control them is forgotten, do we welcome the Sabbath as the great opportunity of the week to refresh our conviction of the divine purpose and presence in the world; to crowd down into its proper subordination whatever has risen up to dispute its rightful supremacy; to renew our consecration to this higher service and this larger life? Do we order our going out and our coming in, our hours of quiet and of company, our periods of rest and of activity, with an eye single to the reënforcement of this spiritual purpose in our own lives and in the lives of others? That is keeping the Sabbath holy, according to the Christian standard; and all other employment - of the day is wasteful and profane.

Fifth Honour thy father and thy mother. To every child born into the world, father and mother are the first and best representatives of the purpose which is in the heart of God. For the father and mother have lived long enough to learn the great lessons stored up in the experience of the race. They have made many mistakes and undergone many hardships; and they desire to shield their child from the errors they have experienced in themselves and witnessed in others. They have tasted or observed the hollowness of much which the child is naturally tempted to seek

as the highest good. They have come to prize character as the one precious thing in life. Hence to heed their counsels, to conform to their wishes and desires, is only a more human way of stating what the previous commandments have stated, that the individual must ally himself with the spiritual purpose that is in the world, and conform his private wishes to the requirements which this larger purpose makes upon him. To honour father and mother is to let our lives be guided by the love of those who know us best and love us most. It is the human formula for the divine service. And the richest blessings of life can come to him alone who willingly and reverently yields himself to such guidance. To dishonour father and mother, on the other hand, is to have ways of our own into which their confidence is not invited, to try experiments which their experience does not approve, and in general to conduct ourselves regardless of the purposes they cherish for us, the sacrifices they have made on our behalf, and the love they bear for us. How could any child expect permanent prosperity who ventures to throw away this best gift of a father's counsel and a mother's prayers!

Sixth: Thou shalt do no murder. According to the New Testament standard, he that hateth

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his brother is a murderer. The look, or word, or deed of unkindness, the thought, or wish, or hope that evil may befall another, even the attitude of cold indifference, is murder in the heart. it is only because we lack the courage to translate wish into will, that in such cases we do not do the thing, which, if done without our responsibility, by accident or nature, we should rejoice to see accomplished.

From a strange and unexpected source there has come the confirmation of this New Testament conception of the prevalence, not to say the universality, of murder. A brilliant but grossly perverse English man of letters was sentenced to imprisonment a few years ago for the foulest crime. From the gaol in which he was confined there came a most realistic description of the last days and final execution within its walls, of a lieutenant in the British army, who was condemned for killing a woman whom he loved.

The poem has the exaggeration of a perverted and embittered nature; but beneath the exaggeration there is the original truth, which underlies St. John's identification of murder and hate. After describing the last days of the condemned man, his execution and his burial, the poem concludes as follows:

"In Reading Gaol by Reading town

There is a pit of shame,

And in it lies a wretched man

Eaten by teeth of flame,

In a burning winding sheet he lies
And his grave has got no name.

"And there, till Christ call forth the dead,

In silence let him lie:

No need to waste the foolish tear,

Or heave the windy sigh:

The man had killed the thing he loved,

And so he had to die.

"And all men kill the thing they love,
By all let this be heard,

Some do it with a bitter look,
Some with a flattering word:
The coward does it with a kiss,
The brave man with a sword."

Charge up against yourselves as murder the bitter looks, the hateful words, the unkind thoughts, the selfish actions, which have lessened the vitality, diminished the joy, wounded the heart, and murdered the happiness of those whom we ought to love, whom perhaps at times we think we do love, and who can profess to be perfect on this point, or guiltless of violating this sixth commandment?

Seventh Thou shalt not commit adultery. We all know how Jesus lifted this commandment up out of the mere prohibition of a particular crime,

which ordinary decency is rapidly banishing from all save the two extremes of society, the idle and luxurious rich, and the squalid and disreputable poor, and established chastity on the broad, rational basis of respect for the dignity of woman and the sanctity of sex. The logic of the Christian Spirit, as set forth in Christ's teaching on this point, is to place chastity on the eternal rock foundation of treating another only as love and a true regard for the other's permanent welfare will warrant. In other words, Christianity permits no man to even wish to treat any woman as he would be unwilling another man should treat his own mother, sister, wife, or daughter. For, from the Christian standpoint, all women are sisters of Christ, daughters of the most high God. This standard is searching and severe, no doubt; but it is reasonable and right. There is not a particle of asceticism about it. And the man who violates it is not merely departing a little from the beaten path of approved conventionalities. He is doing a cruel, wanton wrong. He is doing to another what he would bitterly resent if done to one whom he held dear. And what right has any man to hold any human being cheap, a mere means of his selfish gratification, and not an object of his protection, and reverence, and chivalrous regard?