The Ten Laws: A foundation for human society

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I. The Ten Laws 3

II. The Ten Laws 15

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I.

Thou knowest the commandments. — Luke xviii. 20.

THE ten laws, known to us as the ten commandments, found in the twentieth chapter of Exodus, are very old. When Columbus discovered America, in 1492, they were very old. When William the Conqueror began his Norman invasion of England, they were very old. When J ulius Caesar landed on British shores, they were very old. When Christ spoke to this young man, they were very old. When Eome was founded, more than seven centuries before Christ, these ten commandments were still very old. In early Grecian times, when Solon wrote his laws, these commandments were venerable with age. They were ancient laws when given by Moses. We must go back to primitive times, when Assyria and Babylon were young, when Egypt and China were framing their laws, and Abram was living in Ur of the Chaldees, to come anywhere near the early morning of human history in which these ten laws were written. They were written

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on the human heart. They began with man, or are coeval with man, as laws of his beingo

These ten laws are very new. They belong to our own times. We have but to lay our ears against the solid rocks of the earth, or lift up our eyes to the glowing stars in the sky, and we shall hear murmuring among the rocks, and chiming among the heavenly spheres, a voice which says, " Thou shalt have no other gods before me ; thou shalt not bow down to them, nor serve them." We have but to consider the sun, coming forth as a bridegroom from his chamber, and the moon, in her appointed seasons, in order to " remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy." We have but to look at man in his home, in the State, and in society to be conscious of a still, small voice whispering to us, " Honor thy father and thy mother; thou shalt not kill; thou shalt not steal ; thou shalt not commit adultery ; thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor." These are very new. They concern us to-day and belong to these times as much as though written yesterday. Without them the world could not exist, and men would be but savage animals.

Fragments, echoes, and traditions of these ten laws are to be found in all countries and among all nations. Wherever they came from and however they came, it is certain that they have come,

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and that many nations have portions of them. It is necessary to refer only to the Buddhist decalogue. The ten laws of Buddha are as follows : 1. Not to kill; 2. Not to steal; 3. Not to commit adultery ; 4. Not to lie ; 5. Not to get intoxicated ; 6. To abstain from unseasonable meals ; 7. To abstain from public spectacles ; 8. To abstain from expensive dresses ; 9. Not to have a large bed ; 10. Not to receive silver or gold. One of two things is evident, — either these teachers in other lands had learned something from Moses, or the same voice which spoke to him spoke also to them.

Does not the same voice speak to all of us ? Are there not echoes in each soul, as well as among the nations, of the ten words heard from Sinai ? These words belong to life. They express life. They make life possible, and are the solid foundations upon which all good and true and happy living rests. They are written on tables of stone ; on the rocks beneath our feet, and among the stars over our heads. They are written on the leaves of creation, and worked into the very structure of social order and human existence. Without them there would be anarchy and a reign of terror. They keep the earth wholesome.

We are not obliged to go to a book to find them. There is indeed a book, — an authorized

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edition of them, — upon which we cannot, however, print, as publishers sometimes do, on the titlepages of their books, "All rights reserved," for they are also written elsewhere ; in many places, The covenant made long ago — " I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts " — is fulfilled. No man can diligently consider his own heart and conscience without finding written there, more or less legibly, these divine and changeless laws.

" God is not dumb, that he should speak no more; If thou hast wanderings in the wilderness And find'st not Sinai, 't is thy soul is poor ; There towers the mountain of the voice, no less, Which whoso seeks shall find ; but he who bends, Intent on manna still, and mortal ends, Sees it not, neither hears its thundered lore."

God is always speaking to us, in language which can easily be understood. He is speaking out of our own hearts ; out of the structure of society ; even out of the tissues and organs of the physical body, and making the air we breathe a vocal utterance of his eternal mind and will. A Greek poet has finely said that "laws are neither of to-day nor yesterday, but live forever, since immemorial time."

These ten laws are an abstract and summary of human conduct and righteousness. Whoso dashes himself against them is dashed to pieces.

It is idle to talk of their passing away. When they pass away, the heavens and the earth will pass away. Only as they are revered, observed, and obeyed, can there be social order, national stability, domestic happiness, or individual peace and prosperity.

