Jesus, when here, showed His estimate of man's doings. His withering denunciations of hypocrisy and pretense in religion are well known among us. When the church of Laodicea congratulated herself on her position and attainments, her character was exposed as mere slop-work, for Jesus said, " Thou knowest not," etc. They were sincere enough, and there was no doctrinal heresy in her bosom; but her crying heresy in practice was, having a religion that kept Jesus outside her door. "Ye do err, not knowing the Scripture, nor the power of God." That is the source of all heresy in creed and practice. When the Laodicean church appears again on the scene, it is as " Babylon the Great, the mother of harlots" in Rev. 18:, full of worldliness, and yet professing, with consummate impudence, to be the bride of Christ. She is seen as the mart of the commerce of the nations, and the consumer of the merchandise of the whole world ; and at the top of her list, as has been pointed out, is "gold," and at the bottom, " the souls of men" as if they were hardly worth a thought, coming in, as they do, after "wheat, and beasts, and sheep, and horses, and chariots." But judgment is the end of it, "for strong is the Lord God that judgeth her." Religious profession in our day is fast hastening toward this condition of things ; and surely it is a peculiar privilege to stand, in this the crisis of our age, in the place of faithful confessors of Christ, and to be bold for Him as a Noah, a Paul, a Luther, a Knox, in their day was bold. It is a high honor to be living in a day like this, that we may witness for God and His Christ, against the world- not only in its worldliness, but its religion-and have that faith to which he commits Himself. Things are rapidly tending to the condition they were in before the flood. This world is still Cain's world, and its religion is still Cain's worship.