On one of our pieces of money you find the head of a goddess, a poor inscription for an American coin; far better the inscription that the old Jews put upon the shekel, a pot of manna and an almond rod, alluding to the mercy and deliverance of God in their behalf in other days.  But how seldom it is that money is consecrated to Christ!  Instead of the man owning the money, the money owns the man.  It is evident, especially to those with whom they do business every day, that they have an idol, or that, having once forsaken the idol, they are now in search of it, far away from the house of God, in Rachel’s tent looking for the lost images.

One of the mighty men of India said to his servants:  “Go not near the cave in such a ravine.”  The servants talked the matter over, and said:  “There must be gold there, or certainly this mighty man would not warn us against going.”  They went, expecting to find a pile of gold; they rolled away the stone from the door of the cave, when a tiger sprang out upon them and devoured them.

Many a man in the search of gold has been craunched in the jaws of destruction.  Going out far away from the God whom they originally worshiped, they are seeking in the tent of Rachel, Laban’s lost images.

There are a great many Christians in this day renewing the idolatry of human opinion.  There was a time when they woke up to the folly of listening to what men said to them.  They soliloquized in this way:  “I have a God to worship, and I am responsible only to Him.  I must go straight on and do my whole duty, whether the world likes it or don’t like it;” and they turned a deaf ear to the fascinations of public applause.  After a while they did something very popular.  They had the popular ear and the popular heart.  Men approved them, and poured gentle words of flattery into their ear, and before they realized it they went into the search of that which they had given up, and were, with Laban, hunting in Rachel’s tent for the lost images.

Between eleven and twelve o’clock one June night, Gibbon, the great historian, finished his history.  Seated in a summer garden, he says that as he wrote the last line of that wonderful work he felt great satisfaction.  He closed the manuscript, walked out into the moonlight in the garden, and then, he said, he felt an indescribable melancholy come upon his soul at the thought that so soon he must leave all the fame that he would acquire by that manuscript.

The applause of this world is a very mean god to worship.  It is a Dagon that falls upon its worshipers and crushes them to death.  Alas for those who, fascinated by human applause, give up the service of the Lord God and go with Laban to hunt in Rachel’s tent for the lost images!

There are many Christians being sacrificed to appetite.  There was a time when they said:  “I will not surrender to evil appetites.”  For a while they seemed to break away from all the allurements by which they were surrounded, but sometimes they felt that they were living upon a severe regimen.  They said:  “After all, I will go back to my old bondage;” and they fell away from the house of God, and fell away from respectability, and fell away for ever.