Again, this Commandment distinctly forbids profane cursing, coarse and foul language, making a jest of holy things, quoting the Bible irreverently.

But perhaps the way in which we are most likely to break this Commandment is in allowing our thoughts to wander in prayer, either at home or at Church.

If we repeat a prayer with our lips, and find when we get to the end of it that we do not know what we have asked for, then we have taken God's Name in vain.

But this Commandment, like all the others, is to be taken positively, as well as negatively; it teaches us not only what we ought not to do, but what we ought to do. And so we are taught that this Commandment teaches us to honour God's holy Name and His Word.

To honour God's Name is to make known that Name to the heathen to whom it is unknown. To honour God's Name is always to speak the truth, remembering the Apostle's injunction" Speaking the truth in love" (Eph. iv. 15). To honour God's Name is to worship Him in our hearts, in our families, and in Church.

David in one of the Psalms speaks of praising God with the best member that he has (Ps. cviii. 1, P. Bk. Vers.). What do you think he meant by "the best member" which he had? He meant the tongue. S. James speaks of something, on the other hand, as a fire, a deadly poison. Do you know what he is speaking of? He is speaking of the tongue. Yes, our tongue is either our best member or our worst. The worst when we use it to speak bad words, untrue words, unloving words; the best when we use it to speak good words, true words, loving words, and pure words; the superlatively best when we use it to win others to God, or when we use it to praise and bless our Lord and Saviour, and to magnify His Name.

THE FOURTH COMMANDMENT.

Remember that thou keep holy the Sabbath-day. Six days shalt thou labour, and do all that thou hast to do; but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God. In it thou shalt do no manner of work, thou, and thy son, and thy daughter, thy man-servant, and thy maid-servant, thy cattle and the 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 rested the seventh day; wherefore the Lord blessed the seventh day and hallowed it.

N the Book of Deuteronomy (ch. v. 12, &c.) the Fourth

upon a different foundation.

On the Sabbath-day no one, Israelite or foreigner, was to work, on the ground "that thy man-servant, and thy maidservant may rest as well as thou. And remember that thou

wast a servant in the land of Egypt, and that the Lord thy God brought thee out thence, through a mighty hand, and by a stretched out arm: therefore the Lord thy God commanded thee to keep the Sabbath-day."

To-day we will consider this Commandment only as it concerned the Israelites. We are only bound by the spirit of this Commandment: they were bound also by its letter.

The observance of the Sabbath-day among the Jews rested upon two great principles.

The first great principle of Sabbath observance was this— that as man was created in the image of God, and was intended to grow into His likeness, so man's life was to be modelled on the pattern of God's life.

God's life is represented, in condescension to our ignorance, as work followed by rest. It was therefore fitting that the life of the chosen people should also reflect this life of work and rest. Six days shalt thou labour but in the Sabbath-day thou shalt rest.

They were to work because God ever worked, they were to rest because God ever rested. They were not to consider

D

God's creating work as a thing of the past.

God's work is always going on. The Creation is always new, coming forth each day fresh from His hands.

The Israelite was to go forth to his work and to his labour, because God was ever going forth to His work: he was to rest on the Sabbath, because God rested. Rest was

as much God's appointment as labour. He desires men, one and all, to enter into His rest.

The other principle on which the observance of the Sabbath rested is that which is implied in the version of the Fourth Commandment, given in the Book of Deuteronomy, and is that of redemption on God's part, and gratitude for redemption on their part.

Remember it was said to Israel-that thou wast a slave in the land of Egypt, and that the Lord thy God brought thee out thence, therefore thy slave and thy cattle shall rest as well as thou.

The Sabbath in our Saviour's time had become a hard bondage. What God intended it to be was a deliverance from bondage. It was a proclamation of exemption from toil for the hard-worked slave, and for the much-enduring cattle.

There were no directions given as to how the Sabbath was to be spent; there was only one thing that was forbidden, and that was work.

So far, then, from the law of the Fourth Commandment laying a burden upon God's people, it was the proclamation of a law of liberty.

IN

THE FOURTH COMMANDMENT (continued).

N our last Lesson I spoke to you about the Sabbath as it concerned the Jews: to-day we must consider it as it concerns ourselves.

The law of the Sabbath in its literal sense, and in its minute particulars was solely a Jewish institution, with which we as Christians have nothing to do.

But with the principles on which the Sabbath was based we have to do.

It has no claim upon us as a law: it has claim upon us as a principle.

Christ came to fulfil the law; He came, therefore, to fulfil this commandment.

The Sabbath was only the shadow of good things to come. With the shadow we have nothing to do, with the substance, as it is in Christ, we have everything to do.

The spirit of the old dispensation has passed into the new. As Circumcision lives on in Baptism, and the Passover lives on in the Holy Communion, so the Sabbath has passed on into the Lord's Day.

As far as the letter of the law of the Sabbath goes the whole thing is changed.

The Sabbath was the Saturday, the last day of the week: the Lord's Day is the Sunday, the first day of the week. The Sabbath commemorated the work and rest of the Creator: the Lord's Day commemorates the Resurrection of our Lord.

Now, when I say that the Sabbath lives on in the Lord's Day, I do not mean that, as has sometimes been said, the Apostles or the Early Church changed the observance of the Sabbath from the seventh day to the first. For of this there is no certain evidence, to say the least of it.

As a matter of fact, the observance of both days went on side by side. The Jewish Christians-and you must remember that for a long while all Christians were Jewish Christians-kept both the Sabbath and the Lord's Day; the Gentile Christians as a rule kept only the Lord's Day.

But as years went on, and the Church became less and

less Jewish, and more and more Christian, the observance of the Sabbath died out, and only the observance of the Lord's Day remained.

But still the principles on which the law of the Sabbath was based, apply to our observance of the Lord's Day.

The observance of the Lord's Day, the day of Resurrection, the day of the triumph of life over death, is a witness to the truth that man's life is to be conformed to the life of Christ, that as He died and rose again, so we should rise with Him to life and praise.

The observance of the Lord's Day is also based upon the law of gratitude for our redemption, and serves to remind us that the stranger that is in our gates has a share in Christ's Redemption as well as we.

If, too, the law of the Sabbath was intended to be a law of liberty, that its intention was not to lay a heavy yoke upon men's shoulders, but to take off the yoke: so let us remember that the observance of the Lord's Day should not be regarded as something which lays a burden upon us, or upon any, but as something which removes the burden of toil and earthly care, and lifts the wheels of our life out of the deep ruts of toil and anxiety, on to the higher levels of human life.