PART FIRST. CHAPTER I. PERVERSION OF THE MORAL LAW. SECTION 1.-THE SIXTH COMMANDMENT. MAT. V. 21-26. THE chief design of Jesus throughout the whole of this invaluable discourse is to show that if man would be accepted with God and be a partaker of eternal life, he must be possessed of a pure and perfect righteousness. The Scribes though the professed teachers of the Law, had lost sight of this great scriptural doctrine. They were deluding the people by perverting the very Word of God and lowering the demands of His holy Law. To illustrate the hollowness and unscriptural character of the teaching of the Scribes, our Lord selects several plain precepts of the law of God, shewing how completely the vain traditions of the elders were opposed to the true spiritual meaning of these precepts. The first instance which He adduces is the sixth commandment. G V. 21. "Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not kill, and whosoever shall kill shall be in danger of the judgment." These words in the original admit of two interpretations. They may either be rendered thus, "Ye have heard that it was said to them of old time," in which case we must understand our Lord as Himself quoting the commandment, and adding to it the interpretation of the Pharisees: or they may be rendered as in our translation, in which case we must understand our Lord as adopting the language of the Pharisees, who were accustomed to quote not from the pure word of God, but from the traditions of the elders. These traditions they regarded as of equal authority with the statements of the Bible, and, accordingly, while in the case before us the quotation is made correctly from the law of Moses, "thou shalt not kill," it is instantly followed up by the unauthorised interpretation of their own commentators, "whosoever shall kill shall be in danger of the judgment," that is, he exposes himself to merited punishment at the hands of the civil magistrate. Such was the whole extent of the view which the Scribes held in reference to this command of God. It prohibited murder, no doubt, according to their teaching, but simply in the outward act and as a civil enactment, bringing the murderer under the cognizance of human laws. Such an interpretation of the divine commandment was defective in the extreme. It was limiting |