is gore forth-would that it may prove in mercy!"Go to, ye rich men, weep and howl for the miseries that shall come upon you ; your riches are corrupted, and your garments are moth-eaten; your gold and silver is cankered, and the rust of them shall be a witness against you; they shall eat your flesh as it were fire; ye have heaped treasure together for the last days. Behold the hire of the labourers, who have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth; and the cries of them which have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth. Ye have lived in pleasure upon the earth, and been wanton." This is the text. If we want the comment, we may hear it from every mouth in England. Poverty to the rich, hunger to the full, debasement to the proud-children grown up in luxury, and made delicate by indulgence, reduced to penury, and left to the world's pity, or subjected to privations and indignities-most painful now, but which would have been no hardship had their

fathers never risen.

Who is of the mind of

Christ? There would be a remedy even yet, if men believed that "they are strangers and pilgrims upon earth"-travellers, whom it encumbers to have much to carry-sojourners, who have no abiding city here. This is what the Scripture says we are, but men do not think so. If they did, we should part from our superfluities with as little care, as the young beauty puts off at night the gay attire of a festive evening, and, nothing less happy, nothing less beautiful, assumes in the morning her ordinary dress. We should descend with graceful ease from the station in which we were born, or to which we have been raised, to whatever level becomes our altered fortunes, gratefully satisfied to leave our children there. Again, the Apostle James might supply the picture, but in what altered characters! "Let the brother of low degree rejoice in that he is exalted; but the rich in that he is made low; because as the flower of the grass he shall pass away."

But the world is of a quite other mind. Fol

lowers, so they profess, of Him who had not where to lay his head, they can find no place high enough for the repose of theirs. Worshippers, so they say, at the Manger and the Cross, no mansion is large enough, no acres broad enough, no tables so richly spread, as to suffice them. It will do for this year, but we must have more the next. A little while-a very little-and not that, if we begin not rather low-the gain adds something to our innocent enjoyments, supplies a real want, removes a real inconvenience, serves a useful purpose, and increases our actual happiness; or would do so, if we could rest contented at that point. But desire grows with the increased possession, and unsatisfied desire is not happy anywhere. From that point forward, the agitating game is played for a most unworthy stake-our pride, our vanity, our sordid appetites are the only winners. If our happiness is increased at all, it is by the gratification of passions and feelings, which it is our duty as Christians to subdue, and from which we pray daily to be delivered.

Every creature is at liberty, nay, is required to seek his own good; but if the great things of this world are the Christian's good, God is mistaken. He has abandoned them to his enemies, because they are not worthy of his friendsHe has pronounced many a curse on them, but never once a blessing-where is it written, Blessed are the rich, blessed are ye that are full. And Christ is mistaken: He did not choose great things for those that He loved He did not ask wealth and honour of his Father for them, when He left them-He never, that we know of, advanced the fortunes of any individual while on earth. Once when He saw a rich man. whom He loved, He bade him part from all. And our church too is mistaken, which requires that we take our children to the font, at their very entrance into life, to renounce "the pomps and vanities of the world." Are they mistaken, yourselves being judges, or is the delusion less than it appears? You, who through many a painful struggle, possibly through many a sin, have risen to consequence,

H

do you look back with regret on younger days, when your name was an obscure one, and your home a simple one, and your healthful spirit enjoyed as an indulgence, all that exceeded your necessities? Or you, whose happiness is made up of opinion, of what men think of your condition, your style, your connexions, your importance-do you, when your company is gone, and your chamber-door is shut, think wishfully of those whose happiness is independent of opinion, who are too humble, or too simple, or too heavenly-minded, to care for the world's thinkings? I have some suspicion of it. There have been traitors even in Satan's kingdom, who have betrayed its secrets. But you say that you are Christ's, and live by his example; then I am sure you are not made happy by things which he despised.

It will be said, it is a needless question what we ought to choose, when we cannot choose at all. Our station in life is appointed by our Maker, and our subsequent fortunes are in his hands. But we must remember, that a man's