That some stupendous natural or national convulsion attended the giving of these laws it is almost impossible to doubt. The impression left upon Jewish thought, which expressed itself ages afterwards in their literature through poets and prophets, can be accounted for only on the supposition that some awful scene was witnessed by the nation from the foot of their sacred mountain. The rocks of Sinai shook and trembled; flames flashed from its summit ; a thick black drapery of moving clouds and darkness veiled it from head to foot, while from out of the darkness came a sound as of the voice of God speaking to them, and filling their hearts with terror, as the reverberating thunder-peals broke again and again over their camp, and rolled far away into the desert.

But the law that was given is more important than the convulsion which accompanied its giving. The divine rule which regulates human life does not depend upon the nature of a tornado, which raged and swept round the crags of Sinai. To believe and obey the moral law is better than to know the mysteries of a shaking mountain and a naming sky. We accept these ten words of God, not because of a natural convulsion which happened ages ago on the other side of the sea, but because we find them written in our minds and on our hearts, and bearing the unmistakable stamp of a divine origin.

In the deep peace which comes to a mourner's breast ; in the sharp pang of an aroused conscience, which gnaws like a deathless worm ; in the glare of conviction, which, like a lightning flash, makes all our sins suddenly visible ; and in the sweet, holy calm of repentance and forgiveness, — we hear again, and more impressively, the voice of God, which speaks to us and says, Thou shalt have no other gods before me ; thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image ; remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy ; honor thy father and mother; kill not; steal not; commit no adultery, and speak no false witness against thy neighbor.

Whatever is to be said about the agitation of a mountain, this much about the moral law is to be said with Eichard Hooker : " Of law there can be no less acknowledged than that her seat is the bosom of God, her voice the harmony of the world. All things in heaven and earth do her homage, the very least as feeling her care, and the greatest as not exempted from her power.

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Both angels and men, and creatures of what condition soever, each in different sort and measure, yet all with uniform consent, admitting her as the mother of their peace and joy."

As God is everywhere, so law is everywhere. We can never escape from her presence, though we go up into heaven, or down into hell, or out into the uttermost parts of the sea. She is " omnipresent like the Deity." We can never think too much, nor remind ourselves too often, that God's moral law is not an afterthought, a statutory enactment or decree coming from God and the councils of heaven, but that it is the created nature of things, a principle or mode of existence wrought at first into the creature by the Creator. It is written, not alone on the pages of a book, but also, and first, on the fleshly tables of the human heart. It is built into the physical frame of the human race.

When God built the heavens and the earth, he did not shape worlds and suns and planets like toys, string them together in orders and systems, and then afterward make the law of gravitation, according to which they were to move in orbits ; but the law of gravitation was made when the worlds were made, and was made in the worlds, a part of the worlds, and was an attribute or quality of matter, out of which worlds are formed. So when he made man, he did not

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fashion him without laws or modes of being, and then write a code of laws for him ; but he fashioned him with laws and modes of being. These laws are in himself. Every one of the commandments is in man, and finds its justification in man's constitution.

The difference between physical law and moral law, the law of planets and the law of reasoning men, is, that men can break away from their laws and worlds cannot. If worlds and planets could break away from their laws, there would be confusion and destruction in the skies, and because men have broken away from their laws, there is sin, misery, and death in the world. In so far as men kill and steal, and bear false witness, and fail to honor their fathers and mothers, and set up for themselves false gods, they fail to be men, and fail to live as they were meant to live, or according to the laws written upon their own hearts and consciences.

All these laws are reducible to one. There is but one law, and that law is the law of love. Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and soul and mind and strength, and thy neighbor as thyself. As light, heat, and motion are only different modes of some one unknown force, so all the ten laws are only special forms of the one great law of love. Hence it is exactly true, as James says, if we offend in one point, we

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are guilty of all. If I steal from my neighbor, I have broken the law of love, as certainly as though I had killed him. The ten laws are one law. They are ten links in one chain, and when one link is broken, the chain is broken.

One leak is enough to sink a vessel. One stone taken from an arch ruins the arch, and one wilful trespass against my brother breaks the whole law of love to my brother.

