for the instruction of our own souls. For illustrating this mode of teaching, we will choose for our subject OIL, which is a very common thing.

The Holy Spirit is compared in Scripture, in his influences, to OIL; and we would draw attention to some of the properties of this common thing, as exemplifying some of the operations of the Holy Ghost.

One property of OIL is its power of cleansing, Lev. xiv. 17, 18. It brightens up the wood or metal to which it is applied, and produces a polish which otherwise could not be had. This is precisely the work of the Holy Ghost. The Spirit of God is a cleansing Spirit. Passing into the heart, penetrating it, He brightens it, and gives it a lustre such as no education, no influences of the world can bestow. We know how much the world values the external polish, which lends a charm to society, but there is many an one accounted polished by the world who has no particle of polish in the sight of God. Let us ask ourselves, and put the question to our children also, "Has the Holy Spirit made the heart shine ?" Has He conferred on me those graces which make God esteem a heart bright; has He kept them by his energy shining so brightly, that when the Most High looks into my soul He can see his own image? Let us look into the wood which has received a high polish under the influence of oil, and it reflects our likeness; and so will the gleaming metal from which it has removed the rust; and when God looks into the heart under the full influence of the Holy Ghost, does He not see his own image there? We gather rust in our daily conversatiou with the world; its very breath has a dimming influence upon the soul; the clouding power of earthly relationships and employments are felt and mourned over by every true christian man; the brightening, the restoring influence, is to be found in the Holy Ghost.

Healing is another property of oil; we have this frequently referred to in Holy Scripture (see Luke x. 34, &c.), and the Spirit of God exercises wonderful healing influences upon the soul. The gift of life is by Jesus Christ, but the healings of the soul are by the Holy Ghost. The Spirit is sent by Jesus, He operates from Jesus, but He it is that heals the wounds of the soul. When sin has been fallen into, the Spirit leads to repentance, applies the blood of Jesus, brings in joy and gladness once again, clears away the festerings and swellings from the wound, and soothes, and mollifies it, until it closes up, and is seen and felt no more. We can have no peace in our sin-stricken souls, unless the Spirit brings it in by his own precious influence; He gives us the witness of peace with God, and without that witness the sore must continually fret and vex.

A further property of OIL is its power of illuminating. Scripture

says a good deal about this, see Matt. xxv. 4, Ex. xxv. 6, &c. ; and it is the Holy Ghost who illumines the christian's heart. The light shews the way, and when He is in the soul, He illumines its path; the light dispels the alarm of those noises which are so full of terror when heard in the dark, and when the Spirit is in us, we cease to fear either the threatenings of Satan, or those self-reproachings for sin, which must terrify us if we had no inward light; the light reveals both the way of danger and that of safety, deformities and graces; and when the Spirit is in the soul, all these results are produced. Oil is associated in our minds with the idea of sustained light. It was because the virgins took no oil with them, that their lamps went out. Very different is the calm, and steady, and suɛtained illumination of the lamp fed with oil, from the fitful glare of the torch, which blazes for a few moments, and must then smoulder and expire. We must ask ourselves, and (putting the question in a simple form), ask our children also, what they know of the sustained, even, illuminating influence of the Holy Spirit in the heart? In many schools, alas! there is but little taught about the Holy Ghost; much is taught of the Father, and of the Son, but little or nothing about the Holy Spirit. Let our teachers who have hitherto been thus negligent, amend this great mistake; they will find that the more they teach about the Spirit, and the more they look for his influences, and the more they feel their need of them, the more blessing will come down upon their own souls, and upon those for whom they labour.

Oil has further a wonderful power of sustaining life; it resists the influences of frost, and is an important ingredient in the animal frame for supplying its natural waste, and keeping up its vitality. We may mention here a very interesting illustration of this. In the lochs and pools of the Arctic regions are innumerable minnows. In the winter the water around these fish becomes one solid mass to the very bottom, and the fish are often found in clusters, and so brittle that their bodies may be broken like a piece of glass, and yet upon the ice thawing, animation is again established, and they become as lively as ever. Scientific men attribute the phenomena to the heart of the little fish being surrounded with a fat or oily liquid, which is never liable to be frozen, and which in this instance guards, as it were, the organ of life, and preserves its vitality unimpaired. Under what untoward circumstances will the influences of the Spirit preserve life in the soul! It may be that a chill may seize upon, and stiffen, and contract for a season our outward powers of motion; perhaps we may unhappily, to all human appearance, seem dead as well as cold; but oh! the Spirit as a sustainer of life, holds that life in being, until thawed and warmed, the christian not only lives, but gives symptoms of life once more.

Once again (for the limits of this paper forbid our following out the subject in all its points) let us look at the lubricating properties of oil. It softens, and makes supple, and causes wheel to run harmoniously with wheel, so that all noise, and jarring, and wearing away, is removed.

Here we recognize types of many of the influences of the Spirit. What softens down the hard heart like the influence of the Holy Ghost? What makes the christian pliable for his work, taking away all stiffness and inaptitude, like the indwelling of the influence of the Spirit? What balances and makes the various parts of his character run smoothly together, but the power of this same Spirit? and, lastly, what makes him work harmoniously with others, without jar or creak, but this self-same Spirit?

