THE COMMANDMENTS.—PART 1.
By A. C. Spicer
Further Conclusions from the Foregoing.
I. A careful study of Exodus has reinforced the following impressions and matured them into convictions:— 1. That in Eden during the primitive days of man God gave to him a complete system of religion adapted to his nature and relations as a moral and worshiping being, and gave to him His moral law substantially as afterward developed in the ten definite precepts, in terms adapted to his then existing condition and relations, need and comprehension, as the fundamental law of God’s moral government and that upon which that system of religion was based. 2. That primitively and before the fall of the race by sin, that was a religion of holiness—of righteousness—which pertained to character and implied character to be developed in complete harmony with, and in entire conformity to, that holy moral law and the Divine pleasure as a condition precedent to the rewards by which that law and the on-laying system of religion were sanctioned. 3. That among the blessings promised for holiness of character and life, the highest was immortality. 4. That primitively, purity and innocence were inherent in man’s nature; but not so holiness or immortality. Holiness implied character; and immortality, eternal life, was to be a reward or gift bestowed upon the holy. But character implied development, and development implied activities and tests. 5. But on call to dutiful activities and the application of tests of obedience, man, who was permitted to exercise the essential prerogatives of choice and freedom, failed of obedience, transgressed the rule of holiness,—the holy law of God,—forfeited his claim to, or the promise of, eternal life, and hence was pronounced a sinner, driven from the garden of purity and innocence and from the presence of Holiness, shut out from access to the tree of life, and consigned to mortality, without one ray of light reaching over beyond the grave to light up the future to him, and without one hope beyond this life. 6. That thereupon, a mutual friend to God and man interceded with the Father in man’s behalf, proffered his services as mediator, promised his best efforts—even139his life—to reconcile man to his Maker, restore him to obedience and induce him to retrieve the character lost, so that he might be permitted to live again and share in the blessings of immortality. 7. That as this mutual friend was no less a personage than the Son of God, and hence was equal to the undertaking, the Father accepted the proffer of mediation, and the Son undertook the great work, and in council with the Father adopted a plan of salvation, a scheme at once equitable to God, honoring his authority and law, and appreciably merciful and beneficent to man, upon which to redeem and save all who would accept of salvation and eternal life through him upon such divine plan. 8. That that scheme adopted did fully respect the authority and law of God as rightful ruler of all, and did aim to bring man back from heart alienation from God to respect, love, and honor him, and to obedience to his rightful and just authority and law as the only possible condition for the attainment unto holiness, which alone would render eternal life a blessing and therefore desirable; and that hence that scheme included the offer of himself a sacrifice for sin to die to redeem man from the death to which he had been consigned as a just penalty for his transgression, and the offer again of eternal life upon condition, as before, of willing, cheerful, and implicit obedience to the commandments of God, the Divine will, and the pleasure of his interceding Son, with this element added,—faith. That was faith in the Infinite Father as the all-wise and omnipotent Creator and Upholder of all things and hence the rightful Ruler of all; faith in his word as truth and in his justice, goodness, love and mercy; faith in his law as just and right, and in all his providences as conceived in wisdom, justice, and love, and ordered by unerring judgment; and faith in his interceding Son,—faith that he is in possession of the entire confidence and love of the Father, and of the Father’s co-operation in his mission of mercy; faith in his infinite love and friendship for man, in his pleasure and ability to fulfill all his promises; faith in the plan of salvation and in the power of the Son to conquer the tempting enemy of man and all opposing antagonisms, and finally to unlock the grave and restore man to life and to all the concomitant blessings of immortality. And such faith possessed and implicitly exercised, inasmuch as man by sin had lost the ability of ever attaining unto absolute holiness of character, was to be “accounted to him for righteousness.” 9. Thenceforward the most prominent characteristic of the “pure and undefiled religion” of the race has been faith, and it has been termed a religion of faith; but it is one of faith unto obedience, “obedience unto righteousness,” and “righteousness unto holiness.” 10. Then it was needful that that adopted plan of redemption with all its conditions and requirements upon man should be taught him, that he should be fully and definitely instructed therein, that he might have faith in it and in Him whom he was asked to believe in, to trust, and obey. Hence, as an expedient means or appliance to that end, according to the almost universal method of instructing by symbols, in those early days, a method of instruction was adopted requiring sacrificial, symbolic offerings to be made by the penitent and confessing child of faith, typical of the great sacrifice promised to be offered for sin in the fullness of time; and man was by it early taught that plan of redemption, and was systematically disciplined to represent his faith by those typical offerings, as is evident from the sacrifices offered by Cain, Abel, Noah, Abraham, &c. 11. Nevertheless, though that scheme provided for the redemption of man by the atoning blood of the Son of God, for his salvation by grace through faith, to be consummated in the resurrection morn when that Son should “appear the second time without sin unto salvation,” still it required the same implicit obedience to God’s moral law as was required before man’s sin. Indeed, the whole object and aim of the system of instruction adopted, with all its agencies of grace, seem to have been to discipline to the faith above indicated, ’tis true; but that discipline was for the primary purpose of leading man back from his disobedience and sin to obedience again as the essential condition