drink curse, who, when fired out of the saloon upon the officers' beat, are either taken to jail, to be provided for at public expense, or sent home in this mad condition of mind to vent their wrath upon the noble women and helpless children that dwell beneath the roof which they once provided as a home for their loved

ones.

Intemperance, gambling, and evil reading are as parasites. that are boring into the hull of the ship of state. They are microbes of contagion, and are sending more deadly disease into the community than can be charged to smallpox, scarlet fever, Asiatic cholera, or any other of the dread contagions against which this nation has wisely quarantined its ports.

Because of the seed sowing of these crime-breeding monsters, we are growing up an undergrowth of criminals. Children are born into the world with criminal propensities.

Over and above each of these foul and vicious monstersoutgrowths of man's greed - comes the shriek of the infidel, removing the restraints of religion and morals from the propensities of the wicked; blasphemously crying out, "No God," "No hope of heaven," "No eternity."

The remedy for all these calamities that are growing up in our midst, casting a dark shadow over the future of this nation, is the cleansing of the heart of man by the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ, the turning of this nation unto God, and the exalting of his word in the hearts of the children. With the conversion of sinners unto God must also come, as an imperative duty and necessity, the stopping of the devil's seed sowing for evil. We must prevent the crushing out of moral and religious sentiment, through the saloon, gambling hell, and by the devil's printing press. If we would stop crimes, we must stop crimebreeding. In order to prevent a criminal harvest, we must stop that seed sowing which germinates crime.

"Be not deceived; God is not mocked; for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap."

Chasing Fickle Fortune.

REV. JAMES W. COLE, B.D.

T is often a great misfortune to have a fortune. "They who seek for riches fall into temptations and snares, and many foolish and hurtful desires which drown men in ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all evil.” It is too often reckoned the chief end of life to get much of it. Men search sea and land to find it. They endure untold privations to obtain it. Women are eager to marry it. Health is sacrificed for it. Morality is flung away to gain it. Honor is counted as naught in the wild rush for it. It is the century's badge of heraldry, the insignia of rank, the key that opens the doors of privilege and preference. Men look at all things through gold-suffused eyes. Everywhere the multitudes are clamoring for gold. "Give us gold," is the well-nigh universal cry as attested by the universal seeking. America is pre-eminently a land of gold. But great wealth in the hands of a few invariably breeds trouble.

Money is a concentrated and centralized power in politics, while the power of the masses is too often scattered, diffused, and dissipated. As a result, wealth often elects its legislators and enacts laws favorable to itself, and is now steadily reducing government to a science for making money. In consequence we have now in this country two wide extremes of society, the millionaire and the tramp. Deep poverty is as unfavorable to morality as great wealth. And when these two extremes of the body politic,—the tramp and the millionaire,—become hopelessly diseased, the body must die. The mortification at the extremities will destroy life at the center. To oppress men, whether by law or custom, sinks them to a low level. To pam

per them is equally ruinous because equally corrupting. The specially privileged classes never willingly renounce their privileges. America, therefore, needs to dread these two men,— the millionaire and the tramp. Neither should be especially cultivated by process of law.

Money, however, is as essential to the development and welfare of mankind as are light and heat. While not bread, it is the great agency in bringing bread to the world. While not raiment, it is the essential factor in producing it; while not education, culture, advancement, progress, yet each of these largely depends upon it; where it is lacking, they decay. The more abundant it becomes, the greater the prosperity and happiness of mankind. Whence, then, is the wrong of its getting, whether it be by one man or the million? There is never any wrong in it, in itself. It is the wrong use that makes it an evil.

