When the term "God" is understood ethically, there will be no danger that the sabbath of the Lord our God will become simply a day of rest which might be diverted to the pursuit of amusement or to the praise of a superhuman agency.

THE four commandments which we have thus far passed in review may be specially designated as religious, if we may define religion to be the setting up of any power as a god; they enjoin the worship of morality as an active principle in human life. But if they are religious because they exact worship, they are moral because that which they set up for worship is morality. Thus it is not because religion and morality have anything inherently identical in their nature, but because in this special case morality is deified, that in these commandments the two blend. A commandment that deifies anything is religious; only one which deifies duty is moral. Here we see plainly that religion and morality, although not identical, are not necessarily antagonistic forces or antithetical concepts.

This distinction between religion and morality, and the blending of the two which may exist in one commandment, can be brought out in another way. If we contrast the last six with the first four injunctions of the Decalogue, we note that the last six may be summed up as saying "Be good," and the first four as saying "Love goodness." Now, to love goodness is not the same as to be good, but

the two are activities psychologically and dynamically in vital connection. To love righteousness is to set it up as an object of reverent attention, to let one's craving go out towards it. Such a yearning must precede the being good in the mind of one who has been either indifferent or bad. To say "Be good" to a man who is indifferent or bad, is to overlook the preliminary steps in becoming good. To say "Focus your attention without bias or prejudice upon goodness," is to suggest what even the morally apathetic or antagonistic may easily do. Such a turning of the attention may even be motived by side issues or by aims positively selfish, and still the fixing of the attention may work the desired transformation. Since to love goodness is to turn the attention respectfully towards it, it is the same as setting up goodness as a god; it is equivalent to worshipping goodness. The injunction, therefore, is religious. But inasmuch as to love goodness is likely to make a bad man good, we see how it is that religion dynamically must precede morality. Thus those are right who say that unless a man be religious he cannot be moral. But this is true only in case the religion referred to is ethical; not every religion induces morality in its devotee. But the commandment "Love goodness," if it be obeyed, makes a man morally serious, humble, strenuous, and enthusiastic; it gives momentum and gladness to duty; it transforms moral tasks from irksome constraints into joyous mental activities. The first four commandments, by enjoining loyalty to the universal and inherent principle of morality, attempt to secure that inwardness of disposition which is requisite to complete righteousness. They look to the character side, and to the whole of character-to the inward fountain-head or reservoir of right activity. In contrast to them, the last six are particular rather than universal commandments.

They consider specific relationships and duties and point to particular persons, and they are in the main external rather than inward. They are concerned more with what is to be done than with the ultimate motive for doing it.

Such being the points of contrast between the first four and the last six commandments when interpreted psychologically, it is easy to see the literary design and skill of the makers of the Decalogue. Their order and arrangement is based upon the principle that mental and moral development advances from the acceptation of universal principles and ideals to the ready carrying out of particular and concrete duties. It is as if the framer of the Decalogue reasoned: If the people will but reverence the universal principles of the good life, an impetus will be given to their character which will bear them on spontaneously to do the thing that is right, and an illumination will be shed from the universal principles, enabling the mind to discover the right path.

5. The commandment enjoining filial reverence has been with delicate judgment placed immediately after the religious commandments. For it, more than any other of the last six, partakes of the nature of religion. "Honour thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee." Here is still reverence as the dominant attitude. It is a commandment which enjoins looking up, bowing down, obeying. But here the homage is to be rendered not to the universal and inter-personal principles of right conduct, but to the two persons who from natural inclination and under pressure of social sanction inevitably embody for the child and illustrate and inculcate laws of right conduct. The fifth commandment insists that each of us shall enshrine at the right hand of righteousness the two beings most immediately responsible for our

existence and most likely to sacrifice mere self for our spiritual as well as our physical nurture.

It is the commandment which pre-eminently binds together the generations of men. At first glance it seems to be wholly backward-looking and history-searching, but its ultimate motive is not retrospective. Its object is to preserve in the new generation the highest moral traditions of the past. And who can more easily hand on the torch of national idealism to any child than its own parents? Indeed, it is a plainly discernible fact that even where nation-builders have exacted no such duty of parents, these, however limited and prejudiced, do stamp their own moral ideas-and sometimes well-nigh indelibly -upon the minds of their children. Their ideas, embodied in homely adages, may not rise in dignity of meaning above worldly wisdom, shrewd prudence and cunning; but, such as they are, being the actual principles or the ideal standard of conduct of the parents, they are communicated in season and out of season to the children. Wherever the father and mother have not neglected this most natural function, it has had its desired effect. Even the wisest and greatest of men may scarcely outgrow to the end of life the crude and unsystematic but reiterated and insistent teachings of illiterate parents.

This parental function of transmitting moral traditions was seized hold of by the Jewish statesmen and converted into an instrument of national character-building. The parent was made the ethical and religious teacher, and every child became a pupil of his progenitors. The teacher-function of parents was thus lifted up, regulated and strengthened by the commandment of the State exacting homage from children to parents. It is true that overtly nothing is commanded but the looking upward and backward of the child to his elders and superiors in