True, this maxim is often more than obeyed; business absorbs, business agitates, business ruins millions. Surrendering themselves without a check to its engrossments, they are swallowed up by overmuch care, and socially and religiously become wrecks, though they may pile up gold in heaps. How many in this land are making gold their god, and fine gold their confidence, we need not try to tell. But to correct that tendency, the word of truth has commanded our men of busy lives not merely to be active, but, moreover, to be "serving the Lord" by their activity. It is not activity for the sake of amassing wealth; it is not activity merely that we may stand among the foremost in the market-place, or be able, as some have been, to give laws to kings and empires, to make peace or to declare war. That is not religion; it is the enthronement of self. We are to serve the Lord even in our business. His will is to be our will there, as much as when we are upon our knees before him. The objects to which he points are to be pursued by us; and thus, amid the scenes of busiest occupation, where much that is secular may tend to disturb, or much that is sordid to debase, the man of activity is also to be the man of piety and of Christian principle. Religion is /not/ to be kept for set times and set occasions; it is not to be left behind us when we leave our homes: nay, as the Lord is in every place, the fear of him should everywhere preside. MAMMON. When the Saviour said, "I pray not that thou wouldst take them out of the world, but that thou shouldst keep them from the evil that is in the world," he not merely uttered a prayer, but, moreover, announced a rule for regulating duty; and they who have imbibed the spirit of His words, understand the religion of Jesus--a religion most exquisitely adapted to man on earth, a religion at once of ever-doing activity, and of faithful serving the Lord amid it all. There are, no doubt, snares and perils beyond what can be counted to the souls of men, in the engrossments of business. In commerce, through all its branches, as it appears in our land and day, there is much to deaden the soul, much to eraze the very thought of God; and hence Mammon is the only god of many. But the reason of that is, not that business is essentially godless, but that men prefer God's gifts to himself. Because he is forgotten, thousands are ensnared; they are as completely entombed in worldliness, as the corpse that was yesterday interred is entombed in the deep grave where it lies. PRINCIPLE.