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to the gaze of coarse and superficial men, and the scorn of the world; let such study the spirit of that love which although forsaken in its extremity, uttered ro angry word; but as it passed on, silent and alone, as a lamb to the slaughter, with gentle, regretful sorrow simply said, "Sleep on now and take your rest; it is enough, the hour has come; behold the Son of man is betrayed into the hands of sinners."

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THERE are various and strange his whole remaining property, and diseases in the world. But perhaps enable him to erect a better class of none of the young readers of The houses. My client saw the truth of Church have heard of the case of a the argument, but told me man who was unable to see any must not rely on his neighbour distant object because of a sixpence doing anything of the kind. "The in his eye! present lane," he said, "is good enough for low-class cottages; these sell readily; and though Thompson will spoil his own frontage and mine too, you will find he will go in for them. He is one of those men who cannot see the pound at the end of his nose for the sixpence that is in his eye."

ago;

I confess that I had not heard of this kind of blindness till a few days and then I discovered that it was by no means a singular case; on the contrary, that half the people one meets with in daily life are more or less suffering from this malady. The discovery came to me in the following manner. I was The phrase was new to me. It advising a client as to the laying out may have been original, or my of a parcel of land for building pur- client might have heard it in poses, and suggested that a neigh- America where he had spent some bouring proprietor would give up years. But whether original or Some few yards of his to the public borrowed, it seemed to have much for the purpose of widening a certain force in it, and to put the facts in road; since a handsome and wide a pithy and condensed form. Mr. approach would largely enhance, at Thompson saw his way to making a not distant future, the value of a poor, but still profitable, use of

him. He ceased to give even nominal attendance in the office; from an intemperate and reckless man he became a frequent drunkard. His father, dying, left him a scanty and inalienable annuity, to be paid in weekly doles, and bequeathed his many thousands elsewhere; and the last I heard of James Wilson, who some ten years ago would not see the pound at the end of his nose, was that he had been committed to prison for a lengthened term.

his land; and his mind and vision fever of cards, blinded him to the were so filled by this immediate future, and to the solid and assured prospect, that he was blind to the prospects that were put before much larger profit and the much better use that could be made of it under other conditions and at a more remote date. On further reflection I perceived that what was true in this particular case is true in a multitude of others; that I had seen in my life a thousand examples of it; and that it is probable that a large proportion of the readers of this page may be numbered amongst those who cannot see the pound at the end of their noses because of the sixpence in their eyes; Mary Roscoe has been the victim in other words, that they suffer a of the same strange disease. Young, present advantage, or a present charming, well connected, and well pleasure, to blind them to a much brought up, a happy future seemed greater advantage, a much dearer before her, and might undoubtedly pleasure, that is somewhat more have been hers. But while yet remote.

Let me try to make this plainer by outlining the histories of some lives that have come under my own observation.

under age, with no experience of life, and with small knowledge of what conduces to domestic happiness, she unfortunately crossed the path of one who, much older than James Wilson was the son of a herself, was a broken-down disreland-agent and surveyor who had a putable roué, but who knew too well large and wealthy connection. His the artifices by which to ensnare father gave him all the advantages and hold her young affections. of a liberal education and profes- Vainly her true friends tried to sional training. He destined him open her eyes and show her the to succeed to his agencies, and golden pounds she was wantonly nothing prevented him from being at this moment widely respected and in lucrative practice but this unfortunate malady of the sixpence in the eye. James knew his father to be a man of wealth; he conceived there was no necessity that he should work; he despised business and business habits. The sixpence in his eye was the excitement of racing and the company of a set of fast young men. With these he was continually found. In vain did his father point out that, unless he qualified himself for the proper discharge of an estate-agent's duties, he could not expect that noblemen and others would put their estates in his charge. The whirl of the race course, the flow of the champagne-cup and the

flinging away. Vainly her widowed mother refused her consent to the engagement. The fatal sixpence of a misplaced and foolish love for a worthless present object had blinded her; a secret marriage put her fortune in the power of a heartless and bankrupt wretch; and before many years she had separated from him, and now, with her children (her vision too late cleared), is a burden on an impoverished mother.

