ry of one who scorns, the ritual of a
hypocrite, these are quite as valuable, as indications of what is
within, as a reluctant relinquishment to my neighbour of what is his. I
must not covet. Plainly this is the sharpest and most searching precept
of all; and accordingly St. Paul asserts that without this he would not
have suffered the deep internal discontent, the consciousness of
something wrong, which tortured him, even although no mortal could
reproach him, even though, touching the righteousness of the law, he was
blameless. He had not known coveting, except the law had said "Thou
shalt not covet."

Here, then, we perceive with the utmost clearness what St. Paul so
clearly discerned--the true meaning of the Law, its convicting power,
its design to work not righteousness, but self-despair as the prelude of
self-surrender. For who can, by resolving, govern his desires? Who can
abstain not only from the usurping deed, but from the aggressive
emotion? Who will not despair when he learns that God desireth truth in
the inward parts? But this despair is the way to that better hope which
adds, "In the hidden part Thou shalt make me to know wisdom. Purge me
with hyssop, and I shall be clean."

And as a strong interest or affection has power to destroy in the soul
many weaker ones, so the love of God and our neighbour is the appointed
way to overcome the desire of taking from our neighbour what God has
given to him, refusing it to us.

THE LESSER LAW.

xx. 18-xxiii. 33.

With the close of the Decalogue and its universal obligations, we
approach a brief code of laws, purely Hebrew, but of the deepest moral
interest, confessed by hostile criticism to bear every mark of a remote
antiquity, and distinctly severed from what precedes and follows by a
marked difference in the circumstances.

This is evidently the book of the Covenant to which the nation gave its
formal assent (xxiv. 7), and is therefore the germ and the centre of the
system afterwards so much expanded.

And since the adhesion of the people was required, and the final
covenant was ratified as soon as it was given, before any of the more
formal details were elaborated, and before the tabernacle and the
priesthood were established, it may fairly claim the highest and most
unique position among the component parts of the Pentateuch, excepting
only the Ten Commandments.

Before examining it in detail, the impressive circumstances of its
utterance have to be