Editorial June 11, 1921 Issue

The First Commandment

Frederick Dixon

THE figure of Moses is one of the links in the chain of the Christ which extends through the Bible. The Christ is the spiritual reality of all things. Wherever, therefore, there has arisen a man who has given utterance to Truth, there the Christ has been manifested. Such a man was Abraham, the friend of God, the man who in the midst of the polytheism of Asia saw sufficiently clearly the unity of good to come out from among his own people, and proclaim monotheism to the world. Abraham, mentally alone, amongst the idol worshipers of Padan-aram, gained his vision of the Christ sufficiently clearly to be forced to cross the great river, the river Euphrates, and to go out, by faith in what he had realized of Principle, to found a new nation.

In the same way the vision of the Christ came to Moses. Moses was the first of the great figures in Bible history to see sufficiently through the mist of materialism to separate Spirit from matter. In the words of Mrs. Eddy, on page 200 of Science and Health, "Moses advanced a nation to the worship of God in Spirit instead of matter, and illustrated the grand human capacities of being bestowed by immortal Mind." To Moses has been credited the writing or editing of the books known as the Pentateuch. The Pentateuch is, of course, a collection of documents written by various scribes. It is immaterial whether Moses had any hand in these or not. But, if he had, he was presumably responsible for those sections of the Book of Genesis which are known amongst scholars to-day as the Elohistic document, the document which separates God as Mind from God as a tribal deity.

Moses, struggling, like all the great Biblical characters, toward a clearer sense of Principle, alternately caught and lost, no doubt, his vision of the Christ, like Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob before him, like the great prophets who succeeded him, of whom the last, before the coming of Jesus the Christ, was the Baptist. But probably never did he see Truth more clearly than the day in Sinai, when the voice of Principle spoke to him, and he recorded those commandments which were to be a sheet anchor, throughout the centuries, for those steering their ships, through the storms of the senses, toward a better understanding of Principle. There were but ten of these words, as they have been called, but they were fraught with an understanding of Truth which has been guiding men ever since. And of these ten there is none of vaster import than the first, "Thou shalt have no other gods before me." Of this commandment Mrs. Eddy has written, on page 340 of Science and Health, "The First Commandment is my favorite text. It demonstrates Christian Science. It inculcates the tri-unity of God, Spirit, Mind; it signifies that man shall have no other spirit or mind but God, eternal good, and that all men shall haven one Mind."

Enjoy 1 free Sentinel article or audio program each month, including content from 1898 to today.

Send a comment to the editors