 
 religion as constituting the most sacred 
 duty in human life. Let us, then, so 
 revise the Litany that it shall become an 
 instrument for the education of all men 
 and women in this respect. 
 
 Modern child-study has sprung out of 
 a finer sense of our obligations towards 
 the young than ever was entertained by 
 parent or priest in former ages. Without 
 even knowing it, parents in earlier times 
 sinned against humanity, by treating 
 children as if their nature was the same 
 as that of adults, and by overlooking the 
 
66 COMMENTARY 
 
 peculiar individuality of each child. It is 
 time that the organised religions of 
 modern nations should so help to educate 
 fathers and mothers that the home shall 
 no longer be as it so often has been in the 
 past either a torture-chamber or a 
 lethal chamber for the intellect and the 
 soul of the child. 
 
 One of the sublimest spiritual and 
 ethical trends of our age consists in the 
 effort to abolish poverty and reduce 
 infant mortality to the possible mini- 
 mum ; to shorten the hours of work, to 
 redistribute the wealth produced, and to 
 reorganise its production, in such a way 
 that there shall no longer exist any such 
 thing as degrading poverty. Now, if we 
 were to judge from the prayers at 
 present sanctioned by the Church of 
 England, we should be forced to conclude 
 that this sublime enterprise is a thing 
 apart from the work and function of a 
 Church. Yet surely the Anglican priest- 
 hood would have the wit, if only it had 
 the will, so to revise the Litany as to 
 bring the Church into quickening contact 
 with this noble and ennobling enterprise. 
 
IV. THE SCOPE AND CHARACTER OF 
 THE COMMANDMENTS 
 
 In the life of nations there appears 
 comparatively early a sixfold discrimina- 
 tion or classification of social duties. 
 Almost at the beginning of history, the 
 tribe, or at least the chiefs who attempted 
 to organise and perpetuate the existence 
 and prosperity of tribes, recognised the 
 inviolability of life, property, the family, 
 the State, the truth, and that which 
 was believed to deserve the supreme 
 reverence of the human heart. The Ten 
 Commandments include all these six 
 inviolabilities. 
 
 The first four commandments are 
 generally called religious. They declare 
 the inviolability of something which man 
 is to focus his reverent attention upon, as 
 of supreme worth, or as the source of 
 
 67 
 
68 COMMENTARY 
 
 the supreme value in life. They declare 
 the inviolability, so to speak, of God. 
 
 But these first four are political as well 
 as religious commandments. For the God 
 whose worship they enjoin is a tribal deity. 
 Duty to him involves duty to the State. 
 
 The third and the ninth commandment, 
 enjoining that no one shall bear false 
 witness, and that no one shall take the 
 name of the Lord in vain, deal with duties 
 of speech. They condemn falsehood and 
 insincerity. It is true that they are very 
 specific, and their range is narrow ; but 
 they undoubtedly contain implicitly an 
 affirmation of the inviolability of truth 
 and truthfulness. 
 
 The fifth and the seventh command- 
 ment, and one clause of the tenth, by 
 enjoining respect for parents and for 
 wedlock, proclaim the inviolability of 
 marriage, the family, and the home. 
 
 The eighth and a part of the tenth 
 commandment assert the sacredness of 
 property. 
 
 The sixth declares the inviolability of 
 life. 
 
 The Ten Commandments are sometimes 
 spoken of as if they betrayed just such a 
 
few 
 
 THE COMMANDMENTS 69* \ c & + % 
 
 lack of moral experience and insight as \\ 
 one might expect among a semi-barbarous 
 people. But it would not be easy to find 
 any duty, occasioned by the most highly 
 developed and specialised life of modern 
 times, which could not be included under 
 duties concerning life, property, the 
 family, the truth, the State, and God. 
 
 Wholly new duties, for instance, con- 
 cerning truth, have been revealed in the 
 last few centuries. None of the Ten 
 Commandments imply that it is our duty 
 to investigate the laws of the universe ; 
 none of them imply that intellectual 
 honesty is a duty. But these new obli- 
 gations have been discovered by that same 
 spirit which forbade false witness and the 
 using of sacred names in vain. 
 
 The modern principle of the liberty of 
 the individual does not seem to be secured 
 in any way by any one of the injunctions 
 of the old Decalogue. And yet, when the 
 various commandments are universalised, 
 as in the responsive service which I 
 here submit, it becomes evident that 
 the object of every one of them is to 
 secure the liberty, the rightful scope and 
 claim of the individual. The " Thou 
 
70 COMMENTARY 
 
 shalt nots " are all attempts to protect 
 the individual against encroachment. The 
 commandments imply that each man has a 
 right to life, property, domestic and civic 
 security, to truth, and to that which he 
 most reveres that is, to his God. The 
 purpose of the community, in issuing the 
 commandments to each of its members, 
 evidently is to preserve the integrity not 
 only of itself as a whole, but of each 
 individual. 
 
 The contrast between the Old and the 
 New Testament is sometimes alleged to 
 consist in a tendency of the Old to lay 
 down prohibitions, and of the New to 
 prescribe positive duties. Those who 
 thus interpret the Bible tell us that the 
 Old says " Thou shalt not " ; the New, 
 "Thou shalt." The burden of the Old 
 is, " Thou shalt abstain from injuring 
 thy neighbour " ; that of the New, " Thou 
 shalt be actively beneficent." But such 
 a distinction will be seen upon close 
 examination not to be well founded. It 
 is true that only two of the commandments 
 those concerning the keeping of the sab- 
 bath day holy and the rendering of honour 
 to parents are positive in form. But 
 
THE COMMANDMENTS 71 
 
 all the prohibitions presuppose the active 
 existence of an adequate positive energy 
 in each individual to look out for his own 
 life, his own domestic felicity, his own 
 property, his own country, his own access 
 to truth and to his God, if only he be 
 not prevented by the unjust aggression 
 of others. 
 
 If it be true that in modern times there is 
 a great call upon us to be individually our 
 brothers' keepers, in the sense of looking 
 after their life, their property, their domes- 
 tic security and access to the truth and to 
 God, yet we must remember that the im- 
 plied lack of self-assertion on the part of the 
 individual is, if the individual be normally 
 endowed by nature, always to be traced 
 to social, political, and religious oppres- 
 sion. Somebody perhaps the whole 
 community has done what ought not 
 to have been done, or else there would 
 not be this tremendous modern need 
 of widespread beneficence. If, more- 
 over, the prohibitions of the Decalogue 
 be universalised, so as to cover all cases 
 of wrong-doing, and not simply the 
 extreme ones overtly specified in the old 
 commandments, it will be found that they, 
 
72 COMMENTARY 
 
 if carried out, would render unnecessary 
 the kind of individual beneficence enjoined 
 in the New Testament, in the sublime 
 ethical allegory of the Last Judgment. 
 
