Young man, if your parents are still living treat them kindly. Do all you can to make their declining years sweet and happy. Bear in mind that this is the only commandment that you may not always be able to obey. As long as you live, you will be able to serve God, to keep the sabbath, to obey all the other commandments, but the day comes to most men when father and mother die. What bitter feelings you will have when the opportunity has gone by, if you fail to show them the respect and love that is their due! How long is it since you wrote to your mother? Perhaps you have not written home for months, or it may be for years. How often I get letters from mothers urging me to try and influence their sons!

Which would you rather be—a Joseph or an Absalom? Joseph wasn’t satisfied until he had brought his old father down into Egypt. He was the greatest man in Egypt, next to Pharaoh; he was arrayed in the finest garments; he had Pharaoh’s ring on his hand, and a gold chain about his neck, and they cried before him, “Bow the knee.” Yet when he heard Jacob was coming, he hurried out to meet him. He wasn’t ashamed of the old man, with his shepherds clothes. What a contrast we see in Absalom. That young man broke his father’s heart by his rebellion, and the Jews are said to throw a stone at Absalom’s pillar to the present day, whenever they pass it, as a token of their horror of Absalom’s unnatural conduct.

Come, now, are you ready to be weighed? If you have been dishonoring your father and mother, step into the scales and see how quickly you will be found wanting. See how quickly you will strike the beam. I don’t know any man who is much lighter than one who treats his parents with contempt. Do you disobey them just as much as you dare? Do you try to deceive them? Do you call them old-fashioned, and sneer at their advice? How do you treat that venerable father and praying mother?

You may be a professing Christian, but I wouldn’t give much for your religion unless it gets into your life and teaches you how to live. I wouldn’t give a snap of my finger for a religion that doesn’t begin at home and regulate your conduct toward your parents.

“Thou shalt not kill.”

I used to say: “What is the use of taking up a law like this in an audience where, probably, there isn’t a man who ever thought of, or ever will commit murder?” But as one gets on in years, he sees many a murder that is not outright killing. I need not kill a person to be a murderer. If I get so angry that I wish a man dead, I am a murderer in God’s sight. God looks at the heart and says he that hateth his brother is a murderer.

First let us see what this commandment does not mean.

It does not forbid the killing of animals for food and for other reasons. Millions of rams and lambs and turtle-doves must have been killed every year for sacrifices under the Mosaic system. Christ Himself ate of the Passover lamb, and we are told definitely of cases where He ate fish Himself and provided it for His disciples and the people to eat.

It does not forbid the killing of burglars, etc., in self-defence. Directly after the giving of the Ten Commandments, God laid down the ordinance that if a thief be found breaking in and be smitten that he die, it was pardonable. Did not Christ justify this idea of self-defence when He said: “If the goodman of the house had known in what watch the thief would come, he would have watched, and would not have suffered his house to be broken up?”

It does not forbid capital punishment. God Himself set the death penalty upon violations of each of the first seven commandments, as well as for other crimes. God said to Noah after the deluge—“Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed;” and the reason given is just as true to-day as it was then—“for in the image of God made He man.”

What it does forbid is the wanton, intentional taking of human life under wrong motives and circumstances. Man is made in God’s image. He is built for eternity. He is more than a mere animal. His life ought therefore to be held sacred. Once taken, it can never be restored. In heathen lands human life is no more sacred than the life of animals; even in Christian lands there are heartless and selfish men who hold it cheap; but God has invested it with a high value. An infidel philosopher of the eighteenth century said: “In the sight of God every event is alike important; and the life of a man is of no greater importance to the universe than that of an oyster.” “Where is the crime,” he asked, “of turning a few ounces of blood out of their channel?” Such language needs no answer.