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what was due, to afflict the widow and the fatherless, to fill prisons with the innocent, to evil entreat persons with stripes, famine, or hard bondage, to gain a cause righteously, to give an unjust judgment, to to practice usury, and oppress the poor, all fell under the same law. And of those who, while doing this, would yet offer alms, S. Chrysostom says, God will not have His altar covered with tears, Christ will not be fed with robbery, such sort of sustenance is most ungrateful to Him; it is an affront to the Lord to offer unclean things to Him; He had rather be neglected and perish by famine (in His poor members) than live by such oblations. The one is cruelty, but the other is both cruelty and an affront likewise."

Forgery, horse-racing, calumny, by which a man's goods were gotten from him, breach of trust and tricks of trade, were especially condemned. Pliny says that it was one part of their solemn business every Lord's day to bind themselves with a sacrament or an oath, not to commit any wickedness, theft, robbery, adultery, not to falsify their word, not to deny anything wherewith they were intrusted, when they were required to deliver it up again. And S. Augustine classes frauds in trade among such crimes as murder, adultery, and fornication. Tertullian among such sins as blasphemy,

idolatry, apostacy, murder, and the like, which defile the temple of God and dis qualify men for Christian Communion, With such an one no, not to eat."

To buy stolen goods or to hide a thief was held to be guilt of the same kind as the theft itself. S. Augustine and S. Chrysostom comment on the words, "When thou sawest a thief, thou consentedst unto him, as the same thing as committing a robbery." Idleness and gambling, the latter as bringing many to ruin and encouraging perjury, lying, cursing and swearing were on the same ground prohibited as breaches of this law. The council of Eliberis separates all gamblers from Communion. "If any Christian play at dice or tables, let him be restrained from communicating; but if he leaves off and amends, after a year's penance, he may be reconciled."

We are forbidden by this command:

:

1. To waste as spendthrifts the means God hath given us. All prodigality. therefore, which shelters itself under the name of generosity is condemned. While we are not to be anxious about the morrow, for the morrow will care for the things of itself, we must be careful, moderate in our expenses according to our means, and not beyond them agreeable to our station, and not above it remembering that if a man provide not for his own he is worse than an infidel.

2. To gamble or attempt to get by gaming an advantage over another. Betting and such like unhealthy inventions of the devil to overreach another and gain money at any risk are contrary to what is fair and unjust, and so offend this law.

3. Fraud and cheating of all kinds, whether depreciating an article with a view to buying or puffing it for the purpose of sale. It is to be feared that in this age of excessive advertising and excessive cheapness the bargains gained are at a loss of character to both buyer and seller. And the phrase which one hears often in the market place, "no friendship in dealing" is an offspring of the same spirit.

4. To practice what is unfair and dishonest. Such are the mushroom speculations and bubble companies of the day. Such are the great undertakings and huge failures of firms and the commercial dishonesty in banking and breaches of trust which have involved hundreds in one miserable ruin. We have no right to deny the fair day's wage for the day's work (S. James v.), or to expect those who work for us, and whose labour is essential to our comfort, to be content on a wage which will not give decent food and raiment, nor to feel satisfied that they who have been faithful in their service should not share in the prosperity of their master. On these the Apostle tells

that we have to remember that we have a Master in Heaven. Nor on the other hand can the servant avoid the sin here condemned if he or she wastes that time for which they are paid or connives at, if not actually commits, petty frauds under the deceit that what is taken will never be missed or may be considered a perquisite. God has a word here for the tradesman who falsify their accounts or who adulterate their goods or give short weight, for a just balance is His delight. Whatever, indeed, in howsoever slight a degree offends the truth and justice of God, evading a tax, for tribute must be paid to whom tribute is due, or avoiding a debt or incurring liabilities we are unable to meet, for we must owe no man anything but to love one another; taking advantage of another's simplicity and using our own superior knowledge to their loss; breaking a trust committed and such-like are of one and the same character, thefts, and "Theft is punished by Thy law, O God, and the law written in the hearts of men which iniquity itself effaces not (Augustine)." Exod. xxii. 1-12; Prov. vi. 31.

5. There is, however, a species of robbery which has many defenders, but which cannot be otherwise than classed as the worst of all the crimes condemned by this commandment, that is, robbing God's Church. In this I would include the appropriating

funds left for a holy purpose as for the education of the poor in the principles of the Church or providing that the Church Catechisms shall be taught for ever in certain schools or the giving of alms or clothing or the general maintenance of certain communicants in a parish; funds dedicated to God with a pious belief that they would be faithfully administered and be regarded as sacred yet now perverted to other uses under the plea of expediency or of the original object having failed. Such, too, is the sweeping away of Church rates and the comstant efforts which promise in the end to be successful to deprive the Church of her most precious heritage the care of the poor. "Will a man rot God ?" Church-rates, Church-yards, tithes, and then the Church itself, and when this is done we shall land in a Communism which shall literally be a barren land where no water is. The day perhaps is far distant when this result may be attained, and the hearts of the English people too sound in the love of the Church of Fatherland to permit it, but we have lived to see the calm steps in sacrilege taken, and it behoves us jealously to watch lest we be spoiled of all that yet remains to us. As regards robbery of the Church, Blunt observes in his quaint way that the devil's corn goes all to bran." The receivers of the plunder at