the

Law of Sinai

BEING DEVOTIONAL ADDRESSES

on

THE TEN COMMANDMENTS

by

B. W. RANDOLPH, M. A.

Principal of Ely Theological College

Hon. Canon of Ely

Examining Chaplain to the Bishop of Lincoln

LONGMANS, GREEN, & CO

london, new york, and bombay

1896

All rights reserved

In æternum, Domine: Verbum Tuum permanet in cœlo. Ps. 118:89

to

my father,

cyril randolph, m. a.

rector of chartham,

and

rural dean of west bridge,

whose unselfish life of

“patient continuance in well-doing”

is a constant source of

encouragement and strength.

PREFACE

These Addresses are published in deference to the wishes, expressed from time to time, of some who heard them, and whose opinion the writer feels it a duty to respect.

Were it not for this, the publication of another volume on the Ten Commandments would need an apology.

The Addresses were delivered to those who were preparing for Ordination at Ely; and it is this circumstance which accounts for the form which they take, and for the special point of view adopted throughout.

In preparing them for the press, amid the pressure of other work, the writer has made but few alterations: it seemed better to leave them, as far as possible, in the form in which they were first spoken; though he is well aware of their fragmentary character and of their abrupt style.

He wishes to express his sincere and affectionate thanks to his colleague, the Rev. H. V. S. Eck, for his kind help in verifying the references and in correcting the proof sheets.

B. W. R.

Theological College,

Ely,

Feast of All Saints, 1895.

CONTENTS

Introductory

First Commandment

Second Commandment

Third Commandment

Fourth Commandment

Fifth Commandment

Sixth Commandment

Seventh Commandment

Eighth Commandment

Ninth Commandment

Tenth Commandment

INTRODUCTORY

Omnis consummationis vidi finem: latum mandatum Tuum nimis.—Ps. 118:96.

“If thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments.”—St. Matt. 19:17.

I suppose some of us have, at times, experienced a certain feeling akin to impatience, at the thought of the Ten Commandments occupying the place they do in the formularies of the Church; possibly we have muttered the word “Jewish” or “antiquated,” as if we had got beyond them.

And yet, for all that, the Church insists again and again on their fundamental and permanent value. Long before the Reformation, in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, it was the custom in England to recite them publicly, and to explain their meaning once a quarter: they are among the elements of the religious instruction which we give to children; the Baptismal Service places them side by side with the Lord’s Prayer and the Creed, as being among the most important truths which a child should “know and believe to his soul’s health;” they are the authorized standard of self-examination by which we are to try our lives before receiving Holy Communion; they are ordered to be set up on the walls of our churches; they are recited (and we have no authority for omitting them) even in the Service for Holy Communion ...