an that God has forbidden "bad language," and wishes them to
pray that everybody may be respectful to Him?

Is it any otherwise with the Third Commandment? Do not most look on it
merely in the light of the statute of swearing? and read the words "will
not hold him guiltless" merely as a passionless intimation that however
carelessly a man may let out a round oath, there really _is_ something
wrong in it?

On the other hand, can anything be more tremendous than the words
themselves--double-negatived:

[Greek: "ou gar me katharise ... kurios"]

For _other_ sins there is washing;--for this, none! the seventh verse,
Ex. xx., in the Septuagint, marking the real power rather than the
English, which (I suppose) is literal to the Hebrew.

To my layman's mind, of practical needs in the present state of the
Church, nothing is so immediate as that of explaining to the
congregation the meaning of being gathered in His name, and having Him
in the midst of them; as, on the other hand, of being gathered in
blasphemy of His name, and having the devil in the midst of
them--presiding over the prayers which have become an abomination.

231. For the entire body of the texts in the Gospel against hypocrisy
are one and all nothing but the expansion of the threatening that closes
the Third Commandment. For as "the name whereby He shall be called is
THE LORD OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS,"--so the taking that name in vain
is the sum of "the deceivableness of _un_righteousness in them that
perish."

Without dwelling on the possibility--which I do not myself, however, for
a moment doubt--of an honest clergyman's being able actually to prevent
the entrance among his congregation of persons leading openly wicked
lives, could any subject be more vital to the purposes of your meetings
than the difference between the present and the probable state of the
Christian Church which would result, were it more the effort of zealous
parish priests, instead of getting wicked _poor_ people to _come_ to
church, to get wicked rich ones to stay out of it?

Lest, in any discussion of such question, it might be, as it too often
is, alleged that "the Lord looketh upon the heart," etc., let me be
permitted to say--with as much positiveness as may express my deepest
conviction--that, while indeed it is the Lord's business to look upon
the heart, it is the pastor's to look upon the hands and the lips; and
that the foulest oaths of the thief and the street-walker are, in