3. Is adultery the only offence forbidden? No: all wantonness, fornication, and provocation to uncleanness in ourselves or others are also forbidden? 4. How are Christians to avoid such sins? By keeping a constant watch over their own hearts, and by carefully shunning those companies, conversations, places, and occasions, which are likely to lead to them. THE SEVENTH COMMANDMENT. 1. What is the seventh commandment? The taking or keeping, without the actual obtain the kingdom of God. (Gal. v. 19.) See also Rom. viii. 13; Eph. v. 3-4; Pet. iv. 3; 2 Pet. xi. 14. 4. By shunning, &c.-He that loveth the danger shall perish therein. (Ecc. iii. 27.) The obligation of shunning such danger is thus forcibly expressed by our Saviour: If thy right eye cause thee to offend, pluck it out, and cast it from thee; for it is better for thee that one of thy members should perish, than that thy whole body should be cast into hell. (Matt. v. 29.) This commandment furnishes another proof that the decalogue could not be given as an epitome of the moral law. Among the sins of uncleanness, it prohibits but one species, that of adultery leaving several others, highly displeasing to God, unnoticed here, though they are condemned in other parts of the law of Moses. See Lev. xviii. 21; Num. x. 13; Deut. xxii. 24. : or implied consent of the owner, that which belongs to another. 3. How is this done? In many ways. The following are the most common. 1°. By theft, when property is taken secretly by stealth. 2. By robbery, when it is taken by violence. 3. Of theft and robbery no explanation is requisite: but fraudulent dealing is common, and frequently justified by those who use it, on the plea that they act only as others act, and have a right to obtain the best price in their power for their property. But they should remember that, by walking with the many, they walk in the broad way that leadeth to destruction (Matt. vii. 13), and that no man can possess a right to do an injustice. In Scripture all fraudulent dealing is condemned. It comprehends, 10. the use of false weights and measures, the making of the ephah (the measure) small, and of the shekel (the weight) great. (Amos viii. 5.) Thou shalt not have in thy bag divers weights, a great and a small. Thou shalt not have in thy house divers measures, a great and a small : for all who do such things, and who do unjustly, are an abomination to the Lord thy God. (Deut. xxv. 13-14-16.) Divers weights and divers measures, both of them, are an abomination before God. (Prov. xx. 10.) A false balance is an abomination before the Lord, but a just weight is his delight. (Prov. xi. 1.) 2o. It comprehends also false and fraudulent representations, by which the simple and credulous are induced to purchase at a price above, or 3.o By fraud in the dealings of one man with another. 4.° By breach of contract. 5°. By incurring debt, without the means or the intention of discharging it. 6.° By refusing to pay a just debt. to sell at a price below, the real value. It is plain that whosoever obtains possession of another man's money or property by such deceit, does not possess it with the consent, either actual or implied, of the owner. Therefore, let no man, says St. Paul, overreach and deceive his brother in any matter, because the Lord is the avenger of all such things. (1 Thess. iv. 6.) Breach of contract. In contracts between master and man, the employer and the employed, a breach of contract on either part is almost always a breach of this commandment. If the workman take his stipulated wages, though he has spent part of his time in idleness; if he receive the price for which he covenanted, though he has not performed his work in a workmanlike manner, or in place of sound, has employed unsound materials, he becomes possessed of that to which, by the terms of his contract, he has no right: and in like manner the employer, if he refuse without just cause to pay according to agreement, becomes possessed, without giving an equivalent, of the property of the employed. For the property of the poor man is his labour. The bread of the needy is their life: he that defraudeth him thereof is a man of blood. (Eccus. xxxiv. 25.) The wages of him that hath been hired by thee shall not abide with thee until the morning. (Lev. xix. 13.) 4. What must that man do, who has injured his neighbour in any of these ways? He is bound to repair the injury, or the sin will not be forgiven. THE EIGHTH COMMANDMENT. 1. What is the eighth commandment? "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour." 2. What is forbidden by this? The sin of slander or calumny; that is, of making a false charge to the prejudice of others. Without the means of discharging it.—We seldom find men willing to admit that they have contracted debts without the intention of discharging them yet how is it possible that such intention can really exist when there is no probability that it will ever be carried into execution? 4. Repair the injury.-This is a most serious consideration. The breach of this commandment entails on the sinner the obligation of repairing the injury an obligation which can never be shaken off. Behold, says St, James, the hire of the labourers who have reaped your fields crieth and their cries have entered into the ears of the Lord of hosts. (James v. 4.) Whence he says of wealth acquired by such dishonest ways, Your gold and silver is cankered; and the rust of them shall be a witness against you; it shall eat into your flesh like fire. Ye have stored up to yourselves wrath against the last days. (Ibid. 3.) : 2. The sin of slander.-This commandment prohibits falsehood to the detriment of a neighbour's char 3. What is required of the man who has committed this sin? Justice requires that he recall the slander, and repair the injury. 4. What is the difference between slander and detraction? acter, whether it be uttered in a court of justice or in ordinary conversation. Thou shalt not raise up a false report, nor join thy hand with the wicked man to bear false witness. (Ex. xxiii. 1.) The following was the punishment of the slanderer according to the law of Moses: Both the men shall stand before the judges; and if he have testified falsely against his brother, then shall ye do unto So him as he meant to have done to his brother. shalt thou take away the evil out of the midst of you.-Deut. xix. 16-19. 3. That he recall the slander.—It were well if the author or the propagator of scandal were previously to ponder the heavy burden which he is about to impose on his own shoulders. Will he feel no repugnance to avow himself guilty of falsehood, and often of falsehood of the most disgraceful nature? Yet, to this he must submit, if he hope to obtain the pardon of his sin. Can he ever be aware of the extent to which the slander has penetrated, or of the real amount of the pain, and loss, and disappointment, which it may have caused to his victim? Yet, for all this, reparation is to be made. Certainly it will not require much reflection to prove to him that, in order to injure another, he is inflicting a much worse evil on himself. 4. Detraction.-Detraction is not directly forbidden by this commandment, which is confined to |