y debtors, who had not been successful in business. In
each case, his claim was among the smallest; but he said more unkind
things, and was the hardest to satisfy, of any man among the creditors.
He assumed dishonest intention at the outset, and made that a plea for
the most rigid exaction; covering his own hard selfishness with
offensive cant about mercantile honor, Christian integrity, and
religious observance of business contracts. He was the only man among
all the creditors, who made his church membership a prominent
thing--few of them were even church-goers--and the only man who did not
readily make concessions to the poor, down-trodden debtors.

"Is he a Christian?" I asked, as I walked home in some depression of
spirits, from the last of these meetings. And I could but answer
No--for to be a Christian is to be Christ-like.

"As ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them." This is
the divine standard. "Ye must be born again," leaves to us no latitude
of interpretation. There must be a death of the old, natural, selfish
loves, and a new birth of spiritual affections. As a man feels, so will
he act. If the affections that rule his heart be divine affections, he
will be a lover of others, and a seeker of their good. He will not be a
hard, harsh, exacting man in natural things, but kind, forbearing,
thoughtful of others, and yielding. In all his dealings with men, his
actions will be governed by the heavenly laws of justice and judgment.
He will regard the good of his neighbor equally with his own. It is in
the world where Christian graces reveal themselves, if they exist at
all. Religion is not a mere Sunday affair, but the regulator of a man's
conduct among his fellow-men. Unless it does this, it is a false
religion, and he who depends upon it for the enjoyment of heavenly
felicities in the next life, will find himself in miserable error.
Heaven cannot be earned by mere acts of piety, for heaven is the
complement of all divine affections in the human soul; and a man must
come into these--must be born into them--while on earth, or he can
never find an eternal home among the angels of God. Heaven is not
gained by doing, but by living.

III.

"RICH AND RARE WERE THE GEMS SHE WORE."

"_HAVE_ you noticed Miss Harvey's diamonds?" said a friend, directing
my attention, as she spoke, to a young lady who stood at the lower end
of the room. I looked towards Miss Harvey, and as I did so, my eyes
re