Keeping the Commandments.
By S. P. Bollman
THE moral law (of which the ten commandments are a summary) comprises all the duty we owe to God, whom we are to love with all our heart, soul, strength, and mind; and also the duty we owe to man, in loving our neighbor as ourselves. Eccl. 12:13. The intimate connection which exists between vital piety and the keeping of God's commandments is clearly seen by taking the ten precepts separately, and thus making manifest the intimate relation each one sustains to the development of a perfect Christian character. Let us examine some of them. We analyze the first: "Thou shalt have no other gods before me." This requires a complete concentration of every adoring faculty possessed by man, upon the only proper object of worship—the living God. The second commandment intensifies the first, by prohibiting the worship of any other god, either real or imaginary, by any image or similitude whatever. And the third still further guards against any irreverence in the worship of the true God, or any profanity in the every-day walks of life. The fourth is, we might say, the seal of the law; because it alone defines the true God, showing that the Lawgiver is none other than the God of Heaven, the Creator of all things. The last six precepts cover every possible relation and obligation which can exist between man and man; the whole justifying the declaration of the psalmist: "The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul." True piety, then, is an aggregation of all that results from the keeping of the commandments of God. The purpose of every renewed heart is to keep the commandments. The purpose of every Christian is to "walk in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless." How absurd, then, to assert that the decalogue is abrogated, nailed to the cross, taken out of the way—only intended for, and given to, the Jews, and is not obligatory in the gospel dispensation! Heaven and earth shall sooner pass away than that one jot or one tittle of God's law should fail. The Saviour came to fulfill this law (which he did by keeping the commandments, John 15:10); and to magnify it (which he did by showing that it takes cognizance, not only of outward acts, but of the thoughts and intents of the heart. Matt. 5:21, 22, 27, 28). And in this same path of obedience must all his disciples walk, honoring the same law, and keeping the same commandments. Then will they be prepared to realize the grand consummation spoken of in Rev. 22:14: "Blessed are they that do his commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city."