Thomas and William Abbot were two fishermen on the south coast of Devon. On a happy day they with some companions secured an immense dead whale, which had drifted towards their home, and the share of these brothers came to nearly forty pounds.

present temptation, or it may be some present good, to blind them to a greater and more permanent, though it may be a more distant happiness.

How many a young tradesman, for example, in his determination to make rapid profits, has stooped to the adulteration of his goods or the overcharging of a customer, and so forfeited for ever that respect and confidence upon which alone a lasting and prosperous trade can be established! How many a woman walks the byways of life with her good name smirched or destroyed because she was made blind to the

by the base sixpence of present flatteries, and honeyed falsehood! How many have given up all the future has to offer because they did not weigh it calmly and prudently against some instant gratification, or momentary need!'

This was the foundation of the fortune of Thomas. He put it in the savings'-bank. He added to it what he could spare of his earnings. He bought a share in a trawler; byand-by obtained the entire ship; then another; engaged in general mercantile business; removed to London; always looked to the end of his nose and beyond it; and not many weeks since I heard that, though a Wesleyan, he had sent £100 towards the restoration of the parish church of his native village. From all which we may gather that he has done well for himself. But William his brother? Alas, the £20 was but the fatal sixpence for golden future of matronly joys him. He could see that it would procure him a certain amount of beer and of brandy, and it was soon gone into the pockets of the publican. But not so soon but that it sowed seeds, which he in due course reaped in the harvest of an undermined constitution,idle habits, And is there not one thing in a blasted character, an early death. which, alas, we are all prone to "A short life and a merry one for this blindness? A great inheritance me," was a saying often on his lips is before us all; we are heirs to a when he was urged to consider the heavenly kingdom, to an immortaldifference between his brother and ity of blessedness. But it is in the himself. That it was a short life I distance-it is in reversion. We live know; that it was a merry one I in the present, and in what we call doubt. Thus the same good gift of the actual, though in truth to the Providence became to one a Christian, and to the open eye,: it is fountain of prosperity and well- the world of shadows and of cheats. being, to the other of sorrow and of These shows, these semblances, ruin. The one brother's eye was these mirages, float and dance filled by a vision of low but present between us and the heavenly enjoyment; the other could look plains. And some of them tower so into the future and see how by diligence, sobriety, and doing his duty towards God and man (though it might involve some present self-denial), an honourable independence might be secured.

These illustrations might be increased tenfold; but the three we have sketched may suffice to point the moral of this paper, and to impress on the mind of some youthful reader the conviction that multitudes make shipwreck of their lives and fortunes by allowing some

high, and are dressed in so radiant
colours, that we conceive that they
must be the everlasting hills,
on which we are to build; the
perennial fountains at which our
thirst is to be slaked. Miserable
mistake! Those towering heights
are but clouds, which near experi-
ence will show to be grey, cold, wet,
unsubstantial mists! That shim-
mering, radiant sea will prove but
heated deadly air exhaled by the
scorching deserts.
How many
Esaus are there in the world who

make this discovery too late; who for a paltry present mess of pottage barter away trooping herds and flocks, wide watered pastures, and a Father's blessing! Oh, for wisdom from on high to save us from this foolish, this deadly error! Shall the temporal hide from us the eternal? the things that are earthly weigh down and over balance the things

that are celestial? the pleasures that are for a moment content us under the loss of the blessedness that is enduring, and for evermore? Every counsel of prudence, every dictate of right judgment, cries aloud against such absurdity. Oh, reader, let not the sixpence in thine eye blind thee to the rich treasure that is ready to thy grasp ! C.C.P,

MARKET-BASKET RELIGION.

BY A SERMONISER.

