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best and holiest Name. Think, that Name so foully misused as to be the proverbial word for dishonesty over broad Christendom!

You might be sure that it is only the wrong love of money that St. Paul condemned, when you just think what is meant by the phrase. It is not the love of the mere thing money. We are not thinking of stories of insane misers who gloated over the actual gold: who, even on a dying bed, would dabble with their icy fingers in a basin of guineas. These things are abnormal, monstrous; we leave them out of our calcu

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their native land, very irritating to hear. The love of family ties—you call a man unnatural who has not got it—yet I have known it lead both men and women to the most absurd vapouring about the qualities and doings of their relations. All these loves are most right; but they may lead wrong. Just so is it with the love of money. That may be allowed to grow to a wrong bigness; to push in a wrong direction. It must be kept in its right place, and made to drive the right way-to honest industry and self-denial, not to roguery nor violence. Everything on earth may be abused. Even God's law, the Apostle said, was good if a man use it law-lation. What we mean is the desire to get— fully. You might so misuse it that it should become root of all evil-of pride, selfrighteousness, deception as to one's real spiritual state: Why, God's law, misused, was root of all that made the Pharisee in the parable a warning to all ages. Anything, abused, put out of its place, exaggerated, may be root of much evil. Your daily walk is healthful exercise: it does good to both body and soul. Overdo it, and it is bad for you. Your necessary food-you cannot do without it-one of the few petitions in the prayer Christ taught us asks for our daily bread; but in excess, the appetite runs into degrading gluttony and drunkenness. Then, what better than to bear testimony to God's truth, to stand by right against wrong? And yet a little ago, a most eminent Scotchman, the Duke of Argyll, told us that there is nothing so ridiculous as a Scotchman lifting up a testimony. For, now-a-days, that commonly eventuates in a man's making a fool of himself in some wretched little way, specially in matters ecclesiastical. In old days it sometimes eventuated in much worse -in brutal and bloody murder. The atrocious fanatics and ruffians that murdered the poor old archbishop whose statue kneels over there, thought they were lifting up a testimony for the truth of God: God pity them! There is a fearful instance of the best of all loves proving literally root of all evil. What better than love to Christ, absolute devotion to the personal Saviour Jesus? Yet an organization of men, specially declaring themselves actuated by love to Jesus, taking His blessed name and specially bearing it before all the world, have gained a bad eminence for a dishonesty and cruelty never surpassed on this earth. You cannot say worse of any policy or any conduct than that it is Jesuitical. Most awful perversion of the

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the instinct of acquisition. Now that is a
natural desire; God put it in us. The first
thing in human nature is I am: the second is
I have. And nothing can be surer than this,
that any natural desire is meant by God to
be regulated, not to be extirpated.
desire to get is the thing St. Paul meant.
And it arises in us of necessity, through the
working of our soul's mechanism, at the
sight of what seems desirable. It may be,
it often has been, a root of all evil. It may be,
it often has been, a root of all good. God
never intended it to be cast out; God did
intend it to be ruled: Nothing in us needs
that more. If you see a thing you wish for,
the first rough impulse might be to put forth
the hand and take it; the second would be
by honest work to earn the price of it, and
thus to get it. The instinct of getting, in
fact, may prompt to get by unworthy means,
force or fraud; or by worthy means, industry
and self-denial. It has, in fact, prompted
a great many human beings to the wrong
way. All cheating, all roguery, all robbery
have come of it. And, on the other
hand, all civilisation, all
economy, all
prudence, all national prosperity, almost all
good and faithful work have come of it. It
has tilled our soil: it has mended our climate,
and may well mend it further: it has
brought us from being foul, cruel, and short-
lived savages, into being, to say the least,
far better than that. For the love of money,
rightly understood and rightly ruled, is the
due and grateful valuing of all the gifts of a
kind Providence. There is not a more
touching story than that of the shifts and
sufferings poor human beings have gone
through to earn a little money; not a thing
that shows poor human nature in a more
creditable light. Read the life of good
Robert Chambers, and you will feel that.
Read the story of how Dr. Robert Lee
worked to earn the little sum that would sup-

