awful phenomena in which the law was given. As to the present summit of Sinai, there is little reason to suppose that it had any connection with the giving of the law; and still less the higher peaks of St. Catharine. I know not when I have felt a thrill of stronger emotion, than when in first crossing the plain, the dark precipices of Horeb rising in solemn grandeur before us, I became aware of the entire adaptedness of the scene to the purposes for which it was chosen by the great Hebrew legislator." (Bib. Repos. for April, 1839.) Such are various descriptions of the mountain from which the Law was given, as recorded in the next chapter. Let us praise God that we are not come to Mount Sinai, with its savage bleakness, but to Mount Sion; that we are translated from darkness to light, and from seeking to be justified by a Law that we cannot obey, to receiving complete justification through a Saviour who had obeyed the Law perfectly for us.

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CHAPTER XX.

THE LAW OF GOD.

THE last chapter that we read last Sunday morning contained the sublime and majestic preface to the giving of the Law, when the people came, in the language of an apostle, to the mount that might be touched, to blackness, and darkness, and tempest, and the sound of a trumpet, and the voice of words, which word they that heard it entreated that they should not hear it any more, and if so much, says the apostle, as a beast or a living creature were to touch the mount, it was to be destroyed. We have now the proclamation of God's holy law from the mountain top amidst the thunder, and the lightnings, and all the other awful accompaniments of that sublime and memorable transaction.

Recollect that this Law is quite distinct from what is called the ceremonial law. The Jews had three sorts of law. They had the moral law, the ceremonial law, and the political or civil law. The civil law existed for a time; its principles, as far as they are moral, relate to all time. The ceremonial law lasted till Christ, its end and its object, came. But the moral law, like the God that announced it, is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever.

You will notice, also, that this Law was not invented on Mount Sinai, but only enunciated there. It was ever true; it is now true; and it ever will be true. God's enunciation of it on Mount Sinai was an act of mercy in letting his creatures know what was the precise exaction of his will, and what would be the highest conformity to that will, if the

commands in stone could be transferred to the heart, and be made actual and real in the life and the experience of mankind.

This Law has been called in popular phrase "the Decalogue." It is called in Deuteronomy the Ten Commandments; and hence the word Aɛkahoyo, "ten words," "ten laws," or "ten commandments." I cannot enter on the laws themselves, for that would be incompatible with a short expository reading; but I may state that there has been a dispute from the days of Augustine as to the right division of the commandments. I think that no dispute can be sustained fairly as to distributing these precepts according to what seems their natural, just, and reasonable order; but by Augustine, who lived in the fourth century, and who was the most evangelical and best of the ancient writers of the Nicene Church, the second commandment, as we call it, was attached to the first; and then the last commandment was divided into two; and the ninth commandment, according to that arrangement, was, "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife;" and the tenth was the remainder of the Decalogue. The Roman Catholic Church has taken the division of Augustine; and if it had stopped there, we should not have complained, because, however you divide the commandments, if you give the whole, it is equally and substantially the same; but unfortunately, by attaching our second commandment to their first commandment, they have gradually, year after year, lessened the second commandment, till in countless catechisms, many of which I have in my possession, the second commandment, as we call it, is omitted altogether. For instance, in an Italian catechism which I have, drawn up by Bellarmine, and sanctioned by two pontiffs in succession, the second commandment is totally omitted, and the fourth commandment is perverted, being thus written, Recordati de santificare le feste. "Recollect to sanctify or keep holy the festivals," the word "Sabbath"

being wholly expunged. In the Irish catechisms the second commandment is left out, and also in a French catechism I purchased on the Continent last year. It seems as if some master mind among Romanists graduated the supply of the Decalogue according to the moral latitude of the place; because in countries where the darkness is most dense, the fourth commandment is altered, and the second is omitted; in places again where there is a little more light, as in Connaught, Leinster, or Munster, the fourth commandment is given, but the second is omitted: in England the second is given to a very great extent, but not the whole of it; but in Scotland, where the Roman Catholic authorities seem to think the light is the greatest, the second commandment is given fully appended to the first. So that it seems as if they had adapted the commandments to the amount of light that was in any particular country. I hope it is not uncharitable to think so; for really the fact is so striking, that one can scarcely explain it in any other way. As to the division of the last commandment, it would seem to be unreasonable, upon this simple ground. It happens that in the parallel passage in Deuteronomy, where the tenth commandment is given, it is written first "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife;" but in this passage it is first, "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house." If the commandments had been intended to be divided according to the plan of Augustine, it would have been the same in both - thy neighbor's wife first, and thy neighbor's house second; but the fact that in the one version "house" is first, and in the other" wife" is first, is proof that this last commandment, according to our order, was meant to be a complete commandment, and never was designed to be divided into two distinct commandments.

Our Blessed Lord divides the whole Decalogue into two great Commandments, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first command

ment. And the second is like, namely this, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." Obedience to this Decalogue is based, not simply upon God's claims as a Legislator, which are most just, but also upon God's goodness as a Benefactor; for the preface to the Commandments is, "I am the Lord thy God a covenant God—and I have done this good for you, I have brought you out of the land of Egypt; and therefore, because I am not only your Legislator, but your Benefactor, I ask you to regard obedience to the exactions of this Law as the highest happiness, as well as the supremest obligation; and I wish you to obey it, not because it is just, but because gratitude should prompt you to do so." Then He says, "Thou shalt have no other gods before me." Now mark the force of this. It is not, "Thou shalt not substitute any other gods for me," but, "Thou shalt not have any other gods in company with me." The Cæsars would have allowed to the image of our Blessed Lord a niche in the Pantheon, if the apostles would have consented to the proposal; but the answer of the apostles was, “No; our God cannot be in company with other gods. He must fill the whole Pantheon with his glory, or he will not enter it at all." It is so with the human heart. My dear friends, here ought to be in that human heart but one Supreme Governor, Lord, Master, and King. He will not share the human heart with others; he must have the whole, or he will have none. And the great struggle that goes on in the case of thousands is not a struggle about superseding God by other gods, or dislodging the true God to let in an idol; but it is a struggle whether our adhesion to the Christian religion be compatible with our adhesion to something else that is incompatible with it—whether God and other gods can live together in the same place. It cannot be. It is written, "Thou shalt have no other gods before me." And not only so, but you shall not make any image for worship. This second commandment has been construed