minds from their youth have been, and now are taken up all the day long with worldly business, and worldly cares; and hath neither spare time, nor energy for meditation, contemplation, or prayer. And this is not the case with the labouring and trading people, but with the ministers of religion, and the instructors of every name. They who ought to make debates with the spirit of the times, have given in to it, and hewn out for themselves a system of working, a mechanical occupation, a machinery of societies, management of periodical works, newspapers, and benevolent institutions, which as effectually engross them, as the exchange, and the counting-house, and the workshop engross the others;-insomuch that "the working clergy" hath become a name for distinguishing those busy labourers in schools, societies, and other parochial institutions, from the rest, and giving them that mead of approbation which a mechanical and moneyed generation counteth the highest and the best.

How much the love of money and the desire to be rich prevaileth in these times of ours, above any other age of the world, is to be seen in every thing around us. What is reformation in the state? To save money. And what in the church? To share the money equally. And what among the people? To administer pauperism aright? What is the object of every man in setting out in life? To make a fortune, and retire when he is rich and increased in goods. What the combinations of the people? To raise the wages. In one word, look in every direction, and you will find that money is the polar-star around which every star revolveth. But what is the religious world, save a great institution for raising and expending money; a new method of raising the ways and means? What else is looked at in order to find admission to these societies but an annual donation; to be directors, but a large donation? What is the eloquence of the church bent to do? To raise collections by charitable sermons. For this bishops come forth from their retirements; and for this famous doctors go forth on peregrinations and missions among the churches. No one can deny that the Bible, Missionary, Tract, and School Societies are constituted, not upon any selection of men made according to principle

or practice, but according to his subscription of money. Such a thing I believe was never before heard of in the church, that, for the membership and management of her chief works, no qualification should be regarded, save the amount of money subscriptions. In all time past this was least in esteem, yea, jealously looked at as a source of continual temptations; but in this last and worst age it is made indispensable to a voice in the administration of those great works which are counted upon as the pride and glory of the times we live in. This is indeed a very remarkable feature in ecclesiastical history, a singularity of which there is no example; and, therefore, we need not wonder that it should be so prominently brought forward as a characteristic in the sevenfold view of the church's temptations. If I could estimate how much of the thought, zeal, and labour of the religious public, as they call it, goes to the matter of subscriptions and donations, of collections and disbursements, of religious societies, I would be able to justify in a remarkable degree the application of this epistle to these times. Perhaps, since the Reformation, the church, at least in this land, hath never been united in one feeling, till this feeling of raising money to propagate the Gospel, which is without money and without price, arose amongst us. It hath beaten down the distinctions of orthodoxy and heterodoxy; it hath united Calvinism and Arminianism, Churchman and Dissenter, the worshipper of Christ and the denier of his name. Like a spirit it spreads abroad, and subdues unto itself all sorts of persons.

While I lay out these truths I am far from objecting to the appropriation of the mammon of unrighteousness to such benevolent and religious purposes, believing that it can hardly be so well bestowed. To feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, and to bless the needy, is to use our bounty, as our heavenly Father doth use his; who maketh his sun to arise upon the evil and the good, and his rain to descend upon the just and the unjust. And if the Gospel of salvation, through the sending of his dear Son, be clearly the greatest and the best of his infinite gifts to this needy world; so, likewise, most surely must it be our best gift to an ignorant and unbelieving man to make known unto him that Gospel of his salvation,

without which no possessions of this life will bless him, and no true hopes of the life to come will ever visit him. Surely the Lord Jesus did speak a wise word, and recommend a bountiful course to the rich man, when he commanded him to sell all his possessions, and to follow him in the preaching of the Gospel; and what he saith to one, he saith to all. A very noble and excellent sight it were to see the exchange sending forth its missionaries, and the camp its soldiers of the Lord Jesus Christ; and whosoever feeleth within his soul, the voice of Christ by the Spirit, saying, "Sell all that thou hast, and go and preach the Gospel," would do well to obey that most honourable commission; while those who are called to abide in their places, and their homes, can do nothing better with the superfluity of goods which God sendeth them, than to furnish forth the brother, who, though rich, hath become poor, that the heathen through his poverty may become rich. This, indeed, is one of the great uses which ministers of the Gospel are of to men; to teach them by their example, the proper place which the unrighteous mammon ought to have in their eyes, and likewise the right use to which it should be applied. It was intended of God that no man should take upon him the office of a missionary, or a preacher of the Gospel, until he should, in spirit at least, have laid aside and deprived himself of temporal possessions, and come into the estate of poverty into which Christ the great Apostle of our profession brought himself, in order to fulfil his Divine commission. An order of men in the world, who should thus set worldly things at nought for the honour of preaching the Gospel, is most needful for teaching men the great lesson, that they cannot serve both God and mammon; and if they would obtain the kingdom of heaven, and its righteousness, that they must seek it first, and leave all other things to be added by their heavenly Father. And what is the duty of the church to those faithful men, who, in order to become their servants, or ministers, do forsake all dignities, preferments, and enjoyments, of this present life? Their duty is to feed the mouth that feedeth them with heavenly food, to lodge and further the man who forsook home and kindred for love of their souls; and -so hath it ever been, where the Spirit of Christ reigned in the church. They have ever abounded unto the ministers