The law is broad. It reaches every sin. Nothing escapes it. It has to do with action. We say that God looks on the heart, and so he does, but he looks also on the hand. He knows what the hand is doing, and he cares what the hand is doing. The law of God is a law for the hand and the foot and the tongue and the eye. It is a law for every member. It goes deep. It reaches the thoughts and intents of the heart. It is like a sword piercing to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit.

Human law pauses on the (Jeed, and ought to, but divine law goes to the quick, and searches motives. A malicious feeling is not so bad as a malicious action, but it is bad and is judged by the law. An envious and evil spirit is not so bad as envious and evil conduct, but it is still bad, and is judged by the law. The Jews said, Thou shalt not kill, and whosoever shall kill shall be in danger of the judgment ; but Christ said,

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" Whosoever is angry with his brother without cause shall be in danger of the judgment."

Divine law is supreme. It admits no rival, makes no concession, tolerates no deviation from the line and the plummet. Fathers, mothers, magistrates, and civil authorities are to be obeyed until they set themselves against God and right. Then we must refuse to obey, and take the consequences, — refuse to bow down to the golden images which they have set up, even at the risk of being cast into the burning fiery furnace. There is no choice. The law of God is supreme. Because God is greater than man, wiser than man, better than man, he must be obeyed rather than man.

The law of righteousness is as unyielding as granite. You can break it, but you cannot bend it. It makes no concessions or compromises, and accepts nothing short of perfect obedience. It could not remain a perfect law, and at the same time lower its standard, for then it would cease to be perfect. It can abate no jot or tittle.

This law works well. It makes those who keep it happy and healthy. It is wholesome law. It is the harmony of the world. Those who depart from it have sorrow and misery. Those who keep it have joy and happiness. The way of the transgressor is hard. In the keeping of the law there is great reward. There is perfect happiness in heaven, because all love and obey the law; there is perfect misery in hell, because all hate and despise the law. To obey is heaven; to disobey is hell.

If the fact that a law works well is proof of its wisdom and goodness, then we have conclusive demonstration of the wisdom and goodness of the divine moral law, for it always works well. It is the inexhaustible fountain of goodness and strength.

In a single word, this law is love, "All's love, and all's law," — love to God and man. The law is not a terror, but a rapture. There is as much love in the ten commandments as in the Sermon on the Mount. A father is as kind when he bids his child keep out of the fire as when he welcomes him into the shelter and sympathy of home. The same voice speaks from Sinai and Calvary. The same hand that wrote on the tables of stone was nailed to the cross, — the hand of love. There is not one of the ten commandments which does not forbid men harming themselves or others. There is not one of them which is not most kind and benevolent. They enjoin the things we ought to do, and prohibit the things we ought not to do. He who loves his neighbor, will neither steal from him, nor traduce him, nor kill him, nor dishonor him, nor swear away his property, or life, or liberty.

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Love is the fulfilling of the law. Love teaches a man to delight in doing everything which the law requires.

This law does not advise us, but commands us. It says "thou shalt " and "thou shalt not." It is not a curiosity. It is not for speculation and theory, but it is to be obeyed and practised. It can never become obsolete till man becomes obsolete. It is the law of life. By taking heed thereto, a young man can cleanse his way.

We should teach these laws to our children, and know them ourselves. When the decalogue was given, God said, "And these words which I command thee this day shall be in thy heart. And thou shalt teach them diligently to thy children ; and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thy house, and when thou walkest by the way ; when thou liest down and when thou risest up." Children so taught and trained in the holy law shall have a divine blessing resting upon them, both coming in and going out ; their days shall be long in the land.

II. The Ten Laws

Thou knowest the commandments. — Luke xviii. 20.

WE have seen that these ten laws are very old ; that they are very new ; that fragments and echoes of them are found among all nations; that they are a summary of good and righteous conduct in man ; that they are in force everywhere and always ; that they are broad, supreme, reducible to one, and that they work well. We have also seen that they are organic, structural, or constitutional in man, being engraved on his original substance, as the law of gravitation is impressed upon matter, an indestructible property of matter. Only as man obeys them can he be happy, or himself.

