may experience the superior happiness enjoyed by those who serve God rather than the world. This is the solemn admonition of God himself: " yet they shall serve him, that they may know the difference between my service and the service of a kingdom of the earth." [1]
The pastor will also remind the faithful that God delayed the fulfilment of his promise until after the lapse of more than four hundred years, in order that the Israelites might be sustained by faith and hope; for, as we shall show more particularly when we come to explain the First Commandment, God will have his children centre all their hopes and repose all their confidence in his goodness.
Finally, the time and place, when and where the people of Israel received this law, deserve particular attention. They received it when, having been delivered from the bondage of Egypt, they had come into the wilderness; in order, that impressed with a lively sense of gratitude for a blessing still fresh in their recollection, and awed by the dreariness of the wild waste in which they journeyed, they might be the better disposed to receive the law. To those whose bounty we have experienced we are bound by ties of reciprocity; and when man has lost all hope of assistance from his fellow man, he then seeks refuge in the protection of God. We are hence given to understand, that the more detached the faithful are from the allurements of the world, and the pleasures of sense, the more disposed are they to lend a willing ear to the doctrines of salvation: " whom shall he teach knowledge," says Isaias, "and whom shall he make to understand the hearing? Them that are weaned from the milk, that are drawn away from the breasts." [2]
The pastor, then, will use his best endeavours to induce the faithful to keep continually in view these words, " I am the Lord thy God." From them they will learn that he who is their Creator and conservator, by whom they were made, and are preserved, is also their legislator, and that they may truly say with the Psalmist: " He is the Lord our God, and we are the people of his pasture and the sheep of his hand." [3] The frequent and earnest inculcation of these words will also serve to induce the faithful to a more willing observance of the law, and a more cautious abstinence from sin.
The words, " who brought thee out of the land of Egypt and the house of bondage," come next in order; and, whilst they seem to relate solely to the Jews liberated from the bondage of Egypt, are, if considered in their implicit reference to universal salvation, still more applicable to Christians, who are liberated, not from the bondage of Egypt, but from the slavery of sin, and " the power of darkness, and are translated into the kingdom of his beloved Son." [4] Contemplating in the vision of prophecy the magnitude of this favour, the prophet Jere-
