I do not, however, forget a passage which has often been used, or rather abused, to defend the worldly, unbelieving practice of hoarding up. I allude to 2 Corinthians xii. 14.--"Behold, the third time I am ready to come to you; and I will not be burdensome to you: for I seek not yours, but you: for the children ought not to lay up for the parents, but the parents for the children." How glad people are when they get a semblance of Scripture-authority for their worldliness! In this passage it is but a semblance of authority; for the apostle is certainly not teaching Christians to hoard up--he is not teaching heavenly men to lay up treasure upon the earth, for any object. He simple refers to a common practice _in the world_, and to a common feeling _in nature_, in order to illustrate his own mode of dealing with the Corinthians, who were his children in the faith. He had not burdened them, and he would not burden them, for he was the parent. Now, if the saints of God are satisfied to go back to the world and its maxims, to nature and its ways, then let them hoard up with all diligence--let them "heap treasure together for the last days;" but let them remember that the moth, the canker-worm, and the rust will be the end of it all. Oh for a heart to value those immortal "bags" in which faith lays up its "unfading treasure," those heavenly storehouses where faith "bestows all its fruits and its goods"! Then shall we pursue a holy and elevated path through this present evil world--then, too, shall we be lifted upon faith's vigorous pinion above the dark atmosphere which inwraps this Christ-rejecting, God-hating world, and which is impregnated and polluted by those two elements, namely, _hatred of God, and love of gold_.