d have great need
to take heed unto themselves.

THE ACCOUNTS IN GOOD ORDER.

If possible, let us make our lay parochial friends our secretaries, and
above all our treasurers. But if it must be otherwise, and often it must
be, let us take heed, at any cost of pains. To do so may be overruled to
win a positive influence for the Clergyman. I well remember a dear
friend of mine telling me, with loyal pleasure, of his holy and devoted
Vicar's care in this direction, and its power over the keen-sighted and
not always friendly members of the school-committee in his great parish.
Every item of the books was accurate; every halfpenny of receipts
accounted for. Men could find no fault in that Clergyman save concerning
the Law--and the Gospel--of his God.

INVESTMENT-CIRCULARS.

Perhaps I need only allude in passing to that crude sort of temptation
put so freely before us Clergy, the circular advertisement of the mine
which is to pay twenty per cent., or of the company just formed (I have
such a circular in my possession, and keep it sacredly,) to promote the
construction of a new projectile which shall make war more horrible than
ever; one condition to the success of the Clergyman's investment being,
of course, that war, thus made more horrible than ever, shall also be as
frequent and continuous as possible. But the schemes announced in these
circulars are very various in character; good, indifferent, and bad.
Need I say that, as a very safe rule, they must all be viewed as bad
from the point of view of the young Clergyman's (or indeed of the
Clergyman's) purse? It is a truism to remark that high interest means
low security; but even a truism can bear occasional repetition when it
has to do with a good man's whole life and work, and when the oblivion
may mean acute or chronic misery. Such investments are for us a form of
gambling, almost as much so as the shameless circulars which we
sometimes receive from foreign cities, announcing the possibility of
clearing a fortune at one stroke by a turn of the lottery machine. Does
the sending of such missives to the English Clergy mean that English
Clergymen sometimes answer them? If so, I say that it is strictly
impossible that the man who so answers, whether he loses or wins, can
also be walking with God, and so working that the Lord works with him.
So far as such acts go, he is acting an awfully untrue part, and his
Master knows it. Let us take heed unto ourselves.

OTHER MONEY-