proceed. Food, clothing, and money are inanimate effects; there is in them no life, no power except that with which we invest them. They are without vice and virtue and can neither bless nor harm. Even the body which men believe to be themselves, to which they pander, and which they long to keep, is constantly being yielded up to the dust, it is ever changing. But the higher elements of character are life itself; and to practise these, to trust them, and to live. entirely in them, constitute the Kingdom of Heaven.
The man who says, “I will first of all earn a competence and secure a good position in life, and then give my mind to these higher things,” does not understand these higher things and does not believe them to be higher; if he did, it would not be possible for him to neglect them. He believes the material excrescences of life to be the higher, and therefore seeks them first. He believes money, clothing, and position to be of vast and essential importance, righteousness and truth to be
