distinctly expresses this:  “Behold I am at the point to die, and what shall my birthright profit me?” He might never live to enjoy his birthright; but the pottage was before him, present, certain, there.

Now, observe the utter powerlessness of mere preaching to cope with this tyrannical power of the present.  Forty thousand pulpits throughout the land this day, will declaim against the vanity of riches, the uncertainty of life, the sin of worldliness—­against the gambling spirit of human nature; I ask what impression will be produced by those forty thousand harangues?  In every congregation it is reducible to a certainty that, before a year has passed, some will be numbered with the dead.  Every man knows this, but he thinks the chances are that it will not be himself; he feels it a solemn thing for Humanity generally—­but for himself there is more than a chance.  Upon this chance he plays away life.

It is so with the child:  you tell him of the consequences of to-day’s idleness—­but the sun is shining brightly, and he cannot sacrifice to-day’s pleasure, although he knows the disgrace it will bring to-morrow.  So it is with the intemperate man:  he says—­“Sufficient unto the day is the evil, and the good thereof; let me have my portion now.”  So that one great secret of the world’s victory lies in the mighty power of saying “Now.”

 2.  The tyranny of the sensual.

I call it tyranny, because the evidences of the senses are all powerful, in spite of the protestations of the reason.  In vain you try to persuade the child that he is moving, and not the trees which seem to flit past the carriage—­in vain we remind ourselves that this apparently solid earth on which we stand, and which seems so immoveable, is in reality flying through the regions of space with an inconceivable rapidity—­in vain philosophers would persuade us that the colour which the eye beholds, resides not in the object itself, but in our own perception; we are victims of the apparent, and the verdict of the senses is taken instead of the verdict of the reason.

Precisely so is it with the enjoyments of the world.  The man who died yesterday, and whom the world called a successful man—­for what did he live?—­He lived for this world—­he gained this world.  Houses, lands, name, position in society—­all that earth could give of enjoyments—­he had:  he was the man of whom the Redeemer said that his thoughts were occupied in planning how to pull down his barns and build greater.  We hear men complain of the sordid love of gold, but gold is merely a medium of exchange for other things:  gold is land, titles, name, comfort—­all that the world can give.  If the world be all, it is wise to live for gold.  There may be some little difference in the degree of degradation in different forms of worldliness; it is possible that the ambitious man who lives for power is somewhat