THE FIFTH COMMANDMENT. "Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee."-- Exodus 20:12. This commandment forms a kind of bridge between the first table and the second. Obedience to parents is not merely a neighbourly virtue; we do not... [ Continue Reading ]
THE SIXTH COMMANDMENT. "Thou shalt do no murder."-- Exodus 20:13. We have now clearly passed to the consideration of man's duty to his fellow-man, as a part of his duty to his Maker. It is no longer as holding a divinely appointed relation to us, but simply as he is a man, that we are bidden to re... [ Continue Reading ]
THE SEVENTH COMMANDMENT. "Thou shalt not commit adultery."-- Exodus 20:14. This commandment follows very obviously from even the rudest principle of justice to our neighbour. It is among those that St. Paul enumerates as "briefly comprehended in this saying, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thysel... [ Continue Reading ]
THE EIGHTH COMMANDMENT. "Thou shalt not steal."-- Exodus 20:15. There is no commandment against which human ingenuity has brought more evasions to bear than this. Property itself is theft, says the communist. "It is no grave sin," says the Roman text-book, "to steal in moderation"; and this is defi... [ Continue Reading ]
THE NINTH COMMANDMENT. "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour."-- Exodus 20:16. St. James called the tongue a world of iniquity. And against its lawlessness, which inflames the whole course of nature, each table of the law contains a warning. For it is equally ready to profane th... [ Continue Reading ]
THE TENTH COMMANDMENT. "Thou shalt not covet... anything that is his."-- Exodus 20:17. It will be remembered that the order of the catalogue of objects of desire is different in Exodus and in Deuteronomy. In the latter "thy neighbour's wife" is first, as of supreme importance; and therefore it has... [ Continue Reading ]
THE LESSER LAW. Exodus 20:18 - Exodus 23:33. With the close of the Decalogue and its universal obligations, we approach a brief code of laws, purely Hebrew, but of the deepest moral interest, confessed by hostile criticism to bear every mark of a remote antiquity, and distinctly severed from what... [ Continue Reading ]
PART I.--THE LAW OF WORSHIP. Exodus 20:22. It is no vain repetition that this code begins by reasserting the supremacy of the one God. That principle underlies all the law, and must be carried into every part of it. And it is now enforced by a new sanction,--"Ye yourselves have seen that I have tal... [ Continue Reading ]