IX.

The Master and the Servant.

VER is it true that evil weakens the dis

cerning power of reason.

Vicious hab

its of thought and life disarrange the intellectual faculties; cause and effect are not seen in true relations. Hence, evil digs a pit for others, and, in the end, itself walks into it. This is heaven's law, by which all moral beings, recreant to their King, are made to be judges and executioners of themselves.

The statements and conclusions of Satan are oft times brilliant and marvellous in convincing power; but close inspection always shows a weakness lurking somewhere, which

at last is fatal to the whole. "And why?" we ask. Because ambitious pride and selfsufficiency have cut him off from the fountain of all wisdom; and error, like the weakest point in a chain, breaks down the whole. Beelzebub has not the full capacity to understand the power of perfect goodness, nor does he clearly see that in every human soul there is, at least, a lingering recollection of the Divine image in which it was created, and the blessed possibilities of salvation which lie within its reach. Let this half slumbering knowledge be quickened at a vital moment by God's finger, and straightway man stands upright on his feet, a giant to battle with the evil one.

That vital moment, that crucial point, that right angle of life's pilgrimage, that fulcrum of the soul! How mysteriously come these quickening, energizing visitations of the great I AM! when the Father speaks, and the child's heart leaps up with rapture! In fields of toil; by the still waters of peace; when the cup of bitterness is in one's hand; when vic

tory sings its pæan, or defeat its chant of penitence; in busiest duties or in dreams of night, the Father may be speaking to His child. And, my brother, blessedness will come, if, like the shepherds on Bethlehem's plain, you are not disobedient to the heavenly vision.

Good angels watched the cradle of the boy, because a mother's love and prayers had gone up for her child. Now, in the conscious rest and peace of Paradise, the mother is; but here, the son. Five and forty years have slipped away since his life began. Health, friends, food and raiment, and all the other comforts and conveniences of life are his. Great riches and a good name have also fallen to his lot, and to-night the man is sitting at his ease and beginning to say within himself: "My power and the might of my hand hath gotten me this wealth." Nigh on to twenty years had all his powers been centered in the business of his life; his employees were his friends; no dishonorable act had ever stained his hands, nor had deep laid schemes

of dark corruption defiled the fountain of his heart. Bnt it is a law of human life that,

"One master passion in the breast,

Like Aaron's serpent, swallows up the rest ";

and twenty years' continued reaching out for success in name and business, had made its impress on his character. The heaven, with which a mother's love and angel watchers had surrounded his childhood, vanished as the years went on, and shades of that narrow prison house were closing on the man. In factory and in offices, a thousand men and women missed the old-time geniality of their master, and though justice marked his course, yet that kindly interest, sometimes more precious to the laborer than the wages of his hand; that sympathetic touch with others which had laid the foundations of his great success, had lost its vigor. Money, which holds within its grasp so many benedictions for self and others, was hardening the spirit of the man. To-night, he sits in self-complacency, without the tender influence of a