A Plea for the Ten Commandments.
“At the present day, the ten commandments are having a hard time of it,” suggested a friend recently. It was an odd way of putting it, but the idea is important, and worth considering. Are these old mandates obsolete? Have the tables of the law become fossils? Is it to be deemed a piece of old fogyism to regulate our conduct by the ten commandments? That young America does not like these antiquated leading strings is sufficiently patent. Money and Fashion and Pleasure are very popular divinities, foisted idolatrously into the place where the first commandment puts the living Jehovah. The good, old precept about honoring father and mother is tabooed utterly in many home circles. The Sabbath is kept holy after a very queer sort of keeping, and in a way that reveals the vaguest and loosest notions of sanctity. “Thou shalt not kill,” as interpreted in the New Testament, finds many violators of whom our laws take no cognizance. And “Thou shalt not bear false witness,” is conveniently ignored by many who would be shocked if their Christian integrity were to be directly questioned. Would it not be well to give these commandments a little more airing in our papers and pulpits? Do they not need re-exposition and practical enforcement? Surely their observance has a very close connection with piety. Indeed, piety is out of the question, without faithful and constant effort to observe them. Yet we fear there are multitudes of professed Christians who have little conception of the binding obligations of the commandments, and are utterly unaware how “exceeding broad” they are. Take this matter of bearing false witness. How fearfully prevalent it is in society. Downright falsehoods—deliberately uttered lies—embrace not a tithe of the violations of this law of God. Truth withheld is sometimes a worse deception than a direct misstatement. The essence of a lie is not in what is said, but in the intent to deceive. Lying hearts are just as much an abomination to God as lying lips. We may be liars, when every word uttered is the exact truth. We may be liars, and yet say nothing. A look may be a lie. Silence may be a lie. If we make false impressions, with intent to deceive, purposing to deceive, we are guilty of falsehood. Yet think what trickery, what guises, what shams, what pretense, what withholdings of truth, what flippant misrepresentations, what so-called “white lies,” there are in the world! As if a lie could be washed to purity because it concerns a trifle? All lies are as black as the devil, who is the father of them. All liars, unless penitent and forgiven, shall have their part with him who first deceived the woman in Eden. Yes; let us ventilate these old commandments. They are serviceable yet. If they are “having a hard time of it” in these days, let us see to it that their claims are more faithfully pressed to the conscience and the heart, and they doubtless will be given greater heed. The “go-easy” piety, that makes profession of faith and love, without obedience, is of the garnished and sepulcher sort, full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness. Send the ten commandments sweeping down through our hearts and lives, and many of us might feel, to our hurt and healing, the force of their strong, broad negatives.—American Presbyterian.