 Furthermore, we are very apt to forget 
 that the commandments by the community 
 in the interest of all were originally 
 directed against the classes in power. 
 The fourth commandment plainly implies 
 that the persons it addresses possess 
 servants, and are not themselves manual 
 labourers. It is especially to the 
 possessing classes also that any revised 
 form of the commandments to-day must 
 speak. Such injunctions must, of course, 
 be directed against all the enemies of 
 society ; but not chiefly against those 
 victims of our unjust social order who, 
 in despair and bewilderment, are tempted 
 to commit anti-social acts for the preser- 
 vation of themselves or for the gaining of 
 necessities for their families. The supreme 
 utterance of the social conscience of our 
 day is a prohibition against individual 
 aggression. Witness the attempt of 
 modern democratic legislation to win back 
 to the community as a whole the primal 
 sources of wealth in land and capital. 
 
THE COMMANDMENTS 73 
 
 What is it but a " Thou shalt not " to 
 the landlord and capitalist, rather than a 
 summons to personal beneficence ? 
 
 In order fully to appreciate the negative 
 form of commandment, we must also 
 remember that ethics always has been 
 and always will be a science of limits. 
 It is a science of the limits beyond which 
 individual instincts, desires, and am- 
 bitions shall not dare to pass. And if 
 it were not so, the outlook of humanity 
 would be melancholy indeed. If the 
 primal instincts themselves were deficient 
 rather than in excess, it is not easy to 
 believe that any injunction by the com- 
 munity, commanding people positively 
 to assist others, could ever bring the 
 deficient up to the mark of real energy, 
 insight, and enjoyment. Nature, in the 
 process of evolution, has brought about 
 and it is hard to conceive how it could 
 have been otherwise the survival of 
 those whose instincts are strong. The 
 positive energies of appetite and instinct 
 are in excess, unless restrained by the 
 will of the community ; and, therefore, 
 it must inevitably be that ethics is chiefly 
 and normally the science of the limits 
 
74 COMMENTARY 
 
 beyond which no man shall dare to 
 move in his realisation of himself. From 
 the point of view of the man who is 
 oppressed and denied scope for human 
 activity, the prohibition that checks 
 another's encroachment upon him seems 
 by no means a mere negation. The " Thou 
 shalt not," spoken to the aggressor and 
 the oppressor, means "Now at last I 
 may" to the man who has been 
 oppressed. 
 
 Christian ethics is sometimes defended 
 to the disparagement of Jewish, on 
 the ground that the latter is external, 
 while the former is inward. The latter 
 enjoins, it is said, only the washing of 
 the outside of the cup ; the former, of 
 the inside first. It is asserted that the 
 ancient Jews cared only that the external 
 deed should be correct and in conformity 
 with the positive law, but that the revela- 
 tion of Christianity consisted in the new 
 sense of the importance of the inward 
 disposition of the heart, and of the charac- 
 ter whence issue overt acts. If, however, 
 we study the Ten Commandments with 
 this distinction clearly in mind, we find 
 that on the whole they deal far more with 
 
THE COMMANDMENTS 75 
 
 the inward life than they do with outward 
 conduct. 
 
 " Thou shalt have none other gods 
 before me " is supremely an injunction 
 for the regulation of the attitude of the 
 soul of the individual towards that which 
 ought to be worshipped. "Thou shalt 
 not make graven images " is a direct 
 attack upon externality and materialism 
 in religion, as opposed to the worship of 
 an invisible, universal principle. How 
 can a religion, the God of which can never 
 even be figured in outward form without 
 degradation, be counted a religion of the 
 external act alone ? It is also impossible 
 to think of the commandment against 
 the taking of the name of the Lord in 
 vain as concerned only with outward 
 speech, rather than with the disposition 
 which manifests itself in words. If 
 language is only a system of symbols, and 
 if the symbols concern an invisible and 
 spiritual God, how can this injunction allow 
 that a man shall take the thought of his 
 God in vain, provided only that he do 
 not take the name in vain ? Likewise, if 
 ever a commandment was directed to- 
 wards the inner life, it is that concerning 
 
76 COMMENTARY 
 
 the keeping of the sabbath day holy. 
 The prophetic use of the sabbath had 
 little else as its goal than to check the 
 externalism and materialism of the Jewish 
 tribe. It was an attempt to turn the 
 attention of this materialistic people to 
 the fundamental principles of self-control 
 which secure immortality to a nation. In 
 the same way, the injunction of piety 
 towards father and mother is surely a 
 law for the inner life ; an attitude of 
 receptivity and obedience is enjoined, 
 and there is nothing to imply that the 
 spirit of the commandment could be 
 fulfilled by an external submission without 
 loyalty, devotion, and humility on the 
 part of children. 
 
 It is true that the commandments 
 "Thou shalt not murder," "Thou shalt 
 not commit adultery," and " Thou shalt 
 not steal," deal wholly with outward 
 acts. But it must be remembered that 
 the tenth commandment contains dis- 
 tinctly inward supplements to the in- 
 junctions against adultery and theft. 
 If ever there was an injunction com- 
 manding one to cleanse the inside of 
 the cup, it is : " Thou shalt not desire 
 
THE COMMANDMENTS 77 
 
 thy neighbour's wife." Here we have 
 both inward and outward : " Thou shalt 
 not desire thy neighbour's wife," and 
 " Thou shalt not commit adultery." 
 Also in regard to stealing, the Decalogue 
 declares not only " Thou shalt not steal," 
 but " Thou shalt not covet anything that 
 is thy neighbour's." In all the New Testa- 
 ment, what is more inward, or more fully 
 reveals a sense that out of the abundance 
 of the heart proceedeth the wrong deed 
 or the right ? Accordingly, we see that 
 of these three commandments, " Thou 
 shalt not murder," " Thou shalt not 
 commit adultery," and " Thou shalt not 
 steal," only the first is not traced back 
 to its well-spring in the human heart. 
 But it must be remembered that nearly 
 always, even in modern society, the 
 motive to murder is due either to desire 
 of one's neighbour's wife or to covetous- 
 ness of his property. If, therefore, the 
 two inward injunctions of the tenth 
 commandment be followed, there is na 
 liability that murders will be committed ; 
 for only a fanatic or lunatic takes human 
 life without any motive which maybe traced 
 ultimately either to lust or covetousness. 
 
