because man goeth to his long home, and the mourners go about the
streets. Think for yourselves. What would you wish your end to be--
lonely, unhappy, without the love, the respect, the care of your fellow-
men; or surrounded by friends who comfort your failing body and soul on
earth, and receive you at last into everlasting habitations?

Make friends, make friends against that day, whether or not you make them
out of the mammon of unrighteousness. If you have been unrighteous,
bring friends back to you, as the steward did, by being just and fair, by
confessing your faults freely, by doing your best to atone for them. And
if you have no share in the mammon of unrighteousness, still make
friends. Make them by truth and justice, make them by generosity and
usefulness. To ease every burden, and let the oppressed go free, to feed
the hungry, clothe the naked, and what the very poorest can do--comfort
the mourner; to nurse the sick, to visit the fatherless and widows in
their affliction, and so keep ourselves unspotted from the selfishness of
the world--This is that true Religion, acceptable in the sight of God the
Father--and happy he who has so served God. Happy for him, when he
begins to fail, to see round him attached hearts, and grateful faces,
hands ready to tend him, as he has tended others. And happier still to
remember that on the other side of the dark river of death are other
grateful faces, other loving hearts, ready to welcome him into
everlasting habitations--and among them, and above them all, one whose
form is as the Son of Man, full of all humanity Himself, and loving and
rewarding all humanity in His creatures, saying, "Inasmuch as ye did it
to one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto Me."



SERMON XLIII. THE RICH AND THE POOR