The Ten Commandments

by Campbell Morgan

Excerpt from The Ten CommandmentsThe supreme duty of every man is that he should discover and obey these words. If he live from day to day, from week to week, from month to month, and from year to year without reference to that law, hoping that after being regardless of, if not rebellious against it, he will at last slip into some happy state, then surely he must indeed be blind and foolish.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Genres: Christian Living, Biblical Studies

Paperback

First published January 1, 1901

Reviews

[Nathan Albright · Rating 5 out of 5]

As is the case with many books written more than a few decades ago, much of what is needed to know about a book can be seen from the title itself.  One of the purposes of having lengthy titles is so that they can set the proper expectations for the reader in terms of the book's content and the author's approach.  In this case, the author tips his hand in the subtitle of the book that this look at the Ten Commandments will be done from the point of view of dispensationalism, and the fact that the author mentions that it is a Christian perspective means that one can expect the author to do some fancy footwork to deny the validity of the biblical Sabbath [1] to contemporary believers.  Yet although the author did fulfill this particular expectation, the book ended up being a surprisingly tough-minded look at most of the ten commandments that managed to get pretty close to the mark in its discussion of the ten commandments as a whole, although on a few areas it managed to fuzz the proper division of the ten commandments [2] while making a case for two different divisions of the ten commandments and shading its bets both ways.

This book is organized in a straightforward fashion, although it manages to have some surprises.  Unsurprisingly, the author discusses each commandment in turn, dealing with a variety of issues as they relate to the ten commandments, such as an explanation for the derivation of the name Yahweh from various forms of the Hebrew verb to be.  There are at least a few surprises in store for the reader of this book, though.  One of them is that the book is surprisingly rigorous and harsh on its moral view, to the extent that it would likely make most contemporary readers a bit uncomfortable with how often we break these commandments in our lives with casual profanity, anger, lust, and the like.  Of particular interest and praise is the way that the author really takes exploitative business owners and imperialists to task for their violence and exploitation.  Most of the time when one reads high-minded and even a bit moralistic works, the morals the authors are promoting are strictly private in nature, but this author to his credit has a strong tendency to support social justice and to criticize injustice in light of the biblical ethic, something that is definitely worthy of praise.  The other surprise within the contents of the book is the fact that the author includes the "new" commandment to love one another that, in the author's mind, supercedes all of the other ones.

Given the author's dispensationalist viewpoint, it probably does not come as much of a surprise that the author does not view the law being written on our hearts from the point of view of Jeremiah or the book of Hebrews, but the author's rigorous personal and social morality is something to behold and to recognize, all the more remarkable given the fact that the book comes in at a very short 126 pages, making it clear that this is a book not to be missed.  Despite the fact that the author whiffs on the Sabbath, his standard of morality is sufficiently biblical and sufficiently rigorous to present challenges for any believer, giving us a stern reminder of the expectations of our conduct based on the scriptures, when most of us would feel as if we were doing a good job merely to be a bit more righteous and a bit more obedient than the worldly people around us.  This book is a strong encouragement to aim for a higher standard, and an encouragement most of us probably need.

[1] Unlike, for the example, the following authors:

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But like the following authors:

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[2] See, for example:

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[Michael Vincent · Rating 5 out of 5]

Though I disagree with some of Dr. Morgan's understandings and applications (he is a Sabbatarian and Pacifist), this is a wonderful exposition of the Ten Commandments. He adds a chapter on the "new commandment" on John 14:34-35. There is much thought-provoking study and application throughout the text.

[Douglas Wilson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent.