as if there were no other to die for. He imparts Himself to thee as individually as if He were not the sustenance of Angels, the Life of all which lives. What craves that Almighty Heart of love but that thou shouldest return Him love for love, that thou shouldest, in all eternity, have larger outpourings of His love? This, then, is the measure of the value of time, eternity of infinite love, proportioned to the love thou bestowest here upon thy God. Empassioned love here does everything as would please the object of its love. Thou wakest, morning by morning, with the love of God overstreaming thee. Give thyself for the day, thy thoughts, thy words, thy acts to His love; to speak words or to leave them unspoken, to do acts or to leave them undone, as thou thinkest in thy truest heart, that thy God, Who loves Thee, in His love for thee, wills for thee. Thou lovest thyself only with a finite love; God loves thee with infinite love. We love ourselves with a blind love; God loves thee with an infallible love. Oh! it will give such a deep interest to life's dullest monotony to do those monotonous things to thy best, according to the mind of God; no time will be heavy to thee which shall upbear thy soul to God; no employment will be dull to thee, in which thou mayest approve thyself to God (nay, the duller, the more interesting, because in it there is less of self, and so, more safety that it is done to God). It will be a joy to thee to repress the half-spoken unseemly word; for thou wilt have gained the larger capacity of love of God. The men of this world would think it a token of madness if anyone had strewed along his path the glorious lustre of precious stones such as are pictured in the heavenly Jerusalem,-diamonds, pearls, carbuncles, rubies, amethysts,—and he, neglecting these, were

to treasure up shreds of hay and straw? But now they are not precious stones of any passing lustre, to which, if so thou dost, thou preferrest the dry hay and stubble of this parched, perishing life. They are priceless pearls of purest beauty which thou mayest gather, not to form any crested coronet, but whereby thou shalt thyself shine with the Divine Glory, the beatific Presence of the love of thy God. Remember Him now; remember Him in these His redeemed, now restored to His love, and He Who will not remember thy sins will remember thy love, and will repay thee with Himself, thine own beatitude for ever, thine own God, to be thine own for ever.

b For a penitentiary.

SERMON VII.

Personal Responsibility of Man, as to his
Use of Money.

1408

ST. LUKE xix. 15.

"He commanded these servants to be called unto him, that He might know how much every man had gained by trading."

FOR the subject of this evening's thought and this evening's warning, my brethren, I have taken these words from our Lord's parable of the Pounds, not as though the gift entrusted to the servants in the parable in any way necessarily implies the gift of money, any. more than it does so in the cognate parable of the Talents. In both parables, as we all know well, the talent or the pound stands for any of the unnumbered trusts which the bounty of an all-wise Father has committed to our hand. For all alike are we responsible, in that all alike are His. But, although the pound or the talent represents not exclusively the gift of wealth, it certainly does include it; and there is that in the use and abuse of money amongst ourselves which makes the words specially fitting to-night. For there are two leading thoughts running through this parable,—the thought of our stewardship in time for that which will bear fruit in eternity; and the thought of the account which the return of the great King will bring with it. "Occupy till I come," is the condition attached to every external gift of God: "That He might know what

every man had gained by trading," sets forth the responsibility under which we are taught to carry on that occupation, and to discharge that trust.

Of course it would be easy to carry out this principle into every department of the various callings in life; but to-day's subject limits us to one of the entrusted gifts. I suppose that there never was a time when men needed more the cautions and warnings which tell of the snares of riches, or the promises attached to their lawful ministration; never a time when the burning words of Isaiah, or St. James, or our blessed Lord Himself, needed more to be spoken in ears dull to listen, and to hearts already callous through the hardening power of money misapplied.

I. For if there be one characteristic of our own day, which distinguishes it from any which have gone before, it is the rapid increase of material wealth. For the first time in the history of the world the laws which govern the accumulation of wealth have been in our day a recognised science. To speak of such an increase as though it were a great evil, would be as weak and foolish as to complain of the advance of scientific discovery and the unfolding of nature's secrets. For in the first place, nothing is more unwise, or less likely to lead to good results, than to be ever complaining of the days in which we live; and next, the gifts of the natural world, including that of wealth, come of the same hand as the gifts of the kingdom of grace. Still, the fact itself is noteworthy, and we have not surely been left without warning as to the dangers and temptations incident to such an age, or as to the responsibilities which follow upon such gifts. Many of these a thinking man may gather for himself; upon some of them the Word of God itself has spoken.