Ephesians 6

1. Be ye therefore followers of God, as dear children; and walk in love, as Christ also hath 2 loved us, and hath given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweetsmell- 3 ing savour. But fornication, and all uncleanness, or covetousness, let it not be once named 4 among you, as becometh saints; neither filthiness, nor foolish talking, nor jesting, which 5 are not convenient: but rather giving of thanks. For this ye know, that no whoremonger, 6 nor unclean person, nor covetous man, who is an idolater, hath any inheritance in the kingdom 7 of Christ and of God. Let no man deceive you with vain words: for because of these 8 things cometh the wrath of God upon the children of disobedience. Be not ye therefore 9 partakers with them. For ye were sometimes darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord: 10 walk as children of light: (for the fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness and righteousness 11 and truth;) proving what is acceptable unto the Lord. And have no fellowship with the 12 unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them. For it is a shame even to speak of 13 those things which are done of them in secret. But all things that are reproved are made 14 manifest by the light: for whatsoever doth make manifest is light. Wherefore he saith, 15 Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light. See 16 then that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise, redeeming the time, because the 17 days are evil. Wherefore be ye not unwise, but understanding what the will of the Lord 18 is. And be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess; but be filled with the Spirit; 19 speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody 20 in your heart to the Lord; giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father in 21 the name of our Lord Jesus Christ; submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God.

THERE can be no perfect melody in the heart while sin is there. If word is discordant with word, or deed with deed, or thought with thought; if one speaks what he does not mean, or professes what he does not practice, or promises what he does not fulfill; if the elements of his moral being are at war with one another, the passions with the reason, the appetites with the conscience; if, in a word, the psalm of life has not been tuned to the keynote of the gospel; if our uniform and practical purpose of consecration to God does not bear down all before it; if the aims and aspirations of the soul do not all accord in “glory to God in the highest, peace on earth, good will to men,” there can be no proper melody in the heart. But let this be the case, and that melody is the legitimate and necessary result. Let the soul, by nature at discord with itself, with conscience, with its condition, with the laws of holiness and God, be converted, so that selfish will is subdued, so that God is loved and his law becomes a delight; let the soul, purified by the power of atoning blood and attuned to the praise of Divine grace, be brought to feel that there is no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus, and then all its faculties and affections shall unite in the chorus of “Holiness to the Lord.” The grace of God shall breathe through it, and wake from its trembling strings a music beyond that of Æolian harps. There will be a sweet concert of thought and deed, an unmurmuring submission to God’s providence, a holy joy in doing his will. E. H. G.

1. To the grace of pardon, and the grace of renewal, succeeds the grace of adoption in the order of blessings of his covenant; whereby God, in infinite condescension, is pleased to stand to redeemed sinners in the relation of a father. They walk with him as “dear children.” Goode.—Religion is the harmony of the soul with God, and the conformity of the life to his law. The loftiest purpose of God in all his dealings is to make us like himself; and the end of all religion is the complete accomplishment of that purpose. There is no religion without these elements: consciousness of kindred with God, recognition of him as the sum of all excellence and beauty, and of his will as unconditionally binding upon us, aspiration and effort after a full accord of heart and soul with him and with his law, and humble confidence that that sovereign beauty will be ours. “Be ye imitators of God as dear children” is the pure and comprehensive dictate which expresses the aim of all devout men. A. M.—The Christian life is a transfigured childhood. Like children, we believe without suspicion; like children, we love without distinction; like children, we hope without limitation. A. T.

2. The offerings prescribed by the Levitical law fell into two entirely distinct classes. The one class were called sweet-savor offerings, and were for the acceptance of the worshiper; the thought in them was, man giving to God something which God views with complacency. The second class consisted of the sin and trespass offerings, and are never said to be of a sweet savor; in them the thought was man, as a transgressor, enduring the curse which sin has entailed. Our blessed Lord endured this curse, when, upon the cross, he poured out his soul unto death; as it is said: “Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us.” But before he became our sin and trespass offering, he had been our sweet savor offering, presenting to the Father a human heart all aflame, as no human heart but his ever yet was, with heavenly love and zeal, a life wholly devoted to the service of God and man, and the only pure worship which since the days of Eden had ever ascended from the earth. E. M. G.

