second table contained all from the words, "Honour thy father," &c. to the close of the Decalogue. Tradition has been so uniform in handing down this report that it is entitled to respect. The first table, therefore, enjoins duties directly owing to God; and forbids sins directly committed against him and his worship. The second, prescribes our duties to man; and forbids every species of sin against our neighbour. Calvin: "We have a reason at hand which removes all ambiguity on this subject. For God has thus divided his law into two parts, which comprise the perfection of righteousness, that we might assign the first part to the duties of religion, which peculiarly belong to the worship of his majesty; and the second to those duties of charity which respect men. The first foundation of righteousness is certainly the worship of God; and if this be destroyed, all the other branches of righteousness, like the parts of a disjointed and falling edifice, are torn asunder and scattered. It is vain to boast of righteousness without religion." The precepts of both tables proceeded from the same authority, and yet sins against God are more heinous than sins directed against man. "If one man sin against another, the judge shall judge him: but if a man sin against the LORD, who shall intreat for him?" 1 Sam. ii. 25.

2. The method of numbering the commandments has not been entirely uniform. They are not in Scripture called the Ten Commandments, but the Ten Words. Hence some writers have felt at liberty to regard what is ordinarily called The Preface to the Commandments as the first word. Meier divides the ten words into two pentads, thus. I. (1.) I am Jehovah

thy God. (2.) Thou shalt have no other gods beside me. (3.) Thou shalt not make to thyself any graven image. (4.) Thou shalt not take the name of Jehovah thy God in vain. (5.) Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. II. (1.) Honour thy father and thy mother. (2.) Thou shalt not commit adultery. (3.) Thou shalt do no murder. (4.) Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour. (5.) Thou shalt not steal. This arrangement omits entirely every thing respecting covetousness, and claims to be "the original form of the Decalogue." Kurtz says, that according to Meier: "These were the entire contents; there was not a single word more or less; and this was the way in which the commandments were arranged in the two tables!!" No wonder he adds the marks of exclamation.

The words, "I am the LORD thy God, &c." clearly cannot be taken as constituting a commandment. They enjoin nothing. They prohibit nothing. They are a very fit preface to the whole code or to each commandment in it. And they have been commonly so regarded. They form, indeed, a very important sentence or word. The Jews and some others have put this sentence as the first word. They have united the prohibitions to have other gods and to make any graven image into one commandment, and made it the first; and so have thrown the numbers forward in every instance, making but nine commandments. Augustine took a different course. He united the prohibition against having other gods and the use of images into one commandment, and called it the first. He divided the law concerning covetousness into two, numbering them the ninth and the tenth. He took

the copy of the law not as given in the twentieth chapter of Exodus, but as given in the fifth chapter of Deuteronomy. According to him, the ninth commandment was, "Thou shalt not desire thy neighbour's wife;" and the tenth comprehended every thing else which we are forbidden to covet. The Roman Catholic church, and at least one Protestant church, have adopted this division. It should be fatal to it, that in the twentieth chapter of Exodus, the first thing we are forbidden to covet is our neighbour's house, and not our neighbour's wife. The rehearsal of the law in Deuteronomy is evidently given by a speaker who presents the sense of the whole, but is not claiming to give an exact copy of the very words used on Mount Sinai, or of the order in which they were written. The ordinary mode of division is, that the law against having other gods is the first commandment; that against images, the second; that against profaning God's name, the third; that against profaning the Sabbath, the fourth; and so on, making the law against every kind of covetousness, the tenth. "This division," says Kurtz, "was unhesitatingly adopted by Philo, Josephus, and Origen; and they were followed by nearly all the Greek fathers, and by all the Latin until the time of Augustine. In the Greek church it continued to prevail, (the law against the worship of images being of course interpreted as referring to latria and not to doulia,) and the Swiss Reformers introduced it again in connection with the Reformed church. It has been most warmly and thoroughly defended by Züllig and Geffken, and is almost universally adopted by modern theologians." This division is followed in this work. No particular im

portance attaches to the numbering of the commandments, provided every word that God has spoken be faithfully delivered to the people. It is not reckoning the commandments aright, but keeping them, that is pleasing to God. And yet Roman Catholics have availed themselves of their mode of numbering the commandments entirely to omit from their short Catechisms all allusion to image worship. This is maiming and mutilating the word of God. It is pleasant to find, that of late years, in America at least, some disposition is manifested by them to give this prohibition its place in their formularies. Bishop Hopkins (of the seventeenth century) says that in his time the words, "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, &c.," were generally omitted in all Reman Catholic books of devotion and of instruction for the people. Who has ever seen these words in any copy of the commandments placed near the altar in a mass house?

V. THE PREFACE TO THE MORAL LAW.

I AM THE LORD THY GOD, WHICH HAVE BROUGHT THEE OUT OF THE LAND OF EGYPT, OUT OF THE HOUSE OF BONDAGE. The first title here claimed by God is LORD in the Hebrew, Jehovah. It teaches the selfexistence, independence, eternity and immutability of God. The word is commonly supposed to be derived from the Hebrew verb which signifies to be. Next to Elohim this is much the most usual namə given to God in the Old Testament. It might have been well to transfer it into our English Bible in every case; but our translators followed those versions which had been previously made; and their

authors in their turn had been guided not a little by the Septuagint, which rendered it by a word signifying Lord or Master. But our English translation has guarded against misapprehension on the subject, by putting in small capitals the word LORD, when it is a translation of Jehovah.

The second title here claimed by the lawgiver is God-in the Hebrew Elohim, which is in the plural form. There is no satisfactory explanation of the use of these plurals concerning God, except that they were intended to recognize a plurality of persons in the godhead. Being in the singular, Jehovah expresses the divine unity. Being in the plural, Elohim points to the trinity. The Lord says, I am thy God; by which he claims to have that people in covenant relation with himself. The residue of the preface is a direct appeal to the gratitude of those to whom the law was first given, on the score of God's amazing mercies to them personally and nationally, temporally and spiritually. It reminded them of all that God had done for their fathers as well as for themselves. It specially pointed to the deliverance from Egyptian bondage, as no mean type of the greater redemption promised to our first parents in the garden of Eden.

To us this preface teaches that "because God is the Lord, and our God and Redeemer, therefore we are bound to keep all his commandments." While claiming that these words are a preface to the whole law, we may yet admit that they have a particular relation to the first commandment.

This preface then clearly points to the authority of the Most High, as the Creator and Governor of the world, as possessed of infinite and independent excel