suddenly vanishes away. The best fruit is not that which ripens
most quickly, and the best Christian certainly does not come to
maturity all in a moment.

There is a fable of the Persians which tells us how a gourd wound
itself round a lofty palm-tree, and in a few weeks climbed to its very
top. The quick-growing gourd asked the palm-tree its age, and the tree
answered, "an hundred years." Then the gourd answered boastingly that
it had grown as tall as the palm in fewer days than the tree could
count years. "True," answered the palm-tree, "every summer has a gourd
climbed round me, as proud as thou art, and as short-lived as thou wilt
be."

These, then, are some of the special dangers of the time--an unfixed,
unsettled faith, leading men to question, and argue, and doubt, when
they should believe; and next, a restless desire for something new and
exciting in religion. And, besides these, there are special dangers
peculiar to ourselves, arising from our position, or temperament. This
is a specially _busy_ age, when men must work if they would eat bread.
Every walk of life is crowded, and the competition in every calling and
business is most keen. Now there is great danger in all this to a
man's spiritual life, if he has not _God with him in his work_. He
will become selfish, unscrupulous, and determined to gain a place, and
make money at any cost. He will think only of himself, and God is not
in all his thoughts. There are some who would have us believe that
religion is one thing and business another, and that the two must be
kept distinctly apart. Never believe that false doctrine, my brothers.
A Christian man may not take part in any work on which the name of God
may not be written. Whatever business he may engage in, a Christian
must always remember that he must be about his Heavenly Father's
business. The great merchants of old times used to begin their ledger
and business books at the new year by writing "_Praise be to God_" on
the top of the first page. I would that all men of business could
honestly do the same now. Consecrate your work to God, so that you
need not be ashamed to pray about it, to study the Bible about it, to
write _Praise be to God_ on all your business transactions. And last
of all, a word as to the means by which Christ will confirm or
strengthen you unto the end. I can tell you nothing new about this, I
would not if I could. The old wine of the Gospel is better than all
the