THE 7TH
COMMANDMENT
"Thou shalt not commit adultery."-Exodus 20:14.
Immediately after the commandment declaring the sacredness of human life
follows that which safeguards the highest earthly relationship, and conditions
in strength and purity the holy and sacred office of the procreation of life.
God's first circle of society is that of the family, and the origin of the
family in His purpose lies within the sacred unity of man and woman. The first
principle of human life is its relationship to God. The second is its
inter-relation, that of man to man. Within this second realm the type and
origin of all subsequent relations is the family. Nothing can be more
essential, therefore, for the social order, than that the relationship upon
which all subsequent ones are based should be jealously guarded against any and
every form of attack. The unity of the race is the purpose of God, and this
grows out of the unity of husband and wife. The union of husband and wife is
not capricious, but essential; for "God
created man in His own image …….male and female created He them" (Gen. 1:27). The unity of husband and
wife is thus the unity of the expression of the Divine image. Both are
necessary to give full expression to the Divine. The duality, therefore, is
only the double expression of a most sacred and holy power of procreation.
Such a consideration as this reveals at once the tremendous force of this
7th commandment, and explains its binding nature upon the race in all ages and
places. The actual words of the command are directed against the sin of lewd
conduct as violating the sacred rights of the marriage relation. Its spirit
emphatically forbids all lewd conduct, for if this sense of essential unity in
marriage be admitted, and it be accepted that the union of lives is always in
the plan and government of God, then it at once becomes evident that all
unchaste conduct before marriage, on the part of man or woman, is a wrong done
to the marriage that is to be; and unfaithfulness before marriage is as much
adultery as unfaithfulness after marriage.
There is no subject; perhaps, more difficult to deal with faithfully and
yet there is none demanding more honest and fearless handling.
Consider, then, first the command; second, its bearing on certain facts
of present-day life; and finally, the fierce and searching Christian ethic that
touches the subject.
The Command
The command is a simple, unqualified, irrevocable negative. "Thou shalt not"! No argument
is used, no reason given, because none is required. The sin is of so destructive
and damning a nature that it is in itself sufficient cause for the stern
forbidding. To emphasize the commandment, therefore, it is only necessary to
consider the sin against which it is directed. A sevenfold vice is this sin of
unchaste conduct, being sin against the Individual, the Family, Society, the
Nation, the Race, the Universe, and God.
It is a sin against the Individual. This needs no proof. Nature
visits the sin with the heaviest penalties in every department of the complex
being of man. The terrible results of an immoral life in the purely physical
realm are such as cannot be named here. They are well known. Every man of
science will bear testimony to the awful demand that Nature makes for purity,
and will assert that she has no pity for the unclean. The statistics of lunacy
in this and all lands could tell horrible tales of the effect of unclean life
upon the mental side of man's nature. Many sad stories prove that the highest
spiritual culture and usefulness have been marred and ended by the sin of
yielding unlawfully to lust. The perfect unity and balance of spirit, soul, and
body is destroyed by this vice, and that man or woman surely and irrevocably
commits suicide who falls into and persists in immoral habits: and life.
It is a sin against the Family. The sacredness of motherhood and
childhood, and the demands they make upon the care and thought of all, are
secured and met in the Divine institution of marriage. Wherever the rights of
the marriage relationship are violated and set aside, God's provision for both
is broken down, and the disastrous result of the breakdown of the family circle
and entity results. The race is to be trained in groups and the power and
provision for such training is the government of the essential love of parents.
As the 5th commandment clearly teaches, the two sides of parenthood are
necessary to the nurture of child-life. When the family is destroyed as a
perfect whole by the sin of lewdness, an incalculable harm is done to the
children. There is no more heartbreaking announcement in the newspapers than
that which declares that in the granting of a decree nisi, the charge of the
children has been given to one parent. Therein lies the destruction of the
family after the Divine pattern, and the sin that leads to it is indeed
terrible for this reason also.
It is a sin against Society. This follows from the previous
consideration. The family is a unity of individuals sharing a common life and
governed by a common love. Society is a union of families. Every attempt to create
society upon any other basis is wicked and ends in disaster. The history of the
monkish orders is a flaming proof of this fact. The attempts also to organize
societies upon bases of common interests of trade or intellectual pursuits all
break down sooner or later. Society is the accumulation of families, and all
the human inter-relations of property, of reputation, and of character break
down with the breakdown of the family. The sin which blights the marriage
relation and destroys the family is the enemy of all true social democracy. All
the things that may be had in common can only so be shared as it is forever
understood that communism in the realm of sex is the most damnable sin against
the commonwealth.