7$ COMMENTARY 
 
 In the same way, it will be found that 
 there is no occasion for introducing a 
 commandment of an inward nature to 
 correspond to that which declares, " Thou 
 shalt not bear false witness against thy 
 neighbour," for here again it will be found 
 that in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred 
 the man who swears falsely does so because 
 he either desires the wife of another or 
 covets property which legally belongs to 
 someone else. Even the lies of political 
 and religious leaders will be found to be 
 animated not by love of their doctrine 
 or their country, but by a secret motive 
 of lust or greed. 
 
 The inwardness which this analysis 
 discloses in the Decalogue will doubtless 
 come to many as a revelation, for alto- 
 gether the Old Testament has been dis- 
 paraged in the interest of the New. But 
 whoever perceives the inwardness of the 
 Jewish Decalogue will feel the truth of 
 the assertion often made by writers 
 such as Matthew Arnold, but seldom 
 backed by specific proofs that the 
 ancient Jewish prophets had an ethic 
 passion and insight as far above that 
 of surrounding nations as were the 
 
THE COMMANDMENTS 79 
 
 aesthetic delight and vision of the Greeks 
 above that of their neighbours. The 
 Decalogue compels us to assign to the 
 Jews supremacy in ethics, just as the 
 Parthenon and Plato's Republic constrain 
 us to acknowledge the ascendency of the 
 Greeks in architecture and philosophy. 
 
 As to the number and sequence of the 
 various commandments, it will be noticed 
 that these are based not in logic but in 
 psychology. For instance, if we count as 
 the first, " Thou shalt have none other 
 gods before me," the second is not a 
 totally different one, but rather a specific 
 application. " Thou shalt not make any 
 graven image " was directed against the 
 special violation of the commandment 
 " Thou shalt have none other gods before 
 me," which required pre-eminent atten- 
 tion. Logically, it is involved in the 
 first ; but it was the one instance of the 
 violation of the first which required that 
 a powerful searchlight should be focussed 
 upon it. Again, as we have just noticed, 
 the tenth commandment is not wholly 
 distinct from the seventh and the eighth, 
 but only supplements them by prohibiting 
 those inward dispositions which lead to 
 
8o COMMENTARY 
 
 adultery and theft. It is quite clear, 
 however, that the ancient editor of the 
 Decalogue refused to subsume these two 
 inward prohibitions under the seventh and 
 eighth commandments, knowing that, 
 unless emphasised, they would be in 
 danger of neglect. 
 
 As to the number of the commandments, 
 there is nothing in the nature of the 
 moral law that could give any unique 
 sanctity to the number ten. No doubt 
 that was chosen for several reasons. One 
 was that every human being has ten 
 fingers, and therefore that number always 
 stands out pre-eminently in the mind of 
 the illiterate. There was also no occasion 
 for formulating nine or eleven. Besides, 
 more might tend to burden the memory, 
 and fewer might not have given scope 
 enough for the due emphasis of pre- 
 eminent points. For these reasons, 
 probably, it would also seem advisable to 
 anyone who wished to-day to revise the 
 Decalogue to subsume under some one 
 of the existing ten any new injunction, 
 rather than add other co-ordinate ones. 
 The moral duties of man do not go on 
 subdividing themselves for ever and ever 
 
THE COMMANDMENTS 81 
 
 into co-ordinate commandments. They 
 are duties respecting life, property, 
 family, country, truth, and God. 
 
 It must, moreover, be remembered 
 that even amongst the Jewish prophets 
 it was never supposed that the Decalogue 
 was to be the sole and only instrument 
 for moral edification. It was only one 
 of a hundred various instrumentalities ; 
 it was and is an excellent one ; it was 
 devised by the same genius that converted 
 the astrological into the ethical sabbath. 
 
V. THE TEN WORDS OF THE MORAL 
 LIFE 
 
 First Word. There is an admirable 
 passage in Professor Clifford's writings 
 where he speaks of Conscience as the 
 supreme judge of men and of gods. Such 
 an ascription of supremacy, authority, 
 and dignity to our moral judgment can 
 be gainsaid by no one who thinks. Nor 
 can anyone deny the grave need there is 
 in our times of asserting unequivocally 
 the primacy of conscience. It is an 
 assertion that can scarcely be made too 
 often. If made in strong and simple 
 phrase, the reiteration can never become 
 mechanical. The primacy of conscience 
 is so vitally significant a truth that the 
 repetition of it each day in a man's life 
 would only deepen its hold upon his heart 
 and will, with the effect that whenever 
 some incident in life focussed his attention 
 
 82 
 
THE TEN WORDS 83 
 
 upon it, its meaning would become 
 luminous and full of energy for good. 
 
 If one imagines conscience as speaking 
 or, if not conscience, morality as a 
 factor in life one could not do better 
 than borrow Professor Clifford's phrase, 
 and make the first commandment read : 
 " I am the supreme judge of men and of 
 gods." But, that the full implication of 
 this principle may not be lost, it should 
 also be expressed in the form of an 
 injunction. Duty, speaking authori- 
 tatively in the soul, or morality per- 
 sonified as issuing a commandment, 
 would say, " Thou shalt exalt nothing 
 above me." 
 
 The Old Testament commandment, " I 
 am the Lord thy God : thou shalt have 
 none other gods before me," may possibly 
 not have meant to represent that Duty 
 or Righteousness, as an active potency in 
 human life, was speaking. But even if 
 it did not, that would in no wise lessen 
 the truth or the significance of the com- 
 mandment at which I have arrived by 
 making the very power inherent in the 
 Right declare, " I am the supreme judge 
 of men and of gods. Thou shalt exalt 
 
84 COMMENTARY 
 
 nothing above me." Few will affirm that 
 the writer of the old Decalogue meant no 
 such thing at all. Most people will concede 
 that " the Lord thy God " into whose 
 mouth the Judaic prophets put the 
 commandment was indeed righteous- 
 ness, or its indwelling power; but they 
 will contend that it was also some- 
 thing more the creative and eternal 
 spirit of the universe. Nevertheless, they 
 will admit that the distinguishing quality 
 ascribed to the deity by the prophets was 
 his concern for social righteousness in 
 the hearts and deeds of men, and that our 
 conscience and the power inherent in 
 good deeds are supreme manifestations 
 of God. They will accordingly concede 
 that the same spirit does animate the 
 formula I propose as animated the first 
 commandment of old. And if this be so, 
 few of them would protest against the 
 use for the new of a form suggested by 
 that of the old. 
 