Wealth, like light and heat, is one of nature's products, and designed, like them, for man's well-being. But for heat and light we should die. Yet a man may get so much light, or he may use it so improperly, as to destroy his eyes. He may get so much heat as to burn his body to a crisp, or he may use either or both these material agents to another's wrong. If a man so monopolize nature's store of light and heat as to compel his fellows to sit in cold and darkness, he commits an outrage, albeit he do it by means of a superior knowledge or skill not given to them. Light is as essential to human welfare as eyes are. Eyes do not create light, but they use it. Without eyes, light would be useless. Light and eyes give us knowledge and enjoyment of the objects in nature, but they do not create those objects. The unwise use of objects frequently destroys the eye. A wrong use of light will also destroy it; so that the very things for which the eyes exist may prove to be their destruction. Nevertheless, those things are not evils. So, also, money is a good thing in itself; a very necessary thing for man's well-being. Without money, he would cower like the savage in cold and darkness. Yet, what multitudes of men and women are debased and destroyed by money. Thus the best

things in the world if taken out of their places or uses may become the worst things. He who makes the gratification and cultivation of his natural appetites the main pursuit of his life. becomes a loathsome debauchee. The most intense love for the virtuous does not become unholy, because the unclean choose to pervert nature to their own destruction. But he who seeks appetite for appetite's sake inevitably destroys both it and himself. So man's natural desire for wealth may be turned into the great instrument of his woe.

Money is not a sin, nor the desire for it guiltiness, any more than our natural appetites are sins. It is the perverted use, the undue seeking for these things, that brings guilt. He who makes it the chief business of his life to "seek" money, lowers and debases his nature by that seeking, and so falls into temptations and snares, and foolish hurtful desires. Nevertheless, money is a necessity to man. All men need money, need it for their highest good; need to use it, not abuse it. He who unduly seeks it, abuses it. He who gets it unjustly abuses it. He who seeks it for his own selfish ends abuses it, and then, like all perverted things, it becomes a curse instead of a blessing.

Seven persons, at different times, each drew the first prize of one hundred thousand dollars in a government lottery, with this result: The first to win was a paying teller in a bank, a quiet, industrious young man. On receiving the fortune, he resigned his position at the bank, began a career of extravagance and dissipation, and in two years was reduced to beggary and died in a public hospital of diseases engendered by his vices. The second to draw the grand prize was a man in middle life, having a fine family and a good business situation. When the money was paid him, he also became a spendthrift, a drunkard, and a debauchee, and soon spent his fortune with the harlots he had chosen in place of his family. Then he borrowed money on his reputation for wealth, became a bankrupt, and spent his later years in prison for debt. The third was a merchant not inclined to extravagant habits or vice. He was doing a good paying business. With his enlarged capital of one hundred

thousand he now greatly extended his business with a purpose to become one of the merchant princes of the land. But while he could conduct his little business well, he was not adapted to work his enlarged field, and, making poor investments, he soon became bankrupt, and was subsequently obliged to seek work as a clerk in the very store of which he had been the former owner. The fourth to whom the fortune came was a poor widow unblessed of suitors. She at once became " very attractive" to a swarm of admirers, one of whom she soon married. He was a gay, dashing cavalier and spent the fortune for her in an amazingly short time. Then they separated. Then came a divorce, and she was left far worse off than when a "poor, lone widow woman.' The fifth fortunate owner of the prize was a noted singer in his country, who had already earned a small competence by his talent. He gave up his profession and launched out as a banker and broker, intent on becoming a millionaire. But he quickly found others more skillful than he, and they soon took from him the hundred thousand and the little fortune, and he had to begin life over again. The sixth to win was a poor, laboring man of naturally penurious habits. When the gold came to him, he hoarded it most religiously, loaning it only at exorbitant rates, and constantly fretting lest some of it should be lost or stolen. He became a sordid, miserable miser, living for and gloating only over gold, and was at last meaner than the meanest poverty could make him. While his stock of gold increased, his soul grew smaller and smaller, and he died as many another has done, shamefully, wickedly rich,—but only in gold. The seventh to whom the fortune came, led, like most of the others, the spendthrift's short, gay life to poverty and misery and ruin, and lost his all when he parted with righteousness to gain the unhallowed gold.

If the time, energy, ingenuity and perseverance exercised by the thousands in trying to make a fortune quickly and by illegitimate means were turned into an honest channel the world would be infinitely better, happiness and prosperity more general, and there would be less poverty, vice, and crime.