+IV. The commandment is a keeper, a guide, and a lamp to those only who keep it.+ A man binds his sandal upon his foot and it keeps his foot, because it has itself been kept in its right place. There is a mutual keeping. There can be no keeping _by_ the word unless there is a keeping _of_ the word. A greater than Solomon has told us this truth. Our Lord, in His parable of the sower, reminds us of those wayside hearers who, not keeping the word, were not kept by it, and of those who, like the rocky or thorny ground, kept it only for a while and were only kept by it until the time of temptation scorched them, and their profession withered away (Matt. xiii. 1-7). And our Lord Himself used the commandment in the hour of His temptation to keep Him. To all the advances of the tempter he replied, "It is written." _OUTLINES AND SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS._ Verse 20. The first feature that arrests attention in this picture is, that effects are attributed to the law of a mother which only God's law can produce. The inference is obvious and sure. It is assumed that the law which a mother instils is the Word of God dwelling richly in her own heart, and that she acts as a channel to convey that Word to the heart of her children. To assume it as actually done is the most impressive method of enjoining it. Parents are, by the constitution of things, in an important sense mediators between God and their children for a time. . . . Your children are, by grace, let into you, so as to drink in what you contain. The only safety is, that you be by grace let into Christ, so that what they get from you shall be, not what springs within you, but what flows into you from the Springhead of holiness. To the children it is the law of their mother, and therefore they receive it; but in substance it is the truth from Jesus, and to receive it is life.--_Arnot._ We have already noticed (ch. i. 8) the fifth commandment as comprehending the first five; just as the tenth commandment comprehends the latter five. They ought to be painted so in churches. Handed down so, we verily believe, to Moses, each table must have carried five commandments. Honouring our father, in all the broad meaning of that term, is the first commandment "_in,_" not "_with_" (as in Eng. version), "promise" (Eph. vi. 2).--_Miller._