If ever a text were turned from its exact opposite, this is perhaps the one. It is not only misapplied, but mistranslated; and not only mistranslated, but even then misquoted. People quote it as "diligent in business," and use it as their justification in throwing all their energies into the pursuit of money-making; the very next words of the apostle being swamped in the fulfillment of the prior duty. How hard indeed do Christians find it to be " diligent in business" and " fervent in spirit" at the same time! The occupation of heart with that which is in fact "the mammon of unrighteousness,"-how impossible to combine this with true devotedness to the Lord, He Himself declares. " No man can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will cleave to the one and despise the other:ye cannot serve God and mammon."

But while these are owned, of course, as the Lord's words, how few realize their solemn meaning! How few of those to whom money has become a most real object would willingly own that they were serving mammon! It is an object, they would have to acknowledge, but it is not the object, and surely at the bottom of their hearts one would trust it was not; but it is the admission of another object at all that the Lord warns of. If to get money is the object of the heart at all, a divided heart is a divided service, the very thing that He who knows so thoroughly pronounces incompatible with service to Himself.

How shall the heart be kept free from what the hands must needs be busy with? In one way alone. By really recognizing that what we handle is Another's, and not our own; that what is ours is what is unseen and eternal:that we are really stewards, and that the solemn result of unfaithfulness will be what is emphasized in that momentous question, " If ye have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will commit to your trust the true riches? And if ye have not been faithful in that which is another's, who will give you that which is your own ?

" Faithful:" in real use of your Master's goods as His; beloved reader, are you indeed seeking to be so? not putting Him off with a tenth, or a fifth, or any measured portion, but using as in His sight, all to Him as His?

If that is indeed your desire, how little will your business hinder spirituality! You can take the admonition of the verse "not to loiter in earnest purpose," for that is its real force. Your counting-house or workshop will be as holy as any other place of your companionship with God; neither cares of this life nor deceitfulness of riches can choke in you the seed of the Word, and make you unfruitful; and this is the only way in which all this can be accomplished. As for all need of yours, it will be His care:you are privileged to care for Him, and to let Him care for you, to realize that while " it is vain for you to rise up early, to sit up late, to eat the bread of carefulness,"-He giveth to His beloved sleeping." So says the true version of the one hundred and twenty-seventh psalm. How blessed this deliverance! How precious the privilege of this life of faith, to which not one more than another, but all the Lord's people are called! Dear reader, have you understood your privilege? How many of God's people are walking in heaviness because they are not faithful in the things that are Another's, and therefore cannot enjoy their own! May the Lord waken His own to the reality before eternity comes to awaken us all. May we be "not loitering in earnest purpose, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord."