Deuteronomy 5:21 Neither shall you desire your neighbor's wife, neither shall you covet your neighbor's house, his field, or his manservant… Observe, first, that this is a unique commandment. Search all the laws of all the world, and you will not find one which resembles it. Human laws can only prohibit crimes of which human eyes can take cognisance; the hearts of men are beyond their reach. The tyrant can only command the outward obedience, of his slave, but he cannot subdue the fierce rebellion which rages in that slave's heart. He makes no attempt to order what he is impotent to enforce. The unique command which prohibits not only commissions but concupiscence can be uttered by God alone. And herein the ten commands on Sinai anticipated the eight beatitudes of the Sermon on the Mount. The law says, "Thou shalt not desire"; the Gospel says, "Blessed are the pure in heart." It is a commandment preeminently spiritual; it cuts at the root of all formalism and all hypocrisy; it shows that each man is not what he seems to be to men, but what he is in the eyes of God. The lesson which the Tenth Commandment teaches us is that God must be obeyed, not with eye service as men pleasers, but with singleness of heart. Even the heathen say that the God with whom we have to do is one with whom nothing avails except heart obedience. "Wickedness and injustice," says Aristotle, "lie in the intention." "He," says Juvenal, "who thinks in silent wickedness within himself incurs the guilt of the deed." And this command is tender as well as unique, for it is designed to save us from error; it is meant, not to terrify us, but to train; it reveals to us, as with a flash out of God's eternity, when and how the work of our life has to be done; it shows us that there is" no sound cure for any disease, without the removal of the cause. The literal meaning of the commandment is, Thou shalt not excessively or wrongfully, thou shalt not unlawfully or irregularly, desire anything which thou canst not innocently and uprightly "possess." Perhaps you think, What harm can a mere desire do when I have not even expressed it? "What wrong can there be in such an airy nothing, such an impalpable thought?" The answer is two-fold. First, that airy nothing, that impalpable thought, as you call it, is a very real thing. It is seen in heaven, it is heard in heaven, in heaven it needs forgiveness, and consequently that thought will, if dwelt upon, be certainly the prolific mother of all sins. It is the cockatrice's egg which brings forth the vapour of the fiery flying serpent. Guilty longings are the avant-couriers of the performance of guilty lusts concealed in the guise of a harmless infant, the guilty curiosity, the guilty lingering on the confines of temptation. The guilty wish pushes open the wicket gate, and then, when it has done so it springs into the menacing stature of a giant demon. The sole way to keep ourselves from the infinite possibility of sin is only to follow the exhortation of St. James: "Cleanse your hearts, ye sinners; purify your hearts, ye double-minded." It is with the latter form of concupiscence, with the covetousness which is idolatry, that the extension of the commandment chiefly deals. It warns us against the greed of accumulation and the thirst for gold. This commandment says to our England of today, "Which wilt thou be, the freeman of Christ or the bond slave of Mammon? Which wilt thou be, an example to the world or its corrupter? Rich thou art beyond all nations, and art ever becoming more and more rich. But wealth means weal, means well-being; it does not mean riches and woe to thy weal." But this commandment teaches us something more than contentment, lovely, indeed, and full of happiness as a virtue. Utter content is but the passive form of the most fruitful of all virtues — it is self-sacrifice. But he who has ceased to desire will rejoice also to abstain; he who desires to cease that selfish greediness for what does not belong to him, or what he ought largely to share with others, will be eager to give with wise generosity — he will find that herein is happiness. St. Edmund of Canterbury, one of our sweet English saints, used to leave his money on the sill of the window of his staircase for anyone to take who would, and sometimes he would sprinkle dust over it, saying, "Ashes to ashes, dust to dust." Another great man said, "We have no time to get rich; the expulsive power of good affections leaves no time for meaner passions." The lives of such saints poured silent contempt on gold, and how great is their reward! They are uplifted above the base temptations which surround the toiling, moiling multitude. Self-abnegation, the subdual of concupiscence, means that the soul is satisfied with God. Dissatisfaction is the necessary curse of worldly life. "Vanity of vanity," says one of the best-known novels of the century, "which of us has what he desires, and having it is satisfied? Answer me, children of the world, votaries of self-indulgence, slaves of gold; answer me, and confess your misery." Covetousness means a curse, but he who gives all to Christ gains all from Christ; he who will lose his life for Christ's sake shall always find it. Can you imagine a more struggling and apparently miserable lot than that of some poor harmless missionary in the depths of Africa? Not long ago a dying missionary wrote home from the wilds of Africa: "Tell my family and all my friends that I rejoice to have left all for Christ. Were my sacrifice to make again, I think, as I lie here dying in a strange land, I would make it again a thousand times. I would not change my lot for all the happiness of the world." "This German beast, says Leo X, "cares nothing for gold," — a strange phenomenon when all the priests and all the world cared so much for gold; but because Luther did not care for gold, and lived and died a very poor man, it raised the hearts of myriads of men to seek their treasure where he had done — in things above, where Christ sitteth at the right hand of God. (Dean Farrar.) Parallel Verses KJV: Neither shalt thou desire thy neighbour's wife, neither shalt thou covet thy neighbour's house, his field, or his manservant, or his maidservant, his ox, or his ass, or any thing that is thy neighbour's. |
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