our duty and allegiance to God? If we cannot serve our worldly interests as well as our spiritual, must we not altogether go out of the world, as it were, since our living in the world has such a tendency to expel the Divine Master from our minds, and to bar up the gates of the other world against us?

Now, in reply to this objection, lies the whole strength of our discourse; for we propose to prove by it the reconciliation of the passage-" Ye "cannot serve God and mammon," with the apparent discrepancy in the words of our text"Make to yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness, that, when ye fail, they may "receive you into everlasting habitations."

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It is a law instituted by Divine appointment, that a large portion of time (we may go so far as to say the larger portion of man's time) should be occupied by either bodily or mental employments, which differ in their materials and subject-matter from those which relate more directly to the ordinances of religious worship. For instance, the first man, Adam, when he came forth pure and fresh from the mould of Almighty workmanship, was placed in the Garden of Eden "to dress it and to keep it." The garden was, practically speaking, the world to Adam; and, whilst yet untainted by sin, the tree of temptation was placed within his reach. For he was destined from the first to be a probationary creature, and the tree was the appointed instrument of trial,

to prove his fidelity as a servant and steward of the Most High; and when he became faithless to his trust, and was put out of that stewardship, a life of constant employment was still attached to him, with the penal accompaniments, however, of pain, exhaustion, and sorrow. "In the sweat of thy brow "shalt thou eat bread," is a sentence fulfilled in the spirit, if not in the letter, by the fatigues of the sovereign upon the throne, and the weary tossings of the idle man of fortune, just as strictly as by the labourer at his plough, or the weaver at his shuttle.

If a life of labour, therefore, and employment in worldly business, be an appointed ordinance of God, it is evident that such pursuits cannot be, in their own nature, opposed to his will or government. God never fashioned the world as an idol for man, but man is constantly moulding it into an idol for himself. God has designed the world, with all the countless wheels of its moral and physical machinery, all the governments of which it is composed, all the classes and subdivisions which rank under those governments, together with the separate pursuit of each individual, who forms a unit of one class or the other-God has designed each individually, and the whole collectively, to be so many millions of instruments subservient to one grand end the glory of Christ's kingdom. He has appointed that all his creatures shall serve him by special and direct communication, at least one day in every seven. That is a positive injunction; but

he has also made a provision, that all his creatures should serve him equally during the intervening six days, through the medium and instrumentality of their respective avocations. God would never have ordained a six days' labour, if its nature would necessarily extinguish the religion of the seventh. This fact has been well laid down by some of our ablest preachers :-they argue that the great mistake which men make who find worldly business to be an impediment to religion, lies in this persons view their secular engagements as a matter totally distinct and separate from the business of religion; whereas it is, in fact, a grand and inseparable portion of their service to God. They act as if on the Sunday they were to serve God, but on the week-days the world; whereas, the secular transactions of the week-day ought to be the working out of the principles imbibed on the Sabbath. And it is now our aim to convince you how the faithful steward, in his dealings with mammon, may be serving the Lord of heaven how the minister of state, for example, may be planning the religious and political welfare of a great nation, and so, in the office of an exalted servant in the employment of a royal master, be at the same time doing homage to "the King of kings," and, with an eye of foresight piercing beyond the present, be providing more than a Palace for himself, and everlasting habitations for the people. We wish to prove to you, and we pray God to convince

you, that the plea of business can never be a valid excuse for dearth in religion. How many thousands, immersed in their varied and multiform callings, utter a lament, that they cannot find more time for "the "one thing needful." But those who are sincere we are anxious to console; and those who are notto lay open and convict: and we hope to do both, by shewing how all classes, without exception, may be advancing to heaven through the avocations of the week-day. How the soldier, or the physician, though beset by the sorest temptations, may be working their way to heaven, just as much as one of God's ministers-how those, who are sitting down studiously at their desk, can at the same time be laying up a treasure in heaven-how the trader, though engaged in selling for six days, can be buying food for eternity-yes, and the toiling mechanic, or labourer in the field, be sowing spiritual things, through the process of their daily struggle to reap temporal things for subsistence.

But let us not be misunderstood. The first principle to be grounded is this:-That God alone must be the sovereign reigning in the heart. And the second is, that a world beyond the barriers and confines of mammon, must be the grand end of action and the goal of our labours. The "everlasting habitations" must be kept in the foreground as the chief end of our temporary stewardship. The world, "the mammon of "unrighteousness" is placed before us-it is the

garden alloted to us to cultivate, but at the same time it is the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, to try our integrity, and put to the test our faithfulness in God's service. And if we really and truly keep heaven in our eye, and take God as our master, with these two principles engraven in our heart, we shall no longer serve the world, but rather make the world serve us. We shall no longer set it up as an idol, but rather mould it into an instrument to minister to our spiritual interest. Instead of treating it as a master, we shall look upon it as a servant; and if we can convert it into an agent of usefulness, with the view of working out the principles of the Gospel, making our light shine before men, and so advancing Christ's kingdom on earth, oh! it need be no longer an enemy, but rather a friend—a coadjutor, instead of a stumbling block. For though it can never be the cause of procuring us heaven (Christ is the sole benefactor there), it nevertheless, offers us a platform to work upon, and a thousand instruments by which, God being our helper, we may be weaving the marriage garment, and fitting the soul for the "everlasting 66 habitations."

The Christian who is daily engaged in multifarious pursuits, if he enter into God's service heartily on the Sabbath-day, and make it really and truly what it ought to be-a day for gathering in Gospel principles and Gospel precepts-a sacred