 Nor have I any anxiety but that dis- 
 criminating readers will see that to set 
 up the indwelling power of righteousness 
 as the supreme judge of men and of gods 
 does not in the least involve a denial of 
 
THE TEN WORDS 85 
 
 the existence of an infinite personal 
 Creator. 
 
 Second Word. In order to realise what 
 a burning issue of ancient Judaism was 
 dealt with in its second commandment, 
 one needs only to read an account of the 
 worship of graven images which prevailed 
 in Egypt, and to remember that the Jews 
 themselves had for generations lived 
 surrounded by this superstitious idolatry. 
 The growing consciousness and experience 
 of the Hebrew race gradually came to 
 realise the waste of emotion and attention 
 involved in the practice of image- worship. 
 But the second commandment achieved 
 its work so thoroughly that we, the in- 
 heritors of the Jewish prophecy, are free 
 from this tendency, innate in the undis- 
 ciplined mind of the child and the savage, 
 to deify symbols of the invisible principles 
 of nature or of the mind. The letter, 
 accordingly, of the second commandment is 
 completely obsolete to-day. But there is 
 as great danger as there was of old that the 
 cohesive principle of human society, the 
 power inherent in the right deed and the 
 good will, may be replaced in the hearts 
 of men by other claimants to their atten- 
 
86 COMMENTARY 
 
 tion. Even in Roman Catholic countries, 
 where there is still the use of images, 
 nevertheless the real competitors to-day 
 for the first place in the souls of men are 
 not graven images, but pleasure, wealth, 
 and station. If there be any one object 
 that the social reformers of our time have 
 found it necessary to set before them, it 
 is the breaking down of the love of pleasure, 
 of the craving for worldly possessions, 
 and of the mad chase for outward social 
 distinction and prestige. If one wanted 
 to formulate into a single injunction 
 the chief meaning of the effort to 
 check the forces of degeneration and 
 disintegration that threaten modern 
 nations, one could not do better than to 
 say, " Thou shalt not make a god of 
 pleasure, wealth, or station." This is 
 a warning that should be constantly 
 reiterated in the ears of the worldly, the 
 indifferent, and the aggressively selfish. 
 
 But even in circles where there is a 
 deep love of righteousness, and a strong 
 reverence for the God of the Jews or the 
 Redeemer of the Christian dispensation, 
 and although pleasure, wealth and station 
 may have been renounced, there prevails a 
 
THE TEN WORDS 87 
 
 morally degrading tendency to bow before 
 the mere power manifested in the physical 
 universe and in man himself. It is not 
 so much the goodness as the infinite might 
 of their deity that excites their awe. 
 Among those, however, who share the 
 deeper insight of our epoch, there is a 
 growing sense that goodness, in a being 
 however weak, or goodness in and of 
 itself, as a mere idea and principle as 
 a thing that ought to exist and prevail 
 is just as worthy of homage as goodness 
 when already actualised in a mighty 
 potentate on earth or in an infinite 
 Creator of the universe. It is not the 
 power of a Creator, but his goodness, 
 as goodness, that should receive homage. 
 At least not power in general, but only 
 that which is actually advancing the 
 cause of the good in the world, deserves 
 or should receive reverence. The power, 
 moreover, in righteousness that makes 
 for blessedness should receive the whole 
 devotion of the heart. An overt com- 
 mandment to this effect would help to 
 lead the masses of the people in a demo- 
 cratic age away from their idolatry of 
 mere power. For this reason it would 
 
88 COMMENTARY 
 
 be well if every boy and girl, throughout 
 every democratic nation in the world, 
 should learn by heart, from the fifth year 
 on, " Neither shalt thou worship any 
 being, even though infinite in power, save 
 for its human wisdom and goodness." 
 
 But even reverence for goodness must 
 be rational, and able to render an account 
 of itself. The reason why goodness, as 
 an active power, ought to be worshipped 
 is because it, and it alone, visits the sins 
 of the fathers, through transmission of 
 life and by the words and acts of kinsmen 
 and neighbours, upon the children unto 
 the third and fourth generation of them 
 that hate it, and in all these ways shows 
 mercy unto thousands in them that love 
 it and keep its commandments. It must 
 be remembered that righteousness in 
 itself is a mere abstraction that it does 
 not exist except in specific, concrete 
 tendencies of deed and disposition. The 
 moral deterioration and the misery of 
 the children who are born of sinners, or 
 are influenced by them, spring forth 
 directly as natural and social conse- 
 quences of the sins of men and women. 
 
 In modern language, and from the 
 
THE TEN WORDS 89 
 
 point of view of sociology, we may say 
 that all causes of character and happiness 
 group themselves into two main classes. 
 One we call the law of heredity ; the other 
 we call the law of environment. The 
 latter embraces " the words and acts of 
 kinsmen and neighbours " as influences 
 upon the child. The former embraces 
 the innate tendencies of the stock or 
 family of the father and mother, which 
 determine the capacities and limitations 
 of the offspring of any union. Heredity 
 is " the transmission of life." The 
 investigations of Mendel and Galton as 
 to the relative proportions of the child's 
 being which come from the immediate 
 parents, from the grandparents and re- 
 moter ancestors, justify us, in any literary 
 formula, in neglecting that portion of 
 transmitted characteristics which comes 
 to children from ancestors remoter than 
 the great-grandparents or the great-great- 
 grandparents. It is, therefore, for all 
 practical intents, adequate to speak of 
 the sins being visited upon the children 
 " unto the third and fourth generation." 
 Only within the last two decades have 
 writers upon the nature of the human mind 
 
90 COMMENTARY 
 
 pointed out the immense significance of the 
 focussing of attention as a factor in the 
 building up of good or bad character. 
 Psychologists lay stress upon the difference 
 between voluntary and involuntary 
 attention. The latter is the focussing of 
 all the energies of the mind spontaneously 
 upon some object which acts as a natural 
 stimulus to some one of the forty or 
 fifty innate dispositions of the human 
 mind which are called instincts. These 
 instincts, aroused by various stimuli, 
 compete and clamour to enlist the 
 whole mental energy in the service 
 of themselves exclusively. Voluntary 
 attention, however, is the focussing 
 of the whole mind's interest and energy 
 upon objects which do not minister 
 directly to the elementary instincts in 
 isolation, but rather to those organised 
 dispositions of the mind which long in- 
 dividual and social experience have 
 developed. The preservation of the in- 
 dividual person throughout a lifetime, and 
 of his race for centuries, claims the atten- 
 tion that is, the concentration of the 
 whole mental energy as against the 
 allurements of objects that minister to the 
 
THE TEN WORDS 91 
 
 separate primal instincts. The Decalogue 
 was a device of religious teachers to focus 
 the minds of the people upon those 
 objects of the highest importance to 
 humanity which are liable to be neglected ; 
 and the first two commandments speci- 
 fically enjoin it as a duty upon every 
 individual by systematic effort, against 
 the seductions of antagonistic objects, to 
 attend to what must be the supreme 
 concern of each man through a lifetime, 
 and of his race for all time. 
 
