THE LAW OF PIETY THE FIRST LAW.

THE first Commandment is stated negatively; yet so as not in any wise to conceal the affirmative heart of law which is contained in it. When we are taught, "I am the Lord thy God there shall not be to thee other gods, except Me" (or "before My face"), we are taught that no other things or beings of any sort whatever are to stand to us before the face, or in any way to intercept the true God, who is to be our sole God, from the love of our hearts.

I have little to add upon the subject of the first law, to what is usually said by expositors respecting it. Its meaning is perfectly clear and not liable to mistake. I will therefore content myself with a sketch of the topics into

which the full discussion of this law would run out.

The law readily divides itself into three parts, the complete examination of which would fully explain the law. 1. Whatis it to have God? 2. Who is He whom we are to have? 3. What is it to have none else?

God, the maker

And first of the second. and governor of the world and all things in it, is known to us partly naturally by reason, and partly supernaturally by revelation.

The proof that reason can naturally find Him, is seen in the fact that all mankind, except a very few of the most debased and brutalized of the species, have in all ages maintained some idea of a God.

The mode whereby they have reached this idea, has been partly instinctive (or perhaps traditional, deriving its origin from the remembrance of the time when man, unfallen, lived in the presence of his Maker), and partly rational or argumentative.

In its simplest form, man's natural argument for the being of a God, appears to arise out of the observation of the works wrought in the world, combined with the consciousness of a certain quantity of causative power in himself.

The latter of these forces him to know how effects are caused, the former points to some invisible agent, of sufficient power and wisdom to be the cause of all the effects he sees.

This natural argument may be more or less fully evolved. It may be expanded into a complete system of natural theology. Imperfectly developed, it may lead to all kinds of mistaken and superstitious notions.

If the argument of causation be not pressed far enough, men may acquiesce in the idea of a plurality of gods. If the presence of evil in the world be allowed to interfere with the full logical consequences of the argument, men may end in the belief of two principles. If they be not cautious to distinguish modes or ways of causation from causes, properly so called, they may come to confuse imaginary things, such as 66 Chance," ""Fate," "Necessity," with God, the sole proper cause of things and beings.

Fully, however, and exactly pursued, the natural argument is capable of discovering a single God, the sole, self-existent, and therefore eternal Creator and Governor of the world. It can exhibit Him Omnipotent, Omniscient, and Omnipresent. It can show a preponderance of reasonable ground for believing Him

Though

to be all-merciful, good, and just. the prevalence of physical and moral evil embarrasses the clearness of the proof in these respects, it can surmise a mode of retribution after life, which may vindicate these attributes to the fullest extent.

To the same degree that natural reason can thus discover the being and attributes of God, can it also recognize the duties of man which arise out of the relations in which he is thus found to stand to Him. The obligation to perform these duties so discovered, and the instinctive or traditional worship immemorially existing among mankind, together constitute what may be called natural religion; and is such as was, in various degrees of completeness, and might conceivably have been exactly, the religion of the Heathen world.

The traditional knowledge of God, then, which was to the heathen world blended with the more or less imperfect conclusions of reasoning, and the graceful or dreary fictions of imagination, was, in a single race, maintained, in greater purity, and with less admixture. Whether, from Noah to Abraham, the direct ancestors of the latter patriarch were at all in advance of the rest of mankind in religious

knowledge and worship is uncertain; but it can hardly be esteemed probable that it was so. To Abraham himself the communications made by God were not so properly revelations of truth before unknown, or incapable of being known otherwise, as they were promises, assurances of favour-methods of maintaining the existing knowledge of the God Almighty, and faith in Him, in one family on the earth.

Nor can the communication vouchsafed by God to Moses be properly called a revelation, in the exact sense in which that word signifies a Divine communication of truth, incapable of being discovered by the natural powers of man. The name of Jehovah, though a new name, reminded the people of the self-existence and eternity of their God; but it cannot be thought to have informed them, for the first time, of these attributes. For it can hardly be conceived that man should have any reasonable or just thought or idea of the Divine Being at all, unless these attributes formed a part of it. Protection, nearness, love, redemption to come -all this was, of course, fully assured to the Jewish people, under the communications made to them by Moses; but of actual revelation of the nature of God, the Object of the piety of