It is a sin against the Nation. This, again, moves out as a
logical sequence from the former considerations. The adulterer is the enemy of
the state, and as such, after being divorced in the divorce court, should be
imprisoned by the criminal courts. The man or woman upon whose guilt the marriage
tie is broken, no Christian minister of any denomination has a right to
remarry. It is an act of treason to the state to allow such persons to go free.
They should be incarcerated in separation from the other sex to the end of
their days, and then they could not wipe out the wrong they did the nation when
by unchaste action they struck a blow at the family. The greatness of a people
depends upon the purity and strength of the people and in every nation where
the marriage relation is violated with impunity the virus of death is surely
and certainly at work. This is at once proved by the lurid lights that flash
from the decay of Assyria, Greece, Rome, and in our own times, of France also.
In this respect it is most true that "righteousness
exalts a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people." (Prov. 14:34.)
It is a sin against the Race. No man can deny his accountability
for a share in the development or destruction of the race. The solidarity of
humanity is more than a dream of visionaries. It is an indisputable fact. Every
life is contributing its quota of force to the forces that make or mar. All are
hindering or hastening the perfect day. The crime of prolonging sorrow and
agony lies at the door of every impure human being. The agony and wrong of
degraded humanity is a curse upon the lewd behavior of the past, and every
licentious and bestial man or woman is inflicting new wounds, not only upon the
immediate present, but also upon the years yet unborn. The voice of the human
race, so often, alas unheard in the clamor of the interests of the passing
moment, is thundering perpetually the Divine command, "Thou shalt not commit adultery."
It is a sin against the Universe. The life of the universe is
love. The origin of all is love, for "God
is love." The propagation of all is love. From the highest form, that
of the unity of the marriage relation, through all the lower spaces of action,
love is the law of growth. The lair of the wild beast is fiercely guarded by
the love that holds it sacred. The nesting of the birds is token of the impulse
of the love-life that throbs through all creation. The bee that carries the
pollen from flower to flower is the messenger of the same instinct. Love is
everywhere. The sin of lustful lewd conduct is the violation of love, blighting
and destroying it. Let every adulterer and adulteress know, then, that their
impurity sins against all the genius of the universe, and if they but listen,
every pure and holy love of man and young girl, every devotion of the beasts to
their mates, every song of bird, and every hum of the wing of summer bee,
proclaims the heinousness of their offence against the whole creation.
It is a sin against God. This has virtually been said in every
previous argument. Every human being is made in His image. Of every family He
is the true Father. In all society He is the Shepherd. Over all nations He is
King: The race is His own to its utmost limit. The love law of the universe is
the will of God for all. Thus, lastly and consequently, every impure act or
person strikes a blow at the very heart of God. By An eternal necessity He
excludes the "abominable… and
fornicators" (Rev. 21:8)
from the new heaven and the new earth, and gives them "their part in the lake that burns with fire and brimstone, which
is the second death."
Thus the 7th commandment is seen to be binding and inexorable because of
the purpose of God that all His love creation should reach the highest platform
of perfection. (Jude 24) To minimize
the law against impurity is to deny the value of love.
Application of the Command Today
There are certain signs of the times which point to the necessity for a
re-statement of this commandment. The first of these is the tendency, which is
only too apparent, to loosen the binding nature of the marriage tie. There
seems to be an increasingly popular notion that the marriage relation if civil
opt only. This is a vital error. It is wholly divine. The lawfulness of the
married state lies within the ultimate fact of sex, and this is a part of the
Divine creation. God, who thus created, has conditioned the law of union, and
every marriage is, therefore, a part of a Divine plan.
Unfortunately, too constantly the relationship is entered upon without
any recognition of God, and hence the awful misery that often ensues, for no
human being can tamper with Divine matters without being harmed. Once the union
is consummated it is for the period of life.
There is only one reason for its disannulling until death, and that is
the far more awful fact than death, that, namely, of fornication. The prevalent
notion that incompatibility of temperament is sufficient reason for divorce is
a blow at the very throne of God; and also, therefore, at the foundations of
human well-being. Purity must refuse to give one moment's countenance in any
form to such a doctrine of hell.
Another sign of the times in this direction is the filthy fiction which
has polluted the realm of literature in recent years, fiction in which the
marriage relation is treated with amused pity, and whoremongers and adulterers
are pitied and excused, if not defended. Such literature is the most pernicious
prostitution of a free press that any country can suffer from. A writer who
once publishes a book or an article which undervalues the necessity of absolute
chastity should by such action put himself or herself outside the pale of true
literature. So long as the nation is in thousands of its members impure, such
reading will be provided and read; but surely every member of the Christian
Church should be true to the unalterable law of love expressed in this
commandment, and that not only in their own personal lives, but in the
influence they exert. Then the Church should refuse to give any visage
whatsoever to such writers or their books.
