They mean somehow to get it out of the milliner, out of the dress maker, or out of the merchant. They intend to make one hand wash the other somehow, and they go into petty meannesses to bring it about. And this desire to dress better than they can afford is taking off the very enamel of their virtue, and taking out the very stamina of their religious life. Unimportant as it seems, ostentatious vanity in dress has ruined many a family, and damned many a soul !

The same principle it is that largely corrupts trade. A man wants to build. He has, money enough to build three houses; but he wants to build five. He gets bids. And when it is understood what he wants to do, men say to him, "You can not build five houses with that amount of money. Brick are so much, lumber is so much, and work is so much a day, and it will cost more than you propose to lay out." But the man is determined to build five houses with his money, and he gets other bids; and by and by he finds a man that is willing to undertake the job on the terms offered. The five houses are built; and they are built for that money. How is it done? By a system of cheating for builders are smart enough very often to make a man build five houses where he ought to build but three. The man that builds them is smarter than the man that employs him to build them. The latter does not know how the foundations are laid; he does not know how the partitions are filled up; he does not know how the plumbing is done, or how the glazing is done. There is a system of cheating and deceiving practiced all through, from the first stone in the foundation to the last shingle on the roof. The man meant to cheat the builder, and the builder cheated him. And every tenant that goes into the house will pay for it.

And that which takes place in the building of the house takes place in the furnishing of the house. All the way through, men want more than is just. They are avaricious, and they seek to get all they can out of other men. And they propagate this spirit wherever they have influence; and it goes ramifying itself through all trades and avocations in society. It is a desperate state of things; and the worst of it is, not its relation to political economy, but its moral result, which takes the tone out of true manhood. You can not tell where those influences which demoralize labor, and invalidate honesty and fair-dealing between man and man, will stop. You can not tell how far that wave which you set in motion will go, or on what shore it will break.

Men and brethren, am I speaking at random? Am I not telling things that you know better than I? Can you not, in looking in the store or in the shop, think of some whose cases I have described ? Have you not been partners to a greater or less extent in the wrong courses which I have exposed? Can you not bear witness that I am

speaking the truth, and that men in all avocations are violating not only the spirit, but the letter of the law of love? Are they not causing God's little ones to offend-to stumble headlong into temptation and into woes?

It is monstrous ! It is awful! And unless there is a higher standard of Christian morals quickly adopted, I know not what is to become of this nation, in the augmentation of its power, and in the increase of its wealth. If avarice is to increase in the same ratio that it has increased, we shall soon be consumed.

I will not speak of the intentional misleadings which go on in society, and of which there are many. I will stay the further progress of this discussion in its special applications, only to set before you, in the closing time that I have, the consideration of the value of man in the sight of God.

You are blinded; and many of your mistakes arise from the fact that you take your estimate of men as you find them in society. We judge of a man's worth by what he can do. We speak of a man as we do of goods; and we speak of goods as being worth more or less according to what they will bring in the market. We measure a man's value by his position. We are not taught to think of men in regard to their intrinsic relations to God, nor in regard to their adaptability to indefinite and eternal intercourse. The glory of manhood is never seen in this world. What a man is, you would not suspect from what you see of him here. Our summer is too short and too cold for that. Men do not blossom on the earth-at any rate, in their higher attributes. They live unknown and almost unseen, and die almost unwept and unlamented, to rise into a better sphere, where they begin, under more auspicious circumstances, to take on a dignity and proportion of which we have no conception here. You damage a man here because he is of little value to society, and he passes from your sight, and you think no more of him; but when you see him again, he shall be a prince before God. And Christ says, warning you, "The last shall be first, and the first shall be last."

The overswollen man that makes you a parasite and a flatterer; the man who, with his hands in his pockets, wields a power that makes you bow down and envy his prosperity-that man by and by will die; and the empty pageant of his funeral will pass away as an echo; and you will rise and stand before God ere long, and see him, (if there is enough of him left to see, when he is separated from his money,) and you will scarcely know him. "The last shall be first, and the first shall be last."

