IN order to appreciate the full significance of the Ten Commandments, it is necessary to understand something of the conditions existing in the social and political world of Moses' time. The peoples and civilizations surrounding the Israelites were without a code of moral law. Fear, hatred, revenge, sensuality, infidelity, and idolatry—animality of all kinds—held practically unchallenged sway. Graphic descriptions of the iniquity and barbarity of their habits and customs may be found in abundance throughout the Old Testament, and in other historical records of those times. Not even mother-love was sacred: mothers sacrificed their own children to gain the favor or to appease the wrath of Baal.
Now the revelation, or discovery, embodied in the Ten Commandments came not as a matter of chance to Moses, but because his consciousness had been so purified and exalted, through trials and right desire, as to make this revelation the logical step in the orderly unfoldment of God, good, to men. Moses was not actuated by selfish motives. Even when he slew the Egyptian, he was seeking the good of his people at the expense of his exalted position in the Egyptian court, a position undoubtedly highly desirable from a worldly standpoint. But Moses had to learn the futility of material and human might; and so he was forced to flee for his very life into the wilderness of Midian. There he became a humble shepherd and kept the flocks of Jethro, his father-in-law. How illuminating in this connection is the definition of "wilderness" which our beloved Leader, Mary Baker Eddy, has given us on page 597 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures"! Indeed, Moses must first have found his condition one of "loneliness; doubt; darkness"—the words of the definition. But as he tended his flocks in the quietude and peace of the desert day, or as he stood watchful guard under the soft light of the stars, what opportunities for meditation and communion with God were his! What proofs of the watchful, tender, and compassionate care of the Father-Mother God must he have seen reflected in the shepherd's watchfulness, tenderness, and compassion! And with the unfoldment of Truth in his own consciousness he found the wilderness changed from a place of "loneliness; doubt; darkness" to a place of "spontaneity of thought and idea; the vestibule in which a material sense of things disappears, and spiritual sense unfolds the great facts of existence"—the words of the definition also.
When the call for help went up from the oppressed people of Israel in Egypt, Moses was ready. To mortal sense he had now few of the material, worldly advantages which were his in the first instance. Had not these failed him? But since then he had talked with God in the burning bush; and God had been revealed to him as the one God, omnipotent Spirit, as the "I AM THAT I AM." Equipped with this understanding, he led his people from the bondage and subjection of Egypt, through the Red Sea and the wilderness, to the verge of the promised land. Many were the lessons which the Israelites learned on the journey. They, too, had their wilderness experience. Many were the doubts that beset them. Loud was their murmuring. Manna was theirs; water flowed from the rock; the cloudy pillar by day and the pillar of fire by night went not from before them; but for all that, when Moses returned from Sinai with the tables of stone bearing the revelation of the Ten Commandments, he found them returned to idolatry, and in his sense of human indignation he "cast the tables out of his hands, and brake them beneath the mount." But revelation once seen could not be lost, and Moses again communed with God; and the revelation was restored to him.
