A MERCHANT was celebrating the marriage of his daughter. While they were enjoying themselves above, he chanced to go to the basement hall below, where he met a servant carrying a lighted candle without a candlestick. She passed on to the cellar for wood, and returned quickly without the candle. The merchant suddenly remembered that during the day several barrels of gunpowder had been placed in the cellar, one of which had been opened. Inquiring what she had done with the candle, to his awful amazement, her reply was that, being unable to carry it with the fuel, she had set it in a barrel of “black sand” in the cellar. He flew to the spot. A long, red snuff was just ready to fall from the wick into the mass of powder, when, with great presence of mind, placing a hand on each side of the candle, and making his hands meet at the top over the wick, he safely removed it from the barrel. At first he smiled at his previous fear, but the reaction was so great that it was weeks ere he recovered from the shock which his nerves sustained in that terrible trial. There are candles in many a barrel of gunpowder to-day. Many homes have been blown to ruins by them. There is a candle in the cellar of the wine-bibber. It burns brighter with the added fuel of every cup he drains, and, ere he is aware, all his hopes for this world and the next will be blown up with a ruin more terrible than any destruction that gunpowder may bring. There is a candle in the cellar of the liquor-dealer, burning slowly but surely. He who is dealing death to others will be startled by a sudden blasting of his own peace, when the wrath of God, restrained no longer, shall fall upon him in a moment. “Every way of a man is right in his own eyes; but the Lord pondereth the hearts.” “He that by usury and unjust gains increaseth his substance, shall gather it for him that will pity the poor.” The man who is willfully destroying himself may be deluded, and see no danger; the man who is destroying others may say, I do not see it; but the eyes which ponder both their ways see, not only the evil, but the sudden “destruction” which is before them if they do not speedily repent and reform. See to it that no righteous anger burn against you. See to it that no burning candle in your cellar is endangering you.—Sel.