True, there will ever be the need of carefulness as to the tone and manner in which we set forth the authority for our convictions and our conduct. It must be made manifest, so far as it may be, that we are wholly governed, not by our own opinions, but by the Word of God. There is great danger of attaching an importance to an opinion merely because _we_ have adopted it. This must be carefully guarded against. _Self_ may creep in and display its deformity in the defense of our opinions as much as in any thing else; but we must disallow it in every shape and form, and be governed in all things by "Thus saith the Lord." But then we are not to expect that every one will be ready to admit the full force of the divine statutes and judgments. It is as persons walk in the integrity and energy of the divine nature that the Word of God will be owned, appreciated, and reverenced. An Egyptian or a Canaanite would have been wholly unable to enter into the meaning or estimate the value of these statutes and judgments, which were to govern the conduct of the circumcised people of God; but that did not in any wise affect the question of Israel's obedience. They were brought into a certain relationship with Jehovah, and that relationship had its distinctive privileges and responsibilities. "I am the Lord _your_ God." This was to be the ground of their conduct. They were to act in a way worthy of the One who had become _their_ God, and made them _His_ people. It was not that they were a whit better than other people. By no means. The Egyptians or Canaanites might have considered that the Israelites were setting themselves up as something superior in refusing to adopt the habits of either nation. But no; the foundation of their peculiar line of conduct and tone of morality was laid in these words: "_I_ am the Lord _your God_."