great possessions
proved a magnet stronger than the call of Christ. It was Emerson, I
think, who said that the worst thing about money is that it so often
costs so much. To take heed that we do not pay too dearly for it, is the
warning which comes to us from every page of the life of Jesus. Are
there none of us who need the warning? "Ye cannot serve God and mammon;"
we know it, and that we may the better serve mammon, we are sacrificing
God and conscience on mammon's unholy altars. And to-day, perhaps, we
are content that it should be so. But will our satisfaction last? Shall
we be as pleased with the bargain to-morrow and the day after as we
think we are to-day? And when our last day comes--what? "Forefancy your
deathbed," said Samuel Rutherford; and though the counsel ill fits the
mood of men in their youth and strength, it is surely well sometimes to
look forward and ask how life will bear hereafter the long look back.
"This night is thy soul required of thee; and the things which thou hast
prepared whose shall they be?"--not his, and he had nothing else. He had
laid up treasure for himself, but it was all of this world's coinage; of
the currency of the land whither he went he had none. In one of Lowell's
most striking poems he pictures the sad retrospect of one who, through
fourscore years, had wasted on ignoble ends God's gift of life; his
hands had

"plucked the world's coarse gains
As erst they plucked the flowers of May;"

but what now, in life's last hours, are gains like these?

"God bends from out the deep and says,
'I gave thee the great gift of life;
Wast thou not called in many ways?
Are not My earth and heaven at strife?
I gave thee of My seed to sow,
Bringest thou Me My hundred-fold?'
Can I look up with face aglow,
And answer, 'Father, here is gold'?"

And the end of the poem is a wail:

"I hear the reapers singing go
Into God's harvest; I, that might
With them have chosen, here below
Grope shuddering at the gates of night."

Wherefore let us set not our minds on the things that are upon earth;
let us covet earnestly the best gifts; let us seek first the kingdom of
God; and all other things in due season and in due measure shall be
added unto us.[52]

* * * * *

CONCERNING THE SECOND ADVENT

"Lo as some venturer, from his stars receiving
Promise and presage of sublime