21. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. "An angel said it was builded there By the good St. Thomas, with love and care "For our fellow-men, and that it should be Thy palace of peace through eternity.' "The king this vision pondered well, Till he took St. Thomas from his dungeon-cell, "And said, 'O builder! he most is wise Who buildeth ever for Paradise.'" A.D. 28. -From Geraldine. LIBRARY.-In Mrs. Jamieson's "Sacred and Legendary Art," this same story is told of King Gondoforus of India. Longfellow's Poems, "Morituri Salutamus," beginning at the lines: "In medieval Rome, I know not where, A golden ring with the device, 'Strike here'!" Where the shadow of the finger fell a man dug in the ground and found a secret stairway leading to a hall containing untold wealth, but the man perished. "The image is the adversary old Whose beckoning finger points to realms of gold; Our lusts and passions are the downward stair That leads the soul from a diviner air; The archer, Death, the flaming jewel, Life; The knights and ladies, all whose flesh and bone 21. WHERE YOUR TREASURE. THERE YOUR HEART.-" In one of the art galleries of Italy there is a curious picture, by an early painter, which represents a sick man stretched on his bed, and his physicians come to visit him. They have examined their patient, and 22. The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light. Two Pictures: The Box. ascertained his malady to be that his heart is gone-it has altogether disappeared. From a pulpit near by, St. Anthony of Padua is preaching on the text, For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.' He announces where the particular orLost Heart gan in question will be found; and the clew he furnishes Found in the is followed up, in another compartment of the painting, Treasure by a group of the sick man's friends, who open his strong box, and stand amazed at discovering the missing member reposing among the abundant gold pieces. The artist apparently considered the incident an actual occurrence; and we should err in feeling unmixed amusement at his credulity. For it is as true as though it were a literal fact, that the heart may be enticed from its rightful place to lie among earthly treasures. The case of the invalid, in the picture, is not so singular as at first it might seem." REFERENCE. Lot's wife looking back to Sodom. THE SOUL OF PETER GARCIA.-In the introduction to "Gil Blas" is the story of two students who found a stone with this inscription, "Here lies the soul of Peter Garcia." One ridicules the idea that a soul could lie in the ground; the other dug around the stone, lifted it up, and found under it one hundred gold pieces, willed to the one who should have wit enough to see that Peter Garcia had put his soul into the treasure. BRUCE'S HEART.-The heart is not only the test of the treasure, but the treasure may be a means of placing our heart where it ought to be. There is a story that Robert Bruce of Scotland bequeathed his heart to a favorite nobleman, who encased it in a gold casket, and carried it with him in the war of the Crusades. One time, being hard pressed by the Saracens, he took this heart and, throwing it among the enemy, fought to regain it. So we are to put our hearts into God's work and warfare, and we shall obtain the victory in seeking to gain that in which we have placed our hearts. 22. THINE EYE be Single.-ánλovç, without folds, hence simple, single, seeing but one image of an object, as differing from those 23. But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness! who are cross-eyed, see things double or distorted, or in flickering images. Compare simplicity, from the Latin simplex; semel, once; plicare, to fold; or sine plico, without a fold. See Trench on the A.D. 28. Study of Words." LIBRARY.-Prof. Scripture's "Thinking, Feeling and Doing." THE BAD-EYE FACTORY.-Prof. Scripture in an article on "Schools," says that frequently, by their desks, by the fineness of the print in some lesson-books, and of the work in some kindergartens, our schools become bad-eye factories. So it is that passion, ambition, the love of wealth, the worldly spirit, are bad spiritual eyefactories, destroying our vision of God, of our neighbor's interests, of eternal life. An astronomer looking through his telescope thought that he had discovered some immense and peculiar inhabitants in the moon, but in reality they were but some minute insects upon his lens. So men magnify worldly things till they obscure in importance spiritual and heavenly things. A finger's breadth at hand will mar A mote eclipse a glorious star." LIBRARY.-Compare Edgar A. Poe's story "The Sphinx," where what seemed a huge and hideous monster rushing down the mountain side, was but a sphinx, a death's-head moth, slowly crawling down the window pane. And the story of the Gyascutus in Prof. Vincent's pamphlet, "That Monster, the Higher Critic." Both illustrate how imagination, prejudice, ignorance, passion, fear, may distort our vision and make us see things as they are not. Few people see others as they really are. Roumania,' WRECKS THROUGH DEFLECTED COMPASS.-" The with its freight of newly-wedded loves, and nestful of children, and heroic missionaries, left Liverpool well equipped for the voyage, 24: No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon. and on the Thursday night following all her living cargo save a few persons were either drowned in their cabins, or swept from the ship's deck by furious seas, with the shore only fifty yards away. It was on the same treacherous coast that the 'Serpent' was cast away. Both ships were far out of their proper course. If it be true that there sets a magnet current off the coast of Portugal by which the ship's compass is deflected, there needs no other explanation of the calamity. If the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness.' "--London Sunday-School Chronicle. LIBRARY.-An illustration of the attempt to serve two masters is found in the little book, "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde," here the evil gained the victory. On the other hand, the victory of the good throwing off the yoke of the bad master and serving the good, is attractively set forth in Lynde Palmer's "JohnJack." Compare the self-dialogue of Launcelot Gobbo in Shakepeare's "Merchant of Venice." 24. MAMMON. "For though, pernicious Gold, no altars flame, Yet thou, more honored, sharest the purer part, The unfeigned devotions of the votary's heart." -Juvenal, Englished by an Old Hand. LIBRARY.-Milton's description of mammon in “Paradise Lost," I., 678 ff: "Mammon led them on: Mammon, the least erected spirit that fell From heaven: for e'en in heaven his looks and thoughts Were always downward bent, admiring more The riches of heaven's pavement, trodden gold, Than aught divine or holy, else enjoyed In vision beatific." 25. Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment ? FIRE AS SERVANT OR MASTER.-Fire, says the proverb, is a good servant, but a bad master. So A.D. 28. WORLDLY ANXIETY. is mammon, As a servant, riches may minister to every good, temporal and spiritual,-to comfort the sick, to soothe the afflicted, to help the poor, to spread the gospel. As master, fire itself cannot burn the heart as riches torment and destroy the soul. The man with the muck-rake in "Pilgrim's Progress." The fable of the donkey carrying a load of gold and fragrant spices that weighed him down, but which he could not enjoy. John Newton once said that if Nebuchadnezzar's image was of solid gold, and every worshipper was to have a bit of it, he feared that his nation, as well as the great kings, would be ready to fall down before it. 25. TAKE NO THOUGHT.-" This translation has troubled many a tender conscience. Take thought, in this passage, was a truthful rendering when the A. V was made, since thought was then used as equivalent to anxiety or solicitude. So Shakespeare (Hamlet): 'The native hue of resolution Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought.' "And Bacon (Henry VII.): Hawis, an alderman of London, was put in trouble, and died with thought and anguish.' Somers' tracts (in Queen Elizabeth's reign): 'Queen Catherine Parr died rather of thought. The word has entirely lost this meaning. Bishop Lightfoot (on a fresh revision of the New Testament) says: 'I have heard of a political economist alleging this passage as an objection to the moral teaching of the Sermon on the Mount, on the ground that it encouraged, nay, commanded, a reckless neglect of the future.' It is uneasiness and worry about the future which our Lord condemns here, and therefore R. V. rightly translates be not anxious. This phase of the word is forcibly brought out in I Pet. v. 7, where the A. V. |