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(Sermon to business men.) All religions have their mysteries, and the worship of Mammon is no exception to this rule. Perhaps it would require a hierophant of Mammon to set forth properly the mysteries of this most mysterious of arts, which are quite as curious as any of the arts of ancient necromancy, or any of the mysteries of the ancient Greeks or Romans. The effect of those mysteries must have been disastrous upon the ancient worship, for, for a man to know that he was living by chicanery and deceit was for him to lose his own self-respect. In every age of the world's history, society has had no worse foe than a habitual humbug'. It is not an uncommon thing to talk about the humbugs of religion. I am not sure that it might not properly be a more common thing for Christian men to speak about the humbugs of commerce.

I. WHAT SHALL WE SAY ABOUT THESE CURIOUS ARTS?

1. It is coming to be regarded as a natural thing that there should be an unnatural and untruthful inflation of the market at one time, and then an equally unnatural and untruthful depression at another time; and men who call themselves business men actually lay themselves out to produce such artificial conditions. In other words, this is nothing more or less than a fashionable and a gentleman-like way of picking pockets. There are many men who steal besides those that pick pockets in the street. When a man induces a false conviction with regard to the value of an article, or depreciates it with a view to his own emolument, what is he doing? He is lying; and is making a confession that he is not a business man, because he cannot trust himself to do business with his compeers in commercial life on honourable terms.

2. Another curious art is practised by those most obliging persons who sell goods under cost price. And then, when you look behind the scenes and enter the secret arcanum of this god Mammon, and ask how it is possible, you make the discovery that it is in order that Mr. Smith may undersell Mr. Jones, so that when Jones is got out of the way, Smith can run up his prices to whatever he pleases. And this clever trick is called business. Endeavour to present to yourselves the moral condition of a man who deliberately plots the commercial overthrow of an honester man than himself, in order that he may get the trade that would naturally flow into that man's hands. No man can worship a god without running the risk of becoming as bad as the god he worships. "They that make them are like unto them."

3. It seems to me a very curious thing that in the same place the same article should be sold at half-a-dozen different prices. "Will you buy some tea of me?" said a commercial traveller to an old friend who kept a small shop. "Oh," he said, "thank you, but I can't do it, sir; I buy all my tea at one place and at one price." "But," said the other, "I see here marked up in your window all sorts of different prices. Surely there must be different kinds of tea." "Not a bit, my dear sir. I buy all my tea in the lump, at one and eightpence a pound, and then I put my tickets on it, and some passes for four-shilling tea, some for three and sixpence, and some for three shillings, and everybody is satisfied." Ingenious trick, isn't it? Quite worthy of those ancient necromancers and their wonderful books of mystery.

II. I WONDER WHAT ALL THESE TRICKS LOOK LIKE IN THE EYES OF HIM BEFORE WHOM WE ARE ALL GOING TO STAND BY AND BY? No, I don't think I wonder at all. Ah! is He gazing down upon man whom He has made in His own image, in order that He may raise him to Himself, and sees man stooping to this degraded condition? How the heart of the great Father must bleed and must needs yearn over us as He sees this deteriorating process going still forward in men whose business, instead of being a blessing to them, is their bane.

III. OUR TEXT BRINGS BEFORE US A VERY REMARKABLE TRANSACTION. I wish I could see it emulated in modern commerce. Some of the Ephesians were pursuing their commercial career and making money out of it. There comes into the town of Ephesus a stranger. This stranger preaches a new God, who is going to be the Judge of quick and dead, and that He offers Himself as the Saviour of all who will have Him. This stranger proclaims a higher morality, and tells the people that they will be better without their sins. And as the result of it, these professional men who had been making very large sums of money out of their books, made a great bonfire of them. Men of business, choose between your curious arts and your souls.

IV. WHAT IS IT THAT ENABLES THESE MEN TO TAKE THIS DECISIVE MEASURE? "Many of them that believed." They had found something better than the chicaneries of deceit, and hence they were content to renounce the hidden things of darkness, because there is something better than the hidden things of darkness — the open things of light, In the conscious apprehension of the one, they were content to turn their backs upon the other.

(W. Hay Aitken, M. A.)

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KJV: And many that believed came, and confessed, and shewed their deeds.

WEB: Many also of those who had believed came, confessing, and declaring their deeds.