We now observe that, though these ten laws are organic, and written upon man's original substance when it was formed in the lowest parts of earth, nevertheless they are at first, and in infancy, dormant, latent, — an invisible writing upon the soul. A certain kind of ink which used to be called " sympathetic ink " makes no visible

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mark on the paper. Words traced with it are not seen till the paper has been held before a tire, and the color of the ink drawn ont by the action of heat. The ten laws are written with invisible ink on the tables of the human heart, and need outward law to waken and quicken the inward law.

Very young children, just emerging from babyhood, do not know that it is wrong to steal or bear false witness. A little child takes what is not his own with no guilty look upon his face, and no guilty feeling in his heart. He does not yet know what is his own and what is not his own. There is within him only the possibility of knowing, the preparation for knowing, when the time has come, and an exciting cause begins to act. The law, — " Thou shalt not steal," — although it exists as an organic germ or possibility in that child's heart, has not yet been developed or brought out into consciousness by the action of an authority external to itself. The parent has to teach that child and awaken within it dormant moral sense, which assents to the law as soon as it is heard and understood, for it finds an echo of the law within its own breast.

The conscience of that child answers to the law of honesty as face answers to face, as the air answers to the wing of the bird, or the water to the fin of the fish. " When thou saidst, Seek ye

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my face, my heart said unto thee, Thy face, Lord, will I seek." The heart is a mirror that reflects God's law. It is seemingly a blank page, but really a page written all over with invisible characters.

It may be thought an objection to this view that certain nations — and nations by no means barbarous and uncultivated — have held and taught, as duties, actions of a very different or opposite character. Thus Greek youth were taught that it was virtuous to steal ; and we ask how can it be possible that the law against stealing is organic, if a whole cultivated nation could hold that stealing was virtuous ? It was not, however, stealing that was commended, but only the adroitness in stealing which was able to avoid detection. The law was there like a distorted feature, seen in an imperfect, uneven mirror.

It must never be forgotten that the moral sense of our race has been distorted and disturbed by sin. Man is often only a caricature of himself. He seems what he is not, and seems not what he is. The idea of duty is obscured and degraded. Actual distortion proves intended symmetry. He who obeys the moral law will find a transcript of it in his own soul. The writing may be blurred and blotted by sin and evil, but it can be restored by submitting it to the light and heat of

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God's perfect law. Eevelation assists man to recover the lost art of righteous living. It reveals man to himself. It restores the vanished ideal of moral rectitude, and finally finds the exact counterpart of itself in the perfected man.

" What is a mere parental rule without reason to the child of five years must, through the child's obedience to it, shine in its own light, and carry its own authority, by the time the child is fifteen ; and in the same way ancient laws, which at first were obeyed only because it was believed God gave them, are at last seen to be so right and good that they would still be obeyed if the divine and supernatural sanction were obscured or withdrawn."

To use one other illustration : in the same way that the power of speech is latent in man, and needs the excitement of spoken words to become vocal utterance, so the law within needs to be warmed, quickened, and made alive by the law without. The child hears its mother say " mamma" and begins itself to say "mamma," going through all the upward steps and stops to the full, varied speech of Milton or Shakespeare ; but the power of speech was there before it had been summoned forth into consciousness and action. So man hears God's law, " Thou shalt not steal, or kill, or commit adultery," and his soul responds,

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"Thou shalt not steal, or kill, or commit adultery. " The inward law, that was dead, is made alive by the outward law when it is declared.

As there is a possible chicken in the egg, so soon as it is laid, which must be warmed and incubated into an actual chicken, so there is a possible perfect and upright man in every child born into the world, which must be warmed and incubated into an actual perfect and upright man, by the quickening power and process of parental, social, and divine influence. Man is thus a social product.

All man's inward faculties are developed by action upon them from without. Physical faculties are developed in the gymnasium ; mental faculties are developed in the school; moral faculties are developed in the study and practice of moral law.

