eglect of religious ordinances, accepting at the hands
of Christianity the sacred holiday, but ignoring utterly the fact that
the Lord sanctified and hallowed it, that it is to be called the holy of
the Lord, and to be honoured, and that we are free from the letter of
the precept only in so far as we rise to the spirit of it, in loving and
true communion with the Father of spirits.

Another utterance of Jesus throws a strong light upon the nature and the
limits of our obligation. "My Father worketh even until now, and I work"
(John v. 17) is an appeal to the fact that in the long sabbath of God
His world is not deserted; creation may be suspended, but the bounties
of Providence go on; and therefore Christ also felt that His day of
rest was not one of torpor, that in healing the impotent man upon the
Sabbath He was but following the example of Him by whose rest the day
was sanctified. All works of beneficent love, all that ministers to
human recovery from anguish, and carries out the Divine purposes of
grace for body or soul, rescue from danger, healing of disease,
reformation of guilt, are sanctioned by this defence of Christ.

They need not plead that the commandment is abrogated, but that Jesus of
Nazareth, of the seed of David, found nothing in such liberties
inconsistent with the duties of a devout Hebrew.

_THE FIFTH COMMANDMENT._

"Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon
the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee."--xx. 12.

This commandment forms a kind of bridge between the first table and the
second. Obedience to parents is not merely a neighbourly virtue; we do
not honour them simply as our fellow-men: they are the vicegerents of
God to our childhood; through them He supplies our necessities, defends
our feebleness, and pours in light and wisdom upon our ignorance; by
them our earliest knowledge of right and wrong is imparted, and upon the
sanction of their voice it long depends.

It is clear that parental authority cannot be undermined, nor filial
disobedience and irreverence gain ground, without shaking the
foundations of our religious life, even more perhaps than of our social
conduct.

Accordingly this commandment stands before the sixth, not because
murder is a less offence against society, but because it is more
emphatically against our neighbour, and less directly against God.

The human infant is dependent and helpless for a longer period, and more
utterly,