3. It seems a trifle to all but earnest believers to give way to bad thoughts, to take sinful liberties with the eye or hand; but what says the Scripture? Your eyes and your hands are members of Christ; shall I then take Christ’s eye and hand, and make an unclean use of them? Indeed, we shall never understand how grievous are our sins against purity until we have learned really to believe that we are members of Christ ourselves. An.—In verse 4, “which are not convenient” would be better expressed “things which are not becoming.” A.—“Let there be no coarseness, nor vapid and gossiping conversation—no, nor even the refined but sinful railery of the man of fashion.” Such is a fair paraphrase of the passage. If this be its meaning, it gives us the salutary warning that, albeit pleasantry itself be no sin, it is under certain circumstances very closely allied with sin. By way of preserving pure this offspring of the heart’s merriment, three cautions should be rigidly observed: First, from all our pleasantry must be banished any, even the remotest, allusion to impurity, which forms the staple of much of this world’s wit. Pleasantry should be the fruit of a childlike playfulness, and of a heart buoyant because it has not the consciousness of guile. If you once make it the vehicle of uncleanness, you foul it at the spring. Secondly, all such sarcasms as hurt another person, wound his feelings, and give him unnecessary pain, are absolutely forbidden by the law of Christian love. The flashes of wit should be like those of the summer lightning, lambent and innocuous. Thirdly, all such pleasantries as bring anything sacred into ridicule—or, without bringing it actually into ridicule, connect with it in the minds of others ludicrous associations, so that they can never see the object or hear the words without the ludicrous observation being presented to them—are carefully to be eschewed. At all times our primary duty—that which is inalienably binding upon us, and from which no plea of entertainment can excuse us—is to hallow God’s name. E. M. G.

5. Nor covetous man.** The lax opinions of the Church on the sin of covetousness may delude one with the hope that cupidity alone shall not exclude him from the divine presence; but the decree has gone forth against every covetous man, whatever his standing in the Christian Church. Streams of worldly affluence may seem to seek him, and, like a sea, he may receive them all; but he thinks not of transferring his treasures by deeds of beneficence to the hands of God; and, consequently, when he passes out of time into eternity, though he should be sought for before the throne of God above, sought for diligently among all the ranks of the blessed, he would nowhere be found, for “he shall not inherit the kingdom of God.” J. H.

8. In the reformation of men whose lives had been bad, the gospel evinced a power such as put to shame the highest achievements of philosophy in this practical direction. An inspiration was furnished for the amendment of character such as the world had never witnessed before. This is evident from statements in the Apostolic Epistles and in the early ecclesiastical writers. “We,” writes Justin Martyr, “who formerly were the slaves of lust, now only strive after purity; we who loved the path to riches above every other, now give what we have to the common use, and give to every one that needs; we who hated and destroyed one another, now live together, and pray for our enemies, and endeavor to convince those who hate us without cause, so that they may order their lives according to Christ’s glorious doctrine, and attain to the joyful hope of receiving like blessings with ourselves from God, the Lord of all.” G. P. F.

Now are ye light. The Christian is able clearly to discriminate between his old life and the new, whereby, through Jesus, he has been brought to life and light. Here is no twilight, but the clear light of day, which knows no turning from the light of grace to the darkness of sin. The conversion effected in us by God the Holy Ghost, through the propitiatory sacrifice of Jesus, is the clearly defined boundary between things old and new. Not a single footbreadth of the new heart’s dominions belongs to the old Adam. A. C.

Walk as children. Were we acquainted with the way of intermixing holy thoughts, ejaculatory eyings of God, in our ordinary ways, it would keep the heart in a sweet temper all the day long, and put an excellent influence into all our ordinary actions, and into our holy performances at those times when we apply ourselves solemnly to them. Our hearts would be near them, not so far off to seek and call in as usually they are through the neglect of this. This were to walk with God indeed; to go all the day long as in our Father’s hand; whereas, without this, our praying morning and evening looks but as a formal visit, not delighting in that constant converse, which yet is our happiness and honor and makes all estates sweet. This would refresh us in the hardest labor; as they that carry the spices from Arabia are refreshed with the smell of them in their journey; and some observe that it keeps their strength and frees them from fainting. L.

12. What is the voice of God’s word is also the voice of natural feeling. The man who is fair outside and foul within is condemned of all men as a hypocrite. Men reserve all their strongest terms of reprobation for the dark, reserved, and secret sinner. Nature and revelation both warn us against the danger we run if we pollute our inner and secret life with what we dare not tell. F. T.

