Turning from the first table of the covenant with its upward look, to the second table with its outward look, we find that each new requirement in its order stands for a great principle which is applicable alike to all peoples and to all times, and which has its basis in man's loving union with God. The first of this series, the sixth of the ten requirements, is: "Thou shalt not kill;" or, "Thou shalt do no murder." Here is a great deal more than an ordinance forbidding the striking down to death of a fellow-man. Here is a call of God to guard sacredly the life of every child of God, as that which is dear to God. In the Oriental world, as in the primitive world generally, blood stands for life, and life is supposed to proceed from God and to return to God. When, therefore, an Oriental is told that he must not take it upon himself to shed another's blood, he realizes that that prohibition is equivalent to saying that it is not for him todecide when a life that God has given shall be recalled to God.
This idea it is that runs through the whole system of what is popularly known as "blood revenge" in the East. "Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man,"[278]was the declaration of God as early as the days of Noah; and it is in the line of that declaration that any man in the East who sheds another's blood must surrender his own blood to the other's family, at the present day—as ever since the days of Noah. Not personal revenge, but divine equity, is the real basis of this system. Not because the life belongs to the man, but because it belongs to God, must it be guarded sacredly, and be accounted for—if taken away.
It is on this principle that the civil magistrate, as the messenger of God, takes the life of one who has taken another's life, in these days of the Christian dispensation. "He beareth not the sword in vain: for he is a minister of God, an avenger for wrath to him that doeth evil."[279]A child of God must count sacred every life which God has given; and except while acting as a specific messenger of God, he must never send back a human life to God.
The seventh covenanting requirement is a call to regard the family institution as an institution of God's appointing, and to refrain from aught that tends to its injury. "Thou shalt not commit adultery" means a great deal more than Refrain from unchastity because of its harm to yourself or to your neighbor. It means, Guard God's primal institution for man, as an institution which God holds dear. At the very beginning of the race, it was ordained of God that one man and one woman—the twain, not the three, or the four, but the twain—should be one flesh in loving union.[280]This institution of God's ordaining is dear to God, and it ought to be dear to every child of his; therefore God says to those who would be in loving compact with him, "Thou shalt not commit adultery." Because your and my interests are made one, you must not, you cannot, as my loving people, do aught that shall prove injurious to the family—to the institution which I have established, and which is dear to my heart.
This, again, is not an arbitrary commandment; nor is it one for a single period, or for a single people only. It is the enunciation of a principle which is vital to the well-being of all peoples at all times. It was so from the beginning, and it must be so unto theend. The family is the unit in the State and in the Church. It must not be ignored in the realm of society, of government, or of religion. He who would be true to God must be true to the institution of the family. And who shall say that we have no need of remembering this truth in our land and day?
The eighth requirement of the covenant guards the rights of property as within the plan and ordering of God. "Thou shalt not steal" is announced as an article of the loving compact of God's people with their God. Not merely because your fellow-man would object to your taking his property from him, but because the rights of property are of divine appointment, are you to refrain from claiming as your own that which now belongs to another.
This idea of regarding property rights as of God's appointment is peculiarly prevalent in the Oriental mind. The lines of tribal division in the desert are recognized as having divine sanction; and now, as in the days of old, it is hardly less than sacrilege to remove an ancient landmark in the East. Tribes which are at enmity will make raids across these border lines for purposes of plunder; but this is in the nature of what "civilized" nations call a "military necessity." Again, a stranger who enters a tribal domain without obtaining consent is treated as a smuggler, and all hisproperty is confiscated accordingly. This, however, merely shows the primitive origin of the "high tariff" principle. Orientals who plunder from their enemies, or who collect impost duties from immigrants, do so in the belief that God sanctions these habits of the ages.
When one of the Arabs of our party, in crossing the desert of Sinai, found he had dropped a bag of meal, he went back to look for it, in perfect confidence that it would be left untouched by others. On my asking him if he had no fear that another Arab had carried it off, he replied that no Arab would steal from an Arab. Dr. Edward Robinson[281]saw a black tent hanging on a tree, where, as he was told, it had remained a full year awaiting its owner's return; and he says that if a loaded camel dies on the desert its owner draws a circle in the sand about it, and leaves it without any fear that it will be disturbed in his absence. Burckhardt[282]illustrates the estimate put by the Arabs on stealing, by the story of an Arab father who bound his own son hand and foot, and cast him headlong to death from a precipice, because the son had stolen from one of his tribal fellows. Life can only be taken at the call of God; but, according to thisOriental view, he who violates the property rights of one of God's children forfeits his very life to God.
The principle underlying this estimate of the sacredness of property rights, like every other principle enunciated in the Decalogue, is not an outgrowth of an arbitrary commandment, but it inheres in the very nature of God's dealings with the sons of men. What hast thou that thou didst not receive by God's consent?[283]What has thy fellow that he did not receive by the same permission? It is God who gives. It is for God to take away.[284]No loving child of God will refuse to heed the limits which his Father has assigned in the distribution of his possessions among the children of his love. That was the way in which the Orientals were taught to look at it. That is the way in which we ought to view it. Anti-property communism is rebellion against God.
Ninth in the list of the covenant requirements comes the summons to hold in sacred regard the personal reputation, or good name, of every child of God. "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor" is a prohibition of slander, or of careless speech affecting the good name of one's fellow-man. This is not, as many have supposed, a mere injunction to truthful speech on all occasions. Lying needs nospecific prohibition in a loving compact between God and his people; although the duty of truthfulness is inseparable from the thought of any compact with God—who could not be God if he were to approve untruthfulness.[285]But a disregard by man of the reputation of his fellow-man does need to be guarded against in such a compact; therefore its mention has a place here. A child's good name is always dear to his father. He who loves and honors the father will not be heedless of the reputation of the child. God is the Father of all. The good name of every one of his children is dear to him. He who loves and honors God will not be careless of the reputation of any one of God's dear children. Therefore it is that, in the loving covenant of God with his people, it is declared that love for God includes a truthful fidelity to the good name of every child of God.
