THE NINTH COMMANDMENT

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, Cal. · Nov 24, 1887

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 13, No. 45.

THE NINTH COMMANDMENT.

INVIOLATE truth is the corner-stone of the universe. If God be not what he declares himself to be, he cannot be God. That the laws of nature may be depended upon; that our own consciousness is not mendacious; that the conditions of belief are not false guides—these lie at the foundation of all our thinking and feeling and well-being. There is something, therefore, not only awfully sacred, but something which lies between man and chaos, in the obligations of truth. With such emphasis is the fact that one may almost condone the offense of those who put morality really above religion, with whom truth takes chief and central place in morality. There was a touch of the sublime in that attitude of the “liberal” theologians in our land of the early part of the century, who pushed moral virtue to the front of all the relations of man to God and insisted that to live a pure life, and to be true in speech and conduct, was more than all the whole burnt-offerings and sacrifices of whatsoever issue or dogma. And the history of the past fifty years has often borne shining witness to the benignant wholesomeness of that exalted and inflexible integrity which such men have exhibited in private life and in all public relations.

The ninth commandment especially forbids all forms of detraction—from its most flagrant manifestation in the shape of lying testimony in a court of justice, down to the

hasty utterance of what is not known to be true, to the harm of another, and the malicious misinterpretation of acts or speech which, in reality, are in no way open to the insinuated censure.

A sound theologian has well said that "in condemning all speaking ill of our neighbor, the Scriptures condemn a suspicious temper, a disposition to impute bad motives, and an unwillingness to believe that men are sincere and honest in the avowal of their principles and aims—the opposite of that charity which thinketh no evil, which believeth all things, and hopeth all things."—Congregationalist.