THOUGH for the present without either pulpit or parish, I nevertheless feel occasionally-by force of habit, perhaps a strong impulse and desire to sermonise a little. It is not very important whether or not I am a regularly ordained minister in good standing in an orthodox Church, or that I should take a text from the Bible and treat it after the traditional and approved methods of division and subdivision; for it is a peculiarity of the market-basket religion that many of its ministers have never been ordained, and never enter a pulpit, but take their texts from the common events of life, and preach without gown or surplice from any rostrum they can find.

My dear hearers, let me at this point ask your indulgence for a little digression of a personal character. I have just read this introduction to my sermon to Mrs. S., who objects that it will make you think that I am not a preacher at all, or that I have done something awful, and thus lost my credentials. I therefore rise to explain that I have never yet been immortalised by being charged with heresy or any other scandalous thing. Allow me to say further and finally upon this point, that the ordaining hands of the elders were once duly laid upon my devoted head, "without wrath or doubting," I suppose, though I am not sure about the latter.

But to return. The religion I am about to recommend, though its name is homely and new, is not of an inferior quality, nor is it anything new under the sun. It is the genuine article, and is as old as the gospel; though it must be confessed that it is not as common as it ought to be.

You will find the words of my text in the thirty-fifth chapter of Mrs. Stowe's latest story. It reads as follows: "A holy father, in a long black gown, with a cord around his waist, and with a skull and hour-glass in his cell, is somehow thought to be nearer to heaven than a family man with a market-basket on his arm; but we question whether the angels themselves think so. There may be as holy and unselfish a spirit in the way a market-basket is filled as in a week of fasting; and the oil of gladness may make the heavenward wheels run more smoothly than the spirit of heaviness."

The subject for your consideration which I have derived from this text, and which has already been announced in your hearing, is market-basket religion. My treatment will be topical by analysis; and since it is easier to divide the subject than the text, I will proceed to show, firstly, that market - basket religion is family religion.

It is the peculiarity of this religion that it regards the family as superior in importance to any other interest or obligation, whether monetary, political, or ecclesiastical. It holds everything else to be subordinate to the welfare of the family. It prizes the health, happiness, and love of the wife and children more than wealth, more than Church extension or preferments. There is a kind of religion current which reverses this rule, and makes a merit of sacrificing the tender ties, the comfort and well-being of the family, to the demands of business, or the advancement of the Church- especially the latter. There are many ecclesiastics who so completely absorb themselves with Church work that they hardly become acquainted with their children, and have but little fellowship with their wives. They think nothing is so important as the Church. They have theoretically laid down their own lives for the Church, and proceed to practically immolate their wives and children on the same altar, and verily think they are doing God service. So when, as the result of their neglect, a child goes to the bad, they think it an unaccountable and mysterious providence; or when the overburdened, uncherished wife dies prematurely, they piously comfort themselves with the thought that she died in the holiest of causes, the Church; whereas she has only fallen a victim to that mistaken zeal which thinks the Church must be cared for, if every other interest be neglected.

In this point of view there is real humanity in the Catholic custom of enforcing celibacy on the priesthood. If ministers, instead of walking with their heads in the clouds, and thinking themselves nearer heaven for so doing, would remember that they are husbands and fathers, and remember the paramount obligations imposed in these relations, they would not so frequently have the misfortune of seeing their wives do the real dying "for the cause."

The religion of the man who devotes himself more to Church propagandism than to his family, who is more interested in the elaboration of the nineteenthly of a sermon, or in establishing beyond the possibility of doubt the infallibility of a pet dogma, is, to say the least, more theoretical than practical. Finally upon this point, there is no interest under heaven so important, or so vital to the well-being of humanity, as the family. And no duty incumbent on the husband and father transcends his duty to his family.

Secondly, market-basket religion is one of practical benevolence. Like true charity, it begins at home, but does not always end there. Nor does it content itself with simply praying for and pitying the needy, but is willing to do something for their relief. For you

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