_Extortioner_, are you ready to step into the scales? What will you do with the condemnation of God--"Thou has taken usury and increase, and thou hast greedily gained of thy neighbor's by extortion, and hast forgotten me, saith the Lord God?" _Employer_, are you guilty of sweating your employees? Have you defrauded the hireling of his wages? Have you paid starvation wages? "Thou shalt not oppress a hired servant that is poor and needy, whether he be of thy brethren, or of thy strangers that are in thy land within thy gates. . . . What mean ye that ye beat my people to pieces, and grind the faces of the poor? saith the Lord God of hosts. . . . Behold, the hire of the laborers who have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth: and the cries of them which have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of sabaoth." And you, _employee_, have you been honest with your employer? Have you robbed him of his due by wasting your time when he was not looking? If God should summon you into His presence now, what would you say? Let the _merchant_ step into the scales. See if you will prove light when weighed against the law of God. Are you guilty of adulterating what you sell? Do you substitute inferior grades of goods? Are your advertisements deceptive? Are your cheap prices made possible by defrauding your customers either in quantity or in quality? Do you teach your clerks to put a French or an English tag on domestic manufactures, and then sell them as imported goods? Do you tell them to say that the goods are all wool when you know they are half cotton? Do you give short weight or measure? See what God says in His Word: "Shall I count them pure with the wicked balances, and with the bag of deceitful weights? Thou shalt not have in thy bag divers weights, a great and a small: thou shalt not have in thy house divers measures, a great and a small: but thou shalt have a perfect and just weight, a perfect and just measure shalt thou have: that thy days may be lengthened in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee. . . . Ye shall do no unrighteousness in judgment, in meteyard, in weight, or in measure. Just balances, just weights, a just ephah and a just hin, shall ye have." Are you like those who said: "When will the new moon be gone, that we may sell corn? and the sabbath, that we may set forth wheat, making the ephah small, and the shekel great, and falsifying the balances by deceit? that we may buy the poor for silver, and the needy for a pair of shoes; yea, and sell the refuse of the wheat?" "Show me a people whose trade is dishonest," said Fronde, "and I will show you a people whose religion is a sham." Unless your religion can keep you honest in your business, it isn't worth much; it isn't the right kind. God is a God of righteousness, and no true follower of his can swerve one inch to the right or left without disobeying Him. STOLEN GOODS A BURDEN.