of the Gospel, yea, and superabounded; they have enriched the church, they have replenished it with wealth, until its splendid preferments have become too much for the self-denial of its ministers. And all this influx of gifts upon the office-bearers of the church, proceeding without any covetousness on their part, is a fruit of that lesson which their self-denial hath taught unto the people of God, that the best use of riches is, to make friends of those who are able to receive us into everlasting habitations; while, at the same time, this free-will-offering unto God, this gift unto the poor of his house, hath been a continual odour of thankfulness unto God, for which he doth greatly increase the store from which it hath proceeded. We are far, therefore, from objecting to such contributions as are made for sending missionaries and Bibles into dark and heathen lands; but do regard it as one of the best channels into which to direct our charities : it is the eternal ordinance of God, that the person who devotes himself to the preaching of the Gospel, should, by the believers of the Gospel, be sustained with whatever is needful for the present life; and when thus bestowed our gifts reproduce to us an hundred fold, whereof a splendid proof is given in this land, whose church is the most liberally endowed, both with houses and lands, and with the tenth of all the produce of the earth: and yet behold it is the richest of all lands, and the most charitable also. And so long as the ministry sought not their own, or their families' aggrandizement, but received the church's bounty as from the Lord, and to the Lord's work devoted it, so long as the people gave, without a grudge, their appointed portion unto the house of God, there was no cry of want in our streets, no oppression of landlords over tenants, or of tenants over labourers. The Lord's ordinance was honestly and heartily observed, and the Lord's blessing followed thereon: so, in like manner, with respect to the rich and the poor, two orders which the Lord hath appointed to continue in the world, saying, "The poor have ye always." These two orders have for their heads, the Father and the Son; the rich are entrusted with the Father's plentiful creation, and are required to imitate their Father in dispensing it graciously and freely, without grudging, and without upbraiding. The poor have Christ

for their Head, who is always entitled the Poor One; and as Christ was contented, yea chose to become poor, that he might shew his confidence in his Father's wealth, and his Father's bountiful heart, so we who are poor should walk in his humble footsteps, and exercise his admirable faith in God, who sendeth by the hands of his rich almoners, that which we need. And thus it is, that not equality, nor levelness of rank and riches, but inequality, and mutual dependence, is the ordinance of Divine providence, confirming the doctrine of the church concerning the relations of the Father and the Son.

Entertaining these views of the use of riches and poverty, and from our youth having ever acted upon them, it will not be thought that what we have said concerning the evil spirit pervading the religious world proceeds from any niggardly or churlish spirit. In all errors into which the church hath been betrayed, there is a truth of which the error is the distortion. Pure and unmixed evil can never be the temptation of man in his present state, which is conscious of good and evil both. It is a good ordinance, which in these times hath been perverted to an evil use. The missionary abroad, and the minister of religion at home, are not suffered by us to come into voluntary privation, to follow the great Teacher's example, and become poor, that they may live by faith; but, on the other hand, all teachers of the Gospel are provided for, by stipulated contracts, before they undertake their ministry. The spirit of the times is, neither to send a missionary to preach to the heathen, nor to ordain a minister over a flock, without a bond for his maintenance, or some security of one kind or another, and so the ordinance is made void. True it is, that he who ministers at the altar should live by the altar; but no one who calculates upon this before hand, is worthy to minister there. He ought to go in faith, thinking only of the Gospel of Christ which he beareth; and for him to be thinking of a living, is to degrade his high calling, and to deprive the world of that example of selfdevotedness, which they so much need.

Now, into this estate of the Laodicean angel, the Christian ministry at home and the missionaries to foreign parts are brought. It is maintained as a principle, and argued as a thing both equitable and just, that they also