It should never cease to be remembered by those who are drawn to pleasant and ennobling studies, and who find in them great delight, as well as by those who are watching these expanding minds with special interest, that religion is the first thing—that devotion to the service of God is the highest possible pursuit of any man. The tendency to subordinate this first great duty, this highest of pursuits, to anything else, however good or fair, is wrong and must be fatal in its results. Christ will not take the second place in the affections of any heart. His service should not be postponed for any other service, or be made secondary to any other; and he will judge as strictly, and condemn as sternly, the man of literary tastes and accomplishments, who found in these things reasons for neglecting his gracious gospel, and abjuring his blessed service, as he will the man who turned away from him to find his pleasure in the wine-cup, or the heaping together of treasures of silver and gold. It will be a sad record to come forth, when the books of the scholars are consuming—yea, when many of the sciences which men pursued with so much avidity are disappearing, and the glory of all literature is paling before a new glory—the glory of Christ's great redemption—it will be a sad record to find written then, of all the impressions which should have made us solemn and thoughtful, all the fears which should have startled us, and all the hopes which should have led us onward toward a higher and purer world, the simple words—"Overlaid by literature."—Presbyterian.