precedent to the enjoyment of immortality; and hence all the temporary instructing and disciplining agencies consisting of covenants, ordinances, offering of typical sacrifices, and other ceremonies, with the laws prescribing and regulating them, were all adopted with the same object, were all secondary and limited, and based upon the universal moral law as primary. Evidence of this appears all along in this history, but is more definitely set forth in connection with the Abrahamic covenant, with the tests and proofs of the obedience of the Israelites recorded in Ex. 16 and 19, and as appears very conclusively in Ex. 20 where that law is so formally and impressively rehearsed and so authoritatively and emphatically commanded. Always and everywhere honor and obedience to the commandments of the moral law seem clearly to have been required as a condition together with faith, upon which grace and immortality were offered. To win rebellious man to faith and then through repentance back to obedience and imputed holiness, by the love of the Father manifested in the gift of his Son to suffer and die to ransom a rebellious race, and by the love of the Son manifested by the commanding and constraining example of an earth-life of disinterested love and beneficent sacrifice and the final laying down of his own life for man, seems to have been the object and method of the plan adopted. 12. It appears evident that the object of the choice of Israel and of their separation from the world as a peculiar people, of their early instruction, severe discipline in Egypt and during the forty years in the wilderness and again in Canaan, was to develop faith and to discipline to obedience to that law which had been ordained unto life, but which, transgressed, had “slain the transgressor,” hence to which man must be again reconciled and made subject, that in the keeping of it he might by grace, through faith, find that lost life again. It was doubtless with the same object that the peculiar theocratic system of civil government was instituted, by God, for Israel, based on the moral law and applying the principles of those several precepts to their civil relations while in the promised land. That was also the object of requiring of Israel the strictest possible conformity to the moral law, and the most rigid compliance with those civil statutes and with the laws of types and ordinances. Faith, then, instead of releasing its subject from obedience to the commandments of God, has for its very object to lead man back from his rebellious wanderings to entire obedience to God’s holy law and pleasure. II. These studies also reinforce and mature into a conviction of certainty the following conclusions:— 1. That those precepts of the decalogue are wholly moral; that they are complete and perfect as a law of holiness, providing for all relations, commanding all duties and protecting all virtues, forbidding all trespasses and prohibiting all vices and crimes; that they are universal being applicable in substance to all men everywhere; and that they are perpetual being founded in the nature and need of moral intelligences and in the obligations arising out of their relations to each other and to their Creator, and hence must continue as long as those intelligences and relations exist. This conclusion applies equally to the fourth commandment and as emphatically to it as to either of the others. 2. That the Sabbath and marriage were institutions of the primary condition of human innocence and purity and hence of the religion of holiness, ordained and given to man in Eden and before man’s transgression, with their regulating and protecting laws, and that as such those institutions and laws could not have been affected by man’s sin, or by any temporary, prudential arrangements adopted in the plan of redemption, or in the means for instruction under, or subject to, that scheme. However much man’s disposition toward those institutions of holiness and their appropriate laws might have been affected by sin, still the institutions themselves must have remained unimpaired and unchanged. No more could any subsequent changes or modifications of those temporary expedients for instruction and discipline, whether of ordinances and types or the laws thereof, affect those primary and antecedent institutions of holiness. Such changes might affect man’s respect for them, or his appliances and methods of honoring them, but not the institutions or laws thereof themselves. Those were based in moral necessities arising from moral conditions and relations in a state of purity and innocence and admitting and anticipating a condition of holiness; and their necessity was only enhanced by transgression and consequent state of and tendency to sin. Hence those holy institutions, with their essential laws, must exist and claim the respect of man as long as man exists subject to those relations and needs. 3. That neither the Sabbath nor marriage derived their origin nor any sacredness from the precepts which command obedience in respect to them. This would be true even if it were a fact that those precepts were never known till given from Mt. Sinai. Those institutions are each older than their respective precepts; they were not ordained for the precepts, but their respective commandments were ordained for them, to order and regulate man’s conduct in relation to them and to protect them. Hence, though those precepts might be blotted out, those holy institutions would remain. Even though, in the absence of the precepts, they might not be respected or honored, yet there they would remain, like a forsaken and neglected monument or temple, and even as would the sun and moon remain and shine on, though we might pluck out our eyes so as not to behold them. Disregard of those holy laws could no more blot them out than disregard of the laws of health and life could blot out the laws of health and life. Again, the expiration by limitation or even the abolition of any one, or of all, of those added, temporary, and limited covenants, ordinances, and types, with the law or laws thereof, could no more affect those institutions of holiness or the moral law in any respect, than the expiration of a temporary, local, military or police regulation or of some temporary church or society organization, or the abolition of some provisional session law of this State, could therefore blot out all the primary and fundamental institutions of freedom and light and religion and civilization in our land, and annul the constitution of our general government. A. C. Spicer.