"Be

weeping and howling came, they had acted on the adviceafflicted, and mourn and weep: let your laughter be turned to mourning, and your joy to heaviness!" (Jas. iv. 9). All your riches generally will then be corrupted, for all earthly good is of the dust and tends to decay. That corruption is already in them; from without as by the moth, from within as the rust. Motheaten, then, all the gay clothing with which you bedecked your vain flesh. Cankered your gold and silver! But can gold and silver rust? asks the foolish reader, who will not understand the wise figurative expression. Yes, verily, as St James means, your beautiful and pure gold and silver will rust! Look rightly at it, this mammon of unrighteousness, and you will see the evil rust upon it: do not injustice, selfishness, misuse, the guilt of sin, attach to mammon? This is its rust, which in due time will eat it as to all who have kept it and heaped it up as mammon. Let it not rust in your hands or chests, but make of it friends for your reception into everlasting habitations (Luke xvi. 9). Else wilt thou hear that word which wicked Simon heard―Thy money go with thee to destruction! (Acts viii. 20). Yes, verily, with thee-so means St James all that he has said about corruption, motheating, and canker: Thou thyself must corrupt as the food of worms; thyself, thy flesh will the canker eat like a fire. Therefore, the perishableness of thy treasures should be a testimony to thee that thou art perishing with them! For the world passeth away with its lust (1 John ii. 17). "Every work rotteth and consumeth away, and the worker thereof shall go with it" (Ecclus. xiv. 9).

O what a fire of wrath, what a corruption of death! Had ye but well considered, ye poor miserable men who get riches, that man "as a rotten thing consumeth, as a garment that is motheaten!" (Job. xiii. 38). And have you, the food of worms, despised the salvation of God, and cast from you the heavenly calling, only that after a few days of pleasure upon earth you may perish in your sins? O that you had heard the prophet's sermon "Lift up your eyes to the heavens, and look upon the earth beneath for the heavens shall vanish away like smoke, and the earth shall wax old like a garment, and they that dwell therein shall die in like manner: but My salvation shall be for ever, and My righteousness shall not be abolished!" (Is. li. 6).

When the judgment comes, the rust will break out, the guilt

will be disclosed and avenged. And what is that guilt? Selfishness, hardness, the want of that mercy which alone rejoiceth against judgment. Although what St James goes on to say is not literally and externally true of all the ungodly rich, yet the disposition of the heart is in all the same, as the plainest examples, occurring not seldom, show. Ye have lived in pleasure and been wanton; but the rich harvest of your fields, the great gains of your buying and selling, ye did not learn to distribute to the poor; ye have rather oppressed the poor, whose lot it was to produce your wealth. Behold, the hire of the labourers, who have reaped down your fields, which is kept back by fraud, crieth; and the cries of them that have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth. Ye have regarded the poor labourer, not as your serving brother, equal to yourselves before. God, but as only an instrument of your avarice. Ye have muzzled the ox, which trode out your corn. And therefore what Job said of such oppressors is for you-"The hungry bear their sheaves; within their walls they must press oil, and tread their winepresses, and suffer thirst" (Job xxiv. 10, 11, in the right translation). In the present day how many like these work in our factories; how many neglected children, crippled into machines, labour for the wealth of the rich! Are the rich manufacturers in our Christendom always the first to take the lead in organisations for the good of the working classes? Sure it is, that St James' word is applicable to too great a number, and over many a proud palace the superscription might be written "Woe unto him that buildeth his house by unrighteousness, and his chambers by wrong! That useth his neighbour's service without wages, and giveth him not for his work: That saith, I will build me a wide house and large chambers, and cutteth him out windows; and it is ceiled with cedar and painted with vermilion. Shalt thou reign because thou closest thyself in cedar? Did not thy father eat and drink, and do judgment and justice, and then it was well with him?" (Jer. xxii. 13-15).

The conduct of the despots of wealth, who will not know God and the Saviour of all, towards the poor labourers, cries everywhere in our ears loudly enough: how should it not come also into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth? of Him, who in the law of Moses said: Thou shalt not oppress the hired servant that is poor and needy... lest he cry against thee to the Lord,

and it be sin unto thee (Deut. xxiv. 14, 15). When that sin is visited home and avenged, the word will find another awful meaning-Ye have heaped up treasures, treasures of wrath, and accumulated the debts of an infinite bankruptcy.

