THE TEN COMMANDMENTS

Publishing Committee · ROCHESTER, N. Y. · Sep 20, 1853

THE TEN COMMANDMENTS.

When God gave the law at Sinai, he spoke ten precepts to all the people, "with a great voice; and he added no more; and he wrote them in two tables of stone," and delivered them to Moses.—Deut. v, 22. This is pre-eminently and emphatically THE LAW OF GOD. This is the supreme law of right—a law founded in the nature of things, and naturally binding, with the exception, if you please, of the fourth commandment, on the whole human race. This law embodies every principle of right between man and man, and between man and his Maker, and yet it may be resolved again into two principles—love to God, and love to man—and on these two hang all the law and the prophets. This law, being the basis of every law of right, might be called the constitution by which God governs the world. And yet Christians of the nineteenth century impiously talk of God's revised constitution—comparing the ways of God to those of men! Christians, I say, for if God had no people in Babylon, he could not say, come out of her my people.

This is the law of which Christ spoke when he said, [Matt. v, 17,] "Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets; I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill. Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall by no means pass from the law, till all be fulfilled." All what? All the prophets had said. It was the prophecies which were to be fulfilled. I know of no way to fulfill a law, but to keep it inviolate; and to keep a law does not put an end to it.

It was this law of which Paul spoke, Anno Domini 60, when he said, "By the law is (not was) the knowledge of sin;" and "I had not known sin, but by the law; for I had not known unlawful desire, unless the law had said, Thou shalt not covet."—Rom. iii, 20; vii, 7.

It was this law of which James spoke, about the sixteenth year of the Christian era, when he said, "Whoever shall keep the whole law, and yet stumble in one point, he is guilty (not was guilty) in respect to all. For he who said, Do not commit adultery, said also, Do not kill." And it may be truly added, He who said do not kill, said also, "Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy." John referred to the same law when he said, A. D. 90, "Sin is (not was) the transgression of the law." If transgression of the law was sin, Anno Domini 90, what is it now?

The truth is, my dear brethren, Jehovah has always had one standard of morality and only one; and a violation of this standard of right, always was, and always will be, sin. What change then took place at the introduction of the new dispensation?—Not a change of that law by the transgression of which all men are sinners; but a change in the outward acts by which we come to God for remission of sins. For example: from the days of Abel to the coming of the Lord, men were required to acknowledge their faith in the promised Messiah by the shedding of blood, which pointed forward to the sacrifice of Christ. Now we are required to show our faith in a crucified and risen Saviour, by being baptized into his death. Changes similar to this are all that Jehovah made; man has made the rest.

THE FIRST TABLE.

The first four of the ten commandments contain our duty to God alone—duties which naturally grow out of our relation to God, the universal Father.

1. "Thou shalt have no other gods before me."

2. "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, Thou shalt not bow down to them, nor serve them." We are not, in deed, to admit the existence of another god.

3. "Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain." We must not speak the name of Jehovah but with the utmost reverence.

4. "Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy." We must acknowledge, in deed, that God is the Maker of the world and all its inhabitants. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day, and hallowed it." Here, then, at the creation, God erected a monument sacred to the memory of the Creator.

We talk of moral and positive precepts; but who, brethren, shall decide which of the above four has the most morality about it?

THE SABBATH HAS ALWAYS KEPT GOOD COMPANY.

It is a common saying that a man is known by the company he keeps. If he associates with good, respectable company, he is considered respectable; but if he chooses vicious and dissolute companions, he must bear their character.

God, instead of associating the Sabbath with Jewish ordinances, which pointed to Christ, and were abolished by his death, placed it in company with nine moral precepts, which are, in the nature of things, obligatory on every son and daughter of Adam. This was not done without some good reason. If I were asked the reason, I would humbly suggest, that the Sabbath was of a nature entirely different from Jewish rites, having neither beginning nor ending together with them. And that its obligation is as universal and unlimited as that of its nine companions. Brethren, I repeat it, there was a reason for this; and I insist upon your giving me a reason, coinciding with your views of the Sabbath being done away, or that you admit that I have given the true one. O, thou short-lived Jewish institution! How didst thou contrive to forsake thy fellows, and to ingratiate thyself into the very midst of an immortal company? Thou ordinance which was against us, which was contrary to us! By what foul means didst thou induce our Saviour to say, thou wast made for us? Thou Beggarly Element to which the Galatians, who were idolaters before their conversion, desired AGAIN to be in bondage! What infinite trouble and perplexity hast thou, by thy intrusion, caused the priesthood! But for thee, the dissecting-knife need never have been applied to God's law—that law, which, in the words of an apostle, "is spiritual—is holy, just and good." How many of my beloved brethren have, by thy means, been induced to attempt to dash in pieces God's law—by the use of Paul's comparison between the minister of the law, and the ministers of the gospel, [2 Cor. iii,] and thus to leave God without a law, while they might pick up the pieces, selecting the nine and rejecting thee!

My dear brethren, how has the Sabbath been slandered by the lovers of God and his truth!

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