The Pulpit Commentary — Genesis — Section 38

but by tho very finger of God. It is emphatically said by Moses of the lnw Urn$ gi,en, '' And he added no more." 31. ,~hat then were these ten solemn words proclaimed to the chosen nntion by the ,oice of God with such awful testimonies of his dreadful presence and almighty power? Simple enough they !leem to men now. They are indeed nothing else than those elementary principles of religious and morn! duty,-which, ns we hnve seen, nre rnvoh·ed in man's oiigin, and which man, awnkened to the knowledge of good nnd evil, ought of himself to recognise,-but no,v for the first time in mnn's history asserted as the law of God for man. Though given to one chosen nation in the first instance, nnd addressed to them by "the Lord their God, who brought them out of the land of Egypt from the house of bondage," yet, ns the whole scene testifies, the commands are those of the God of all the earth, the Lord of all nations, the one li,·ing and true "God of tlie spirits of all flesh." And being his law, these com- mandments, simple as they may seem, cannot be understood aright unless their spirit, and not merely their letter, is recognised. To the outward ear, ns to the Scribes and Pharisees of old, they sound merely as prohibitions of some great sins, which the natural conscience of man itself condemns. "All these have I kept from my youth up," is the natural feeling of many now, as of the young ruler in. the gospel. It is only when, like St. Paul,' we are startled out of our self-righteousness by discovering the spiritual force and infinite comprehensiveness of this Divine law, that each commandment, however often reiterated, suggests the prayer, "Lord, have mercy upon us, and incline our hearts to keep this law." 32. The spiritual character of the Divine law, as condemning not only outward offences, but the first beginnings of sin within the heart, sufficiently appears from the last of the commandments, to which St. Paul refers as proof of this truth. But there is another principle, npplicable to all law in some sense, and to the Divine law emphatically and to the fullest extent, of which it is necessary to have a clear appre- 1,er.sion in order to underst.and the scope and purport of this law of God. This is, tliat a law, when it is the expression of a duty, embraces the whole sphere of duties and responsibilities to any part of which it refers; in other words, not only t liat every command includes the prohibition of that which is opposed to it, which 1,01,e woul<l deny; but also that every prohibition involves a command to do that which is the opposite. This principle, which even in the science of human law is of no email importance,2 is absolutely essential to the right interpretation of DiYine law, of which the Psalmist truly says," Thy commandment is exceeding broad." It means that justice covers the whole domain of man's responsibility, there being no distinction, such ae some imagine, between perfect and imperfect obligations, but that whatever it is right to do it is wrong to leave undone: there is no middle ground between good and evil ; and consequently the principles of justice and of charity or love are identical, requiring of us the same actions, having the same extent and the same limits. This view of the Divine law was obscured in medireval and later Roman theology by tl,e doctrine of "works of supererogation," works which trnnscend the BJJhere of absolute duty and therefore of law, a notion founded on an erroneous con- ception of justice. Yet even b,v such theologians it was allowed in theory, that " every human action proceeding from deliberative reason must be either good or l,ad." J \Vhatever, therefore, it is right to do, it cannot be right, and must be evil, to leave undone. If it be wrong to do any injury to our neighbour, it is right to 1 Rom. vii. 7-10. 2 Rome thougl, ts are borrowed from a very interesting discussion of the question in a work to wl1ich reference has Leen already made-Lorimer's 'Institutes of Law,' Book I, xi;, xii, • ThoID. Aquinas, • Summa! Theo!. Prima Sec. Qmest.' xviii. art. iv. 3.  INTUODUCTION TO TUE PENTATEUCJT. XXV