I. "Thou shalt have no other gods before me. II. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; and shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments.

III. Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain: for the LORD will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.

IV. 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 maid-servant, 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 rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the seventh day, and hallowed it.

V. Honour thy father and thy mother; that thy days may be long upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee.

VI. Thou shalt not kill.

VII. Thou shalt not commit adultery.

VIII. Thou shalt not steal.

IX. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.

X. 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."

Illustration.

1. Thou shalt have no other gods before me. Thou shalt have no God besides me. "The Lord our God is one God," is declared often in the scriptures. This great doctrine is called the Unity of God. The word God is sometimes used in the scriptures in an inferior sense. In one place it is said, "there are gods many, and lords many;" in another, "Moses was unto them as a God." This is an oriental or Asiatic mode of expression. In those countries in ancient times, great dignity and importance were attached to men of high stations-the humbler classes prostrated themselves before them. When Joseph appeared abroad in Egypt, persons went before him, who cried out, "Bow the knee ;" and the people kneeling awaited his coming: this is sometimes called worship. This worship often became supreme homage.

2. God revealed himself to Adam, Noah, and other patriarchs. This is Primitive Revelation. The patriarchs transmitted this revelation to their descendants, but they forgot it, and many of them invented Polytheism, or worship of many gods. It has already been told, that men, and even brute animals were deified, or made objects of religious

worship. The commandment prohibits this idolatry.

3. Thou shalt not make to thyself any graven image, &c. The second commandment is like the first. "God is a spirit, and must be worshipped in spirit and in truth," says Christ. God is a mind--he must be worshipped in the mind, and honoured in the heart. He is the object of thought, not of sight. "No man hath seen God at any time."-God cannot be represented by 66 'any thing that is in heaven above, or in the earth beneath." He is a pure moral being-" a jealous God," that is, one who knows his own infinite excellence, and who requires of his creatures their supreme love and praise.

4. He visits the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, &c. "He is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity" with complacency. He punishes. all sin. When parents by their vices and bad examples corrupt their children, God punishes the crimes of the children which were caused by the neglect of the parents. But this just God, who "will by no means clear the guilty," shows mercy to them who love him, and keep his commandments. It is this attribute of love that should make us love him, and his Son Jesus Christ, who was the minister of his father's will to man, long after Moses.

5. Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain, &c. This commandment is connected with the first two. It suggests the reverence due to God in all our words. Want of respect to the divine presence, to him who is about our bed and about our path, who knoweth our down-sitting, and our up-rising, and all our

thoughts afar off, and from whom we cannot, for a moment, hide ourselves, is a presumptuous sin ;" and those who are guilty of it may expect punishment.

6. "God hath been pleased (no matter for what reason, although probably for this) to forbid the vain mention of his name :- Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.' Now the mention is vain, when it is useless; and it is useless, when it is neither likely nor intended to serve any good purpose; as when it flows from the lips idle and unmeaning, or is applied, on occasions inconsistent with any consideration of religion and devotion, to express our anger, our earnestness, our courage, or our mirth; or indeed when it is used at all, except in acts of religion, or in serious and seasonable discourse upon religious subjects.

7. "The prohibition of the third commandment is recognised by Christ, in his sermon upon the mount; which sermon adverts to none but the moral parts of the Jewish law. The words of Christ extend the prohibition beyond the name of God, to every thing associated with the idea:'Swear not, neither by heaven, for it is God's throne; neither by the earth, for it is his footstool; neither by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the Great King.'

:

8. "Mockery and ridicule, when exercised upon the Scriptures, or even upon the places, persons, and forms, set apart for the ministration of religion, fall within the meaning of the law which forbids the profanation of God's name: they are moreover inconsistent with a religious frame of mind; for, as no one ever either feels himself disposed to pleasantry,

or capable of being diverted with the pleasantry of others, upon matters in which he is deeply interested; so a mind intent upon the acquisition of heaven, rejects with indignation every attempt to entertain it with jests calculated to degrade or deride subjects which it never recollects but with seriousness and anxiety."*

9. These three commandments engage us particularly to honour God, even the Father, and to put no created being on an equality with him.

10. Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour and do all thy work, &c. This commandment enjoins two duties. One the observance of a day of rest and religious worship; the other the performance of all other duties by industry and application to business during six days out of seven. The Jews observed the sabbath. The Jewish sabbath was the last day of the week; it celebrated the day on which God finished the work of Creation. Christ rose from the dead on the first day of the week, and his followers have ever observed the day of his resurrection as their sabbath.

11. The Pagans of all countries have no sabbath. Dr. Watts calls this blessed day, "the best of all the seven." It is a day of peace and comfort, a day of praise and instruction-a day when men go to the house of God in company, and meet in pleasant walks, when the father, the mother, and the children are collected together in love, and taught all they need know or do, to be good. To neglect the Sunday, to spend it in idleness and voluntary ignorance, in foolish amusements, or in cruel treatment of poor animals is a great sin. "The Sabbath," says

* Paley.