Christians wandering over the earth like sheep having no shepherd, isolated from their brethren, dwelling alone—­however frequent this spectacle now—­is not often witnessed in the New Testament.  There they congregated in churches.  But this experiment of isolation is most perilous to the individual, and a prodigal expenditure of the wealth of the church, which has souls for her hire.  It is true that a few persons become centers of attraction to new churches that grow up around them; but very many are lost in the great whirlpool of this world’s strife.

What, then, is the remedy?  Evidently this:  Jesus accepts no divided empire in the human heart.  He will have all or nothing.  The Church of Christ, the cause of Christ, the people of Christ—­these must be the centers of attraction to which the heart of the Christian turns with all the enthusiasm with which an Eastern idolater bows before the shrine of his idol.  In return for such devotion Jesus gives to his people every imaginable blessing.  Wealth, power, dominion, science, civilization, genius, learning, power over the elements of nature, and insight into its magnitude, do now belong to the Lord’s people in Europe and America as they never belonged to any people before.  Yet all these must be laid at Jesus’ feet before he will make the returning prodigal the recipient of his love.  Everything must be subordinated to our religion.

Since the almighty dollar has become the touch-stone by which everything is to be decided, I assert that this is a good speculation:  secure a neighborhood homogeneous and not heterogeneous.  Let its tendencies be favorable to temperance, education and religion, and in doing so a man will have added fifty per cent, to the selling value of his property.  The present thrift, wealth, genius, enterprise and intelligence of the people of the New England States is the legitimate outworking of the training bestowed on their sons by the stern, old Puritans that first peopled these inhospitable shores.

But all temporal and earthly considerations disappear, as fade the stars at the approach of day, when we consider that measureless ruin, that gulf of everlasting despair, that voiceless woe, into which the emigrant may sink himself and family by locating in a profligate, dissipated or irreligious neighborhood, or in a community wholly swallowed up in the love of money, or absorbed in the questions, What shall we eat, or what shall we drink, or wherewithal shall we be clothed?  What home on the beautiful prairies, what treasures of fine water and good timber, what corner lots, what property in town or country, can equal in value the guardianship of our Lord, the indwelling of God’s good Spirit, the approval of a good conscience, the smiles of angels and the inheritance of a home in heaven?  Let no man, therefore, fall into the folly—­the unspeakable folly—­of subordinating his spiritual and eternal interests to his temporal welfare.  “Seek ye God and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added.”