A Fireside Talk on the First Lesson in September. BY REV. W. F. CRAFTS, M.A. in this T was the custom in Uncle Will's home to have a fireside We talk on the Sunday-school lesson of the next Sunday, on seach Wednesday evening, after the six o'clock tea. All the members of the family participated home conversation about the Bible, from the grandmother to Little Mona. This home study of the lesson was not introduced earlier in the week because it was best that there should be time for the older members to do some preparatory study, that they might cono tribute to the profit of the exercises. It was not put later on the week, in order that there might be time after the fireside talk for looking up points that might be suggested, and for thinking over new phases of truth that might be expressed. When tea was over, we remained at the table, only that the plates were taken away and open Bibles were laid before each of us instead. "You remember," said Uncle Will, by way of preparing for the talk about the Ten Comandments, "That I had in the paper yesterday morning an advertisement for a boy to work in our shop, and run errands, and make himself generally useful. Very early in the day, the shop was thronged with boys of all ages, sizes, sorts, and conditions, all wanting to find a situation. I only wanted one boy, and how to get the right one was the difficulty, I saw I must devise some plan to lessen the number of applicants and get at the best of them. So I sent them all away and thought the matter over; and this morning there was an advertisement in the paper, and in my shop window, een e 'WANTED-A BOY WHO OBEYS HIS MOTHER.' There was no crowd this morning. Ben, how many do you suppose came ? If you had wanted a place, could you have applied ? " Ben, our boy of nine, did not answer; but hung his head, and a little crimson flush came to his face; for he had during the afternoon disobeyed his mother, going to a cricket match when she had forbidden him to do so, because his lessons for to-morrow could not be prepared if he did. Uncle Will did not wait for an answer, or for the guesses to be expressed, which every one had made in their minds, but continued, "There were only two of all the numerous boys seeking employment in our great city who felt they could honestly come and say, 'I obey my mother.' We only wanted one boy, but we hired both of these, knowing that such boys were rare, and when we wanted another one we might not so easily find one. "We shall make a place for the second boy to be useful. Boys that learn at home to obey their mothers will be less likely to disobey their masters in business, and the laws of the country and of God against stealing and other wrongs. The world wants everywhere for servants, soldiers, and rulers, those who in boyhood have learned to obey." "Ah," said Grandmother, shaking her head ominously, glancing over the tops of her spectacles, "there is not so much family government as there used to be in my childhood!" Bernard, a young lawyer who was visiting with us, archly replied, "Ob, yes, there is quite as much family government as there used to be, but there is not so much of it in the hands of the parents. 'Parents, obey your children,' seems to be the revised version of the Commandment in many homes to-day." "That reminds me," said Mrs. Uncle Will, "that the home is a God-appointed school for teaching obedience. Boys and girls sometimes think it hard to mind their parents, and to be punished if they do not; but they will by-and-by learn that, as one of the chief duties of a school-teacher is to show them how to read, one of the most important duties of parents is to teach their children obedience to law. A parent who does not teach perfect obedience is as unfaithful as a school-teacher would be who did not teach his pupils to read and write." "Sometimes parents," said Uncle Will, “think it is because they have such great love for the children that they do not restrain them. God says that a father who does not insist on obedience at home 'hateth his son.' Many a son who has had his own way in childhood, and has not learned to obey his God-appointed rulers in the home, has grown up to be restless and disobedient under the law of the State, and has come at length to curse the parents who failed to teach him loyalty to law. I will write on our home blackboard the three parts in God's lesson of obedience :— Because obedience is so important, God has put it as the first lesson in the Bible, in the five books of the law." "I have noticed," said Dr. Brown, a Christian surgeon, who lives just opposite, and who comes in on Wednesday night to share our fireside talks, "that the key-words of the whole Pentateuch are, 'As the Lord commanded, so did he.' In the last chapter of Deuteronomy A FIRESIDE TALK ON THE FIRST LESSON IN SEPTEMBER. 347 it comes in every few lines, like a chorus, and the same expression occurs frequently all through the Pentateuch. Indeed, the five books of Moses are like five points in a sermon, of which the text is, 'As the Lord commanded, so did he,' all the incidents being illustrations of it, or warnings against the consequences of disregarding it." "We have a little song," said Mona, our six-year-old girl," that tells about doing as the Lord commands. This is the chorus :'Write, O my Saviour, in love on my heart, What the Lord commandeth; Lead us, O Spirit, from wrong to depart, God and my neighbour, O help me to love, Trusting and working, my covenant prove, As the Lord commandeth.'" "Let us all learn the Ten Commandments perfectly," said Uncle Will, "to repeat next Sunday morning after breakfast, so that we can say them without hesitation when they are called for in the Sundayschool." "In our history lesson yesterday," said Ben, we learned about King Alfred translating the Ten Commandments and the rest of the verses in Exodus xx.