But ye brethren who are not directly and personally affected by this, take them nevertheless for an example; let these words have the effect upon you which St James intended them to have upon his believing readers. Ye poor and oppressed, take comfort in your better treasures; nor let it enter your minds to envy the rich. And, ye godly rich, learn still more and more not to trust in uncertain riches, but in the living God; to do good, and be rich in good works, ready to distribute, willing to communicate, and thus lay up for yourselves a good foundation against the time to come, that ye may lay hold upon eternal life (1 Tim. vi. 17-19). Have we thoroughly learned, as rich and poor, these great lessons? Are we giving all diligence, with undivided hearts, in this the seedtime for the eternal harvest? Do we all know how profoundly true it is that riches and earthly good are not merely in themselves vain things, but things full of danger? Do the poor, who believe in Jesus, keep themselves free from all undue desire to be rich? Is there no unhappy canker in the gold and silver of those who are rich? Do we live and act on the firm persuasion that nothing can be more foolish than to heap up treasures in the last days; and nothing more wise and blessed than to make all our possessions serviceable to the glory of God and the good of our neighbour? Let us, who bear the Lord's testimony before those who are without, take care never to be found in any such practice of buying and selling as would reduce us to a level with the condemned, instead of causing them to bethink themselves of their ways. Let us for ever prayIncline mine heart to Thy precepts, and not to covetousness! (Ps. cxix. 36).

XXVII.

PATIENT WAITING.

(Ch. v. 7-9.)

Be ye patient therefore, brethren, unto the coming of the Lord. Behold, the husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth, and hath long patience for it, until he receive the early and the latter rain. Be ye also patient; stablish your hearts: for the coming of the Lord draweth nigh. Groan not one against another, brethren, lest ye be condemned: behold, the Judge standeth before the door.

What is your life? It is a vapour which appeareth for a little time, and then afterwards vanisheth away. And this afterwards, how soon will that be present! How short and transitory is our life! Nevertheless, to some it is too long; they would wish their life shorter, to get rid of all their trials and cares. And this is marvellous enough. But it shows us that time in itself is nothing; it becomes short or long according to what it includes and results in. It comes from the hand of God, but it is given into our hands. How dost thou regard the time of thy life? Is it too short or too long to thee? It is too short for thine earthly projects and plans, so that thou requirest a longer future than ever will come? It is too short for the enjoyment of thy pleasure, so that the present moment hastens away before thou hast properly enjoyed it, and thou wouldst vainly hold fast and increase the days of joy? Then will thy life be verily too short in the end. Misery will suddenly come upon thee, and then-thou hast lived in pleasure on the earth! The fear of the Lord prolongeth even the few days: but the many years of the wicked shall be fearfully shortened. The hope of the righteous shall be gladness; but the expectation of the wicked shall perish (Prov. x. 27, 28).

Ye righteous, only wait in patience, and let not the time be long to you! Ought you not rather to think life too short for the attainment of eternal salvation? Ought you not rather to want more time for making absolutely sure your calling and election? Instead of this, how often is the waiting to the end

too long to the pious, because they are wanting in that true patience, in that true waiting on the Lord, which is the object of St James' present exhortation!

He turns once more from the severe condemnation of the unbelievers to the proper readers of his Epistle, to the beloved brethren, to those who needed consolation among the Christians. And now, after having had much in the earlier portion to rebuke, he goes on to the end in a strain of gracious appeal. He comforts the oppressed, those who were afflicted by the proud rich; he comforts them by the same argument which had been a threatening to the others, by that speedy coming of the Lord which will bring judgment to the self-confident and salvation to those who wait in hope. The Judge and the Deliverer stands before the door: to His own, His coming brings the summer (Luke xxi. 30)—the harvest of the precious fruit of the good seed. Is not this, generally, still true of us all, though not in the particular meaning which St James had in view? Did not the Holy Spirit give him a word of exhortation for all times? Let us then observe the life of the Christian in time as a patient waiting for the near approach of the Lord. We see first what that is in itself; and then what here follows from it.

The Christian not only waits patiently for the precious fruit at the end of his probation, but receives also patiently the needful rain and blessing during his life; and with this waiting, the end is still ever near at hand. Behold, the husbandman waits for the precious fruits of the earth, and is patient; for, between seedtime and harvest the ordinance of God in nature requires its time, and the husbandman who could not wait that time would never reap and probably never sow. True, it is only fruit of the earth, but still in its kind it is precious fruit. Indeed, such owners of land as those who were previously rebuked, whose oppressed labourers reaped the harvests of their hoarding avarice,—do not truly enjoy, they do not understand and treasure up the precious fruit of the earth. Their eyes have not waited for it as a gift from the hand of God; they have perverted and misused God's gift into idolatry, as the sins of men pervert all earthly blessings into curses. But we, dear brethren, should rightly understand St James when he speaks to us figuratively of a quite different and more precious seedtime and harvest for heaven, which takes place upon earth. Every year