Or turning from inspired men, to those who had to spread the sacred page before them, and pray to God to shed light upon it, we may glance at the man whom God raised up, about three hundred years ago, to emancipate a large portion of Europe from Popery, that dark superstition which ever crushes man to the dust. Luther stands alone before the crowned, the mitred, and the lordly. A bigoted emperor holds that solitary man's life in his hand; and had he doomed him to die upon the spot, millions would have rushed to applaud him for the deed. "Recant," that is, deny the Word of God, was in substance the demand made from Luther; and was the demand conceded? Nay; the Bible was to him something better than a collection of syllables and words. The Spirit had made it a power, a life, a soul to that man's soul; and, "I cannot recant, so help me God," was in substance his reply to the crowned, and the lordly before him. But there is a glare and a grandeur about cases such as these, which may dazzle yet more than instruct. Let us pass then to a different scene, and seek some abode of poverty. We are, perhaps, afraid to enter, so repulsive, or unpleasing is all that meets the eye. In that rude home, which every wind of heaven can penetrate, we find a dying one. Perhaps for a quarter of a century, she has been the inmate of that abode; for all that time, she may have had no hand but the hand of God, and of charity, to feed her. What, then, is it that has sustained her spirit, amid trials which we almost shudder to see? She has lived, and is now preparing to die, upon the Word of her God. She is strong in the strength which it supplies, and the home which looks so cheerless to others, has been to her a home of hymns and of rejoicing. The God of the Bible has made her glad in the house of her pilgrimage by means of his Word. She has learned to regard it as God himself does; and it is visibly magnified in the effects which it thus produces in souls by nature weak, wavering, and ungodly. But we have not nearly exhausted the illustrations of the power of truth in the Market-place. We have looked at some proofs of its power where it is honoured and obeyed: let us now glance at some of the results of neglecting it. If some men are of opinion that their main business upon earth is to "buy and sell, and get gain;" the Holy One has, on the other hand, made it plain that there is another God besides "the Mammon of unrighteousness." MERCANTILE MANIA. We have referred to the crashes, and the failures, the gluts and stagnations which occur in trade, with a periodicity which can almost be calculated--they can at least be easily foreseen as they approach. The adventurous "traffickers," are sometimes seized with a mania which turns the counting-house into a gambler's den, involving results and disasters from which the most judicious can with difficulty escape; so powerful is the current, so ingulfing the suction. Let us glance at some of these seasons.