THAT is what a Michigan prelate, Bishop Williams of the American Episcopal Church, proposes. Here is his revised code as given in a news despatch, dated Detroit, February 18:
1 — Thou shalt not have any other gods before Me.
2 — Thou shalt not make unto thyself any graven image, nor the likeness of anything that is in the heavens above nor in the earth beneath nor in the waters under the earth; thou shalt not bow down to them nor worship them.
3 — Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord in vain.
4 — Remember that thou keep holy the Sabbath day.
5, 6, 7, 8, 9 — Unchanged.
10 — Thou shalt not covet.
And here are his reasons stated in the same despatch:
"I don't believe there is any person nowadays who believes the Lord created the heavens and earth in six days," said the bishop, "and that is my reason for favoring an abridgment of the fourth commandment. If the American Episcopal Church should take up the matter of abridging the Decalogue, I would be in favor of abridging the first, second, third, fourth, and tenth commandments. The others are short enough."
In the first place, the fourth commandment does not say, "In six days the Lord CREATED the heavens and the earth," but, "In six days the Lord MADE the heavens and the earth." It is well to hold to the exact terms, yet the word implies creative force,—energy and power. From chaos God called in six days the cosmos of a finished world, and peopled it with life. In reference to its very masterpiece it is recorded that "God CREATED man in His own image, in the image of God CREATED He him; male and female CREATED He them." Gen. 1:27. The devil does not care if men worship something called God; they may worship many gods if they desire. The devil will help them to multiply conceptions of God; but the arch-enemy of man has ever tried to hide from earth's masses, groping for light, God the Creator. The devil will say to his apostles: "Let the dying soul believe in the god of evolution, the god of pantheism, the god of a thousand philosophies. Teach them of great Marduk, of a hundred Baals, of Jupiter, and his father Saturn, of Bacchus, of Venus, of Mars, of Apollo, of Plutus, of Mammon, of the whole world's pantheon. Teach them there is no sin. Say to them, 'Ye shall not die; ye shall be as God.' But by every device, every hypothesis, every theory of science, philosophy, and theology, hide from them God, the Creator."
How well the prince of demons has accomplished his task among the lovers of sin and death! But the saddest of all is that he, the devil, is finding his strongest spokesmen, teachers, heralds, apostles, among the professed children of the living God who creates. The hypothesis — it is only that — of evolution, held as hallowed creed of human exaltation, has made it necessary to eliminate God the Creator from the first chapter of Genesis, to eliminate Genesis itself, to eliminate the moral law, because the moral law knows, nay, it came from, the living God, the Creator. Deuteronomy teaches the same thing; therefore Deuteronomy must go, notwithstanding that it was endorsed three several times by our Lord Jesus Christ on the Mount of Temptation. Isaiah speaks of Him who "created the heavens, the God that formed the earth and made it," that "created man upon it." In unparalleled sublimity of thought he directs our eyes to the star-sprinkled vault of heaven with its countless wheeling, whirling, shining orbs, and exalts the Holy One "who hath created these, that bringeth out their host by number," "the everlasting God, Jehovah, the Creator of the ends of the earth." Therefore Isaiah must go.
THE SPIRIT OF HIGHER CRITICISM: And what remains of the Bible, Beloved, is divinely inspired.
Why the devil's enmity to God's creative power? why the efforts of his emissaries to take the thought of God's creatorship from the world, and exalt the wisdom of man? — It is all answered in one sentence: Lost man's only hope is in God's creative power. Evolution at its best promises hope only in the long, indefinite ages, and slow, toilsome change, often downward. The Gospel of the living God proclaims a Saviour who can create and re-create, generate and regenerate, form and reform. "The Gospel . . . is the POWER OF GOD UNTO SALVATION." Jeremiah appeals to the idolatrous, sin-loving Israelite to turn to "the true God," "the living God," "an everlasting King," who "made the earth by His power," and "established the world by His wisdom, and by His understanding hath He stretched out the heavens." See Jer. 10: 10-12. God, through Isaiah, would comfort His people by placing man's glory in the dust and exalting "the everlasting God, Jehovah, the Creator of the ends of the earth." He "fainteth not, neither is weary; there is no searching of His understanding. He giveth power to the faint; and to him that hath no might He increaseth strength." Would Paul turn the Lycaonians from the false gods they worshiped to the true? — He points them to the "living God, who made the heaven and the earth and the sea, and all that in them is," as the hope of salvation. Acts 14:15. When at Athens, the center of earth's great pantheon of gods, the great apostle preached the "God that made the world and all things therein," the "Lord of heaven and earth," who "is not far from each one of us." See Acts 17: 24-27. God's last great threefold message for these days, now going to the world, has for its great positive proclamation "the everlasting Gospel" with its needed burden for these times of infidelity: "Fear God, and give Him glory; for the hour of His judgment is come: and worship HIM that MADE THE HEAVEN AND THE EARTH and sea and fountains of waters." Rev. 14: 6, 7.
Why? — Because creative power alone can save the soul. "If any man is in Christ, he is a new creature [margin, "there is a new CREATION"]." 2 Cor. 5: 17. He is "CREATED in Christ Jesus for good works." Eph. 2: 10. He has "put on the new man, that after God hath been CREATED in righteousness and holiness of truth." Eph. 4: 24.
Thus the great truth permeates the entire Book. Rejected in Exodus, it must be rejected in Ephesians; rejected in Genesis, it must be rejected in the Revelation. It means the rejection of the Bible and the rejection of its Gospel. It takes away the last hope of the wretched. It sends the sinner dying with his leprosy of iniquity to a heathen philosophy which never saved or comforted.
Therefore the fourth commandment is set aside, and therefore God's Sabbath, by which His "wonderful works" are "to be remembered" (Ps. 111: 4), God's Sabbath, the SIGN of His eternal CREATORSHIP (Ex. 20: 8-11), the PLEDGE of His POWER to SAVE (Eze. 20: 12, 20), is set aside, and in its place has been erected a human sabbath, supported by human law.
O friend, God is Creator and Re-creator. He can touch your leprosy of sin, and cleanse you as of old "immediately." He can speak to the sin-deadened powers within you, and by His life they will live. Worship Him, hope in Him.