 Third Word. The old third command- 
 ment has no longer any significance. 
 There was a tendency in ancient Jewish 
 society to use the most sacred word 
 treasured by the community as a magical 
 potency in the practice of sorcery. This 
 practice it was necessary for the patriotic 
 statesman to condemn. Also there was 
 a tendency on the part of false witnesses 
 before judges not to shrink from calling 
 upon their God to curse them if their 
 testimony were false. The patriotic 
 statesman viewed with alarm the scep- 
 ticism or cynicism of witnesses who had no 
 fear of or belief in the national God. 
 
 In our day, except among a few de- 
 
92 COMMENTARY 
 
 generate intellectuals, there is no belief 
 in sorcery or magic, and, so far as I am 
 aware, even among degenerates there is 
 no tendency to use names to summon 
 occult forces. There is also no great 
 reason why modern patriotic statesmen 
 should view as a national menace the 
 oaths uttered in courts of law by witnesses 
 who do not believe in the deity upon 
 whom they call ; for there is certainly no 
 more tendency among avowed atheists, in 
 taking the customary oaths, to bear false 
 witness than there is among conventional 
 believers in the established religions. 
 
 But a very definite and great cause of 
 moral disintegration in our day is to be 
 found in the way in which all sorts of 
 personal and social wrongdoings are often 
 spoken of either in levity, for jest, or 
 cynically and in the bitterness of contempt 
 for all efforts at the restraint of powerful 
 instincts. Obscenity is only one form of 
 this evil. There is no analogous term to 
 describe flippant or cynical talk in regard 
 to intemperance, drunkenness, theft, and 
 murder; but such talk is most flagrant 
 and most dangerous to national character. 
 There is also a tendency in certain social 
 
THE TEN WORDS 93 
 
 sets to ridicule in speech all the virtues, 
 until the very names purity, self-control, 
 mercy, humanity, and justice fall into 
 dishonour. In such sets, scarcely anyone 
 dares to give expression to his love of 
 right or his regret at anyone's short- 
 comings. There are circles of highly 
 intellectual and leisured society in Eng- 
 land where, in speech, even to recognise 
 the distinction between right and wrong 
 is considered a mark of inexperience and 
 lack of independent reflection. Such a 
 state of things has been engendered not 
 so much by the actual wrongdoings of 
 the men and women in these circles as by 
 the habit of cynical and flippant speech. 
 The tongue is a most mighty tool in the 
 tearing down of a nation's high tradition. 
 There seems, therefore, to be great 
 occasion for the formulation by modern 
 educators of an injunction that will 
 especially call the attention of every man 
 and woman, and of every boy and girl, 
 to the personal responsibility of each in 
 keeping up the associations of terms that 
 stand for deeds of social service, and in 
 preserving the associations of alarm and 
 dread, of contempt and loathing, for those 
 
94 COMMENTARY 
 
 deeds that tend to the destruction of all 
 that is sweet and sane in life. An in- 
 junction of this sort learned in childhood 
 and repeated in the family circle, at 
 school, and in the religious meeting, 
 would deepen the consciousness of the 
 fact that we are the trustees of language. 
 It would direct the attention of the whole 
 nation to the heinousness of the offence 
 which George Eliot called " debasing 
 the moral currency." 
 
 But there are special grounds why such 
 an injunction should be accompanied by 
 a statement of the reason which has led 
 the educator to formulate it. The ordinary 
 unthinking man or woman does not 
 realise the consequences of cynical and 
 flippant speech concerning right and 
 wrong ; or if he grasps the fact that 
 deterioration of character and conduct 
 often finds its origin in mere words, he 
 has seldom analysed the law of cause 
 and effect manifested in this sequence. 
 He does not see that the cynical and 
 flippant use of ethical nomenclature has 
 for its immediate effect the weakening 
 of the common reverence for righteous- 
 ness. Yet it is out of the relaxation of 
 
THE TEN WORDS 95 
 
 the moral fibre, thus induced, that all 
 the remoter consequences arise. 
 
 If we compare the formula which I 
 have suggested as meeting the require- 
 ments of our day, with the third command- 
 ment as it is found in the Jewish Deca- 
 logue, we notice that the letter of the 
 old commandment has been entirely dis- 
 carded ; yet its spirit is preserved, and 
 not only its spirit, but its form. In the 
 name of their God centred all the holiest 
 and finest associations of the Hebrew 
 mind and character. But while the old 
 formula does not cover all the duties 
 embraced by the new one, the new con- 
 tains by implication, for everyone who 
 is still a believer in the old deity, the 
 injunction " Thou shalt not take the 
 name of the Lord thy God in vain." 
 
 Fourth Word. The old-time Jews and 
 Christians believed that the sabbath 
 was set apart by the Creator of 
 the universe, that man should pay 
 homage to him on that day. The judg- 
 ment of our own age is that the Jewish 
 Government, acting in the interest of the 
 nation, adopted a custom borrowed from 
 other nations. We know that originally 
 
96 COMMENTARY 
 
 the motive was, in part at least, to pay 
 homage to the self-conscious intelligence 
 of the tribal God, but that, unconsciously 
 or consciously, it was at the same time 
 one of social utility. In the interests of 
 those human beings and beasts of burden 
 that were always in danger of being 
 overworked by their masters, the day 
 became, or was at the start, one for 
 rest. In the Deuteronomic version, 
 the people were bidden to meditate 
 upon the nation's history and out- 
 look. At the advent of Christianity 
 the Jewish sabbath had been widely 
 adopted throughout the Roman Empire 
 as a day of cessation from manual labour. 
 All modern humanists recognise the 
 keeping of one day in seven for rest as a 
 most beneficent invention. The social con- 
 science throughout the world to-day is 
 becoming more and more convinced of 
 the necessity that all human beings, so 
 far as is practicable, should keep sacred 
 to meditation upon the higher destinies 
 of man the one day in seven set apart 
 by the community to that end. It is 
 highly probable that as the nations of 
 the world become co-ordinated in ideal 
 
