Was there ever a period when such pains were taken as now with what we should eat and drink? Was there a date, even in the luxurious days of imperial Rome, when cooks commanded a better salary than clergymen, and more money was spent for liquor than all the machinery of government? Look at any of our great hotels, or well-established private mansions. What is the central spot to which the greatest care and expense are devoted? Evidently the dining room. No corner of the earth but is ransacked to find additional delicacies for the appetite. What vastly more attention is given to the stomach than the brain! Again. In the real centers of business, our homes, what is the great subject of thought? Marriage. A British writer states that the one object in the households of England is the eligible settlement of the sons and daughters at the hymeneal altar—this he declares to be the pivotal point of ambition and labor. Is it different here? And then look at our newspapers. The leading events of the day, with which every journal is full, of which the slightest particulars are conned with eagerness, are the marriages of Victoria’s son and of our President’s daughter. What crowds, what magnificence, what costly presents! Would it be wrong to say that the two foci of our social system to-day are the table and the altar? But if so, does it not recall to the Christian mind the startling fact that this very state of things is mentioned by the Saviour, as premonitions of his Second Advent? Hear what he says:— "As in the days that were before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the ark, and knew not until the flood came and took them all away, so shall the coming of the Son of Man be." Brethren, let us be ready.—Church Union.