we are now doing, gives us a striking homily on sins of the tongue. He shows us that no fountain can send forth, at the same time, sweet water and bitter -salt water and fresh; that olive-berries cannot be gathered from fig-trees, nor figs from the vine. And he would thus instruct us in the solemn truth, that to bless God with our tongue is cruel mockery, if with that same member of our body we are acting hurtfully to men. How can lips, that in the morning moved in the ejaculations of prayer and thanksgiving, mould, ere the noon or night, the ribald jest, or the profane expression, or the angry retort? How can the tongue, that one hour is voluble with the praise of God, be in that succeeding, engaged in deceiving or defaming man? Was there sincerity before, and shall there be only calumny now?

IV. THE FOURTH COMMANDMENT CORRESPONDS WITH THE TENTH.

FOURTH COMMANDMENT. "Remember the sabbath-day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work: But the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy man-servant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates : For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and resteth the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the sabbath-day, and hallowed it."

TENTH COMMANDMENT.

"Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife, nor his man-servant, nor his maid-servant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour's."

Here there seems a greater discrepancy than in the three preceding instances; nor should we wonder at it, if we bear in mind the illimitable distance that severs the creature from the Creator. But these Commandments are strictly analogous in their distinguishingly spiritual nature. Paul declares that he had not known what "lust" was, except the law had said, "Thou shalt not covet!"* and all who have prayerfully studied the import of the Fourth Commandment, discover that it requires holiness of heart and self-dedication to the Lord, not on one day only but in the whole course of our lives. Both precepts refer to the right ordering of the inward man, so that we may render unto Cæsar the things that are Cæsar's, and to God the things that are God's. The Commandments going before them in either Table may be understood, in their letter at least, to set forth sins that would be evidenced by external acts; but these twain are confessedly of a spiritual kind, telling of inward emotions only—of thoughts unseen by man, yet well known to the Lord-and of the transgressions of the law by mental departures from the right rule. On the one side, we have what Jehovah hath claimed for His own, and what we therefore call "the Lord's Day;" on the other, the various things that form the wealth, or contribute to

* Romans, vii. 7. The Authorized rendering of this verse has about it an obscurity, that the old version of Wycliffe happily escaped :

"For I wiste not coveting was sinne, but for the law saide, Thou shalt not covette."

the happiness of man; and we are forbidden to appropriate either, even in thought. All that the Lord has taken of our time is one day in seven. It is no longer ours. He has blessed and sanctified it for Himself. We must not "covet" it, that we may devote it to secular purposes. It is the property of another. Noticeable it is, moreover, that in the Fourth and Tenth Commandments alike, the Lord of heaven and earth casts His shield of protection over weak and helpless ones. Men, who may be higher, are expressly prohibited from abusing their position in respect to those that are lower. They must not, in grasping covetousness, exact labour improperly from dependants; nor may they seek to remove them from their places, to gratify their own self-interested wishes. In each commandment, provision is made for the man-servant" and the "maid-servant;" and gentle consideration is extended even to poor dumb cattle. With none of these defenceless ones, is the Sabbath to be ignored; nor is their employment or their employer to be changed unduly. Rest for them, and security of position, are guaranteed. But unregenerate men cannot see these truths, in their holy import. They will not keep the Sabbath from polluting it. They make it, like an ordinary day, to become the agent of their toil, or the minister of their pleasure. They covet what is not their own-the Day of Rest; and they compel others to violate God's holy precepts respecting it. They deprive their inferiors of their sabbath; and, in their breaches of the Fourth Commandment, they nullify every portion of the Tenth,

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if taken from man and exalted in application to God.

Once more: the great principle of the Fourth Commandment is the "rest" of man in the rest of God. Similarly, the Tenth Commandment prescribes that happy injunction which can alone give us rest in our worldly goods-contentment. So long as there is a looking abroad on the things of others, and a longing for the acquisition of what the Lord has not seen fit to bestow upon us, there can be no repose of the soul. Fretfulness and impatience will arise within; and murmuring and complaining will be seen in the life. Like the troubled sea, when it cannot rest, the waves of covetousness, if they roll in upon the soul, will cast up only mire and dirt. Not so with the Lord's people. They are kept in perfect peace, for their minds are stayed on Him. Their quietness now is a shadow of the Sabbatism, that "remaineth" for them throughout Eternity.

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On these Two Commandments-supreme love of God, and a love of one's neighbour as oneself-hang all the law and the prophets. The Tables twain were joined together of God, and man may not put them asunder. A true obedience to either co-exists only with a rightful observance of the other. Placed side by side, the Tables of the Law afford mutual illustration. We can reflect light from the precepts of the Second Table upon the First, and we can enlarge and illumine by the heavenly requisitions of

the First, all that we find set before us in the Second. The subject is but partially opened in this chapter; and the reader will find it pleasant and profitable to examine the matter in its details. Other and minuter particulars will readily develop themselves, illustrating yet further the theme I proposed for consideration-the Correspondence between the Two Tables of the Moral Law.