ing a rolled-up mat, beaming bright, for he is made well to-day after thirty-eight years' suffering. Yet met by strict Jews, scolded severely as law-breaker for carrying the mat. (See St. Luke xiii. 14.) In a country synagogue poor bent-up woman; eighteen years like this; healing come at last; ruler indignant that it was not put off till after the Sabbath. Thus the Jewish teachers spoiled the day by troublesome rules. (Example-Must not gargle the throat on Sabbath, nor walk more than certain number of yards, &c.) The blessing spoiled here and there with rules that were strict and hard to keep. Christ, as "Lord of the Sabbath," set the day free (St. Mark ii. 27, 28).

(iii.) The blessing restored. (a) How Christ did this. (1) He gave them good sound teaching about the Sabbath. Here a man loosing ox or ass on Sabbath, leading it out to watering. What did He teach from this? (St. Luke xiii. 15-17.) A sheep fallen into a ditch on Sabbath, shepherd quickly pulls it out. What lesson? (St. Matt. xii. 9-12.) David and his men very hungry near the Tabernacle; only the holy bread, for priests properly. Yet rather than that the men should faint, what? (St. Matt. xii. 3, 4.) Holy hours of Sabbath may be used for man's need rather than he get faint and ill. (2) He brightened many Sabbaths with glorious healing. Name six Sabbath miracles; several already spoken of. Demoniac in synagogue at Capernaum (St. Mark i. 23, &c.); St. Peter's mother-in-law (St. Mark i. 29, &c.); cripple of Bethesda; man with withered hand; man born blind, Jerusalem; bent woman in synagogue of Peræa. What happy Sabbaths for these poor folk; and think of the spiritual good beyond the healing (Mal. iv. 2). What two kinds of work did He show us as fit for the Sabbath? Works of necessity; cooking food, &c. Works of mercy; caring for the suffering.

(b) What this cost Him. The Pharisees hated Him for setting aside their rules; for acting as Lord of the Sabbath. Treated Him as a profane breaker of two of God's Commandments-which? (St. Matt. xxvi. 65, 66, and St. John v. 16, ix. 16.) To be put down as one of a lot of blasphemers and Sabbathbreakers would be very hard for a respectable young man who had been good at Sunday-school, Bible-class, church. Such He endured patiently that we might have happy "Sundays." St. Francis,

of Assisi, was watching a lamb amongst goats, which were treating it badly. He thought, "Thus was my mild Saviour treated by the Jews." When we read this let us remember that what He did in His love for the Sabbath, His desire that it should be happy for us, partly made Jews act as these goats.

What

(c) The honour it brought Him. The Church (1) altered the day of the Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday, the day of Christ's resurrection, that it might be bright with His rising. (Illust.—Sunflower turning towards the sun to catch its light; Church turning towards rising of Christ to catch the brightness for its Sabbath.) (2) Called it by the Lord's name "The Lord's Day" (see Rev. i. 10). Think of St. John, then aged; lonely island, cut off by dreary sea; far from friends; yet his happy Sunday (ver. II- -18). (3) Fixed on it as the special day for Christ's special service. that? (Acts xx. 7.) What a mark in the lives of those poor dockers, and labourers, and hard-worked mothers, communicants at Troas, these Sundays must have left. (Illust.-They say that on sides of English coal mine limestone is constantly being formed, i.e., white on black. When the miners are at work the dust of the coal makes the limestone black. When they rest it is white; no dust. For each Sunday there is thus a white line, called "the Sunday stone." So well-spent Sundays leave distinct mark on hardest lives.-" Dictionary of Illustrations.")

Be careful about your Sundays; often the first downward step in a wrong life is the badly kept Sunday. Big lads, or lasses, should make two rules. (1) I will give proper time to class and church (Heb. x. 25; Acts xvi. 13; Ps. cxxii. 1). (2) I will do all I can that others shall have their Sunday rest as well as myself (St. Matt. vii. 12). [Here let teachers speak plainly, according to the circumstances of the scholars, on Sunday excursions, Sunday trading; buying sweets on Sundays that could be bought on Saturday; cycling, if it takes them away from church. May I do this or that on Sunday?" is often difficult to answer. Keep well to the two rules above given, and aim to make Sunday very bright.] Learn the good old rhyme :

"A Sunday well spent

Brings a week of content

And health for the toils of the morrow;
But a Sabbath profaned,
Whate'er may be gained,

Is a certain forerunner of sorrow."