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of the humbler facts of human nature. know congregations-the very best congregations-ministered to by the very best parish priests, both in Scotland and England

where a regular part of the congregational organization is the Parochial Savings Bank; and where the working man is exhorted, not as of worldly prudence but of Christian duty, to practise economy, to save something

port him through his first session at our University; you will not read it without a touched heart. Ay, and the poor lonely widow scraping together the shillings to pay her rent; the dying genius propped up with pillows to write wit to get bread for his children if there be a thing that Christ would look upon with tender sympathy you have it there. And it is not Christianity, it is asceticism, it is monkery, it is sour puri-weekly however little, to lay by in days of tanism, to say that all God's worldly gifts are nothing worth: to slink about creation afraid to look or feel cheerful. And money means all God's worldly gifts. It means home, and books, and art, and knowledge, and comfort: It means travel; it means the healthful alterative of the sight of foreign lands; it means snowy Alps and medieval cities, with all the varied good they do you; it means needful rest, when you must rest or break down, when continued overwork would speedily bring to the grave; and besides giving these worldly advantages, it gives you a better chance, as commonly understood, for the other world. It gets you better preaching to listen to; it gets you a solemn and beautiful church instead of a shabby barn; it gets you a great genius now and then, instead of some lifeless repeater of stale sentences, to care for your soul; it gets you better religious books, better commentaries, bringing out God's mind in His word better. There is no harm in saying that these things are good, and you value them. The man is a fanatic or a hypocrite who says he does not value them. They are not God's best gifts, but they are God's good gifts. And we receive them thankfully. We ask His blessing on them. We pray they may be sanctified to our soul's good.

It is pleasant to know that these plain truths, which have never failed of even more than due recognition outside the Church, are now being frankly recognised within it. All truth is God's truth: the truths of political economy just as really as those of revealed religion. There is not one kind of truth which a Christian is to receive heartily and willingly, and as from God; and another kind of truth which he is obliged indeed to receive, but grudgingly, unwillingly, and as though not coming from God. Now, though the truth which saves and feeds the soul is the best, all truth coming from God is good. I see, joyfully, that in churches where the blessed Gospel of Christ is preached most faithfully and spiritually, with the deepest discernment of its eternal verities and its unearthly power, there is frank recognition

health and strength and regular employment, against times of sickness and times when work may fail. Would any one but a fool fling in the face of that congregation and its clergyman this text, which says that “the love of money is the root of all evil"? Ay, brethren, not that kind of it! I know, and some of you know, what an assurance we have of steadiness, and industry, and sobriety, and all decent respectability, when the working man begins to lay by a little, and to feel the sedate pleasure which God has attached to watching the growth of his little store. Whenever I know that a fisherman, or a young journeyman, or a maidservant, has a little money in the bank, I feel safe with them. By God's grace, they are in the way to lead honest and sober lives, and to gain general esteem. I have not the smallest fear of their turning miserly. I know how that little hoard has been drawn upon, to help a sick parent or sister: I have known deeds of a grand liberality beside which the gift of the Baird half-million was very small. Just as I wrote that last sentence there was laid on my table the report of the St. Andrews Savings Bank. I thank God when I read there that eleven hundred and fifteen separate persons in this little city have each their deposit. It is a good account of my parish; not the best account, but a good account. A man or woman may be better than prudent and saving: but that is a capital beginning of God's fear and service; and I do not look for anything very good where these are not. Two hundred and ten domestic servants; two hundred and seventy-one lads and girls under age; a hundred and twenty farm servants; eighty-three artisans; sixty-six widows and single women: Thank God! Who is clean and sober and punctual at work; whose tidy house is a pleasure to go into; whose careful wife tells me with a bright face what a good husband she has; whose children are rosy and well fed and well clad and never absent from schoolwho, but the working-man who has got money in the bank?