Oh! the influences of the Holy Ghost in this one aspect of softening down all asperities, and making apt to work, and sweetening the fellowship of christians in intercourse or labour, are wonderful indeed. May they be found in every Sabbath-school in which these lines are read, and may our readers be apt to teach, and apt to love! The wheels of our Sunday-schools oiled each one on the points on which it revolves itself, and each one in its point of contact with others would thus help to build up the Church of God, silently indeed after the fashion of the builders of the temple, but surely, under the influences of the Spirit.

P. B. P.

THE TEN COMMANDMENTS.

II.

The Third Commandment is intended to instruct mankind as to the manner in which they are to worship and serve God, as the second was designed to teach them the kind of worship they were to avoid. It is to be observed that these two commandments are the only ones in the Decalogue, to which special judgments against the violation of them are appended, as if to signify that although the Holy One which inhabiteth eternity must needs abhor all sin in his creatures, yet those of idolatry and blasphemy are especially hateful in his sight, and destructive to the human soul, and, therefore the more carefully to be avoided.

By the prohibition, " Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain," we are taught negatively to sanctify it, and hold it in especial reverence. The pious Jews of old would never utter or

write the sacred name of Jehovah if it could be avoided, substituting another word for it (as we have done in the English translation of the Bible), even in their sacred books. It is told of a very learned and good man, the Hon. Robert Boyle, that "the very name of God was never mentioned by him without a pause, and a visible stop in his discourse," because he felt the unutterable Majesty of the Infinite thus brought home to his thoughts. It is our duty "in all our ways to acknowledge Him," to adore Him as the Creator, Sustainer, Redeemer, and Sanctifier of his people ;-to acknowledge his dealings with us to be just and true, and not to murmur at the orderings of his Providence;-to attribute to Him the good we receive, and to praise Him for the mercies we enjoy ;-not to be ashamed to confess ourselves his servants ;-to defend his truth when it is assailed ;--and to reverence "his holy name and his word" in all our doings.

Thus shall we be kept from the ordinary way in which this command is violated. The declaration," My name continually every day is blasphemed," spoken of the Jews of old (Isaiah lii. 5), could, alas! be said of the Christian nations now. For in the common talk, in the violent anger, in the idle ribaldry, in the profane assertions, which meet our ears as we pass through the streets, is there not the constant use of the Holy Name "in vain," to no good purpose, to no reverent end, but from forgetfulness, contempt, mockery, or even intended blasphemy?

We need not add that this commandment must also condemn the practice of appealing to God to witness to the truth of the assertions made in ordinary converse in daily life, and the common habit of the world in appealing to Him thoughtlessly on every trivial matter in which their statements are questioned or disbelieved (Matt. v. 31, 37); although it does not forbid the oath required by the laws of the land, or by special solemnity, to witness to a true and just cause, that peace and quietness may be preserved, that the innocent may not be unjustly punished, and that guilt may meet with its due (see Exodus xxii. 11; Deut. vi. 13; Heb. vi. 16). To swear falsely, or as we are accustomed to say, to commit perjury, is a violation of this law, so fearful and so rare, that not only is it held in abhorrence even among men, but is so severely punished in this life, that the judgment against such a flagrant insult to God here pronounced, begins here, as it will be continued and completed hereafter, unless mercy is sought and found by deep repentance for Christ's sake.

But while the young, and the earnest Christian professor, may avoid all these ways of openly violating this Divine law, neither using the name of God irreverently in conversation, nor by the

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coarse and vulgar oath, nor by false witness,-yet is there still one way in which we must all plead guilty, and adopt the prayer following the repetition of the commandment in our Liturgy, "Lord have mercy upon us." For in our thoughts of God, and in our prayers and praises when speaking to Him, if there be irreverence in our secret feelings as to His dispensations; if there be forgetfulness of Him, when repeating with our lips petitions for mercy or for grace; and if there be no making melody in our heart, when our lips are praising Him; are not such thoughts, and petitions and thanksgivings, a real violation of this law, since it is "in vain" we use the name of God, even when drawing near to him with our lips, if our hearts are far from Him!

The Fourth Commandment completes the series of precepts which are especially intended to guide us in our duty towards God our Creator, and to show us the nature of the worship and service we are to render to Him. The Sabbath (a Hebrew word signifying a secession or rest), is no ritual Jewish observance, although there were services connected with it, under the Mosaic dispensation, of that character. The word by which this commandment commences, "Remember," implies that it was not a new ordinance then first given, but a neglected or forgotten law, the observance of which the Jews were more strictly to renew; and hence it was that new reasons and motives were given, whereby that people especially were encouraged to keep it. In Exodus xxxi. 16, it is said, "The children of Israel shall keep the Sabbath to observe the Sabbath throughout their generations for a perpetual covenant; it is a sign between me and the children of Israel for ever:" and in rehearsing the Law to the people, Moses added, in Deut. v. 15, another motive for its observance; "Remember that thou wast a servant in the land of Egypt, and that the Lord thy God brought thee out thence, through a mighty hand and stretched-out arm; therefore the Lord thy God commanded thee to keep the Sabbath day." These, however, are not the reasons given for its original institution, but for the particular form of its observance required among the Jewish people; hence this sign of the covenant is continually referred to by the prophets, and the neglect of it by the Israelites assigned as the cause of the judgments predicted by them.

The original purpose of the institution is declared in the Commandment itself, and takes us back to the first days of the world's history; for "on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and He rested on the seventh day from all the work which He had made; and God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it,” Gen. ii. 2, 3. Hence the first day of Adam's life, after his creation, was the Sabbath, and its especial holiness in God's sight could not