The man who is of a detracting spirit will misconstrue the most innocent words. Full of wise saws and modern instances; Yet it ought to be true of me that, he Uttered nothing base. If I were to choose the people with whom I would spend my hours of conversation, they should be certainly such as laboured no further than to make themselves readily and clearly apprehended, and would have patience and curiosity to understand me. To have good sense, and ability to express it, are the most essential and necessary qualities in companions. When thoughts rise in us fit to utter among familiar friends, there needs but very little care in clothing them. Conversation teaches more than meditation. Thought too, delivered, is the more possessed: "Let your speech be always with grace."-COLoss. iv. 6. When we are in the company of sensible men we ought to be cautious of talking too much, lest we lose two good things,—their good opinion and our own improvement. Although in public speaking wise men may have Thoughts that breathe and words that burn; yet in private conversation the wisest very often talk like the weakest; for indeed the talking with a friend is nothing else but thinking aloud. With thee conversing I forget all time. The hawthorn bush, with seats beneath the shade, Where more is meant than meets the ear. There is so much correspondence betwixt the heart and tongue that they will move at once. Every man therefore speaks of his own pleasure and care. If the heart were full of God, the tongue could not refrain to talk of Him: the rareness of Christian communication argues the common poverty of grace. Covetousness. OUR Saviour saith (LUKE xii. 15): "Take heed, and beware of covetousness for a man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth." I must attend to this double warning of Him Who knows what is in my heart, Who knows what is my besetting sin, and Who says: "Out of the heart proceedeth covetousness." "Refrain from covetousness and thy estate shall prosper," wrote Plato, who died 347 B.C. "The wealth of covetous persons," says Socrates, the master of Plato, "is like the sun after he has set, delights none." Not one godly man in all the Scripture is to be found whose history is blotted with the charge of covetousness—the professor's sin. sub I must not make the fear of poverty my excuse for covetousness. Against that deadly sin of covetousness my best resource is a glad compliance with God's precept in the bestowal of my stance. Most insidious, most fatal, and most common, is the sin of covetousness. This disease is as almost universal as it is virulent. Wealth is the goddess whom all the world worshippeth. The foulest fact that was ever done in the world was done for money—the betraying of Christ. The covetous person lives as if the world were made altogether for him, and not he for the world; to take in everything and part with nothing. The covetous are cruel. In everything else we are made wiser by age: but this one vice is inseparable from it. We are all inclined to grow fonder of money-making, more close-fisted, more grasping, the older we grow. Of all vices none doth more wax old with us than covetousness. Because men believe not Providence, therefore they do so. greedily scrape and hoard. They do not believe there will be any reward for charity, therefore they will part with nothing. Horace, the friend of Virgil, and who died 8 B.C., well says: "Semper avarus eget, the miser is always in want." He wants for ever who would more acquire. Juvenal the satirist, A.D. 128, says: "The love of money in-. creases as fast as the money itself increases." The prodigal robs his heir, the miser robs himself. covetous man pines in plenty. I must so live that no one may ever say of me: Through daily care To get, and nightly fear to lose his own, He led a wretched life, unto himself unknown. The I must remember that the Scriptures tell me that "Covetousness is idolatry" (COLOSS. iii. 5); and that "no covetous man, who is an idolater, hath any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God" (EPH. v. 5). "Thou shalt not covet," is God's commandment; "the covetous the Lord abhorreth" (Ps. x. 3), wrote David, who wrote as he was moved by the Holy Ghost. Like St. Paul, I must covet no man's silver, or gold, or apparel, or anything that is his." I must in nowise yield to the sin of covetousness, for in so doing I shall err from the faith, and pierce myself through with many sorrows; and I shall justly give my neighbours occasion to say of me, "He coveteth greedily all the day long." This must be my daily prayer unto God: "Incline my heart unto Thy testimonies, and not to covetousness." Thus saith the Lord (ISA. lvii. 17): "For the iniquity of his covetousness was I wroth, and smote him"-Achan with stones, Ahab with an arrow, Gehazi with leprosy. He saith also: "He that hateth covetousness shall prolong his days" (PROV. xxviii. 16). One of the many mottoes of the believing Christian must be this: "Hating covetousness" (Exod. xviii. 21). Death. "By man came death.”—1 Cor. xv. 21. "The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.”—1 COR. xv. 26. 'Tis one of God's blessings that we cannot foreknow the hour of our death; for a time fixed even beyond the possibility of living, would trouble us more than the uncertainty. The foresight of the hour of death would continually interrupt the course of human affairs. Aristotle, who died 322 B. C., said: "Death seems the boundary of all things, with no good or evil beyond it." Vespasian the Roman emperor had a slave who said to him daily as he left his chamber, "Remember thou art a man.' Death levels sceptres and spades together. He spares none. He turns all secular glory into ashes. The glories of our birth and state Are shadows, not substantial things; We shall not die an hour the sooner, but abundantly the Leaves have their time to fall, And flowers to wither at the north-wind's breath, And stars to set;—but all, Thou hast all seasons for thine own, O death! He that always waits upon God is ready whensoever He calls. He is a happy man who so lives, as that death at all times may find him at leisure to die. Is death uncertain? therefore be thou fixed; All expectation of the coming foe. Death is the foreshadowing of life. Believing Christians may die once, but over them the second death shall have no power. The Christian may say, Death shot its sting into the Saviour's side, and there left it, and there lost it. O death, how bitter is the remembrance of thee to a man who liveth at rest in his possessions, unto the man that hath nothing to vex him, and that hath prosperity in all things! In that sleep of death what dreams may come, * The death of those distinguished by their station, To solemn dread, and strikes a saddening awe. Death's shafts lie thick! here falls the village swain, Though we believe that death will completely free the holy soul from its remaining pollutions that it will exchange defective sanctification into perfect purity, entangling temptations into complete freedom, suffering and affliction into health and joy, doubts and fears into perfect security, and oppressive weariness into everlasting rest-yet there is no magic in the wand of death which will convert an unholy soul into a holy one. There is a pause near death, when men grow bold Towards all things else. The dying Christian can say with Christ, "My flesh shall rest in hope"; and can say to Christ, "When I awake in Thy likeness I shall be satisfied with it." Let me live the life, then shall I die the death, of the righteous and shall be able to say with Jesus Christ, my Lord and Saviour, "Father, into Thy hands I commend my spirit." |