I. ""To-morrow is the rest of the holy Sabbath unto the Lord.' This is said in connexion with the gathering of the manna (Exod. xvi. 23-30). By these words the Sabbath was either instituted, or re-instituted, and became thenceforth binding on the Israelites. Its essential character of a weekly 'rest' was at once assigned to it (1) by its name; (2) by God's resting on it from His self-imposed task of giving the manna; and (3) by the rest which the absence of manna on the Sabbath day imposed on the people. Thus the way was prepared for the stringent law of Sabbath observance laid down in the Fourth Commandment."-(Canon Rawlinson.)

2. Canon Rawlinson comments on Exod. xx. 8-11 as follows:"The Commandment is not limited to a mere enactment respecting one day, but prescribes the due distribution of a week, and enforces the six days' work as much as the seventh day's rest: 'In it thou shalt not do any work." Note further (1) the prohibition against gathering the manna on the Sabbath (chap. xvi. 26); (2) against lighting a fire (chap. xxxv. 3); (3) against gathering sticks (Num. xv. 32-35). Some exceptions were allowed-as the work of the priests and Levites in the Temple on the Sabbath, attendance on and care of the sick, rescue of a beast that was in peril of its life, &c.

By the time of the Maccabees it had come to be considered unlawful to defend oneself against the attack of an enemy on the Sabbath. Our Lord's practice was pointedly directed against the overstrained theory of Sabbath observance which was current in His day. . . . It is not improbable that the work of creation was made to occupy six days because one day in seven is the appropriate proportion of rest to labour for such a being as man. God might have created all things on one day had He so pleased, but, having the institution of the Sabbath in view, He prefigured it by spreading His work over six days, and then resting on the seventh. His law of the Sabbath . . . taught men to look on work not as an aimless, indefinite, incessant, weary round, but as leading on to an end, a rest, a fruition, a time for looking back and seeing the result and rejoicing in it. Each Sabbath is such a time, and is a type and foretaste of that eternal 'Sabbatising' in another world

4. Dean Farrar has an excellent chapter on the Fourth Commandment. The following extracts are telling :

"When, in the godless audacity of the French Revolution, those who would fain have shaken themselves loose from every vestige of religion tried to get rid of it, and to have a holiday only once in ten days, they were compelled, after an experience of only twelve years, to revert to the blessing and ordinance of God." The Christian Church meant her Sunday to be 'a sort of Easter Day in every week'; and as the sunflower turns morning and evening to the sun, so the early Church turned for ever to the Sun of Righteousness Who had risen upon her with healing in His wings." "The only New Testament rubric about Sunday is that which sets it apart for almsgiving, 1 Cor. xvi. 1—3." "When the back ached, and the sweat stood thick upon the brow, and the limbs were weary, many a poor Jew learnt to rejoice that there was a day of rest. But our working classes in these great cities, among huge furnaces, under the pall of lurid smoke, deafened by the ever-whirling wheels of machinery, devoid of the sweet refreshments of labour in the pure air and the sunny fields, need the day of rest far more even than the Jews." Bishop Neale was asked, in the reign of James I., whether ladies might on Sundays employ their hands in knottingsomething like what we call netting. He deigned to give no other reply than 'They may (k)not;' purposely leaving the answer ambiguous, as the only reply which such a petty question deserved." The Dean is scathing on the "lazy lounge" of the aristocratic Sunday :"How immeasurably nobler, as well as immeasurably happier, is the Sunday of such a man, for instance, as the late

Lord Cairns, or the late Lord Hatherley; men who, even in the mighty pressure of legal business, kept their Sundays free from worldly toils; men who were not ashamed to be seen humble, reverent, habitual worshippers in the assemblies of devout and penitent Christians who were proud, and not ashamed, to sit upon the humble benches of a Sunday-school, Sunday after Sunday, for forty years together, and to teach the children of the poor."

"

5. Lord Macaulay, in a speech on the Factory Acts, illustrates the value of a day of rest: 'Man, man is the great instrument that produces wealth. The natural difference between Campania and Spitzbergen is trifling when compared with the difference between a country inhabited by men full of bodily and mental vigour and a country inhabited by men sunk in bodily and mental decrepitude. Therefore it is that we are not poorer, but richer, because we have, through many ages, rested from Our labour one day in seven. That day is not lost. While industry is suspended, while the plough lies in the furrow, while the exchange is silent, while no smoke ascends from the factory, a process is going on quite as important to the wealth of nations as any process which is performed in more busy days. Man, the machine of machines... is repairing and winding up, so that he returns to his labours on Monday with clearer intellect, with livelier spirits, with renewed corporal vigour."