13. It should run thus: “But all things when they are reproved are made manifest by the light; for everything that is made manifest is light; that is, the light of your Christian light, which will be by your reproof shed upon these deeds of darkness, will bring them out of darkness into light, for everything, when it is manifested, becomes light.” The Ephesians themselves were “once darkness,” but were now become “light in the Lord,” having been reproved “by God’s Spirit.” For this reason it will be better in verse 14 to render instead of “Christ shall give thee light,” “Christ shall shine upon thee,” make thee light. A.

14. Awake thou that sleepest.** To the men of this world it seems, as they look upon the restless activity that surrounds them, that any other term than “asleep” should be the figure to describe it. “This world around us asleep?” they ask—these panting millions, pressing, dashing, trampling each other in the dusty highways of fortune, fame, or pleasure? Asleep! this restless, raging ocean of life, over which the storm-king rides in his fury? Humanity asleep, that neither night, nor sickness, nor satiety can check in its tumultuous course? But the Scriptures teach that spiritual slumber may consist with great physical and intellectual activity. Godless men are not only sleepers but somnambulists. They walk and still sleep; they speak, though still they sleep; with open eyes they sleep; in the view of the gospel they have eyes and see not—cars have they, but they hear not. They see what is not, and do not see what is; things far off seem near to them; things near seem far off. While they walk, as wakeful men, their steps are not directed by the reality of things. S. R.—Wake in death you must, for it is an earnest thing to die. Shall it be this, I pray you? Shall it be the voice of death which first says, “Arise,” at the very moment when it says, “Sleep on for ever”? Shall it be the bridal train sweeping by, and the shutting of the doors, and the discovery that the lamp is gone out? Shall that be the first time you know that it is an earnest thing to live? Let us feel that we have been doing; learn what time is, sliding from you, and not stopping when you stop; learn what sin is; learn what “never” is: “Awake, thou that sleepest.”

15,16. It is a distinct duty to use life while we are here. Time is short; therefore opportunities are so much the more valuable. There is an infinite value stamped upon them. Therefore use the world. But, then, it is a duty equally distinct, to live above the world. Unworldliness is the spirit of holding all things as not our own, in the perpetual conviction that they will not last. It is not to put life and God’s lovely world aside with self-torturing hand. It is to have the world, and not to let the world have you; to be its master, and not its slave. F. W. R.—An Italian philosopher expressed in his motto that time was his estate; an estate, indeed, which will produce nothing without cultivation, but will always abundantly repay the labors of industry, and satisfy the most extensive desires, if no part of it be suffered to be wasted by negligence, to be overrun with noxious plants, or laid out for show rather than for use. Johnson.—All that life has of good, or great, or valuable, or useful, is fashioned out of time. Out of it we bring the well-spent hour, the well-spent year, the well-spent life. Time for an intelligent being is the equivalent of existence, and we must estimate it by the capabilities or possibilities which it involves; what it can do for character, virtue, integrity, piety, Christian hope, beneficence. E. H. G.

18. “Excess” is a mere truism. The word thus rendered means “ruin,” “profligacy,” reckless casting away of body and soul. The best rendering would be “profligacy.” A.—18-20. “Be not drunk with wine, like those who live riotously; but be filled with the indwelling of the Spirit, when you speak one to another. Let your singing be of psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, and make melody with the music of your hearts, to the Lord. And at all times, for all things which befall you, give thanks to our God and Father, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Throughout the whole passage there is a contrast implied between the heathen and the Christian practice. When you meet, let your enjoyment consist not in fullness of wine, but fullness of the Spirit; let your songs be, not the drinking-songs of heathen feasts, but psalms and hymns; and their accompaniment, not the music of the lyre, but the melody of the heart; while you sing them to the praise, not of Bacchus or Venus, but of the Lord Jesus Christ. C.

