teacher, and, like the melting, penetrating salt, it has reached the heart of a godless father or a careless mother; or, like the light, spread and diffuse itself through the various members of the household,-like the leaven in the parable, which the woman took and hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was leavened. How often has the mere presence of one of God's people, known and commended as such, rebuked and restrained an ungodly company! And how often, too, has the presence of such a one, like Elisha in the Shunammite's house, brought a host of blessings in its train! Surely, then, we ought never to think any sphere too limited or too lowly for the Lord's work: there is encouragement to the humblest and the poorest; and even of the very youngest it has been said, "Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast Thou ordained praise: " and our Lord here says to those who were of no higher station than fishermen on the sea of Galilee, "Ye are the salt of the earth." It is, however, blended with a seasonable caution, not only that it lose not its savour, but that its work be not superficial. The scribes and Pharisees professed much, and were much observed of men, and outwardly they assumed to be almost the only righteous :-"God, I thank thee that I am not as other men;"—and yet it is a solemn warning which our Saviour gives, that unless our righteousness exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees,

D

we shall, in no case, enter into the kingdom of heaven.

SECTION XIII.

(Chapter v. verses 21-32.)

OUR Lord here gives His exposition of some of the commandments of the Decalogue, and strange indeed must that exposition have sounded in the ears of those who had been trained up and accustomed only to the corrupt and partial glosses of their Jewish teachers. He commences with the sixth commandment, the first of the second table, which teaches us our duty towards our neighbour. "Thou shalt not kill," is its brief and simple prohibition, and the Jews confined it solely to the actual crime of murder. Cain was no doubt a murderer in the Jewish sense of the law. But had he stopped short of actual death, or had his brother Abel, though left for dead, been unexpectedly restored to life, Cain would have been no murderer. One sees at once, even by natural reason, how unsound and defective was such an exposition of the law, and that the man who committed violence with an intent to murder, though the act was not completed, was as guilty of the crime as if he had effected his purpose; as the man who went out to commit a theft, and was disturbed in his purpose, was equally a thief, though he carried nothing away with him. But

was it simply to enunciate this that Jesus delivered his exposition of the commandment? was this His measurement of the length and breadth of the law? David had long before said of God's law, "Thy commandment is exceeding broad," and he had also said, "The law of the Lord is perfect;" and St. Paul after him had said, "We know that the law is spiritual;" and it is this threefold character of the law which our Lord in this portion of the chapter unfolds. The law is "broad," or extensive, inasmuch as where a duty is commanded, it extends to and prohibits the contrary sin, and where a sin is forbidden, the contrary duty is commanded; so again, when any duty is commanded, everything that may lead and tend to the fulfilment of that commandment, everything that may promote its facility and further its practice, is commanded also; and so also when any sin is forbidden, every avenue to that sin, every path that leads to it, every inlet that may give access to it, is as strictly forbidden also, in the breadth of God's commandment. The "perfection," too, of the law of the Lord is comprised in this, that it binds every one to the full conformity of the whole man unto righteousness, that every thought be brought into captivity to the obedience that is in Christ-that it requires entire obedience, demanding the utmost perfection in every duty, and forbidding the slightest deviation into sin-and this for ever. Again, the law is "spiritual," because it reaches to the very

thoughts and intents, the wishes and desires, of the heart-it takes cognizance not only of the outward act, but of the inward and hidden purpose-it forbids not only the commission, but the conceiving of lust in the heart. "The rays of this sun enter the most secret chambers of the heart." Let us just exemplify this with regard to the sixth commandment. The actual violence, the deed of outrage, is no doubt forbidden. But does our Lord stop there? No! every avenue to unkindness in our hearts towards a brother is ordered to be closed up; all causeless anger is prohibited; and even if a righteous anger be provoked, we are elsewhere cautioned against extending it too far: "Be ye angry," if it must needs be, but "sin not." Nor must we let it linger and rankle in our hearts: "Let not the sun go down upon your wrath." Nor is this the only door that must be guarded. Set a watch upon the door of your lips: angry words lead to revilings, and revilings are hurried on to that bitter abuse, and those fearful imprecations, which so often degrade and brutalize the quarrelsome and malignant. Every thought of unkindness, every feeling that would lead you to look askance on a brother, must be crushed: it was a spirit of envy that was the first germ of the first murder that stained the earth; and if no feeling of unkindness is to be allowed, every feeling of kindness, of love, and of good-will is to be cherished; for, as one apostle tells us, "Whoso hateth his brother is a murderer;" so another

apostle adds-"Owe no man anything, but to love one another; for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law;"-and, "Love is the fulfilling of the law."

SECTION XIV.

(Chapter v. verse 33 to the end.)

THERE is much in these precepts of our Lord that can hardly be understood literally, any more than in the precept which we before read-" If thy hand or thy foot offend thee, cut it off; or if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out." It is nowhere required that a man should mutilate himself to prevent sin, or to punish himself for it when committed; and if a man, by way of penance or precaution, were to do so, he would in reality do that which was in itself sinful. The maceration of the human frame, as practised and encouraged, or at least applauded, in the Roman Catholic Church, is nearly akin to this, and is alluded to by the apostle, and condemned among those things which "have indeed a show of wisdom in will-worship, and humility, and neglecting of the body;" and, therefore, in that injunction in the 30th verse, as well as in those we have now read, we must look rather to the spirit of the precept, than to its literal meaning and purport. We are not, for instance, to give to every one that asketh, for if we did we should but encourage idleness and imposture, and soon