vitation comes to-day which was given in the parable of the king's son, the invitation into worthier living, the call to choose that which is of chief importance; and still men say that they must go to their merchandise; they cannot "I pray thee, have me excused." And they are left to go as they desire. The gate of heaven opens, and they who pass by on the dusty road are invited to enter; but they may be excused, if they will.

come.

The "kingdom of God" means even more than this. As Jesus preached it, it signified a reorganized society, in which the Lord God should be the head of the state, and all men. should be brothers. The Christian is more interested in brotherhood than he is in business, and cares more for men than he does for money. No man is a Christian who does not love his fellow-men.

Evidently the man who loves his fellow-men will pay a Christian rate of wages. That good adjective does not belong to any sum of money which represents just one remove from bare starvation. I know that the man of business is hampered by the conditions of his time; and those conditions bear with fearful heaviness upon the poor. I know that competition is to

blame for many evils, and that good men with Christian intentions find themselves entrapped by the devil, and set in unchristian positions. Many times they would be glad to pay a decent wage if they knew how. Under such circumstances it is the business man's initial business to find out how. He ought not to be able to eat his dinner with any relish, so long as there are men in his employ whose scanty wages for their honest work keeps them face to face with hunger. He ought not to be able to sleep in peace at night while the men in his mill or in his mine live like beasts of burden.

There are some who would persuade us that the world of business is even now a section of the kingdom of heaven, and that there would be sweet peace everywhere if it were not for the ambition, the avarice, and the bad temper of the workingmen. But we do not so read the daily papers. The workingman is fighting a desperate battle for his life. Defeat means slavery; success means the possibility of living like a man. Surely there is something wrong when a man can work from the dark of morning to the dark of evening, and his wife work, and his children work, and with all the labor of the whole family in all their waking hours get

only a starvation dinner and a sty to live in. True, nobody knows exactly what is the matter. But if there were no strikes nobody would try to find out.

"He's true to God who's true to man: wherever wrong is

done

To the meanest and the weakest 'neath the all-beholding

sun,

That wrong is also done to us; and they are slaves most

base,

Whose love of right is for themselves and not for all the race."

To do unto others as we would have them do unto us is but the beginning of Christianity. That good rule was not a new commandment. Jesus Christ came to teach us to love our fellow-men as he loved us. That is the Christian standard. That is the heart of Christian ethics. To behave one's self in the transactions of the world of industry as the Lord Jesus Christ would conduct himself under the same circumstances is the one sufficient rule. Το work in an office or a mill as Jesus worked in the carpenter shop at Nazareth is the ideal. What would Jesus say? What would Jesus do? Thus questions the Christian with himself as he sits at the board meeting, as he makes his bargains, as he counts his money,

as he manages his affairs, as he deals with his clients. Would Jesus Christ be satisfied to own this tenement? Would Jesus Christ consent to this commercial combination? Would Jesus Christ vote this way? Would Jesus Christ set his signature to this scale? And what would Jesus Christ say if we were to object that "all that sort of thing might be good enough religion, but it would be pretty poor business"?

The Christian business man is never in alliance with the devil; he would rather go bankrupt. He is never in partnership with Cain. He values his own soul more than he values the whole world beside. And he cares as much for the souls of his neighbors as for his own. If he cannot carry on his business in accordance with that blessed brotherly love which Jesus taught, he will abandon it tomorrow. "Blessed are the poor," who have made themselves poor for the kingdom of heaven's sake.

Difficult? Nothing is so difficult as to be a Christian in business. You remember the camel and the eye of the needle. The Christian business man is tested every day. But he that is not a Christian in his business is not a Christian.

THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM.

"Preaching the gospel of the kingdom."-ST. MATT. iv. 23.

THESE two characteristics are essential to the Christian religion, that it is a gospel, and that it has to do with a kingdom.

The gospel, however often the word may be mistranslated, means the good tidings, the good tidings, first of all and including all, that God so loved the world that he sent his most dearly beloved Son into it that it might become through him a world worth living in. That good news begins with the birth of Jesus Christ, and it continues without end in all the gracious blessings which God forever gives us by his Holy Spirit.

We have the good authority of the Christmas angels for affirming with regard to these good tidings that the news which they bring is a message of great joy, and that this message is intended for all people. We are able, accordingly, to say with complete assurance that the Christian religion is meant to make men happy.