Then, again, is there not a growing danger of ministering to impurity in
the multiplication on every hand of callings for women which throw them among
men and give them wages which are insufficient? One of the greatest curses of the
world today, is the employment of young women in the various shops of our
cities and towns. At this point it is of great regret that the conditions of
life created in this feverish age of Mammon worship have made it necessary for
our daughters to go out of our homes at all to secure their living. If this be
necessary, at any rate let them take the most religious care as to the
character of the men with whom they are to be thrown in contact day by day. Lewd
qualities are begun too often under conditions that seemed to be honest and
pure enough.
Then how one would thank God if some word that was not prudish or narrow
might be spoken to the women of this country about their dress. The half dress,
the jeans, the pant suits of the society woman is surely a sign of reversion to
type, and has in it the pandering to animalism which has for ages been the
curse of the marriage relation. Moreover, the distortions of the female form
that are common everywhere are alike an insult to beauty and to goodness, and
therefore to God. I am not pleading for the uniform of the Salvationists, but
for the becoming and beautiful and modest attire, which shall have no possible
suggestiveness that is not in harmony with the homage and reverence that man
should ever render to woman. This is a subject that seems to be of no moment to
some. Let every daughter of the King think the subject out alone with her
Master, and that which I have failed to say will be understood.
And yet once more. There is an anomaly that dies hard in the distinction
that is being made between the guilt of man and woman in this matter of lewd
conduct. When General Booth issued that remarkable book, "Darkest
England," he said, in defense of his using the word
"fornication":
"Why not say prostitution? For this reason: prostitution is a word
applied to one-half of the vice, and that the most pitiable. Fornication hits
both sinners alike."
The importance of that statement cannot be overestimated. Until the man
who sins is branded with as deep a scar as is the woman, that public opinion
which shields him is guilty of complicity with this vice which is deadly and
damning.
After all that has been said, there yet remain the most scorching,
withering words of all to repeat. The fell from the lips of the Incarnate
Purity in that manifesto of His Kingdom which He gave to His disciples during
the days of His sojourn on earth. Let them be read as He uttered them: "I
say unto you, that everyone that looks on a woman to lust after her hath
committed adultery with her already in his heart. And if thy right eye causes thee
to stumble, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee
that one of thy members should perish, and not thy whole body be cast into
hell. And if thy right hand causes thee to stumble, cut it off, and cast ii
from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish,
and not thy whole body go into hell. It was said also, Whosoever should put
away his wife, let him give her a writing of divorcement: but I say unto you,
that everyone that putts away his wife, saving for the cause of fornication,
makes her an adulteress: and whosoever shall marry her when she is put away
commits adultery." (Matt. 5:28-32)
If this law be obeyed, the impure act will indefinitely be prevented, for
this ethic passes beyond the act to the thought. According to this teaching the
wish proves capacity for the deed, and is to be condemned equally with the
deed. In order that impurity of thought and desire may be prevented, it is
profitable to maim the body. The eye and the hand are precious, but not so
precious as purity of spirit. At the severest cost the law of love is to be
obeyed. He knew that lewd conduct of thought and deed makes spiritual
development impossible, and therefore repeated the old commandment with new
emphasis and meaning. The word of Jesus is the sternest of all, and there can
be no obedience to it except as the heart itself is purified. The grace of His
Kingdom is manifested here, in that He imparts His own purity to those who
submit to Him, and thus saves all such from the unholy and polluting influence
of lewd conduct.
The duty of every Christian, and of the Christian Church, is plainly
marked in the light of this word of the Master. First, of course, there must be
no trifling with impurity, and discipline must be received within the borders
of the fellowship. To permit known wrong to continue unjudged is to insult the
Lord Himself, and to rob the Church of her power of witness to purity. There
must be no intermarriage between the godly and the ungodly. The high ideal of
the family taught in the New Testament can only be realized when the marriage
relation is cemented and glorified in the common loyalty of husband and wife to
Jesus Christ. If the Church is to be the messenger of peace and power to the
present age, there must be no room in her fellowship for any person who in any
degree is lewd in speech or conduct; and no room in individual lives for any
act or thought that is smirched with uncleanness.
It is for those to whom is given the sacred work of teaching the will of
God, by precept and life to repeat the great purifying laws of God in words
that burn, "Thou shalt not commit
adultery"; "Everyone that looks on a woman to lust after her hath
committed adultery with her already in his heart." (Matt. 5:28)
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