The men that sway their sceptre over the market, when once death shall touch them, will be like mushrooms; and the man that

not one can be found to follow-the pauper, whose home here is soli. tary and in the wilderness-will be a crowned prince in heaven.

You are living in the midst of terrible realities. But lands, and houses, and furniture, and ships, and goods, and governments-these are not the realities. These are transient. The little child, the throbbing heart of woman, the soul-nature of man-these are the durable things that we are living among. We are casting our shadow upon some to heal them, as Peter did. Every heart beats against some other heart. Every thought is as the sculptor's chisel. Every hour you hang over some man as the sun hangs over the earth, either nourishing some poisonous plant in the tropic, or bringing up some generous vine in the temperate zone. Your whole life is a mighty power in the midst of the various elements in this world; and the command of the Master is, "Beware! beware! whoso shall cause to err the poorest man, the lowest man, the least man, and make him worse-it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea."

Down, down, down goes the bubbling wretch around whose neck the heavy weight is placed; and yet, at last, with fainter and fainter struggling he subsides on the bottom of the sea. But he around whose neck God's final judgment hangs will go down forever and forever, in that bottomless pit where the destroyers of men are themselves destroyed!

PRAYER BEFORE THE SERMON.

WE bless thee, our Heavenly Father, for all the help which thou hast vouchsafed in times past, and for those great and precious promises which thou hast made for the future. But for the hope which we have in thee, we should be appalled at the greatness of the way before us. So mighty are those influences which draw us downward, so many are the things which tend to forgetfulness, so easy is it in prosperous circumstances to become self-indulgent, so do our very affections twine idolatrously round about earthly things, that, were we left to ourselves, we should all of us sink steadily lower and lower, until the thought of heaven would be too far away for influence-until thou thyself wouldst be hidden behind the cloud of all thy mercies. As the sun that drieth up the vapor from the earth is hidden by that which itself hath done; so thou by thy mercies art hidden, filling the air round about us with the tokens of thy goodness. We seize upon the things that are good, and forget the giver. And, O Lord our God! how worse are we than little children, with their folly and frivolity and ignorance! How are we, in all things, plunging, stumbling, erring through ignorance, through untempered passions, through evils manifold! We implore thy forgiveness. But what were all the forgiveness of God in the past, if we are afraid for the future. We implore even more thy presence, and thine inspiring help. Go with us from step to step in all our future lives, and give us a clear understanding, a sound judgment, and comprehensiveness of things right and things wrong. And grant that there may be an interpretation of duty in our very nature, that we may become so sensitive to things evil or good, that on the one hand or on the other, we shall repel or draw them. And may we walk with growing strength. May habit supplement desire. May we thus fortify what we gain, and hold, with grow ing strength, steadfastly on unto the very end of life.

Deliver us from the evil that is in the world. May we not seek to be friends of this world in all its evil aspects. May we look upon it as our field of labor. There may we delve, and sow, and rear the immortal harvest. And yet, may we not give ourselves to it as our chiefest good, nor be seduced by its pleasures, nor deceived by its deceits. Grant that we may walk in the world as not abusing it; as in it, and not above it. And as our experience grows, make us to desire that rest which remaineth for the people of God. Not one day sooner would we lay aside the work and the harness than thou dost wish; yet how joyful will be the sound when thou dost call for us; when thou hast need of us in some higher sphere; when thou dost desire to behold us, and wilt permit us to behold thee! How joyful will be that meeting, if our souls may but clasp thee, and call thee ours!

Grant that we may so live that we shall have a vision and a foretaste of that blessed rest which belongs to the heavenly estate. And when all our temptations and dangers are past, and that work is accomplished which it is our duty to accomplish, bring us to the end of life joyfully and assuredly, that we may go out singing songs of victory, and rise to grander songs of triumph in the heavenly land.

And to thy name shall be the praise of our salvation, Father, Son, and Spirit. Amen.

SELF-CONCEIT IN MORALS.

SUNDAY MORNING, JANUARY 3, 1869.

INVOCATION.

