2

fice thy tastes, inclinations, and pleasures, rather than be obliged to contend with thy neighbour. If duty and charity should sometimes oblige thee to contradict others, let it be always with the greatest discretion. Be ever ready to forgive those who aggrieve thee, and show to them a countenance cheerful, open, and smiling."

Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking be put away from you with all malice: and be ye kind one to another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you. Eph. iv. 31-32.

CHAPTER VIII.

COMMANDMENT VII.

66 Thou shalt not commit adultery.” The master-thought of this command, which is God's protection against human selfishness, of the purity and chastity of the Christian home, is the holiness of the Body. We are temples of the Holy Ghost. A temple is a building consecrated to the service of the Most High, filled with holy things, and devoted to a holy purpose; to use it for common objects is to profane it, and to dishonour Him whose abode it is. So with the Human Body. Christ hath

purchased this great gift, the gift of holi-
ness, which is not of ourselves, but which
cometh from and belongeth to Him. We
will come unto Him, and make our abode
with Him, "God the Holy Ghost dwells
truly and really in the hearts of the faith-
ful. He is their Life, He unites them to
Christ, and is the source of all graces,
comfort, life, and fire of love. "The world

cannot receive Him because it seeth Him
not, neither knoweth Him; but ye know
Him, for He dwelleth with you, and shall
be in you." And so He is to us wisdom
and righteousness, and sanctification, and
redemption, for He dwelleth in us. And
these gifts are summed up in the one gift,
which is even God Himself, Love, God is
Love, and He that dwelleth in love dwelleth
in God, and God in Him. So does S. Paul
speak of the love of God being shed abroad
in our hearts, not given to, but shed abroad
in our hearts, as showing the profusion of
it. That gift then, which is the greatest
possible, He hath given; not heaven, and
earth, and sea, but what is more precious
than any of these, and hath rendered us
angels from being men, yea, sons of God,
and brethren of Christ. But what is this
gift ?
The Holy Spirit. He hath shed
abroad the full fountain of His Blessings.
So over and over again our position as
members of Christ," as baptized into one

Body, and partaking of one spirit, as being one Body, and one Bread, as dwelling in Christ, and Christ in us, as having received not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God, as having the spirit of His son sent forth into our hearts, is spoken of; by all which expressions we know that one and the same truth is meant. We know that we are of God, that the spirit of God dwells in us, that Christ is in us, that the spirit of the Father is in us, and that being in Christ, in the spirit, we are the temple of God unless we be reprobate. A wondrous mystery of love and an awful truth.

Weigh well," says S. Gregory, "dearest brethren, what a dignity that is, to have in the dwelling-place of the heart the presence of God."

"Put off thy shoes from off thy feet," said God to Moses, " for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground."

What place must that be, how sacred, wherein is His very shrine, and where the Holy Trinity dwells through the spirit.

This, I repeat, is the master thought of the command; we are to consider the holimess of that body which is the Temple of God. We are to consider what it must be to defile that body, what a very misery sin must be when brought into the very Presence of God. For a soul washed in the Blood of Jesus to choose sin, to be impure, unchaste,

what can be more awful, what more sickening ? So does God bid us consider the sacredness of our bodies, and not commit adultery. All sins of impurity are forbidden here, and all the opposite virtues enjoined. The command is, abstain from fleshly lasts which war against the soul," and on the ground that we are "members of Christ" and "temples of the Holy Ghost," and that "God hath not called us to uncleanness, but unto holiness."

It is to be observed that the first seven of the commandments seem to stand on a somewhat higher footing than the rest, in that the penalty attached to breaking them was the severest possible, nothing less than death. To worship a God, or own another God than Jehovah, was death; to blaspheme, to break the sabbath, to be disobedient to parents, to commit murder, and so with this command to commit adultery, was to incur the punishment of death. It will be seen that the sanctity of the nature of man is indissolubly bound up in the Holiness of God. The relations of parent and child, of man with man, as of the family who own but one head, and whose life is derived from one source, is thus very distinctly laid down. We must bear this in mind, that we may see the sin of a breach of this command, and that we may understand how fatally society has erred in palliating or condoning the sins of the flesh.

In the heathen world it was otherwise. No check was placed on the free indulgence of the passions, and no special sacredness attached to the marriage vow. They, to use S. Paul's word, were on this point past feeling, and gave themselves over to lasciv. iousness, to work all uncleanness with greediness; but, he adds, ye have not so learned Christ. The Egyptians were great sinners in this particular, and the com mand was made the more significant, and the penalty perhaps the more severe, to show what was the mind of the Eternal, and to warn Israel not to copy the vice to which they had been for so long. accustomed.

And of the mind of the Eternal there could be no question, for the history as well as the teaching of the Bible speak in no doubtful words of this point.

The contest of good with evil has from the very first been between the pure and the impure. The sensual habits of the antediluvian_world are particularly mentioned, and Noah, the preacher of righteousness, stands out as a lonely witness to purity in a surrounding of evil. Lot was vexed with the filthy conversation of the wicked, which conversation brought down the fire from heaven, and the sins of the Canaanites against which Israel was warned, and into which whenever she fell God de

A