grosser forms of idolatry; and yet wealth may as effectually dethrone the supreme God, usurp the ascendency over us, and constitute for us the great good of life, as though we considered the exchange a temple of worship, our ledgers sacred books written in cabalistic letters, and the various investments of money the household gods to which the homage of profound trust and daily devotion was due. Our attention, our delight, our confidence, may all be transferred from the Creator, blessed forever, to the creature. Satisfied with the stream we may forget the fountain; engrossed with the augmentation of worldly resources, we may become blind to the primary, originating source of whatever is desirable on earth. Thus, to love the world so as to make it practically our great good, to trust in riches, is to deny the God that is above. Here then we are brought to a solemn pause. We must choose the one or the other; God or the world; heavenly or earthly treasures.

Oh, for that faith which is the evidence of things unseen!-which, passing through the shadowy phantoms of the present and the visible, grasps the eternal substance. That alone which is solid, substantial, abiding, is worthy of the heart of man; fills its ideas and its hopes; realizes its expectations, and exhausts its capacities of enjoyment.

"Now, unto him that is able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy, to the only wise God, our Saviour, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and ever." Amen.

LABOR AND REST.

BY JOS. CROSS, D. D.,

OF THE SOUTH CAROLINA CONFERENCE.

"For David, after he had served his own generation by the will of God, fell on sleep, and was laid unto his fathers, and saw corruption."-Acts xiii, 36.

"God seeth not as man seeth, nor judgeth as man judgeth." Very different, often, from ours, is his estimate, even of the same persons and the same actions. The reason is, that "man judgeth according to the appearance, but God looketh upon the heart." He sees through what is outward and accidental, and discerns clearly what is inward and essential. He disregards mere external forms and aspects, and values all things according to their real and intrinsic qualities. Men judge the motive by the act; God judges the act by the motive.

It is our true wisdom, to unlearn our own method, and learn the method of God. But this is a wisdom which we are little inclined to seck. Naturally, we are averse to it; and if by grace we ever acquire it, it is ordinarily with great difficulty, and by slow degrees. It is no easy task to climb the mountain, whence we may look down upon the world, with all that it contains, and behold it as it is. Death, however, will place us instantly upon the summit; and the panorama of all terrestrial things, in all their relations and influences, will lie around and beneath us. Then the cloud will be lifted from the landscape, the veil will be rent that intercepts our vision, and all false lights will be extinguished, and all distorting media will be removed, and gold will cease to charm, and fame will cease to allure, and the vain pomp and unsubstantial pageantry of earth will lose their bewildering splendors, and we shall see things as God sees them, and estimate them by the same perfect standard. Even now-such is the wise and gracious arrangement of our Heavenly Father-every season of affliction, every disappointment of our hopes, every sickness which brings us near the verge of life, every bereavement which throws over us the shadow of death, forces us to anticipate that judgment and those feelings which the last great change shall fix unalterably and forever.