THE TEN WORDS 97 
 
 interests, the Jewish sabbath or the 
 Christian Sunday will be universally 
 adopted ; and one of the best means of 
 bringing about such a result will be the 
 inculcation of the sentiment as a social 
 commandment. The use of this as a part 
 of the aphoristic wisdom of the world 
 will secure that there shall be no danger 
 thereafter of anyone's imagining that the 
 day was established by a superhuman 
 intelligence. The formula must clearly 
 assert that it was adopted by the com- 
 munity itself, in the interests of humanity. 
 Modern humane sentiment clearly re- 
 quires that recreation shall not en- 
 croach upon the day set apart for medi- 
 tation, but shall be given an adequate 
 place throughout the six days. Both 
 labour and recreation are incompatible 
 with meditation upon universal principles 
 and duties. Meditation of this order 
 requires the relaxation of the will and 
 the detachment of the heart from all the 
 specific responsibilities and diversions of 
 life. Intuitive insight comes in hours of 
 relaxation even from every effort of 
 thought. Only detachment affords an 
 opportunity for the sub-conscious reservoir 
 
98 COMMENTARY 
 
 of psychic life to rise into conscious- 
 ness and be appropriated for social 
 service. 
 
 But spiritual meditation requires not 
 only that the individual himself shall for 
 a period of hours become detached from 
 the fret and the worry, the ambition 
 and concentration of ordinary life ; it is 
 practically impossible, if all those about 
 one are as busily pursuing recreation and 
 labour as ever. It is easy to rest in the 
 spirit only when everybody else is simi- 
 larly resting. The detachment of those 
 about us makes our own spontaneous. 
 It well may be that it is impossible 
 so to arrange society in modern life 
 as to secure that every human being 
 throughout the nation shall abstain wholly 
 from manual or other specific labour, or 
 from diversion, on the one day in seven set 
 apart for meditation. But the practical 
 implication of the sabbath is that no one 
 shall do anything during those twenty- 
 four hours except it contributes to the 
 sum-total of relaxation from laborious 
 effort. 
 
 Fifth Word. No one who has had an 
 opportunity to compare the domestic 
 
THE TEN WORDS 99 
 
 life of the poorest Jewish with the poorest 
 Gentile families in the slum districts of 
 our modern cities can fail to experience 
 a sense of the advantage which Jewish 
 children possess, in that they inherit the 
 Jewish tradition. This advantage is due 
 to the fact that Judaism required the 
 father to transmit to his children, by 
 word of mouth, the great hygienic and 
 ethical disciplines of the Mosaic polity. 
 
 Nor can anyone who compares the 
 fortune of children of any race born into 
 very poor and illiterate families with 
 those in well-to-do and highly educated 
 ones, fail to realise the dire misfortune 
 of being excluded from the best traditions 
 of a race. When parents are ignorant of 
 the wisest sanitary practices and mental 
 disciplines, the children aje denied the 
 privilege of receiving a thousand valuable 
 influences at that period of life when they 
 are most impressionable and responsive. 
 The full significance of the responsibility 
 of parents to keep in touch with " the high 
 tradition of the world," in order that they 
 may transmit it to their children by word 
 of mouth, cannot be fully realised if we 
 limit the meaning of the phrase simply to 
 
loo COMMENTARY 
 
 its distinctively and more narrowly ethical 
 connotation. That high tradition is a tra- 
 dition in accuracy and mastery of speech, 
 in courtesy and deference of demeanour, 
 in science and art, in the knowledge and 
 practice of a thousand regulations in the 
 care of the body and of the mind, as well 
 as in a strong sense of civic virtue and 
 responsibility. 
 
 Deep social and historic insight was 
 manifested by the Jewish statesmen who 
 connected the honouring of parents with 
 length of days in possession of their 
 national territory. Reverence for an- 
 cestors engenders loyalty and devotion to 
 every object associated with them. While 
 it is not of itself an adequate force to 
 cope with the aggression of mighty 
 empires mad with territorial greed, yet, 
 other things being equal, it can do much 
 in securing possession. It brought the 
 Jews back from Babylon ; and there are 
 men of no mean insight and political 
 training to-day who believe that ulti- 
 mately this honouring of parents will 
 bring the great mass of the Jews them- 
 selves into possession of their ancestral 
 territory, and re-establish them in 
 
THE TEN W o * D s 'ioi 
 
 sovereignty. Certainly, as the sentiment 
 of the fifth commandment spreads through- 
 out the democracies of the modern world, 
 deference for the Jew will, more and more, 
 lead to a desire to restore to him not 
 only political independence, but Zion 
 itself. More and more will it be im- 
 possible for one nation to steal the territory 
 of another. For such theft inflicts a 
 deep spiritual deprivation. 
 
 Sixth Word. The commandment "Thou 
 shalt do no murder," attempts to fortify, 
 from within a man's own soul, the powers 
 which would stay the impulse to commit 
 the extremest attack upon the life of 
 another. But this commandment, taken 
 literally, is not calculated, either logically 
 or psychologically, to prevent those attacks 
 upon bodily or mental life which are short 
 of murder. An infinite amount of injury 
 to the mental energy of others, for example, 
 is inflicted by persons who would never 
 so much as dream of committing murder ; 
 and since bodily and mental life are inter- 
 dependent and inseparable, injury in- 
 flicted upon the mind is as much a 
 desecration of life as injury inflicted upon 
 the body. The causing of any pain, where 
 
io2 ; Co M:M E N T A R Y 
 
 there is no social necessity for inflicting 
 it, is a violation of the spirit which 
 animates the injunction, " Thou shalt do 
 no murder." But if it is not overtly 
 condemned, the commandment will exer- 
 cise scarcely any influence to the checking 
 of it. 
 
 The Jewish form of this commandment 
 also does not, either logically or psycho- 
 logically, involve a condemnation of 
 suicide. Much less does it include a 
 censure of the thousand and one ways 
 in which human beings inflict upon them- 
 selves mental and physical injury or pain, 
 to no good to themselves or the com- 
 munity, or to individuals round about 
 them. Undoubtedly by drunkenness, by 
 excessive indulgence of various instincts, 
 untold misery and weakness and shorten- 
 ing of life are induced. The injunction 
 " Thou shalt do no murder " ought, 
 both logically and psychologically, to be 
 supplemented by another to the effect 
 that no one should do anything to injure 
 his own health, unless the true life of 
 humanity requires such a deed as a 
 sacrifice. 
 
