Editorial July 23, 1927 Issue

"And I will walk at liberty"

Duncan Sinclair

It is written in the hundred and nineteenth pslam: "So shall I keep thy law continually for ever and ever. And I will walk at liberty: for I seek thy precepts." The words tell the reader very simply, but very emphatically, that liberty is dependent upon obedience to God's precepts, God's law. Comparatively early in the history of the human race the discovery was made that laws were necessary for the preservation of the individual, the tribe, and the nation. The laws might be arbitrary, as in the case of primitive peoples; but without them they would by degrees have been self-exterminated.

Gradually there developed a moral consciousness among men; and nowhere, perhaps, is its development more readily observed than in the Hebrew race, whose progenitors had caught the truth of monotheism—that there is one God. With this truth demanding their allegiance moral law became a necessity, moral law which insisted upon a right sense of their relationship with God and with one another. And in course of time this moral law was codified by Moses and given as God's priceless gift to them. But the Ten Commandments are of universal application; consequently they have come to be recognized as obligatory on all mankind.

Now what is the effect of obedience to moral law as embodied in the Decalogue? The answer must be: happier, healthier, nobler lives. No one can argue that impure, untruthful, covetous thinking will not result in unhappiness, ill health, and degradation of character. No one doubts that the worship of idols, whether they be graven in brass, wood, or stone, or molded after the pattern of the gods of present-day worldliness,—the pleasures of the senses, ambition for place, power, or wealth,—is destructive of manliness and womanliness, that it prevents spiritual development and stultifies character. The Ten Commandments are an asset in the lives of all who obey them; their value can never be fully appraised. Christian Scientists know this, and long to see them graven, deep and indelibly, on every human heart.

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