proud presumption of secure life, and health, and success,— this is evil: it dishonours God, it saps everything of spirituality that there may be in us, and it exerts a baneful influence around.

Now, brethren, what James wrote to the merchants among the Jewish Christians of his day, is nowise less applicable in our time. The forms of human life vary; the texture takes different shapes and hues in different ages and countries; but the spirit is substantially the same, the hazards for the soul the same, the refuge for the soul the same. In an age like ours, when natural science is every day so greatly increasing the means of money-making, when trade has so many ramifications, and, connected with it, so much that is exciting, there is very great peril of a man's losing the thought of God, and, amid the whirr of commercial machinery, failing to hear the 'still small voice' which reminds us that 'life, and breath, and all things' are at His disposal. For our time, therefore, the apostle's words have, if possible, even greater force than they had for his own. And the teaching is not for merchants only. All kinds of anticipations of the future in which worldly desires of any sort come into play, involve the same danger. 'The mother of Sisera looked out at a window, and cried through the lattice, Why is his chariot so long in coming? why tarry the wheels of his chariots? Her wise ladies answered her, yea, she returned answer to herself, Have they not sped? have they not divided the prey? to Sisera a prey of divers colours, a prey of divers colours of needlework, of divers colours of needlework on both sides, meet for the necks of them that take the spoil?' Nothing but worldly hope, worldly confidence-no thought of God or His providence; but meanwhile the enemy of the Lord has perished.

'All such rejoicing'-all arrogant forecasting in any sphere and on any subject-'is evil.' But to the energetic prosecution of all the activities of life, to sagacious forecast and vigorous exertion founded thereon, all maintained in a spirit of reverential remembrance of God, the words of James are in no measure hostile. The Bible is eminently stimulative to industry. Its

principle is, that if any man will not work, neither should he eat;' and every intelligent and faithful holder of Bible truth is diligent in his business.' Now in many departments this cannot be done without looking forward, perhaps far forward— without deciding to 'go to such a city, and continue there' a week, or a month, or a year, and buy and sell ;' and on all such resolutions of honest, God-fearing men, formed and carried out in the humble spirit of those who always say in their hearts, if not with their lips, 'If the Lord will,' He does not frown. The thought of divine providence, of his heavenly Father's watchful care, cheers the Christian in all his work; and the remembrance that our life is but 'a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away'-the taking in of death into his calculations-does not unnerve, but stimulates. 'Whatsoever his hand findeth to do, he does it with his might;' bearing in mind that 'there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither he goeth.'

But, brethren, is not the fact on which the apostle's appeal is founded a very strange one,-—that the great truths of our ignorance of the future, and of the brevity and uncertainty of life, exert so little influence on the views and conduct of vast . multitudes? For reasons of infinite wisdom, having reference both to our good and to His own glory-some of which we can perceive even now—God has hidden our earthly future from us. Prophecy sheds light on the great principles and outlines of God's administration,-but in regard to the future history even of the church we know almost nothing in detail; and regarding our own personal earthly future, absolutely nothing. We may conjecture, but we have no knowledge; and few things are more calculated to bring with liveliness before us the contrast between our littleness and God's greatness, than the consideration that 'we know not what a day may bring forth.' We speculate, and reason, and guess; we grapple with the future, tearing at the veil, sometimes, as if we defied omnipotence to keep it there; and yet we know nothing, whilst He knoweth the end from the beginning.' Eternity is to Him one great present, which in all its length and breadth, with all its events

and all their relations to each other, He surveys at a glance, without movement or effort.

We are ignorant of what will befall us even if we continue to live,—and we may die. Ere another day dawn, 'the silver cord may be loosed, and the golden bowl broken, and the pitcher broken at the fountain, and the wheel broken at the cistern.' We know this,—that we certainly shall die one day, and that that may be to-day. No man or woman in the world doubts it; nothing is a more utter commonplace than that our life is ‘as a shadow,' ‘as a flower of the grass,' 'as a vapour;' and yet what vast numbers act as if they were to live for ever, as if . all men were mortal except themselves! The very familiarity of the truth, the fact that we know it so well and hold it so certain, deadens it to us. As Coleridge finely says, 'Truths of all others the most awful and interesting, are too often considered as so true that they lose all the power of truth, and lie bedridden in the dormitory of the soul, side by side with the most despised and exploded errors.'1

The words of the seventeenth verse, looked at by themselves, exhibit a general principle regarding sin,—that knowledge and responsibility go together. If, in reference to any point of morals, neither conscience, however candidly interrogated, nor revelation, however honestly and carefully studied, yielded any light, sin could not have place at all; and the clearer the light on God's law, the deeper is the sinfulness of those who break it, whether by committing what God forbids or neglecting what He enjoins. In their connection, however, which is clearly with the immediately preceding paragraph,—not, as has been supposed by some, with all the previous part of the Epistle,—the words seem intended specially to press home to the consciences of the readers the responsibility resting on them all, from the fact that the truths of which the apostle has been speaking are so familiar to all. 'It is the tritest of all commonplaces,' he says, 'that life is a vapour, and that for its continuance, and everything that rests on its continuance, we depend absolutely on the will of God. 1 Aids to Reflection: Introductory Aphorism i.

Knowing this so well, then, bear in mind your responsibility; repent of your proud and foolish speeches, and of the spirit which gave them utterance; humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and resolve in His strength henceforward to cherish ever a child-like sense of dependence on Him. To him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin.'

XXV.

WOES OF THE WICKED RICH.

'Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you. 2 Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are motheaten. 3 Your gold and silver is cankered; and the rust of them shall be a witness against you, and shall eat your flesh as it were fire. Ye have heaped treasure together for the last days. 4 Behold, the hire of the labourers which have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth: and the cries of them which have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of sabaoth. 5 Ye have lived in pleasure on the earth, and been wanton; ye have nourished your hearts, as in a day of slaughter. 6 Ye have condemned and killed the just; and he doth not resist you.'-JAMES v. 1-6.

`HROUGHOUT the previous chapter the apostle has

TH

been occupied with the subject of worldliness, and the enervating and debasing influence on the character of professing Christians of sympathy in any degree with the longings and efforts of persons who seek their portion on the earth. Dwelling on the fact that the root of worldliness is pride, arrogant self-assertion against God, he has illustrated this by an examination of two of the innumerable forms in which the worldly spirit shows itself-depreciation of others for self-advancement, and confidence in the duration of life and of prosperity. Having closed his remarks on these examples, the apostle at this point, in very natural accordance with that elevated strain of solemn appeal which has pervaded the fourth chapter, turns aside for a moment to address those avowed enemies of Christianity, the wealthy unbelieving Jews, through free intercourse with whom it was that many of the professed followers of Jesus had been led far astray. That by the words Ye rich men,' in the first verse, are intended not wealthy Christians (probably a very small class), but