All fullness of one thing hinders the receiving and admittance of any other, especially of things so opposite as these fullnesses are. A brutish fullness makes a man no man; this divine fullness makes him more than a man. It were happy to be so filled with this as that it might be called a kind of drunkenness, as it was with the apostles (Acts 2). L.—There is one intensity of feeling produced by stimulating the senses, another by vivifying the spiritual life. Stimulants like wine inflame the senses, and through them set the imaginations and feelings on fire; and the law of our spiritual being is, that that which begins with the flesh sensualizes the spirit—whereas that which commences in the region of the spirit spiritualizes the senses, in which it subsequently stirs emotion. Wine is but a specimen of a class of stimulants. All that begins from without belongs to the same class. The stimulus may be afforded by almost any excessive enjoyment of the senses. The prophet tells us of those who are drunken, and not with wine. . . . We want the vision of a calmer and simpler beauty, to tranquilize us in the midst of artificial tastes—we want the draught of a purer spring, to cool the flame of our excited life—we want, in other words, the Spirit of Christ, with power to calm and soothe the feelings which it rouses; the fullness of the Spirit which can never intoxicate! F. W. R.

20. Giving thanks always.** If, when thou art in prosperity and happiness, in success and enjoyment, thou givest thanks, it is nothing great or wonderful; but what is looked for is, that thou shouldest give thanks when in tribulation and in sorrow. Utter nothing in preference to these words, “I thank thee, Lord.” Let us give thanks, not merely for manifest blessings, but also for those which are not manifest, and for those which we receive against our will. Chrys.

22. WIVES, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. For the husband 23 is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the Saviour of 24 the body. Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in every thing.

25. Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it; 26 that he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word, that he might 27 present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but 28 that it should be holy and without blemish. So ought men to love their wives as their own 29 bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself. For no man ever yet hated his own flesh; 30 but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church: for we are members of his 31 body, of his flesh, and of his bones. For this cause shall a man leave his father and 32 mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh. This is a great 33 mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church. Nevertheless, let every one of you in particular so love his wife even as himself; and the wife see that she reverence her husband.

1. Children, obey your parents in the Lord: for this is right. Honour thy father and 2 mother; which is the first commandment with promise; that it may be well with thee, and 3 thou mayest live long on the earth. And, ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath: 4 but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.

5. Servants, be obedient to them that are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and 6 trembling, in singleness of your heart, as unto Christ; not with eyeservice, as menpleasers; 7 but as the servants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart: with good will doing 8 service, as to the Lord, and not to men: knowing that whatsoever good thing any man do- eth, the same shall he receive of the Lord, whether he be bond or free.

9. And, ye masters, do the same things unto them, forbearing threatening: knowing that your Master also is in heaven; neither is there respect of persons with him.

THE family state is the beginning and the condition of society. He who passes out of its healthy training into the larger circle of fellow-citizens or fellow-men, has a foundation already laid for all social sympathies, for the conception of human brotherhood, for the exercise of good will in every form. It is also the condition of, and the preparation for, all law. The dependent being trained up in it to listen to higher authority and wisdom, to give up self-will and practice self-control, becomes fitted for the loyal life of the citizen, and for obedience to God. Thus it was meant, according to the primeval plan, that the infant mind should be disciplined in the family for a life of law and of love—law, which should lead the soul up to the great central lawgiver of the universe, and love, which should embrace the brotherhood of souls, and God, the Father of all. Such was the idea and type of the family which, through the fall of the race, has not been fully realized. T. D. W.

To watch your own spirit; to be ready with the soft answer which turneth away wrath; to wait on the invalid and never weary; to be yourself the invalid, yet neither fretful nor exacting; to minister to the mind diseased, pulling it out of the self-same slough many times a day; to carry in your own bosom some great care or sorrow, and yet rejoice with those that do rejoice; to break away from favorite pursuits in order to give to others pleasure; to do all this is difficult, so difficult that it can only be long and systematically sustained in strength of God’s giving; but just because so difficult, it is the discipline which God prescribes to thousands who, up the steps of social life and domestic duty, are climbing to glory, honor, and immortality, and who, as they reach the landing, will find repayment in the children whom God hath given them. Hamilton.

