by unfair means cut their own throat oftener than they clip fortune's wings. A contractor who makes a "good thing" out of his contract, and supplies bad iron or inferior food, though he pockets his thousands this time, has eaten up all his acorns at a blow, and sees his future gains reduced to zero; a shipbuilder finds it advantageous in the long run to use the best Baltic, no matter what the price, rather than rotten timbers at half the cost, and chiefly serviceable for diminishing the seafaring population, and sending crew and cargo to the bottom; builders find half-burnt bricks a poor investment, all things considered, and amongst these all things, reputation ; cotton-spinners spinning bad cotton, charged as the finest sea and land, get only a year's profits or so, instead of a lifetime's. And so with the rest, human nature having a decided disinclination to being exploité, and made use of for selfish ends. But seeking, first and before all things, to do what is best and right, because it is best and right, and not because it is lucrative, nor avoiding it when poor pay-seeking always the true and the good, and not the remunerative, as primarily remunerative,-is of itself the surest way of coming to the best worldly end. There is a certain law of moral consequence which answers to the spirit of our lives; and to whatever principle we live by that shall we fail or triumph. "Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and all these things shall be added unto you."

I know two women who exemplify this last saying with almost startling accuracy-the one by direct fulfilment, the other by indirect neglect. They are wives of men of the same profession, and wives possessing in their homes that dangerous, because unbounded, moral influence which makes women the ruin or the salvation of men, as it is nobly or ignobly directed, and the worldly success of their husbands is of a kind that depends on reputation for intellectual power somewhat, but on moral character and spiritual circumstance still more. Now, the influence of the one is for religious, generous, and conscientious dealing-for the thing that is right, no matter at what apparent immediate cost, and always for the thing that is generous and humane. Money, which is the concrete expression of a professional man's repute, is accepted as the material ultimate without which man could not exist in a complex state of society at all—as the fruit borne of the root of noble endeavour; but it is not the object of life, it is not the first thing thought of, scarcely, indeed, is it thought of at all, and never as a motive. The influence of the other is worldly grasping, and time serving; the immediate guinea, never mind how obtained, or from whose slender purse plucked out; the liveried servant waiting at the gate for the neighbours to see what a grand clientèle they have, no matter whose loose livery he wears, and Anonym is quite as acceptable as Saint Predentias; the well-connected patient to be diligently cared for, whether bread pills and

quassia water be the sole remedies needed now; the influential name to be followed up; the money afloat in the family to be looked after; anything, in short, that will advance her own material life, stock her larder with choicer meats, and her wardrobe with richer dresses, and add another round to the social ladder by which she hopes to climb to the heaven of success. This is the direction of the influence, the object and ultimate of her life. The result of both is, that to the unworldly and uncalculating household favour and good fortune have flowed in in unwonted measure, and the more is given the more is received; while to the other, the worldly prosperity, for which all higher ends are sacrificed, comes but sparely. It is known abroad. that in this woman's household and by her influence well doing is subordinated to gain; that friends and acquaintances are courted or shelved only according to their incomes and connections; that her conscience is as elastic as her standard is rigid; that she has but one aim in life, "to get on," and is in no-wise careful of the means; all this is known-has the world no eyes or voice?—and that, too, in spite of a larger amount of verbal fictism than what truly honest Christians dare assume. And the inevitable result has come. The world objects to be treated so; the rich despise the courtesies which are solely due to their wealth; the poor resent the violence which is because of their poverty; men of fortune laugh at the blandishments which have for object the brilliant establishment of a portionless daughter; and the very openness of the worship paid to mammon repels even the charitable. So it is: the life which is passed in taking thought for to-morrow loses even to-day, and is merely an anxious, abortive, decrepid Now, full of disappointment and of failure. These two women have always seemed to me as types of the two classes of God and mammon worshippers; and of the two there is not much question whose life is noblest, nor, indeed, whose career is most successful.

Few things chill the soul so much as mammon worship. If the flesh overlays and the devil distorts, the world withers up the heart and soul of a man. The constant striving after dead things seems to deaden the whole nature, and the energies which are dwarfed to gold-grubbing become as low as the object they seek. Say that the nature is originally kind, even generous, not much of either kindness or liberality is left after a long course of benumbing mammon worship; and the dearest friend must go to the wall when to be seen arm-in-arm on the crown of the causeway together would lose good names from the visiting list, and close stately doors against his companion. Even the careless "Bohemian" has this virtue at the least, that he stands by his fellows, at whatever personal disadvantage to himself, and could not be tempted from his class fidelity by any art of private seduction known; but the mammon worshipper flings

