ote to your
mother? Perhaps you have not written home for months, or it may be for
years. How often I get letters from mothers urging me to try and
influence their sons!

Which would you rather be--a Joseph or an Absalom? Joseph wasn't
satisfied until he had brought his old father down into Egypt. He was
the greatest man in Egypt, next to Pharaoh; he was arrayed in the
finest garments; he had Pharaoh's ring on his hand, and a gold chain
about his neck, and they cried before him, "Bow the knee." Yet when he
heard Jacob was coming, he hurried out to meet him. He wasn't ashamed
of the old man, with his shepherds clothes. What a contrast we see in
Absalom. That young man broke his father's heart by his rebellion, and
the Jews are said to throw a stone at Absalom's pillar to the present
day, whenever they pass it, as a token of their horror of Absalom's
unnatural conduct.

Come, now, are you ready to be weighed? If you have been dishonoring
your father and mother, step into the scales and see how quickly you
will be found wanting. See how quickly you will strike the beam. I
don't know any man who is much lighter than one who treats his parents
with contempt. Do you disobey them just as much as you dare? Do you
try to deceive them? Do you call them old-fashioned, and sneer at
their advice? How do you treat that venerable father and praying
mother?

You may be a professing Christian, but I wouldn't give much for your
religion unless it gets into your life and teaches you how to live. I
wouldn't give a snap of my finger for a religion that doesn't begin at
home and regulate your conduct toward your parents.

Sixth Commandment

"Thou shalt not kill."

I used to say: "What is the use of taking up a law like this in an
audience where, probably, there isn't a man who ever thought of, or
ever will commit murder?" But as one gets on in years, he sees many a
murder that is not outright killing. I need not kill a person to be a
murderer. If I get so angry that I wish a man dead, I am a murderer in
God's sight. God looks at the heart and says he that hateth his
brother is a murderer.

First let us see what this commandment does not mean.

It does not forbid the killing of animals for food and for other
reasons. Millions of rams and lambs and turtle-doves must have been
killed every year for sacrifices under the Mosaic system. Christ
Himself ate of the Passover lamb, and we are told definitely of cases
where He ate fish H