July 21 1869

THOU that dost hold the sun, and pour forth therefrom the light and glory of the day, from thine own self let there come streaming as the daylight those influences that shall awake in us all hope and all gladness of love. For we sleep except when thy beams are on us. Only when we are in God are we alive. Let us in, O our Father! and may all that is within us rise up to worship thee. Accept our service according to what we would do, and according to what thou wouldst have us do. Bless the Word, and the reading thereof. Bless our songs of praise, and our fellowship therein. Bless our communion one with another, and with thee. Bless us in our meditation, in the services of the day, at home, and everywhere. Make this a golden day to our souls, through Jesus Christ our Redeemer.

Amen.

"VERILY I say unto you, that the publicans and the harlots go into the kingdom of heaven before you."-MATT. xxi. 31.

SUCH a declaration as this, made to the men and women who stood highest in social life; who represented the highest religious attainments of that age; who considered themselves not only far above the wicked, but eminently virtuous and religious, must have created a profound indignation and disgust. Even yet, it seems at first sight extravagant and revolutionary. It seems to say that the gross extortions of publicans, and the unutterable corruption of courtesans, are less criminal than a morality which observes all laws scrupulously, and is clothed with eminent decency. For these words were uttered, not to low, degraded classes, but to the teachers - the Scribes and the Pharisees. These words seem to lower the value of a good life, by making an exceedingly bad one safer and more hopeful.

But such inferences are not just. It is not affirmed, nor must it be inferred, that the publicans and the harlots were better than the Pharisees. They were not better, they were not pronounced better -far from it. The Pharisees were a great deal better than they were in the ordinary use of that term, and in the ordinary meaning of it. They came nearer to observation of law and decorum; and if these elements of moral character were all that was necessary, they certainly might be supposed to be relatively safe.

LESSON: MATT. xxii. - HYMNS (Plymouth Collection): Nos. 40, 889, 923.

Nor is it to be inferred that our Master regarded either party as good, or that either party would enter into the life eternal. Neither is it intended to teach, nor, if justly considered, does it teach, that there is in evil a recuperative power, so that very bad men have in their badness a kind of spring or rebound which makes them safer than if they were not as low down. It rather takes the public and universal opinion of the utter and desperate wickedness of the publican and of the harlot for granted; and the almost hopelessness of their recovery is taken for granted. Then it says, "Yet, bad as they are, they are more likely to become good than ye are." ruptions of the passions are more likely to be healed than is spiritual conceit.

The cor

That is the force of the passage. So that the passage teaches, not the safety of passional corruption, but the danger of self-righteousness. It is not a comparison between them as to their moral character; but is simply a comparison between them as to the likelihood, which there is, in the one and the other, of recovery. A man in the almost hopeless state of passional corruption may recover; but for the recovery of a man that is in the hopeless state of spiritual corruption and conceit, there is scarcely a chance. In every respect but one, the Pharisees were superior to the publicans and the harlots; and that was susceptibility to the conviction of sin, and likelihood of resort to God for a true life. Eternal life is a gift of God. No man has it in himself. It is not that which develops itself out of the seed that is in man-it is wrought in us. It is the gift of God, and without it there is no immortality. But it is not a gift. as of something out of the hand of God, like a title, or like a sceptre, or like a key to open the gate of heaven, or like a coronet. Eternal life is not a gift as of something fixed, finished, accomplished, and passed over. It is a gift as education is. It is something wrought patiently and long in a man. Eternal life is a gift to us as the sunlight is to the flowers— an influence which enters into them and fashions them. Eternal life from the hand of God is a gift to mankind, as healing is a gift from the physician to his patient. It is that which is slowly wrought in them. Eternal life is wrought in us by the power of the Highest, by the indwelling of the Holy Ghost. And the hope of the future is that God's Spirit, entering into the soul, will give it eternal life. Hence, the criterion of hopefulness in any case, is not a certain position or a relation of a man's conduct and character to a moral standard, useful as that is, and indispensable for some other purposes; but the criterion of hopefulness in every man's case is the openness of his soul to divine influence, and its susceptibility to change under that influence.

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