22-33. He is enforcing the duties of the domestic state, and begins with those arising from the conjugal relation. His method is to illustrate these by the relations of Christ to his Church. The relative duties of marriage are more fully comprehended when the essential oneness of the relation is compared with the oneness of the believer with Christ. The husband is the head of the wife, just as Christ is the Head of the Church. The wife is to be subject to her own husband, just as the Church is subject to Christ. The husband is to love the wife, just as Christ loved the Church. He is to nourish her as his own body, just as Christ nourished the Church, which is his body. The parallel is drawn out in all these details, and then the very terms are cited in which the law of marriage was first given, in order to show that the two are one flesh, precisely as believers are members “of Christ, of his flesh and of his bones.” And the whole form of exposition assumes that there was a mystical feature in marriage, designed to prefigure the mystical union of Christ and the Church. A “mystery” was put into the most fundamental of our natural relations, and was kept a secret through all the ages, until the corresponding “mystery” was revealed in our spiritual relations, which cleared up its meaning—the hieroglyph over the very portals of marriage, not to be deciphered until the key was furnished in the work of redemption. What sanctity is lent to the conjugal bond, when from the beginning the husband was designed as the type of Christ, and the wife a type of the Church, and human marriage a symbol of the sacred espousals between the Lord and his people! If there be a holy shrine upon the earth, it is the Family which wraps within its hidden folds the “great mystery” of grace, the believer’s living union with his living Head. B. M. P.

22-24. The wife stands related to the husband as the Church to the Lord; that is, she is to be subject to him, and to show him all due reverence. But this obedience does not exclude equality of personal and moral dignity. It should have nothing slavish or bitter about it, no fear nor trembling. It should be free and joyful in, and for the sake of, the Lord. So the Church finds her highest honor, delight, and freedom in everywhere following her heavenly bridegroom in the most trustful self-resignation. P. S.—This subordination of the wife is urged upon the ground of its meanness or propriety, “as it is fit in the Lord” (Col. 3:18). The duty is thus laid upon her conscience, and is not left simply to the operation of instinct. At the very first, the woman did not separately exist. When God executed his counsel to “make man in his image and after his likeness,” he created Adam alone. The woman existed as yet only potentially in the man, and was formed afterward, by what may be termed a secondary creation, out of his substance. Her natural condition is that of union with man as a portion of him. The wife is always the rib, having her true place in the side, again reincluded in the man, from whom she was at first taken. In the beautiful language of Matthew Henry, she “was not made out of his head to top him, not out of his feet to be trampled upon by him, but out of his side, to be equal with him, under his arm to be protected, and near his heart to be beloved.” Her derivation from man as the rib, and her restoration to him as the woman, are both to be connected together, and their typical significance is that the union in marriage is the most intimate which can be conceived, that it is spiritual in its nature, and that headship in the one, with submission in the other, are the two halves that make up the whole. But over and beyond this God has made the subordination of the wife and the supremacy of the husband a part of the constitution of marriage, and has established both by positive statute. Can there be any degradation in the wife’s obedience to the law of her husband, when this is obedience directly rendered to the authority of God? B. M. P.

Is it nothing for woman to remember, when her sex is made the type and tabernacle of love, that we have ascribed the loftiest glory even to the Almighty Father when we have said that his name is love? Is it nothing to her that her place in society and her powers in the world correspond to her character? that, while she shares with man, in honorable and often equal measure, certainly in these modern times, every intellectual privilege and literary accomplishment, she yet has a realm all her own, sacred to her peculiar ministry, where she reigns by a still diviner right? It has been historically demonstrated that scarcely a single hero, reformer, statesman, saint, or sage has ever come to influence or adorn his age who was not reared by a remarkable mother that shaped his mind; and then ask whether it is not equal folly for woman to claim the name of power and for man to deny her the possession. Then let her take up and wield the spiritual sovereignty that is her birthright. Let her understand the power lodged in her whole spirit and voice and look and action for or against the kingdom of heaven. Let her be the brave domestic advocate of every virtue, the silent but effectual reformer of every vice, the generous patroness of intelligence, the guardian of childhood, the minister of heaven to home, the guide of orphans, the sister of the poor, the disciple of Christ’s holy Church. On Jesus of Nazareth—all fails except for this—on the Saviour’s heart let her rest her unchangeable and unassailable hope, her unquestioning trust, her unconquerable love. For then shall man and woman be fellow-belgars to the truth; marriage the pure sacrament of a spiritual faith, and families on earth humbler branches of the great family of heaven. F. D. H.

25. For this Church Christ “gave himself.” That token of love is immense. His strong love laid the foundations of that Church; his strong love preserves it. That affection can neither abate nor die. Jesus will love the Church as long as he loves the Father, that is, for ever; and as he loves the Father, that is, with a love that is infinite. A. V.

