370 FEEDING. 



bee returns, from its happy rovings amid " the budding honey 

 flowers, and sweetly breathing fields." 



Just so, has many a pilgrim from the golden shores of 

 California and Australia, returned ; enfeebled in body and 

 mind, bankrupt often in character and happiness, if not in 

 purse, and unfitted in every way, for the calm and sober 

 pursuits of common industry ; while thousands, yes, and 

 tens of thousands too, shall never more behold their once 

 happy homes. Bibles and Sabbaths, altars and firesides, 

 parents and friends, wife and children, how often have all 

 these been wantonly abandoned, in the accursed greed for 

 gain, by those who were prosperous, and might have been 

 happy, at home, but who wandered from its sacred precincts, 

 only because they were determined to make the possession 

 of wealth, the chief object of life, and whose bones now 

 lie amid the coral reefs of the ocean, or moulder in the 

 howling wastes of the " overland passage ;" just as the 

 bones of the unbelieving Israelites whitened the sanda of 

 the desert. Of those who have reached the "land of" 

 golden " promise," how many have died in despair, or worse 

 still, are living so besotted by vice, so lost to all power of 

 virtuous resolutions, that they shall never more see the happy 

 homes from which they so thoughtlessly wandered, never 

 more hear the soft accents of loving friends ; never again wor- 

 ship God, in a peaceful Sanctuary, or behold again an opened 

 Bible ! 



"Gold! Gold! Gold! Gold! 

 Bright and yellow, hard and cold, 

 Molten, graven, hammer'd, and roU'd ; 

 Heavy to get, and light to hold ; 

 Hoarded, barter'd, bought, and sold, 

 Stolen, borrow'd, squander'd, doled : 

 Spurn'd by the young, but hugg'd by the old 

 To the very verge of the churchyard mould ; 



