1. The Ten Commandments form but a very small part of the Law; but they are the part which concerns us far the most. The other precepts are rules for the guidance of a particular people at a particular time. After a while many of them seem to have dropped into disuse: the people, in fact, outgrew them; they lost their original use, and became a mere burden too heavy to bear. But at first they were needed. When a people is in a young, unformed state, above all when it is so disorderly and wilful as the children of Israel were in those days, nothing could serve but stiff rules to be obeyed, going even into the lesser matters of life. The laws given by Moses were chiefly intended to enforce just and merciful dealings among themselves, to keep them separate, as a people set apart to God, from the idol-worshipping and foully immoral nations around them, and in a great many different ways to lay down rules for the outward service of God. The people were not to invent for themselves ways of doing Him homage which they should be apt to regard as bribes to His majesty. They had simply to do as they were bid, to offer to Him just what He commanded to be offered. But it was in offerings that their worship was chiefly to consist. Public prayer, such as makes up the greater part of our worship, was as yet unknown. They approached God through sacrifice. To yield up to Him a portion of the good things He had given them, to acknowledge in this practical way that they owed all to Him-this was the natural religious service of men who as yet had far more to do with acts than with words; and the spirit of that service remains the very Christian spirit. When we never tire of calling upon God to give, while we grudge every self-denial on our part for His sake, we are making no advance on the religion of those ancient Jews, we are but moving away from all true religion of any kind.
Has the first voice of Sinai ever lost its cosmopolitan ring? Have its commands ever become merely national? “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God”-is that national; is it not the voice to humanity? “Thou shalt not make any graven image”-is that national; is it not the ignoring of all physical limits? “Honour thy father and thy mother”-is that national; are not the ties of family universal? “Thou shalt not kill”-is that national; is not life everywhere dear? “Thou shalt not steal”-is that national; are not possessions everywhere precious? “Thou shalt not bear false witness”-is that national; have not all lands sought the secret of truth? Even the command to keep a day of rest, seemingly the most local of all the Decalogue precepts, is based upon no national observance-no Jewish holiday, no patriotic anniversary, no commemoration of a people's triumph. It is based upon the fact of creation, on the constitution of Nature itself, on that design of the world which makes all things one, “Remember the Sabbath Day to keep it holy, for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth.” Such universalism is grand-in the old world it is unique. It can belong only to a race which has in it the consciousness and the conscience of humanity-a race which feels within its veins not merely its native blood, but the blood of all ages and the heart of all climes. Such a race had a right to its Messianic aspirations.1 [Note: G. Matheson, The Representative Men of the Bible, i. 214.]
2. The Mosaic laws have become the starting-point of all religious systems and of all true civilization, and only from their promulgation dates the diffusion of a genuine monotheism, a purely internal morality and a sound enlightenment. They form a decisive epoch in the history of the human race, and are, therefore, perhaps the greatest and most important event in universal history. In a simple and condensed, yet extremely emphatic, form, equally impressive for every degree and manner of intellectual culture, a complete system of duties is comprised, which man owes to his Creator and his fellow-men; and so comprehensive is the purport of these words that already from the earliest times the whole sum of the Divine precepts has been considered to be included in them as in an embryo, so that all the other laws are to be regarded only as the development or detailed elaboration of these words, wherefore they are by Hebrew tradition justly called the “fundamentals of faith.”
While the law on stone is written,
Stone-like is the mighty word;
We with chilling awe are smitten,
Though the word is Thine, O Lord.
Firm it is as mountains old,
As their snowy summits cold.
Stone-like, too, on each offender
Broken laws may heavy fall,
And with crushing vengeance render
One a terror unto all:
Struck themselves, in enmity,
Ireful sparks may from them fly.
Lord, Thou hast the law re-written,
Where we may untrembling read;
We with tender awe are smitten,
As we see the Saviour bleed,-
Bleed in His obedient love,
Hope and zeal in us to move.
From His heart the law is shining,
Heart-like is its every word;
We who in the cold were pining,
Of the sunny warmth have heard:
From the rocks we feared would crush
At His touch sweet waters gush.
Honoured be the name of Jesus,
Who for us obedient stood;
Faith in Him from fear will ease us,
Love to Him will make us good:
When the law in love is shown,
Hearts we have instead of stone.1 [Note: T. T. Lynch, The Rivulet.]