all encumbering affections overboard, as impediments in the great race of life, and comes in time to be ashamed of any one who is not a social help or a transferable purse. It is this possible personal disadvantage accruing, and not any special regard for virtue, which makes worldly people so careful of the public repute of their associates. And by public repute I mean simply the balance between means and character, which is all that the mammon worshipper regards. Thus, the roué of ten thousand a year and the "fast" clerk on two hundred are very different things. The one is probably slandered; people are so ill-natured, and it is so easy to speak ill of our neighbour, we cannot be too careful what we say and what we believe; the other is a godless young man, inadmissable into a Christian household, a person by no means to be cultivated, and whose vices are not to be dealt with leniently; the wife of that titled neighbour of ours, who is good enough to call on us, and who sends the children fruit and playthings, and is so generous to my husband, she may be imprudent in her manners, innocent women thinking no evil after all—and I know that some very painful things have been said of her, but I am sure they are false, and that she is the victim of her own indiscreet simplicity; but the wife of that penniless artist, whom my husband thinks so pretty, is vile, and I would not have her inside my doors. That costly diamond ring S. Anonymy gave my son was a touching act of gratitude, showing that the poor thing has really a good heart; and does not the Bible tell us not to break the bruised reed or quench the smoking flax? Besides, is not the Magdalene as true as the Mother? but the souvenir of no intrinsic value, presented by the poor musician's daughter, only for good, frank, girlish friendship, was an impertinence and a freedom, if nothing more significant, and I hold it as part of my womanly and maternal duty to rebuke her for it on the earliest opportunity, and to make my son restore it without delay. Magdalene has money and a large paying connection, and her diamond ring looks vastly well on my son's finger or my own; but the musician's daughter is to be a governess, and her embroidered cigar-case is not worth half-a-crown to buy or to sell; and of what value her affection, her intelligence, or her goodness? Ah! there is no morality outside itself in mammon worship; and even virtue is chameleon-like, and valuable only according to its accessories.

The like thing has gone down into what are called the lower classes, and chiefly into the servant class, which it threatens to dissolve away altogether, so that by-and-bye we shall have no such thing as a contented, affectionate servant-maid remaining in her situation for years, till she grows to be part of the family, transplanted only by marriage, or uprooted only by death. They are all wild for "change," not so much for the excitement of novelty as for

the bettering of their circumstances, the bettering meaning higher wages and larger perquisites, without any regard paid to the moral nature of the home lost or of that joined. If the bettering by two guineas a year led from Deborah's house to Jezebel's, most of them would pack up their boxes and make their final courtesy, then take their turn at the rouge pot, without the faintest qualms of conscience. Yet inconsequent and thoughtless as they are, the real source of the evil besetting them lies in the ranks above them rather than in themselves. If the lady, whose example the maid follows, was not a mammon worshipper, neither would she be one, for dread of missing her lesson; if simplicity and self sacrifice were fashionable in the drawing-room, they would filter down by degrees into the kitchen, as crinolines and spoon bonnets have done. Ah! the forms of fineladyism, and time-serving, and self-seeking, and pampered flunkeyism, indeed, which plague us so much among our servants, are due to the bad examples above them; for when Lucinda shows the way can Betty refuse to follow? When master swings his censer to mammon can John own himself too proud for the dirty work? Bad enough for ourselves, our mammon worship is worse for others; and it would be as well to remember that, if we choose to hazard our own souls for tags of ribbon and lumps of gold, we have no right to risk others' not strong enough to resist the fascinations of evil patterns.

All this would be but the absolute ordering of common sense if mammon was, in truth, the supreme God, and this earth of ours the only dwelling-place of souls, and human life the beginning and the end of all things for us; if it was only to-day, and there was no to-morrow; only now, and no hereafter-then to eat the daintiest food and wear the richest garments-to lie on the softest rosebed of pleasure, caring only that the leaves shall not be corrupted, and that the thorns shall be plucked out,—would be the wisest aims we could pursue, then Mammon would be the anointed, and his worship our best sacrifice. But when beyond this life lies the life of eternity-for the glory or sadness of which each day is preparing us, according as we use it, then surely mammon worship is the saddest and most short-sighted of all employments, and to peril the soul's eternal joy for the sake of a few days' delight a folly like to which is there no folly equal in magnitude throughout creation!

CHURCH MUSIC.

THE music employed in primitive times for the hymns of the Church was that prevalent either among the Jews, or, probably, the heathen, especially the Greeks. The adoption of the latter is the more likely, as it would have had the effect of attracting the notice of the Pagans, who, we know for certain, were, amid other causes, drawn into a profession of Christianity by the music used in public worship. Nor need it be supposed that the clergy rejected indiscriminately everything that was of heathen growth; for we all are aware of the accommodating spirit encouraged chiefly by some of the Gentile converts, who had come over from the schools of philosophy to the Church. At all events, it admits of little doubt that the music of the primitive Church was principally derived from secular sources. How long this state of things continued cannot be accurately decided; but the practice fell into disuse the more Christianity succeeded in liberating itself from the influences of Paganism. Thus, about the year A.D. 312, after the defeat of Mazentius, when the Christian religion became fully established, we find that all music not ecclesiastical had fallen into desuetude. This change was brought about to suit the improvements in architecture. At this time, magnificent churches were being built throughout the empire by Constantine, and the tenuity of the melodies in use became obviously unsuited for buildings of large dimensions. The sacred edifices required a greater volume of sound, and, therefore, a larger band of singers, to fill the vast arches and aisles of these enormous temples.

Here lies, then, the origin of our cathedral music. It is a development of that prevalent in the Church prior to the age of Constantine, while the latter seems identical, to some extent, with what we term parochial psalmody. These two, along with instrumental performances, e. g., voluntaries, comprehend all species of Church music. We propose, in what follows, to furnish our readers with a sketch of the rise and progress of these into the forms which they wear at present amongst us.

Though, of course, gradually verging towards it, yet Church music did not assume that definite form which terminated in the cathedral method, till the reign of Theodosius, A.D. 384. Its birthplace was the East; but from thence it was introduced into the