corrupt elements will coalesce and explode and cast down all that is excellent with all that is evil in a common ruin. But when the minds of those, who direct the ресиniary enterprises of society, are open to perceive the power and glory of christian principles; when these principles come in to guide their conduct, inspire their motives, and control their aims, then will such consecrated wealth form a mighty engine to plant the institutions of Christianity in power all over the land. Let the principles and spirit of Jesus prevail to guide all the operations of capital, and we shall hear no more of the injustice of usury or the oppression of moneyed power. When the time shall come that men shall feel that Christ has a right to rule on 'change as well as in church; that they are just as much bound to act out all the christian precepts, in the mart of business as in the walks of social life, then shall we see the State rise in all its nobility and grandeur, and holiness to the Lord shall be written on all that meets the eye and rejoices the heart of man.

COMMERCIAL MORALITY.

LUKE XVI, 10-13. He that is faithful in that which is least, is faithful also in much and he that is unjust in the least, is unjust also in much. If, therefore, ye have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will commit to your trust the true riches? And if ye have not been faithful in that which is another man's, who shall give you that which is your own? No servant can serve two masters.

THERE is this great difference between the morality of the world and the morality of religion: that while the one is connected exclusively with motives that concern this life, the other is connected with the commands of Jehovah and the interests of eternity. It is the reputation and the success which is at the foundation of a mere worldly morality; while the consciousness of the divine presence and regard for his law and the best interests of his kingdom are the deep, pure and powerful motives that bring forth the morality of the Gospel. The morality and the honesty of those who are strangers to the power of religion, is at best a superficial life, beneath which is the cold soil of self-interest. The refinements of a calculating selfishness; especially amid the balmy atmosphere of a pure religious influence, may bring forth plants, flowers, and fruits to the eye beautiful and pleasant; but they lack the vitality, the perennial force, and the rich fragrance of those which spring from the love of God in the soul. The morality of selfishness regulates itself by those maxims which worldly policy has exalted

to the place of laws; while the morality of religious principle follows the single rule which the divine lawgiver has enacted for the regulation of men. The worldly wisdom is ever shifting its ground and changing its tactics, according to the varying circumstances of human society and individual interest. It does not hesitate to venture across the line of strict honesty occasionally, when the pressure of some financial crisis is upon it, or when some fair fruit may be stealthily gathered without the loss of character. It has no high and puissant arbiter within the bosom, ever speaking one voice and pointing into one path, according to which it may ever be guided. It permits its subject sometimes to forage within doubtful and even foreign territory; and, varying its modes and appliances for obtaining success, is true only to one purpose, and that the purpose of self-aggrandizement. But the morality of principle, uninfluenced by the force of circumstances or the pressure of self-interest, sets before it the one path of christian integrity and walks therein with an undeviating step. With it the knowledge or the ignorance of others of what it does, in no way affects the course it seeks to pursue; conscious that there is an eye that flames through all diguises, it acts ever as in the view of that great task-master's inspection. Deriving its principles of action from the unchangeable principles of divine truth, it is solicitous only to apply those principles, in the fullest manner, to the varying circumstances of life. The morality of worldly wisdom often applauds successful injustice and extols, as a man of tact, enterprise, and skill in his profession, him whom the morality of religious principles condemns as a scoundrel and a thief. Thus in the context we find the steward, who could not steal outright, because that was an outrageous immorality and a crime, and who could not

beg because it was disgraceful, yet indirectly both begging and stealing according to the maxims of a refined worldly policy. He who would not have dared to rob his employer directly, and who was ashamed to seem dependent on his friends, can yet, in a business transaction, to which only the two parties uniting in it are privy, both defraud his employer of his rights and induce his debtors to become partners in the infamous transaction. This conduct is commended as a master-stroke of worldly policy-of worldly wisdom; and from it the Savior takes occasion to declare, that the children of this world are, in their generation, wiser than the children of light. While, however, he does this, as if forever to put the brand of condemnation upon all such transactions, and forever explode the ultimate wisdom of such a policy, and demonstrate the only style of honesty and morality that can be acceptable to God and will furnish a sure evidence that he who practices it is fit for the kingdom of heaven, he at once adds the words of the text. Let us attend to two propositions which they present to us, and then to some of those inferences therefrom, which are of special importance to business men in the conduct of their daily affairs.

Our first proposition then, is, that he who is unjust in little things, is truly an unjust man in reference to great things; that he who perpetrates dishonesty on a small scale, is as truly dishonest as if he confined his acts of injustice to those large transactions in which he has the power of effecting stupendous frauds and vast gains. In substantiating this proposition, you will consider, (1) that the actual effect of dishonesty in small matters is to make a man dishonest on a large scale; for the great mass of business transactions are necessarily limited in their nature: it is by little and little that the profits are made; it is article by article that goods are sold; and it is by

daily, and hourly, and minute acts of service that a man's wages are earned and his business performed. It is rarely men have the opportunity of launching out into large speculations, of perpetrating fraud on a vast and splendid scale; it is very rarely that men are placed in circumstances where it is in their power to strike for a fortune by a few bold movements, and through some gigantic scheme of dishonesty, ascend at once to opulence and power. The wholesale merchant must send forth his goods piece by piece, and the retail yard by yard and pound by pound; the clerk must labor step by step and with figure after figure through the long day, while his employer must count his profits, usually not so much on here and there a single fortunate speculation, as on the large aggregate of a mass of sales, each small in itself and of little comparative value. As the planets move forward by small but constant increments, and thus in their progress soon sweep around their vast orbits, and in the course of time compass an amount of travel, distancing the boldest flights of imagination, and astonishing to the boldest speculator in figures; so is it in the affairs of life, that each man moves forward, not by leaps and sudden and vast individual profits, but rather by the slow increments of a business more or less enlarged, and the accumulated advantages of an innumerable company of little things. Now, for a man to be practically unjust on a large scale, it is not at all necessary that he should stand on an eminence and wield trusts of great value, and engage in transactions involving tens, and hundreds of thousands and millions. It is not necessary that he should cheat any one individual enormously, or make extraordinary profits on here and there a single unjust transaction. Let him but be unjust in little things; let him only cross the line of rectitude in each of a multitude of