"THE DECADENCE OF THE DECALOGUE."
By Editor
THE above is the heading of an editorial article in the New York Observer of September 10, which opens thus:— The Ten Commandments have never been popular. If the Decalogue had ever at any period in history been submitted to public suffrage it would have been rejected by a decided majority. All the people would not have said, "Amen!" to it. The Decalogue is too inclusive, insistent, imperative for the average man. There has always existed in the human heart a repugnance to legalistic searchings. The impulse is to run from the glare of Sinaitic burnings, and to take refuge in the dark depths of a cavernous oblivion. . . . There are not wanting many evidences of a decadence of the Decalogue. Whatever limitations and failures may have characterized the religious teachings of half a hundred years ago, it certainly can not be asserted that "the old theology" failed in faithfulness to the cardinal doctrines of morality. Youth was grounded in the fear of God, and ingrained with the words and temper of the moral law. But that contemporaneously with the coming of more "genial" and congenial styles of teaching (in and out of the pulpit), there has lapsed in many quarters the habit of insistence upon the fundamental moralities of life as these are tersely expressed in the Ten Commandments, can not, we fear, be successfully disproved. . . . And the point may well be raised whether in America at the present day there is not a lamentable lack in many homes and institutions of definite and insistent teaching as to the rudimental requirements of the essential moral law of God which changes not from age to age, tho the prophet's voice has long since ceased to speak from rugged Sinai. (Italics ours.) So much concerning the condition of things as regards the people's respect for the Decalogue and its influence upon them now. The Observer, however, we are glad to know, does not believe in this setting aside of the Decalogue. It continues:— We do not mean by this, of course, to imply that the Ten Commandments can be extinguished, however neglected. The decadence of the Decalogue is not its discontinuance. The guarantees of morality in the character of God himself, are impossible of destruction at the hands of men. The Observer then speaks of the "many millions . . . who are doing all they can to postpone the millennium, if not to make it altogether impossible." It refers to the souls unsaved, and the sad facts presented in the increase of criminals, and thus concludes:— The Ten Commandments appear to have little meaning for large numbers of our people. Defalcations, trickeries in trade, repudiation of debts, public and private, to say nothing of the long list of crimes due to intemperance as a primary cause, and the depravities of vice, all attest the deplorable consequences of failing to generally enforce the principles of those Ten great Words which God spake solemnly on Sinai, and which he has never yet recalled. All this is true in a general way. Let us kindly call the attention of our Christian brethren of every denomination to a specific cause of "the decadence of the Decalogue." We do not do this in the way of censure or condemnation, but by way of appeal. The Decalogue, "which God spake solemnly on Sinai, and which he has never recalled," expressly enjoins: "Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy." That we may know to what day this applies, it clearly declares: "The seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God." See Ex. 20:8-10. That this means the seventh day of the week is evident from Matt. 28:1; Mark 16:1, 2; Luke 23:56; 24:1. Granting this, as it seems to us every honest person must, what must be the effect upon the people generally concerning the other precepts of the Decalogue, when professed ministers of Christ, teachers of truth, and preachers of the Gospel, openly teach and contend that God did not mean what he said when he enjoined, "Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy," and declared, "The seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God"? If the Lord does not mean what he says, when he declares that "the seventh day is the Sabbath," does he mean what he says when he declares in the same document, "Thou shalt not steal," "Thou shalt not kill," "Thou shalt not commit adultery"? Is not the Fourth Commandment as much the word of God as the Sixth, or Seventh, or Eighth? When the recognized teachers of religion and morality show by teaching and practice that the Fourth Commandment has little meaning, why should his trusted hearers think otherwise with respect to the Seventh or Eighth? These are solemn facts and questions. Is it not to this very thing that Inspiration refers in connection with the prediction of the great and dread second coming of "our God" (Ps. 50:1-3), when it says:— "What hast thou to do to declare my statutes, or that thou shouldest take my covenant in thy mouth? Seeing thou hatest instruction, and castest my words behind thee. When thou sawest a thief, then thou consentedest with him, and hast been partaker with adulterers. Thou givest thy mouth to evil, and thy tongue frameth deceit." Verses 16-19. If one teaches that it is right to kill, that is, to transgress the Sixth Commandment, is he not a partaker with adulterers, those who transgress the Seventh Word? Does not the same principle hold true of the Sabbath commandment as well? Did not the same God that spoke one speak all? Truly he did. And he declares to all who transgress his eternal law:— "These things hast thou done, and I kept silence; thou thoughtest that I was altogether such an one as thyself, but I will reprove thee, and set them in order before thine eyes. Now consider this, ye that forget God, lest I tear you in pieces, and there be none to deliver." Verses 21, 22. Would to God there was loyalty to him in every respect on the part of all his professed followers, then would they be a power for morality in the world. "Ye are my friends," says Jesus Christ, "if ye do whatsoever I command you." "Why call ye me Lord, Lord, and do not the things that I say?"