Question.-You said, that your Godfathers and Godmothers did promise for you, that you should keep GOD's Commandments. Tell me how many there be?

Answer.-Ten.

Question.-Which be they?

Answer. The same which GOD spake in the twentieth chapter of Exodus, saying, I am the LORD thy GOD, Who brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.

I. Thou shalt have none other gods but Me.

II. Thou shalt not make to thyself any graven image, nor the likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or in the earth beneath, or in the water under the earth. Thou shalt not bow down to them, nor worship them: for I the LORD thy GOD am a jealous GOD, and visit the sins of the fathers upon the children, unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate Me, and show mercy unto thousands in them that love Me, and keep my commandments.

III. Thou shalt not take the Name of the LORD thy GOD in vain for the LORD will not hold him guiltless that taketh His Name in vain.

IV. Remember that thou keep holy the Sabbath-day. Six days shalt thou labour, and do all that thou hast to do; but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the LORD thy GOD. In it thou shalt do no manner of work, thou, and thy son, and thy daughter, thy manservant, and thy maid-servant, thy cattle, and the 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 seventh day, and hallowed it.

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 do no murder.

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 servant, nor his maid, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is his.

Question.-What dost thou chiefly learn by these Command

ments?

Answer.-I learn two things: my duty towards GOD, and my duty towards my Neighbour.

Question.-What is thy duty towards GOD?

Answer.-My duty towards GOD, is to believe in Him, to fear Him, and to love Him with all my heart, with all my mind, with all my soul, and with all my strength; to worship Him, to give Him thanks, to put my whole trust in Him, to call upon Him, to honour His holy Name and His Word, and to serve Him truly all the days of my life.

Question.-What is thy duty towards thy Neighbour?

Answer. My duty towards my Neighbour, is to love him as myself, and to do to all men, as I would they should do unto me: 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: To hurt no body by word nor deed: To be true and just in all my dealing To bear no malice nor hatred in my heart: To keep my hands from picking and stealing, and my tongue from evilspeaking, lying, and slandering: To keep my body in temperance, soberness, and chastity: not to covet nor desire other men's goods; but to learn and labour truly to get mine own living, and to do my duty in that state of life, unto which it shall please GOD to call me.

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1. As the second part of the Catechism is occupied with an explanation of the vow of Faith, so the third is with the vow of Obedience. The connecting sentence is in this case supplied, owing to the Creed having intervened since the vows were considered. This seems to point, in all teaching, to the need of judicious repetition.

Tell me how many there be? 'Be' seems to be used here as the third person, present indicative, of the verb to be. The form in A.S. is beón, in O.E. ben. This use is not uncommon. Cf. Latimer's Sermons, p. 23:—

'Which works be of themselves marvellous good, and convenient to be done.'

Shakespeare, Richard Third, iv. 4. 95, 96 :

'Where be the bending peers that flattered thee?
Where be the thronging troops that followed thee?'

and the phrases below-'Which be they?'-'All things that be needful for our souls and bodies.'

2. The circumstances of the giving of the Ten Commandments deserve careful attention, as they show the unique position which they occupied in the Law of Moses, and also seem to indicate the place which moral teaching ought to occupy in education.

i. After being delivered from the power of Egypt at the Red Sea, the people were soon encamped in the plain before Sinai. On the day appointed by God, the mountain was enveloped in all the terrors of thunderstorm. It was covered with a thick cloud, and out of the cloud came a voice like a trumpet. The people were kept from the mount by bounds marked out round it; Moses and Aaron alone were allowed to go up to the mount. (Ex. xix. 10-25.)

When all was ready, the voice of God spake out of the cloud, and delivered the Decalogue, or ten Words, in the hearing of the people. How the voice came we do not know. It was the tradition of a later age that the Law was given through the ministry of angels (cf. Gal. iii. 19; Heb. ii. 2; Acts vii. 53).

The terror was so great that after the finishing of the Decalogue, the people besought that Moses alone should henceforth hear the voice of God, and that he should then repeat what was said to the people, and this was the method pursued in giving the remainder of the Law. Thus by its mode of promulgation the Decalogue was distinctly marked off, and put in a place of prominence. But not only so: at the end of the first forty days, which Moses spent on the mount, God gave him two slabs of stone on which the ten Words were written; and when Moses had returned, after the making of the golden calf, and the breaking of the first tables, God wrote the same words on two other slabs which Moses had hewn for the purpose (Ex. xxiv. 12-18; xxxi. 18; xxxii. 1, 19; xxxiv. 1, 28). These two last tables were placed in the Ark of Covenant (Deut. x. 5). They were still there when the contents of the Ark were examined at the dedication of Solomon's temple (1 Kings viii. 9), and were lost, along with the Ark itself, when Jerusalem was taken by Nebuchadnezzar (2 Kings xxv. 8-22).

ii. When the Israelites were led through the Red Sea, they were thereby marked out as God's peculiar people (Deut. iv. 20; vii. 6-8): they were delivered from the slavery which they had suffered, and they were started on the way to the promised land. It was at the commencement of that journey—a journey whose end to any particular individual was very uncertain (Num. xiv. 20-25)—that the Law was given. So it is with the Christian. It is, after he has been by baptism delivered from the bondage of Satan, and when he is starting on the journey of life, the end of which, to the faithful servant of Christ, is the attainment of the spiritual Canaan, that he is taught the Moral Law, that it may be to him a guide on his way. This order-first baptism, then teaching-agrees with that commanded by Christ (Matt. xxviii. 19, 20).

3. The Commandments as given in the Prayer-book are not found in any translation of the Bible. They appeared in a short form in the Institution of a Christian Man, issued in 1537, and again with slight modifications in the Necessary Doctrine and Erudition of any Christian Man, issued in 1543. In the Prayer-book of 1549 they appeared still in the short form, with some slight verbal alterations. In 1552 the introductory sentence and the sanctions, as given in Exodus, were added. From that time they have remained unaltered. The few verbal variations that exist between this version and the Authorised