26,27. When Paul exhibits the union of the Church with Christ under the image of the bride and the bridegroom, declaring it to be the divine purpose to present the bride to her Lord “holy and without blemish,” he really offers the strongest conceivable appeal to the Christian disciple for an unsported life. F. D. H.—How highly Paul himself estimated this heavenly purity we may infer from his dwelling so much on the idea of it in this place. He mentions it, and then he repeats the mention of it, and then, not satisfied, he repeats it again; heaping up words as though he found words too poor to describe it, too weak to come up even to his conceptions of its blessedness. The Church is first “sanctified and cleansed”; then it is “without spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing”; and at last it is “holy and without blemish.” In our present state we are wanting in everything. In heaven every defect shall be supplied; nothing shall be wanting in us which can bring glory to our Redeemer or happiness to ourselves. C. R.

28,29. The relation of the husband to the wife is the same as that of Christ to the Church. He is not to lord it over her ambitiously and arbitrarily, but with the power of love, surrendering himself to her, as a part of his own being, as his other self, making her partaker of all his joys and possessions, patiently and meekly bearing her weaknesses, promoting in every way her temporal and, above all, her spiritual welfare, and sacrificing himself for her, even to his last breath, as Christ has given his life for the Church, is continually purifying and sanctifying her with his blood, and raising her as a spotless, richly adorned bride to full participation in his glory and blessedness. This, then, makes the sanctification and moral perfection of the character the highest end of conjugal life. P. S.

The broad doctrine of the husband’s supremacy grounded in love receives additional emphasis from the twofold argument by which the apostle enforces it upon the conscience. The first is the consideration of the wife’s identity with her husband. The allusion, of course, is to the mystery of the woman’s original derivation from the body of the man. She is, therefore, his other self. And, as “no man ever hated his own flesh,” so in “nourishing and cherishing” her he simply loves his own body. She is henceforth one with him in a mystical unity-holier and closer than that which was broken when the flesh was closed over the cleft in his side. The second argument of the apostle is the analogy between the husband’s love and that of Christ for the Church. The immense sacrifice whereby Christ “gave himself for the Church” finds its type, indescribably faint, it is true, in the consecration of the husband; when, forsaking all past associations and fellowship, he cleaves unto his wife, and devotes himself to her alone. And how beneficent is the reciprocal effect of a true conjugal intercourse between the two; when she, by her winning tenderness, softens in him all that is harsh and rough, and he, with his kindly firmness, upholds and trains those pliant graces which bloom the brighter as they twine themselves around his strength. B. M. P.

30. Three principal relations are included in this conception of the Church as the body of Christ. Christians as such are essentially united together in virtue of their relation to Christ, and that irrespective of any feeling or will of their own. Next, they are bound to one another by the obligation of mutual offices, the fulfillment of which is necessary for the well-being of the whole. And lastly, all alike derive their life from their Head who is in heaven. B. F. W.

32. A mystery is a truth, a fact, but to us a hidden truth. It is a truth hidden, whether from the eye of sense or from the direct glance of natural reason. It is apprehended as true, it is not comprehended. It can only be known from the evidence or symptoms of its presence. Yet the evidence, whatever it be, proves to us that the truth is there; and the truth is not the less a truth because it is itself shrouded from our direct gaze. Thus Paul speaks of the mystery of the Incarnation, and of the mystery of the calling of the Gentiles, when alluding to the fact that these divine purposes were hidden for ages in the mind of God and at length revealed. And he speaks of marriage as a great mystery, meaning that it embodies a secret correspondence to the union between our Lord and his Church, which does not lie upon the surface. H. P. L.

1-3. The first duty of children is obedience. This is not to be slavish but cheerful, the obedience of unreserved confidence and grateful love. It is also the first form of all piety toward God and reverence for divine things. For in its parents the child sees the representative of God, the reflection of his majesty and love. Where this course, which even natural right and the first commandment of the second table point out, is forsaken, there inevitably results wildness, slavery, and curse. Obedience to the divinely ordained authority of parents forms the only true training for real freedom and manly independence. P. S.

1. Authority is here presented to the conscience as grounded in absolute right. “Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right.” A broad foundation is thus laid, upon which a steady obedience may rest; for the appeal is made to the intelligence and reason as well as to the conscience and heart of the child. But, while the divine will is presented as a motive to filial obedience, it reflects equally upon parental authority. If the child must “obey in the Lord,” the parent must command in