Editorial July 10, 1909 Issue

THE SECOND COMMANDMENT

Anne M. Knott

In studying the Ten Commandments, as set forth in the twentieth chapter of Exodus, we are given at the start the reason why we should acknowledge the divine authority which demands our obedience, "I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage." The second commandment is clearly an amplification of the first, and it inevitably directs thought away from any tendency to material worship, and lifts it toward the apprehension of spiritual realities. No thinker would deny that idolatry has a degrading tendency, wherever practised, or that spirituality has an elevating influence upon any people whose worship is characterized by it. In other words, we see that obedience to God's law is for our good always, and that this obedience is never restrictive, but leads to the largest liberty.

It is very evident that we must understand God in order to understand His requirements, and this understanding demands our awakening to spiritual sense. The tendency of the human mind is to attribute to God its own qualities, which are admittedly imperfect; as, for instance, jealousy, to which reference is made in the second commandment. It sometimes happens that people are greatly puzzled by the statement, "I the Lord thy God am a jealous God." Strictly speaking, this word is synonymous with "zealous," and it is so given in some dictionaries, where it is also defined as "vigilant, solicitous, watchful." The other definitions, "apprehensive," "suspicious," "intolerant of rivalry," are secondary, but they express the prevailing mortal concept. We should of course see at once that God could never manifest or cherish any quality which would be wrong in us. In "Miscellaneous Writings" (p. 259) Mrs. Eddy says: "Whatever appears to be law, but partakes not of the nature of God, is not law, but is what Jesus declared it, 'a liar, and the father of it;'" therefore God's jealousy must mean the zealous, watchful care with which He guards His children from every sense of evil,—from sin, sickness, or death.

We should never forget that when the Decalogue was written a corporeal concept of Deity seemed to prevail over the spiritual, a concept which has unfortunately come down to our own day, and which fails to discriminate between the divine justice that wipes out all sense of evil, and the personal punishment of the wrong-doer. A clergyman, in discussing with a young student of Christian Science the subject of healing, contended for the law of heredity as he held it to be expressed in the second commandment. The Scientist tried to show him that this passage referred only to those who hate God, good, and who were therefore not under the protection of Truth and Love. She also pointed to the wonderfully inclusive promise of "mercy" (healing) unto the "thousands" who love God and keep His commandments. The good man acknowledged that this was a new view of the subject to him, as he had never supposed this commandment referred in any way to healing, but that this view had much to commend it. He was also told that Christian Scientists seek to obey the second commandment by refusing to "bow down" to any images of mortal thought,—beliefs of sin and sickness,—or to serve these false gods; that they strive to obey the command, "Thou shalt utterly overthrow them:" and that they rely upon the promise, found in the twenty-third chapter of Exodus, "I will take sickness away from the midst of thee."

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