of them that love me and keep my com

mandments.

III. "Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain;* for the Lord will not hold him guiltless, who taketh his name in vain.

IV. "Remember the sabbath-day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work: but the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work; thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy man-servant nor thy maid-servant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the sabbath-day, and hallowed it.

* The proper translation of this clause is, "Thou shalt not utter the name of the Lord thy God to a falsehood:" it is a prohibition of perjury, or false swearing, and ought to be so explained.

V." Honour thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.

VI. "Thou shalt not kill.

VII. "Thou shalt not commit adultery.

VIII. "Thou shalt not steal.

IX. "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.

X. "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house; thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife, nor his man-servant, nor his maid-servant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour's."

These Ten Commandments contain excellent rules of life: they teach us to love and honour God, our kind Creator, never to use his holy name to support a falsehood, and to keep holy the sabbathday. They teach us to honour our parents, to abstain from all violence and

F

deceit, and never to suffer ourselves even to desire that which belongs to another person. Let us lay up these divine laws in our hearts, and try to live as they require us to live. Let us take delight in doing the will of God; and then He will delight to bless us, and to do us good.

THE GOLDEN CALF.

(Exod. xx. 18-21, xxiv. 3-18, xxxii.)

WHEN the children of Israel saw the smoke and the lightning on Mount Sinai, and heard the thunder and the trumpet, and the voice of God himself speaking to them from the thick darkness, they were greatly afraid, and they went and stood afar off. And they said to Moses, "Speak thou with us, and we will hear; but let not God speak with us, lest we die."

This shews that the people had then a proper reverence for Almighty God; and

a short time afterwards, when Moses read to them the Ten Commandments, and other laws which God had given them, they promised that they would do all that the Lord had said, and would be obedient.

But they did not keep their promise long; for soon after this, God called Moses up into the mount again, in order that he might give him directions what sort of a tabernacle or church was to be built for· Him, and how His worship was to be conducted. Moses remained in the mount forty days and forty nights; and when the people saw that he did not come down so soon as they expected, they began to grow very impatient; and they went to Aaron, and asked him to make them a God, who should go before them, and lead them out of the wilderness where they were-for, "as for that Moses," they said, "the man that brought us up out of Egypt, we know not what is become of him."

Aaron was so wicked and so foolish as to do what they desired. He told them to bring to him their golden ear-rings : and, when he had received them, he melted them, and made of them a calf, which he set up before the Israelites, saying, "This is thy God, O Israel, who has brought thee up out of the land of Egypt." He also raised an altar before it, and the people offered sacrifices, and danced and feasted.

But the great God, who sees and knows every thing, was very angry with them for this, and he sent Moses down from the mountain to reprove them.

Moses carried in his hand two tables of stone, on which God himself had written the words of his law; and when he came to the camp, and saw the calf, and the people dancing and rejoicing before it, he was so much grieved at their wickedness, that he threw down the two tables of the law, and broke them. And when he had made procla