To make this plain, we observe that all are familiar with the power exercised over the soul by any new object or new pursuit. Begin with the earlier years of infancy. See a little child engrossed with his toy. His whole soul is absorbed by it; for a time it is his world. But present him with some new object; the former is speedily discarded, while the new engrosses the mind as the old had done. Or pass onward from childhood to youth. There also you see the same law prevailing. Mind is never left a blank. The old is discarded, but it is for the sake of the new; and man thus flits from object to object, the last being always the ascendant. Or pass upward to still graver years, and there also the same law prevails. One pursuit, one passion, one object of interest after another sways the heart, alternately expelled and expelling from the soul. The love of God in a converted soul supersedes the supreme love of the world. The pleasures of godliness take the place of the pleasures of sin. The power of the world to come overmasters the power of a present evil world; and thus a wise and exquisite law guides us in religion--a law as simple in its operation as that which keeps the planets in their orbits. REASON AND RELIGION AT ONE. Now, in accordance with that law, our next Counsel is, that the Christian in the Market-place, should never forget that he is not forbidden to seek earthly things /at all/; he is only forbidden to seek them /first/. The Saviour just wished man to prefer what should be preferred--to put eternity before time, and God before man, and the soul before the body; and wherever men have escaped from the control of blind passion, such a maxim must be approved for its wisdom. To believe that there is both a God and a soul, and yet seek some ephemeral thing before either or both, is surely to outrage reason, as well as to turn aside from the plainest maxims of religion. On the other hand, he who sets the Lord before him has adopted a course which will more than realize the fable of Midas, who turned all that he touched into gold. And who can doubt that confidence placed or preference given anywhere but to God, will blight and wither all at last? Who can doubt that the accumulated thousands of many who name Christ's name are their god? They seek happiness there. They find all their enjoyment there. These thousands are their rock, their confidence, and their high tower. They not merely seek them /first/, they seek them exclusively. The portion of their heart is there as completely as the confidence of the Hindoo upon Shiva, or of the Romanist upon Mary. It is thus that God is dethroned, and thus that man's blossom often goes up like the dust from the midst of his idolatrous confidence. * * * * * EQUIVOCATIONS.