"Lay not up for your yourselves treasures upon earth … but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven." Matt. 6:19, 20.

We are living in a day of unparalleled covetousness. Never, perhaps, in the history of man has there been seen such a love of money, and such frantic efforts to obtain it.

The love of it has become such that it matters not how it is gotten-he who gets it is in high honor. Crime of every description may have been resorted to, it matters not. Character, conscience, the lives of men, the welfare of multitudes, eternal doom-all is laid on the altar of this dreadful and relentless god by its numberless worshipers.

And would to God that this great scourge were confined to the open enemies of Him whose words are quoted above. If it were, we would not pen these lines, except to bring before them another passage for their warning:"Go to, now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your 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, and shall eat your flesh as it were fire. Ye have heaped treasures together for the last days." James 5 :1-3.

But, alas, the plague reaches God's people too, and many who, a few years ago, would have shrunk from such ways, and means, and associations most questionable, to say the least; things which, Delilah-like, dull the conscience, stupefy the spiritual senses, and cut off the locks of our heavenly Nazariteship and strength, are now found in them for. the sake of making money. This is dreadful to think of.

Let the great fortunes which men have made, or are making, be traced to their origin, and, we fear, but few will be found, at some point of which an awful deed or a series of deeds was not committed, that will haunt the soul of the perpetrator throughout eternity. So with the people of God, we believe few will be found among those who seek riches, who have not here or there compromised their Christian conscience.

In contrast with all this what exquisite beauty shines out in the Scripture which heads these lines. Let the reader carefully go over Matt. 6:19-34, and see for himself. The Lord loves His own, and He seeks their profit, not profit for this brief life merely, but for eternity as well.

He wants them to be rich with riches that do not vanish. But for this the present has to be sacrificed. It must be used as the farmer uses his seed. He scatters it. It looks like waste. No, not to him, for he has his eye on the harvest.

Does the enemy suggest that we shall come to want some day? Ah, says our real Friend, "Behold, the fowls of the air; " "Consider the lilies of the field." If your heavenly Father deals so with them, do you think He will neglect you, if you tread the path He loves ?

Brethren, what a privilege is ours to use this present life with its present goods, in view of the coming harvest, whose fruit shall eternally abide. May we not fritter away such privileges for the gratification of earth-born desires.

The Christian’s Joy.

There is nothing in common between the life heaven and that of the world.

It is not a question of prohibitions as to using this or that, but of having altogether other tastes, desires, joys; and it is on that account people imagine Christians are sad, as if they were absorbed by only one thought. It is that our joys are altogether different from those of the world.

No unrenewed person can comprehend what renders the Christian happy. J. N. D.

Submission.

I was struck to-day with Gen. 22:9, with Isaac's side of it. What submission! What obedience! No resistance, no seeking to escape-allowing Abraham to do just what he would! Ver. 6, Isaac carried the wood; Abraham-the father-carried the knife and the fire! John's gospel, the gospel of the Father and the Son, is the only one which gives us Jesus carrying His cross-the wood. How beautifully and blessedly perfect is God's book! W. E.