6. Quite a pathetic feature in connexion with the Jews in the time of the

Maccabees was their refusal to take up arms in their own defence on the Sabbath, their willingness rather to submit to be slaughtered. We will not come forth, neither will we do the king's commandment to profane the Sabbath day. So then they (their enemies) gave them the battle with all speed. Howbeit they answered them not, neither cast they a stone at them, nor stopped the places where they lay hid; but said, 'Let us die in our innocency: heaven and earth shall testify for us that ye put us to death wrongfully.' So they (the enemies) rose up against them in battle on the Sabbath, and they slew them, with their wives and children, and their cattle, to the number of a thousand people" (1 Macc. ii. 32-38; see also 2 Macc. v. 24-26, vi. 11, xv. I—5).

7. The last Sunday of the life of George Herbert is thus touchingly described by Isaak Walton: "The Sunday before his death he rose suddenly from his bed or couch, called for one of his instruments, took it into his hand, and said

281. Why are we to honour our parents?

We are to honour our parents chiefly because God set them over us, and gave them the charge to bring us up well (Eph. vi. 1-4; Exod. ii. 9).

282. What others, besides our parents, has God set over us?

God set over us, besides our parents, the Queen and other rulers, the clergy and other teachers, masters for those in service; but parents come nearest to us, and so are named in the Commandment (Rom, xiii. 1, 2; Eph. vi. 5).

283. How is the Fifth Commandment explained in the Duty towards our neighbour?

The Fifth Commandment is explained in the words, "To love, honour, and succour my father and mother; to honour and obey the Queen, and all that are put in authority under her; to submit myself to all my governors, teachers, spiritual pastors and masters; to order myself lowly and reverently to all my betters."

284. How are we to honour those set over us?

II. THE INSTRUCTION on "" Picture: "The Home at Nazareth," from a window of The Boys' Home Chapel, Regent's Park Road.

Look at our picture; from a beautiful window, to memory of a kind mother, in a home for orphans, and others, worse off than orphans, who have bad parents. Picture takes us to Nazareth again; Christ as a Son. We shall see how He kept Fifth Commandment and taught others to keep it.

(i.) His own obedience to His "parents."

(Read St. Luke ii. 51.) Hold your hand up before you, open it, fancy this written upon the palm: "He was subject unto them."* See if you can answer five simple questions about this writing. Touch the tip of each finger in turn at each question. (a) What does this mean: 'subject unto them"? Did as He was told perfectly; told by Joseph to saw the wood; see how it is being done. (b) Why is this remarkable? He knew how high He was above them, from heaven, their God, yet stooped to obey them (ver. 49). (c) What the secret of this obedience? Did it to please His Father in heaven (St. John viii. 29; Heb. v. 8, 9). (d) What reward on earth did He get for this obedience as a good Son? Every one pleased with Him; all loved the obedient Child (ver. 52). (e) What if He had not acted thus ? fit to save us.

Would have been unIf told to saw wood,

fetch water from well, and had not done it, or had done it carelessly, we all must have been left to perish (Rom. v. 19). (Illust.-"A merchant wanted a boy in his business. He advertised, and a crowd of applicants appeared. To sift them he put in another advertisement: 'Wanted. A boy who always obeys his mother.' The next day only two lads applied for the place.”—("Tools for Teachers.") These two were, in this way, copies of our Lord Christ. Are the boys or girls of this class like them? (Eph. vi. 1-3.)

(ii.) His rebuke of unfilial sons and daughters.

(Read St. Mark vii. 9-13.) The obedient Son grown to be a Man-the great Teacher. His foster-father dead, mother a widow, long (as supposed) supported by Jesus. This not the

fashion amongst the grown-up sons and daughters then. Wanted money to buy fine clothes; got married, left their old people to shift for themselves, perhaps too old to work-mothers who had nursed them, worked hard for them, left, old, shrivelled, weak, in want. The tall white storks which visited their land in summer might have rebuked themfamous for loving the old nesting-place, called the dutiful bird," because the ancients believed these birds repaid care of their parents when these grew old and feeble. Our Lord pitied the poor old folk left by their sons, rebuked