-xxiii., as the basis of English law; and teacher said that all the laws we have to-day grew out of the Ten Commandments, as an oak grows from an acorn." "But," said Mary a young lady teacher boarding in the family, was not that old code of Moses abolished by Jesus Christ ? Our minister always speaks of the Old Testament as a sort of cast-off clothing, chiefly interesting now as an historical curiosity." : Uncle Will replied, "Here is a written memorandum I have made of six places in the Gospels, where Christ puts the stamp of His authority on the decalogue as law for all countries and all centuries :Matt. xix. 18, 19; Luke x. 25-28; Matt. xv. 4, xxii. 37-39; Mark xii. 29, 30; Matt. iv. 10. When Christ was tempted He held up the decalogue as a shield between Himself and Satan, saying, 'It is written, thou shalt worship the Lord thy God him only shalt thou serve.' He quoted also in that conflict with the tempter two or three Old Testament laws not found in the decalogue, 'It is written, thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God,' 'It is written, man shall not live by bread alone,' showing that the fundamental principles of all Old Testament laws have an application always and everywhere. It was the work of Christ not to destroy Old Testament laws, but to explain their deeper meanign, which is the central purpose of the Sermon on the Mount, and to add new precepts that the people were in his time able to receive." "But," said Mary, "May not one keep the whole decalogue and not have any heart religion? " Martha, our oldest daughter, a practical young lady like her ancient namesake, replied, "Jesus said, when the lawyer came to him asking about eternal life, having repeated the decalogue, 'This do and thou shalt live." He could say that, because the law includes the heart love to God as well as outward morality. The trouble is that some persons like the young ruler who came to Christ, boast that they have kept all the law from their youth up because they have not stolen, nor killed nor borne false witness, when they have neither kept the first commandment about worship, nor the last one about covetousness in the heart." "Yes," said Uncle Will," God told the people when the law was first given, as Jesus did afterwards, that the decalogue was all summed up in love to God and love to our neighbours, the whole world being considered our neighbourhood. Many think they keep the whole law when they have obeyed most of the second table and forgotten the first." "As if one should claim," said Bernard, to be a law-abiding citizen who obeyed Volume II. of our present statutes, when he had disobeyed Volume I." "Such people," said Martha, "need to hear Rachael's ancient motto, 'Whatsoever God hath said unto thee, do,' as a warning against picking and choosing among the commandments of God instead of obeying them all.” "That was almost the motto of the Virgin Mary also," said our Mary, "you remember at the feast of Cana she said to the servants, whatsoever he saith unto you, do it." But is one a Christian who keeps all the Ten Commandments of the first table as well as the second ?" "Rather," said Uncle Will, "one is a Christian who keeps the Ten Commandments of Christ, in addition to the Ten Commandments of Sinai. I remember reading of an eccentric preacher who, without making known his profession, put up in a farm-house, and the old mother, who was deeply religious, thinking it her duty to examine him on religion, asked him among other things, how many commandments there were. He answered 'eleven.' She was greatly shocked by his apparent heathenism and ignorance of religious matters. The next morning, to her surprise, she found him in the pulpit of the country church where she attended, as the preacher appointed for the day. He said in giving out his text that he would preach on the eleventh commandment,- A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another.'" This reminds us that while Christ endorses the old decalogue six times over, putting the stamp of His world-wide kingship upon it, He also added not one but ten new commandments. (Search your Bibles, and learn what they are.) "He is a Christian who obeys not one table only of these new commandments, but both, doing what Christ has commanded not only in regard to secret faith, but also open confession." 66 But," said Mary, "may not one be a friend of Christ and not profess religion ?" 66 Christ answers," ," said Uncle Will, "Ye are my friends if ye do whatsoever I command you,' 'Why call ye me Lord, Lord, and do not the things that I say ?'" We closed by singing, "Oh, how happy are they who their Saviour obey!" Gleanings for Teachers. "GARDENS AND ORCHARDS." THESE have ever been the delight of Orientalists. The Hebrew term rendered garden includes orchards planted with choice trees of all kinds, and watered with fountains, according to the ability of the owners. In the hands of princes, like Solomon, the garden swelled to the dimensions of a park (pardes, that is, paradise, a term including in itself the garden, the orchard, and the pleasure-ground), where all things were collected that could delight the eye or regale the senses. Solomon had such parks in various choice places; as at En-gedi on the Dead Sea, at Etam by the Pools south of Jerusalem, and on the borders of Lebanon, where were spicery and trees of all kinds of fruit. Biblical Geography and Antiquities. In the small valley of Etam (now the Wady Urtas) are the supposed remains of Solomon's Pools, three in number. They are about seven miles from Jerusalem, and a mile and a quarter south of Bethlehem. Their figure is quadrangular. The breadth of each is about ninety |