Those who most revere human nature seek constantly to foster and promote the moral qualities in that nature by the exercise of discipline and restraint. The whole business of preachers, teachers, parents, and reformers is to cherish, brood over, and stimulate the unformed capacity in man to know right from wrong; to seek right and avoid wrong, to love right and hate' wrong. This is done by training. Parents tell their children not to steal or lie. They punish them for doing so. They put an accent of suffering

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upon disobedience. These ten words are a first revelation of moral law which grows to the obedient soul clearer and clearer, till it shines with the authority and beauty of heaven itself.

It is a misfortune to the times if this moral law in domestic training has been relaxed. If parents no longer claim and exercise wisely and seriously the natural, inalienable right to govern their children, it is a calamity. " There was a theory/' so says a most excellent preacher of our own times, " promulgated early in this century, which taught that a child's own conscience and reason should be regarded as a sufficient rule of his conduct, and that a parent of forty should never require a baby of four to do anything which the baby itself did not recognize as expedient and right. It is doubtful whether anybody was ever foolish enough to try how the theory would work, but it is certain that there is a general indisposition or inability to assert and maintain parental authority."

Children, so neglected and abused by those who should protect and cherish them, will perhaps never know the majesty and beauty of God's blessed, righteous law. They will later feel its pressure. They will later come under its power. They will later revere its supreme and august authority. New laws will not avail. Old laws amended will not help them. Nothing will help

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them but a return to the eternal law, both new and old, of righteousness as summed up in the great commandment. Having obeyed these ten commandments, they will learn more and more perfectly, year by year, that righteousness is not righteousness merely because commanded, although everything God commands is right ; that sin is not sin because forbidden, but forbidden because it is sin ; that everything God forbids is sinful ; and that these laws, written on tables of stone, were indelibly written creation morning, on tables of the human heart.

The ten laws were given to be kept. This may seem a truism, almost a trivial truism; but no man can be ignorant of the fact that many religious people nowadays say, almost as a matter of course, that the commandments of God were given to convict us of sins, to bring us to a sense of guilt, and to make us aware of our need of divine help and forgiveness. That the laws of God do have such an effect, and were intended to have such an effect, cannot be questioned, but neither ought it to be questioned that they were given in good faith, that they are wholesome salutary, necessary laws, and were given in order that they might be obeyed carefully and constantly. We are to walk in the way of his commandments ; to keep them and do them.

The children of Israel were required to keep

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them and do them. They were not to have false gods, nor to make graven images, nor to work on the Sabbath, nor to kill or steal or commit adultery. The ten laws command obedience, expect obedience, and will enforce obedience with visited penalty. Christ released no man from the commandments. He came himself to do them, and he has taught us that those who love him will keep his commandments and his Father's commandments. We are not to evade them nor invalidate them on some fanciful ground or pretext that the gospel frees us from the sacred obligation of law. They were given to be kept.

There is an opposite error, — that they were given for rude, barbarous people, people low down in the social scale ; that they may be needed in the slums, and among the offscouring, but that they are not needed among religious and spiritual people. They are indeed not needed among these people just in so far as they have come to be unconsciously and invariably obeyed. It is not necessary to tell a man that he must do what he always wants to do. The law ceases to be law only when it has become habit, or so much a part of man that he obeys without knowing it. In that way he is indeed freed from the law by coming perfectly under the law.

We are not therefore to despise what is called

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" common morality," or to suppose that the laws requiring this morality are only for barbarous and degraded people; they are for all. None are beneath their notice, and none are exempted from their power. The most spiritually minded man is the man who most gladly runs in the way of God's commandments, and takes delight in them as the laws of God, which are holy, just, and good. When they cease to be a shackle, they become a golden ornament. The chains that once dragged their heavy, weary weight on the limbs become wings bearing up the whole body, and helping the redeemed immortal to run without being weary, and to walk without fainting. Great reward and blessedness have those who keep the commandments to do them. " More to be desired are they than gold, yea, than much fine gold: sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb. Moreover by them is thy servant warned : and in keeping of them there is great reward."

These ten laws are not easy to keep, or rather, perhaps I should say, one of them is not easy to keep. If you ask which one of them is not easy to keep, I shall decline to tell you which one of them is not easy for me to keep, and shall not think it necessary or proper to ask which one of them is not easy for you to keep. For every man there is one not easy to keep ; it troubles him more than all the rest.