In no instance did I find any better estimation of him in business circles; for his religion did not chasten the ardor of his selfish love of advantage in trade; nor make him more generous, nor more inclined to help or befriend the weak and the needy.  Twice I saw his action in the case of unhappy 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 received the sparkle of her gems.

“Brilliant as dew-drops in the morning sunbeams,” I remarked.