he matter over, and said: "There
must be gold there, or certainly this mighty man would not warn us against
going." They went, expecting to find a pile of gold; they rolled away the
stone from the door of the cave, when a tiger sprang out upon them and
devoured them.

Many a man in the search of gold has been craunched in the jaws of
destruction. Going out far away from the God whom they originally
worshiped, they are seeking in the tent of Rachel, Laban's lost images.

There are a great many Christians in this day renewing the idolatry of
human opinion. There was a time when they woke up to the folly of listening
to what men said to them. They soliloquized in this way: "I have a God to
worship, and I am responsible only to Him. I must go straight on and do my
whole duty, whether the world likes it or don't like it;" and they turned a
deaf ear to the fascinations of public applause. After a while they did
something very popular. They had the popular ear and the popular heart. Men
approved them, and poured gentle words of flattery into their ear, and
before they realized it they went into the search of that which they had
given up, and were, with Laban, hunting in Rachel's tent for the lost
images.

Between eleven and twelve o'clock one June night, Gibbon, the great
historian, finished his history. Seated in a summer garden, he says that as
he wrote the last line of that wonderful work he felt great satisfaction.
He closed the manuscript, walked out into the moonlight in the garden, and
then, he said, he felt an indescribable melancholy come upon his soul at
the thought that so soon he must leave all the fame that he would acquire
by that manuscript.

The applause of this world is a very mean god to worship. It is a Dagon
that falls upon its worshipers and crushes them to death. Alas for those
who, fascinated by human applause, give up the service of the Lord God and
go with Laban to hunt in Rachel's tent for the lost images!

There are many Christians being sacrificed to appetite. There was a time
when they said: "I will not surrender to evil appetites." For a while they
seemed to break away from all the allurements by which they were
surrounded, but sometimes they felt that they were living upon a severe
regimen. They said: "After all, I will go back to my old bondage;" and they
fell away from the house of God, and fell away from respectability, and
fell away for ever.

One of the kings in olden times, the legend