How the application of this principle comes home to us in our social life as God's children! We are jealous of the good name of the members of our own families. We are tender of the reputation of those whom we know to be very dear to our dearest friends. But how careless we are of the good name of those in whom we feel no special concern, or of the reputation of those who happen to be personally disagreeable tous! We hear and repeat the words spoken to their discredit without knowing whether or not those words are true. By our unguarded speech or looks we help, perhaps, to give a false impression to others concerning them. And all the while they are God's dear children, and every spiteful or thoughtless blow at them is a stroke at him. Is this consistent with our claim of loving union with their God and ours?
It was in the line of this principle that our Lord Jesus gave emphasis to his one new commandment, that those who loved him should love one another, as being dear to him;[286]and, again, that he declared that whoever ministered tenderly to one of his disciples should be reckoned as ministering to himself.[287]God links himself in loving sympathy with all his children, and he wants their welfare to be held dear by all who hold him dear.
And now we come to the tenth and last of the requirements of this covenant. Here we find an injunction that goes deeper than those which precede it on the second tablet of the written compact. "Thou shalt not covet." Not only, Thou shalt not openly disregard human life, or the family institution, or the property or the reputation of any one of thy fellows; but, Thou shalt not want to do any of these things.Thou shalt recognize thine own lot, and thy possessions, and the lot and the possessions of others, as God's assignment to thee and to them; and thou shalt be contented within the sphere which he has deemed best for thee.
This requirement in the second table of the compact corresponds with the third requirement in the first table. The one says that the child of God must be sincere and unfeigned in his loving devotedness to God as his Father; the other says that the child of God must accept in all heartiness his Father's ordering concerning himself, in his relations to all his brothers and sisters in the great family of God.
Here it is that we find the more spiritual teachings of the Decalogue concerning man's obligations to his fellow-man in the loving service of God, as they are pointed out, and emphasized in the words of Jesus, in what we call the Sermon on the Mount.[288]Here it is that the lesson comes home to us that it is not enough for us to refrain from actual murder and adultery and theft and false witnessing; but that it is inconsistent with our devotedness to God as our loving Father for us to have a hateful thought toward one of his dear children; for us to look longingly in the direction of another family assignment than that which is ours inthe way of God's appointment; for us to turn a wistful or an envious thought toward any possession of another which we have no right to seek after. And all this is not of God's arbitrary commanding, but is in the very essence of God's loving covenanting with his chosen people. Therefore it is that the Apostle urges Christians to keep themselves from "fornication, uncleanness, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, the which isidolatry;"[289]the indulging in which is being untrue to God as one's covenant God.
And now in the light of these disclosures of the nature and meaning of the successive clauses of this covenant of God with his Oriental people, let us look back upon it as a whole in its spirit and teachings, in order that we may see what is covered by it, and wherein its applications are for us as well as for God's people of old. God must be recognized as God alone. No heart can love God as God, unless that heart loves God wholly. God must be worshiped spiritually; for spiritual things are spiritually discerned, and only as a man is lifted above sight and sense can he be in communion with the spiritual and the infinite. Union with God must be sincere and unfeigned; for only by a complete and willing surrender of one'sself can one's self be merged into a holy and infinite Personality. The loving worship of God must have its stated times, and hence, of course, its stated places, in order to have its fitting hold on the worshiper; and the recognition of this truth in the covenant is the authorization of all legitimate seasons and methods of worship. God's representatives in the family, in the State, and in the Church, are to be honored as God's representatives; and herein is the authorization of all right forms of human rule. These are the teachings of the first table of the covenant; and those of the second table are like unto them.
He who loves God must love those who are God's. As the Apostle expresses it: "If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, cannot love God whom he hath not seen. And [therefore] this [second] commandment have we from him, that he who loveth God love his brother also."[290]Every child of man is a child of God. Wayward and prodigal son though he be, he still is one who was made in the image of God; and his Father's heart goes out toward him unfailingly in love. Hence he who loves the Father must guard with sacredness the life of every child of that Father. He must honor theinstitution of the family, which is the human hope of the children of that Father. He must hold dear the property possessions and the good name of each and every child of that Father. And in his heart there must be such love for that Father's children as the children of his Father, that he will have no wish to do aught that shall harm any one of them in any degree.
Thus it is that the spirit and substance of the entire covenant compact stand out in those words of our Lord which lose their meaning if we look at the Ten Commandments as ten arbitrary commandings of God. When a certain lawyer came to Jesus with the knotty question, "Master, which is the great commandment in the law?" Jesus said unto him: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second like unto it is this, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hangeth the whole law, and the prophets."[291]And thus it is that we are enabled to realize that "love ... is the fulfilment of the law."[292]
The "Ten Commandments" are the law, the law of the covenant of love; but, be it remembered, theyare not the "Mosaic law." They were not originated by Moses; nor were they done away with when the Mosaic law was fulfilled and abrogated in Christ. They are the law of the promptings of love; an orderly statement of the principles which rule in a heart which is devoted to God. Their origin is in the nature of God; and their continuance must be coexistent with the needs of the children of God. With all our shortcomings in love, and with all our failures in fidelity to our covenant-union with God in Christ Jesus, just so far as we are in oneness with God by faith shall we be true to the principles of this covenant-compact of God with his people. "God is love; and he that abideth in love abideth in God, and God abideth in him."[293]"And hereby know we that we know him, if we keep his commandments."[294]