at when a person broke one of
the Commandments he was guilty of breaking the whole law. I could not
understand it. Now, I desire to illustrate this truth to you to-day.
Suppose that I were suspended over the edge of a great rock by this
chain. If the chain should break, I would be plunged headlong, hundreds
of feet down a very great embankment, upon rocks at the bottom of the
chasm, and lose my life. You will readily see that it would not be
necessary to break every link in this chain before I would begin to
fall. In order to break this chain, it is only necessary to break a
single link. The moment one link breaks, the entire continuity of the
chain is broken.

I think you will see that it is just the same way with the law of God.
If you break one of these Commandments, you have broken the law. If you
fail to "remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy," or if you disobey
your parents, and thus break the Commandment which says, "honor thy
father and thy mother," or any other of the Commandments--if you break a
single one, you have broken the entire chain of the Ten Commandments.

Now, there are a great many laws in this land of ours. There are laws
against murder, and there are laws against stealing, and there are laws
against getting drunk, and thousands of other laws. If a man simply
steals and should be caught in the act and brought before the judge, he
would be convicted of the crime and be sent to prison. It is not
necessary that a man should be a murderer and a thief and a robber, and
should be guilty of breaking all the laws of this land, before he is
cast in prison. It is simply enough that he should have violated one
law. By breaking only one law he becomes a criminal, and therefore he is
cast into prison. The man who has committed but one murder has his
entire liberty taken from him. The man who has been caught in the act of
stealing but a single time is adjudged a thief, and all his liberty is
taken from him.

So I think you will see that, in order to become a criminal, it is not
necessary that we should break all the laws of the land, but if we break
a single law we become criminals. So it is with the law of God; if we
break only one of the Ten Commandments we are criminals before God, we
are guilty of all.

Now the laws which men make in this and every other country are human
laws. They are not absolutely perfect. They are changed and improved
from time to time. But the Psalmist tells us, and we all know