 The humane conscience of our day 
 
THE TEN WORDS 103 
 
 also demands that the life of lower animals 
 shall not be taken unless the good of all 
 requires it. Not only is the life of dumb 
 brutes, other things being equal, to be 
 counted inviolable, but their health, their 
 freedom from pain, and their enjoyment 
 and zest in living out the activities 
 involved in their peculiar constitution, 
 are to be held sacred. The sixth com- 
 mandment, in the form into which I 
 have cast it, condemns murder, suicide, 
 the infliction of mental and physical 
 injury or pain upon oneself, upon any 
 other human being, and upon any dumb 
 animal, unless adequate cause, before 
 conscience, demands it. 
 
 There is a difference of opinion among 
 modern humanists as to the exact 
 motive at the heart of the new sense 
 of the sacredness and rights of the lower 
 animals. Some maintain that the reason 
 why no injury should be inflicted upon 
 them is because such a practice 
 would redound to the injury of 
 mankind, by increasing cruelty or 
 insensitiveness to the sufferings of 
 men. Others maintain that, irrespective 
 of any such remote and indirect injuries 
 
104 COMMENTARY 
 
 to mankind, the infliction of death and 
 pain upon lower animals is wrong. Society, 
 they maintain, as an ethical ideal, includes 
 not simply human beings, but all sentient 
 creatures whose existence and welfare 
 are within man's control. This latter con- 
 ception seems to me the only right, the 
 only organic one. I have, therefore, in 
 the expression " except the good of all 
 shall require it," used in the word " all " 
 a term which would include the !ower 
 animals as well as human beings. Every- 
 thing else being equal, there is no difference 
 morally between depriving any dumb 
 creature of life and happiness, and 
 depriving another human being of them. 
 But the phrase " the good of all," while 
 comprehensive, is not dogmatic in its 
 implication upon this point. 
 
 Seventh Word. As the union of man 
 and woman is not, in the stnct sense, a 
 marriage unless it be legally sanctioned, 
 the commandment " Thou shalt not 
 commit adultery " is purely legal. On 
 this account it is inadequate as a deterrent 
 against the violation of many relations of 
 sex which must be respected if a nation 
 or tribe is to survive and increase in 
 
THE TEN WORDS 105 
 
 mental and physical efficiency. Even 
 the supplementary injunction of the tenth 
 commandment is not adequate. Now 
 that women are becoming free, there is 
 equal occasion to declare, " Thou shalt 
 not covet thy neighbour's husband." Also 
 there are many others besides neigh- 
 bours' wives who should not be desired 
 by married men. Nor is it enough 
 that only married men and women 
 should abstain from such emotional 
 vagaries. Man or woman, married or 
 unmarried, " Thou shalt not so much as 
 desire anyone whom for the sake of the 
 common life thou shouldst not have." But 
 it is neither possible nor desirable that in a 
 formula of instruction on this question 
 there should be anything like a specifica- 
 tion of all the offences which it is necessary 
 to exclude. Nor is there any occasion for 
 such a specification. 
 
 The " Thou shalt not desire thy 
 neighbour's wife " of the tenth command- 
 ment of the Jewish Decalogue at least 
 gives the hint towards constructing a 
 universal rule. By immediately calling 
 attention to the universal principle of 
 inward purity, we should condemn all 
 
io6 COMMENTARY 
 
 possible violations of the outward law. 
 We need, then, only to widen this clause 
 of the tenth commandment. 
 
 Our seventh word, thus universalised 
 and made subjective, addresses itself to 
 women as well as to men, to the unmarried 
 as well as the married. While it selects 
 for overt condemnation only the one act 
 which the old formula forbade, yet, by 
 the universal nature of the inward com- 
 mandment contained in the second clause, 
 it contains implicitly a censure of all the 
 other forms of sex irregularity. Thus are 
 prohibited all that the law of a country 
 condemns, and also the much more which 
 is left to private honour. 
 
 Eighth Word. The commandment 
 " Thou shalt not steal " is, like the 
 seventh, purely a legal one. To steal is 
 to take property that legally belongs to 
 another. But the social conscience of our 
 day, in the spirit of this old commandment, 
 makes a far more sweeping prohibition. 
 The legal injunction " Thou shalt not 
 steal " still holds ; but many persons in 
 modern life who do not steal are accounted 
 by all of us to be as bad as thieves, and 
 some as far worse. Under our laws it is 
 
THE TEN WORDS 107 
 
 possible to get possession of wealth to the 
 injury of thousands of individuals, of the 
 life of the community and of the race. 
 One may legally inherit property which 
 the law ought never to permit one to 
 inherit. The laws ought so to be changed 
 that many forms of taking property would 
 legally become theft. But this is not the 
 whole case : the moral commandment 
 concerning property, its accumulation and 
 control by one person, is of infinitely 
 wider scope and delicacy of application 
 than anything which the laws of the State 
 can ever formulate. It would be the 
 peculiar function of a religious and ethical 
 Decalogue, designed to be taught by 
 parents and teachers and preachers, to 
 supplement the civil and criminal law, 
 and to create an enlightenment and a 
 disposition among the people that would 
 prevent not only violations of positive 
 law, but also violations of those interests 
 of individuals which no legislation could 
 reach. 
 
 Ninth Word. Two of the Jewish com- 
 mandments were aimed against sins of the 
 tongue : " Thou shalt not take the name 
 of the Lord thy God in vain," and "Thou 
 
io8 COMMENTARY 
 
 shalt not bear false witness against thy 
 neighbour." The duties of speech, how- 
 ever, are not exhausted by such injunc- 
 tions ; and it is probable that the states- 
 men who formulated them only meant to 
 strike against the worst violations of love 
 of truth which the tongue could commit. 
 It would, however, enormously advance 
 modern communities if the educators of 
 children, and of adults, could make every 
 individual as clearly conscious of the 
 claims of society upon kindness and 
 truthfulness in speech as the Jews were 
 made by their prophets concerning the 
 heinousness of false witness in a court of 
 justice. 
 