Now, all this that I have said you all know

to be true. In business matters, in this did such a thing for his disgraceful peerage, for world's affairs generally, sensible folk go his base bishopric, for his foul pension; not upon these principles. But have not some meaning that peerage or bishopric or penof you, if the truth were spoken out, an un- sion was disgraceful in itself, but that it comfortable feeling in your minds, that became disgraceful when used as a bribe, or though all this be common sense it is not the as the price of disgraceful doings. One teaching of the New Testament as to money morning Lord Macaulay had a visit from a and the desire of it? I feel quite sure that great publisher, who gave him a cheque for some of you are uneasily recalling a phrase twenty thousand pounds in part payment for which occurs in the New Testament no two volumes of his great History: I have held fewer than five times-four times in St. Paul, the cheque in my hand. That money was once in St. Peter-a harsh-sounding phrase, not filthy lucre; it was the honestly earned which some think casts a shadow upon all wages of honourable work. The great wealth-the phrase filthy lucre: and perhaps man did well to be proud of it. It was as some of you have some vague idea that that creditable as it was substantial. But if he word, and the passages in which it stands, had got the same sum for betraying his convey that money is, if not a bad thing out-country to a foreign foe, or for doing any and-out, at least a low and unworthy thing for dishonest thing, then it would have been a high-toned Christian to care for or work for. filthy lucre. It depends entirely on what it My friends, there is not a thing I am more is given for, whether money shall be filthy anxious for than that you should all under- lucre or honourable wages. And filthy lucre, stand that Christianity is the strongest common in God's word, never means the mere gain, sense as well as the sublimest and most the mere money. It always means the money heroic spiritual morality. There is not time discreditably got, for disgraceful services. now to take up these five passages one by The payment of a vile man for doing a vile one and show you what they mean; but let thing is filthy lucre. The mercenary doing, me tell you that I have carefully examined for the mere pay, of what ought to be done them all in the original language; and I from a higher motive, makes the pay filthy speak in the hearing of scholars who know lucre. That is the meaning of the phrase. that I am right when I ask you to remember And I trust I have made it plain. this: that filthy lucre, in the Bible, never means money. In common parlance, we know, it is often used to mean that. But in the Bible it always means money put out of its right place; specially, money used as a bribe. Take one typical passage in the Epistle to Titus (i. 11), where certain vain and dishonest talkers are described as "subverting whole houses; teaching things which they ought not, for filthy lucre's sake"-literally, "for base gain's sake." That is, these bad men did a dishonest thing for a disgraceful bribe. The thing they got, money, house, land, worldly position, no matter what, was disgraceful because it was a bribe. It might be a thing quite good and right in itself, but it becomes disgraceful, or as St. Paul says, filthy, when thus given, thus received, as the discreditable pay of discreditable services. Why, a peerage, a bishopric, a professorship-all in themselves honourable and good things-have been used in vile political or social jobbery, as bribes for discreditable doings; for doing some wicked king's dirty work, or some unscrupulous prime minister's. History swarms with such cases, under the rule of Tudor, and Stuart, and Guelph ; of Wolsey, and Walpole, and others who need not be named: and in such instances we might say, such a man

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Now to conclude. The desire to get and to have, the instinct of acquisition, is in human nature. It cannot be got rid of, and it ought not. may lead us wrong: it may lead us right. It may be admitted in due measure: it may be allowed to grow to sinful extreme. It may gratify itself by just means; or by unjust. It may be the root of all evil: it may be the root of very much good.

Try then, by honest means, to get on in life; but remember that the best of all getting is to grow in grace-to grow kinder, purer, and better. Try for worldly wealth, there is no harm in that; but God give us all the true riches-a soul pardoned and sanctified. We trust, humbly trust, that God will not try our weak faith too far; and yet, in sober earnest, true as the hardest truth in politic science, that poor man is richest of race, who is "rich towards God;" and it would be well worth while, on the calmest calculation, like St. Paul, "to suffer the loss of all things," that we might "win Christ."

Yet may the kind Saviour, who knows what poor weak creatures we are, be pleased to grant us, along with His eternal rest in the better world, a life of modest comfort and cheerfulness in this world, meanwhile.

HOMEWARD.

"There remaineth a rest."

I.

THE day dies slowly in the western sky;

The sunset splendour fades, and wan and cold

The far peaks wait the sunrise; cheerily

The goat-herd calls his wanderers to the fold. My weary soul, that fain would cease to roam, Take comfort; evening bringeth all things home.

II.

Homeward the swift-winged seagull takes her flight;
The ebbing tide breaks softer on the sand;
The red-sailed boats draw shore-ward for the night,
The shadows deepen over sea and land.
Be still, my soul, thine hour shall also come;
Behold, one evening, God shall lead thee home.

H. M.

G

SUNDAY EVENINGS WITH THE CHILDREN.*

FIRST EVENING.

