ful giver with which He is well pleased! Read in the thirty-fifth chapter of Exodus how the desert Israelites poured forth their gifts for the tabernacle; how the women took off and gave their brooches and earrings and armlets; how every man that offered offered gold, a free-will offering unto the Lord. Will ye see that ye abound in this grace also? will you, like them, thank God that you have (as indeed you have) the means, and, what is better than the means, the will to offer willingly? Test your own superiority to lower considerations, show that you can endure the- to some of you agonizing-martyrdom of an infinitesimal self-denial. About a hundred and fifty years ago the French Protestant preacher, Saurin, preached a sermon on charity, in which he mentioned, as I have done, the example of the Jews, and the beatitudes of wealth enriched by liberality, and at the end of his sermon men placed all the money they had in the collection plate, women heaped upon it their jewels and their gold. Do you think that they missed what they gave? Were they the losers for being for once carried out of themselves— out of their meaner, narrower, more worldly selves by a wave of sacrifice? May we not feel sure that they looked back on that impulse of generosity as having caused them greater happiness in the gold they gave than in all the gold they kept? I, alas! am no Saurin; but is there any reason why you should not be as generous as the French eighteenth century audience which Saurin addressed? Life is fleeting; opportunity is short; the needs are great; the Master presses. Then, while you have life, and health, and means, give to God that which is His. Give for the sake of the poor, that they may live; for the sake of society, that it may endure; for your own sake, that the work of your hands may be blessed; for the dignity, and beauty,

the worship, and usefulness of the House of God; for the sake of duty, honesty, and honour; to-day and always, as habitual and generous and cheerful givers, give, and it shall be given unto you. There is that scattereth, and yet increaseth; there is that maketh himself rich, yet hath nothing; there is that withholdeth more than is meet, and it tendeth only to poverty.

MAMMON WORSHIP.

"For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil.”—I TIM. vi. 10.

In the fifth of the chasms which form the abyss of Fraud, Dante, in his Vision of Hell, sees a cleft marvellously dark. It reminds him of the lake of clammy pitch which he had seen in the arsenal of Venice, where in winter-time the sailors caulked their damaged ships. "So," he says, "not by fire, but by divine art, boiled down there a dense pitch which beplastered its banks on every side. It I saw, but I saw nothing else there, except the bubbles which the boiling raised, and the heaving and compressed subsiding of the whole. And, while I was gazing down fixedly upon it, my guide cried out, 'Take care, take care!' A demon came running by, bearing a sinner on his shoulders, and shouted to his fellow-demons: 'See, here is one of Santa Zita's elders (from Lucca). Thrust him under the pitch while I return for more. There at Lucca they turn "Yes" into "No" for money.' Then, as the other fiends rush at the hapless wretch, and push him under the pitch, they tauntingly cry to him, 'Here the Sacred Face avails not; here thou must lie underneath the pitch, so that, if thou canst, thou mayst pilfer privately.'”

Let me explain. Dante's vision of Hell is a vision. not only of the future punishment of men, but also of their present sins; not only of what shall be the case with the soul hereafter, but also of what is the case with the soul. now. That lake of pitch is the dark, evil, slimy sea of usury, malfeasance, commercial fraud, feverish speculation,

sordid avarice. The Italian city of Lucca was infamous for this greed of gain. Like many a modern city, it was wholly given over to the idolatry of gold. The sinner whom the fiend has brought from thence is scornfully called "one of Santa Zita's elders" by way of contrast. For seventy years before this time there had lived and died in Lucca a holy servant-girl, a maid of all work, named Zita, who, living and dying in uttermost lowliness and poverty, had yet been sainted for her good deeds, and was much nominally honored in that city of usurers and cheats. Lucca prided itself on a very ancient and holy crucifix known as "the Sacred Face," and the demon tells the greedy pilferer that no hypocritic adoration of Christ or His crucifix will avail him here. But how forcible is the emblem! how awful the scene! A lake of pitch, at a little distance, looks quite resplendent in the sun: it looks, in fact, exactly like a lake of gold. But go near, and it is pitch, not gold. Touch it rashly, and it defiles you. It even overglues its banks, so wide is its polluting influence. the love of money looks respectable and even resplendent, yet it is full of peril. Basely gained, ostentatiously squandered, meanly hoarded, it sticks to the fingers, defiles the mind; and, while its outer wave overflows with filth and baseness, its inner depths heave and bubble as with excitement and depression, and the sighing of souls which will not be satisfied. And the dark dealings of fraud are punished in kind. He who has secretly wallowed in them here shall wallow there in an agonized obscurity, as undiscernible as his nefarious life on earth.

So

How disproportionate, how vast a place has money ever occupied, as now it does, in the thoughts and desires of man! How vainly emphatic are the warnings of Script

ure respecting it! How many, how varied the crimes which attend its servitude! For money, men, alike rich and poor, have been ready to make all their lives a lie to themselves and a fraud upon their neighbours. For gold men have betrayed their country, their friends, their God, their immortal souls. For gold they steal, and rob, and break open houses, and commit assaults and murders, and become the terrors and scourges of society. For gold men forge and cheat and start bubble companies, and tamper with securities, and snatch the support of the widow, and steal the bread of the fatherless. For gold they live by trades and manufactures which are the curse and destruction of mankind. For gold they involve whole countries in the horrors and crimes of war. For gold they soil the honour of their sons, and sell their daughters into gilded misery, and poison the world with stagnant gossip, and stab noble reputations in the dark. For gold they defraud the hireling of his wages, and grind the faces of the poor, and wring the means of personal luxury from rotting houses or infamous pursuits. Gold corrupts trades and professions into that commercial standard which is often little better than systematized dishonesty. Gold can condemn the innocent and shield the guilty.

"Plate sin with gold,

And the strong lance of justice hurtless breaks;
Clothe it with rags, a tiny straw will pierce it."

"Look into the history of any civilized nation, analyze with reference to this one cause of crime and misery the lives and thoughts of their nobles, priests, merchants, and men of luxurious life. The sin of the whole world is. essentially the sin of Judas. Men do not disbelieve in Christ, but they sell Him." O my friends, let every one