 Terribly prevalent is the omission to 
 say what we ought to say. A thousand 
 motives lead to it : cowardice, self-interest, 
 vanity, conventional exclusiveness, and 
 etiquette. Not only do we omit to 
 communicate information concerning facts 
 that would be of value to others ; the 
 progress of the world is still more retarded 
 by our failure to communicate to others 
 our own subjective convictions and sur- 
 mises as to truth, our own principles and 
 judgments. The democratic watchword 
 
THE TEN WORDS 109 
 
 " freedom of speech " by no means 
 adequately characterises the demands of 
 the best men and women to-day as regards 
 the ethics of the tongue. It is not so 
 much the freedom as the duty of speech 
 that must be insisted upon. Nor is mere 
 abstention from telling lies concerning 
 facts and concerning our private con- 
 victions by any means our whole 
 duty. Our silences although no one be 
 deceived, because no one draws any 
 inferences at all may be as sinful as the 
 most malicious lie. What is more, we 
 need enlightenment as to the relation of 
 the law of truth in words to the law of 
 kindness in words. A man shall not 
 escape condemnation simply because all 
 he says is true to fact and to his inward 
 conviction. He must make clear to his 
 own conscience, or that of anyone who is 
 to sit in judgment, that the communication 
 of that truth or that conviction upon that 
 special occasion was at all events not 
 fraught with the infliction of unnecessary 
 pain and discouragement. Was it best for 
 the social life, or at least not detrimental 
 to it, that he should have communicated 
 that truth or that praise or blame ? 
 
no COMMENTARY 
 
 Tenth Word. In the Jewish Decalogue, 
 the tenth commandment devotes many 
 words to the specification of the various 
 items of one's neighbour's property 
 which one should not covet. In that age 
 there may have been occasion for such 
 specification ; but to-day the command- 
 ment would be adequate if it simply read, 
 " Thou shalt not covet anything which 
 another owns." Such a condensation, 
 moreover, leaves space for a supple- 
 mentary injunction vitally akin to that 
 against coveting one's neighbour's goods, 
 and in our age requiring to be reiterated. 
 
 The prohibition against coveting that 
 which others own is evidently directed 
 towards persons who do not own some- 
 thing which they would like to possess. 
 But a state of mind very akin to covetous- 
 ness often exists among those who own in 
 superabundance that which others need. 
 They cling to that which they legally 
 possess, although it is patent, to all whose 
 minds are not blinded by self-interest, 
 that it would be far better for the com- 
 munity and for humanity at large if there 
 was no such accumulation of property in 
 the hands of any one individual person. If 
 
THE TEN WORDS in 
 
 the most enlightened conscience of our 
 day is saying anything at all, it is a word 
 to the rich ; and in substance it is this : 
 " Thou shalt not so much as desire to 
 get or keep anything which it were best 
 for the community that others should 
 possess." It is, no doubt, terribly wicked 
 for those who possess no land and no 
 capital to covet any fraction of the enor- 
 mous wealth of millionaires ; but it is far 
 more to the interest of humanity that the 
 subtle and disguised form of covetousness 
 which fights to acquire or retain much 
 more than it needs of this world's goods 
 should be rooted out of the human breast. 
 
VI. THE OLD FORMS UNIVERSALISED 
 
 In the foregoing pages I have more than 
 once spoken of bringing the Decalogue 
 and the Litany up to date. But the 
 essence of the adaptations here made is 
 not the modernising of the old. That, at 
 most, is only incidental. My task has 
 rather been to universalise both the 
 Decalogue and the Litany, by removing 
 all supernaturalistic elements and all 
 Christo-centric tendencies, and by in- 
 troducing supplementary features. I have 
 removed the ancient Hebrew colouring 
 from the Ten Commandments, and have 
 replaced the Roman and mediaeval 
 features of the Litany by worldwide and 
 enduring lineaments. In its dead letter, 
 the Litany is Christo-centric ; in the word- 
 ing here suggested, it has its centre in the 
 God-point of beneficent energy at the heart 
 
OLD FORMS UNIVERSALISED 113 
 
 of every human being. If the Litany, in the 
 wording I propose, be no longer Christian, 
 yet there is nothing anti-Christian in it ; 
 and it is non-Christian only in the sense 
 that it includes more than Christianity, 
 and is not tied to the transient elements 
 of traditional dogma or to the pre-scientific 
 discipline of the spirit. It seems to me 
 that I may claim for the adaptations I 
 have made, that they do not destroy 
 either the Jewish or the Christian spirit, 
 but fulfil them ; and do so by transcending 
 the old letter. In origin, the Decalogue is 
 Jewish and the Litany Roman Catholic ; 
 and both, as commonly interpreted, 
 involve supernaturalistic implications ; but 
 in virtue of their social utility, and of our 
 right to give them an evolutionary and 
 ethical interpretation, they are in destiny 
 universally human. My adaptations, in- 
 stead of obscuring the inmost meaning and 
 beauty of the old documents, illuminate 
 what in them had been obscured. 
 
 In my version of the Decalogue, 
 there is no pre-eminence given to the 
 Jewish people, and it is therefore 
 possible for citizens of any nation to 
 introduce special references to their own 
 
114 COMMENTARY 
 
 institutions and development. The 
 Litany, by ceasing to be Christo-centric, 
 will become immediately welcome, for 
 example, to Buddhists or Shintoists, 
 because it does not require them first to 
 attach themselves intellectually to the 
 Christian symbols. 
 
 My attempt to adapt an ancient Jewish 
 and an early Christian document so as to 
 make them of moral utility for all human 
 beings, of whatever nation, should not be 
 interpreted as implying on my part any 
 preference for ancient Christian and 
 Jewish documents as compared with the 
 materials furnished by the other religions 
 of the world. So far, however, as I am 
 acquainted with the writings of ancient 
 Egypt and Assyria, of India, China, and 
 other peoples of the East, there seem to 
 me to be in them no summaries of human 
 wisdom and duty comparable either 
 to the Decalogue or the Litany. But even 
 if these ancient Jewish and Christian 
 documents, when brought into accord with 
 science and humanism, should always 
 remain pre-eminent, that is no reason 
 why we should not appropriate materials 
 furnished by the Oriental religions. 
 
OLD FORMS UNIVERSALISED 115 
 
 Furthermore, as I have already in- 
 dicated, there is no occasion for limiting 
 future rites to mere adaptations of old 
 materials. We may expect original poets 
 and prophets to create for the expression 
 of ethical passion and insight forms 
 which have no precedent or analogy in 
 the religious literatures of the past. 
 
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