Opening Hymn: "There's a Friend for Little Children." Lesson: Daniel vi. 1-23. Concluding hymn: "All Praise to Thee, my God, this Night."

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YOUR

YOUR adversary, the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour." These are words taken from a letter which Peter, one of Christ's very first followers, wrote to the early Christian Church. You have all seen a picture of a lion; perhaps you have seen, too, a living lion in the cage of a menagerie or at the Zoological Gardens. The lion is powerful and fierce. Nobody would like to be shut up in the cage with such a savage creature.

In Babylon, a long while ago, they kept lions in a den; perhaps a place like the pit at the London Zoological Gardens, where the bears are that climb up the pole, when, by means of a stick, you hold a bun, at the top of it. And they used in Babylon to put people into this den for the lions to eat up. People who had vexed the king they put to death in that way. But you have just heard how, when they put good Daniel into it, the lions would not eat him; indeed they would not touch him. God shut their mouths and saved poor Daniel, and he was taken out again not a bit harmed, and the king and all the people were amazed and knew that Daniel must be one of God's friends.

But if we want to see what the lion is, we must not look at him in a cage in London nor in a den at Babylon. We must see him in the wilds of Asia and in Africa. Asia and Africa are the lands of the lion. It is there that "he walketh about seeking whom he may devour," and if men were not brave enough to drive him away or to kill him, he would devour all the sheep and cows, and perhaps the people too. And Peter says there is an enemy of man which is like the lion. I will tell you a story about an African lion, and the way in which it sought to kill a man, and we shall see what was in Peter's mind when he said this.

There was a village in Africa surrounded by beautiful long, waving grass and tall, feathery reeds. About half a mile from

this village, in among the long grass and tall reeds, there was a spring. The spring ran its little stream into a small pool which was always full of water, and from this pool the people of the village had to fetch their water. Now all round the pool the beautiful, long, wavy grass and the tall, feathery reeds grew more tall and beautiful than anywhere else about the village. In the daytime, the villagers, men and women and little children, took their strange looking vessels to this beautiful pool to fill them, and at night wild deer and antelopes, old and young, came down to it to drink and to cool themselves after the scorching hot African day.

Now it happened one day that one of the men of the village put off fetching his water till rather late in the evening. It was about sunset when he set out, and it would therefore soon be dark; for in Africa the darkness comes all at once. There is not much of what we call "twilight." The sun goes down, then suddenly it is night.

When this man had reached the pool, he thought he heard in the long reeds and grass quite near him a slight rustling sound. What could it be? It was not wind; for there was no wind. He thought it was made by a deer, or perhaps an antelope, perhaps only by a bird; so he went on, down to the water-edge, and began to fill his bottle or jug. Then, hearing a low growl, he quickly turned to look at the place it came from and saw the fierce eyes of a lion flashing through the reeds. In the next instant, with a dreadful roar, the lion sprang into the air and was leaping on to the man. The man was terrorstruck and fell to the ground. Nothing could have been more fortunate for him; for, through his fall, the lion shot right over him and plunged into the pool, where it floundered for awhile before it could get to land again. Inspired by a sudden hope, the man sprang to his feet, thinking nothing of his water-jug, you may be sure, and made for-he thought not where as fast as his feet could carry him. Fortunately, he ran in the direction of the nearest tree. He saw it, and with nimble hands and feet climbed, almost leaped up, into

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It may be desirable to give a brief explanation of the reason and aim of this new feature of the magazine. Looking back through many years, few things seem to the Editor to have so told on his spiritual life as his mother's Sunday evening simple, natural, and loving talks about God, and Christ, and heaven. Whilst he was still very young the dear voice was hushed in death. What were the words that won his boyish interest he cannot tell; not one of them does his memory retain. Even the features of the kind face are all too dim. But one thing is clear and certain: that mother taught him GoD. The only friend his mother had of whom he has any clear and fond recollection is God. In the hope that he may somewhat help to make in many homes the Children's Sunday Evenings as holy and blessed as, long ago, they were made in his, he sets apart for the coming year this portion of his magazine.

A little service is arranged for each evening. The hymns (which may be either sung, or, if that is not possible, recited together line by line) are selected from hymns common to all the principal children's hymn-books in use in the various Evangelical churches in the country. Let the spirit of the whole service be unconventional and free, and encourage questions.

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