day of his complete redemption. Respecting the nature of this life, Revelation gives no exact or particular account, and that probably because our finite faculties are not capable of receiving it1, for, as the Apostle Paul says, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him2 (1 Cor. ii. 9). Still some ideas are given us respecting "the life of the world to come3," and that (1) negatively and (2) positively, telling us what it will not and what it will have.

5. Negatively. In the new heaven, then, and the new earth (Rev. xxi. 1), we learn that there shall be neither hunger, nor thirst, nor night, nor pain”, nor sorrow, nor death. All that makes this life full of misery and trouble, of care and anxiety, shall be done away; for God will wipe away all tears from every eye (Rev. xxi. 4), and will make all things new (Rev. xxi. 5).

6. Positively. But Revelation also tells us something of what the life of the world to come will have. And we gather that not only will there be an absence of all painful toil, all distressing anxiety, all overwhelm

1 See Secker On the Catechism, Vol. 1. p. 270, and Whately On the Doctrine of a Future State.

2 Compare the Collect for the Sixth Sunday after Trinity.

3 As this Article is expressed in the Nicene Creed. 4 Nicholson On the Catechism, p. 86.

5 Rev. vii. 16, and compare Isai. xlix. 10.

6 Rev. xxii. 5, There shall be no night there; and they need no candle, neither light of the sun; for the Lord God giveth them light; comp. Rev. xxi. 23, 25.

7 Rev. xxi. 4. The word for pain in the original also denotes excessive toil, exhausting labour, which also will have passed away.

8 Rev. xxi. 4; comp. Isai. xxxv. 10.

9 Rev. xxi. 4; 1 Cor. xv. 26.

ing sorrow, but the future life will be a state of rest1, and peace, and joy. Again, St Paul informs us, that our vile bodies will be fashioned like unto Christ's glorious Body (Phil. iii. 21), which at His transfiguration shone as the sun, and was white as the light (Mtt. xvii. 2); St John tells us that we shall be like unto God, for we shall see Him as He is (1 Jn. iii. 2); and our Lord declares that we shall be as the angels of God in heaven (Mtt. xxii. 30). These words, whatever they may denote in all their depth and fulness, at least imply, that freed from all tendency to decay and disorder, our bodies will become fitting instruments for the noblest exertions, that our faculties will be infinitely exalted, and our understandings raised to their utmost capacities; and that in a state of never-ending felicity, and ever-increasing progress and improvement, we shall be employed in executing the will of Him in whom we live, and move, and have our being (Acts xvii. 28).

7. Amen. Such are some of "the good things passing man's understanding, which God hath prepared for them that love Him?," and to this, and so to all the other Articles of the Creed, we reiterate our assent by solemnly adding, Amen, i.e. So be its.

1 Or Sabbath-keeping, Heb. iv. 9.

2 Isaiah lvii. 2.

3 Mtt. xxv. 21, Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord.

4 More literally, the body of our humiliation, rd oŵμa τῆς ταπεινώσεως ἡμῶν.

5 St Paul tells us that we shall know even as we are known by God, 1 Cor. xiii. 12; see Secker's Lectures on the Catechism.

See Whately's Lectures on the Doctrine of a Future State; and Isaac Taylor's Physical Theory of Another Life. 7 See the Collect for the Sixth Sunday after Trinity. 8 So ends the Creed in the Prymer of A. D. 1538, and an English Creed, circ. A.D. 1400. One of the xvth century concludes, So mote it be, Amen. See Heurtley, p. 99.

PART III.

THE COMMANDMENTS.

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 shew 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 man-servant, 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.

IX. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neigh

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 commandments?-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 evil-speaking, 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.

INTRODUCTION.

I. The Ten Commandments. Of the three vows made at our Baptism, the third, as we have already seen', is that of Obedience, or to keep God's holy will and commandments, and walk in the same all the days of our life. We have also seen that these Commandments are Ten in number, that they were given to the Israelites by God Himself, under circumstances of peculiar solemnity, that as containing the Moral Law they were not done away by our Lord, and

1 See above, p. 15.

that "from obedience to them no Christian man whatsoever is free 1."

2. Their Division. When first given to Moses they were written on two tables of stone2 (Ex. xxxii. 15, 16), and were long preserved in the Ark (Deut. x. 5)3. How many Commandments were written on each Table is not certain. Some think Five were written on each1; others hold that Three were written on one and Seven on the other. Others, again, as is apparently the case in the Church Catechism, distribute them into Four and Six. According to this division the First Table teaches us our Duty towards God, and the Second our Duty towards our neighbour.

3. The Lord thy God. To remind us, moreover, that the Ten Commandments are binding upon us, the preface to them contained in the twentieth Chapter of Exodus is also rehearsed in the Catechism7. For in answer to the question, How many Commandments are there? we reply, Ten; and in answer to the further

1 See above, p. 16, and the note.

2 And on both their sides, on the one side and on the other side were they written (Ex. xxxii. 15). "We know not their form or size. But we know the hard, imperishable granite out of which they were hewn; we know its red hue; the style of the engraving must have been such as can be still discerned in the Desert Inscriptions." Stanley's Jewish Church, Pt. 1. p. 175.

3 Comp. 1 Kings viii. 1, 9; Heb. ix. 4. Hence it was called the Ark of the Testimony (Numb. iv. 5).

4 See Smith's Dictionary of the Bible, Art. Ten Commandments.

5 See Nowell's Catechism.

6 And thus in effect our Lord divides them, see Mtt. xxii, 37-40.

7 It is to be observed that the translation of the Decalogue used in the Communion Service, and in the Catechism, is not that of our present Version, but that of the Great Bible, A.D. 1539-40.