whatever they did well, and to punish them in this life for whatever they did wrong. He therefore promises long life and prosperity to such children as behaved well to their parents. And indeed, even now, when Christians look to another world for their reward, a blessing generally accompanies them, who loved and honoured and succoured their parents. But I must be true to my office, as a minister of Christ; and therefore, I must bid you, when you behave well in any relation of life, to look for your reward in the favour of God, in the gifts and graces of Jesus Christ, in the happiness and everlasting life of another and a better world. Short, extremely short, like a passing cloud, like the morning dew, is the life of man in this troubled and sorrowing world. But there are mansions prepared by Jesus Christ in the heaven of heavens for all who truly love and serve him. And therefore, my dear Christian friends, keep up your spirits under all the changes and toils of

this short life: and whatsoever good thing any of you do, the same will ye receive of the Lord, whether ye be bond or free.

And now to God, &c.

LECTURE LVI.

EXODUS XX. 13.

Thou shalt not kill.

THIS is the sixth commandment, on which, my friends, I propose to speak to you this evening.

God himself forbade his people to do so wicked a thing as to kill any person. He had before said, "That whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man should his blood be shed. This he had said for all the people of the earth: the rule to walk by, in every place where men and women were to be found. And he now gives a particular command to his favoured people, the Is

raelites, to do no murder. And indeed, though God himself had never ordered us

not to kill any one, our own hearts would have instructed us not to do it. What! take that from our neighbour, which we can never restore to him! take life! deprive him of that which we think so great a blessing! send him with all his sins about him to the judgment-seat of Christ! take from a wife a husband, and from a child a parent! do our neighbour the greatest wrong that one being can do to another! All this, one would have thought, would have been sufficient to have struck every one with horror, when he was about to lift his hands against another. But God knows man better than man knows himself. He knows that hatred and revenge spur on his creatures to do a thing which nature abhors. He therefore condescended to forbid it by a particular command: he has thought it right to say to the Jews and to all people of the earth-" Thou shalt not kill." "Whoso sheddeth man's blood,

by man shall his blood be shed." And so it is. Wherever there are men and women, there are laws to punish murder with death. The murderer must not live. He must suffer death for the death he has caused. But this is not all. We learn from the Bible, that "no murderer hath eternal life abiding in him." He will suffer in the next world worse things than he suffers in this. He will find himself cast away from the presence of God, driven into the fire, which is never quenched, prepared for the devil-himself the first murderer.

If it be thus horrid and thus dangerous to our souls to kill another, it must be equally so to kill ourselves. This shocking crime has been sometimes committed. I believe, that when it is committed, the poor creature must have lost his reason-he cannot know what he is doing. If he does know, and wilfully takes away his own life, his sin is great indeed. Repentance through