Riches

“My brethren, have not the faith of
our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord
of glory, with respect of persons,
For if there come unto your assembly a man with a gold ring, in
goodly apparel, and there come in
also a poor man in vile raiment:
and ye have respect to him that
weareth the gay clothing, and say
unto him,, Sit thou here in a good
place; and say to the poor, Stand
thou there, or sit here under -my
footstool: are ye not then partial
in yourselves, and are become
judges of evil thoughts? Hearken,
viy beloved brethren, Hath not God
chosen the poor of this world rich
in. faith, and heirs of the kingdom
which he hath promised to them
that love him /” — ST JAMES ii. 1-5.

/“”1TVHE same cause produces different effects

under different circumstances. Look, for

example, at volcanic action. As the higher we

rise in the air, though we approach the sun, it grows the colder; the deeper we descend into the bowels of the earth it grows the hotter, by something like a degree for each hundred feet; every fathom down being, in fact, six feet nearer the fire — nearer to that immense, central mass of burning matter, around which this green earth, where we build our houses and reap our harvests, lies like the shell of an egg around its contents; and which, once it burst out, will remove the doubts of sceptics, and supply fire enough for the flames of the last day. To this imprisoned power, struggling to escape, we probably owe the earthquakes that make the frame of nature tremble, as well as those volcanic phenomena, which, though all arising from the same cause, present so many different appearances: as in Iceland, where, preceded by a noise like thunder rolling underground, a vast column of hot water is suddenly projected to a great height into the air, amid discharges like artillery and clouds of snowy vapour; or as in one of the beautiful islands of the Pacific, where the mud of the soil is constantly boiling over the thin crust that there separates the surface of the ground from the fires below; or, as in the lofty ranges of the Andes, where flames and smoke are ever rising from what have been called the chimneys of the world — the tops of mountains that are wrapped in a mantle of perpetual snow.

As it is with such physical forces, so it is with the passions that rage and burn in human breasts; their expression varies with circumstances. It is affected by the period and condition of life. It is modified by the influence of the gospel and of civilisation, by the customs and the laws of different countries — human passions no more than the earth’s fiery contents exploding everywhere alike. The detracting word dropped of one who has injured you, the abuse bandied between two scolding women, the curse one rough and angry man hurls at another’s head, the sudden blow dealt by a boy in the playground on the cheek of his companion, are ebullitions of the same passion that used to place two men on the dewy ground, amid some peaceful, rural scene, to aim their bullets at each other’s hearts; and which still, in the south of Europe, steals with noiseless foot and coward steps on an unsuspecting enemy to plant the poignard in his bosom, and wipe the bloody steel with a grim smile of satisfied revenge.

Like revenge, the love of money, the thirst for gold, the inordinate desire for wealth, against which God’s Word raises some of its most awful warnings, presents itself under a variety of aspects. Proteus-like, it assumes sometimes one form, sometimes another; but in whatever form it appears a base, soul-destroying passion, it is accursed of God; insidious as it is fatal; one on which our Lord pronounces this decisive sentence, “Ye cannot serve God and Mammon.’* In such a country as ours, which owes its greatness to its commerce, whose ships plough the waters of every sea, whose manufactures clothe the natives of every land, where millions rise every morning to the sound of the factory-bell, and trade is carried on to an extent, and with an energy unexampled in the history of the world, we especially need to guard against the worship of money, the inordinate desire for its possession, giving to mere wealth the honour that belongs to moral worth. For this end, let us look at the way in which an undue regard to wealth appeared, according to the apostle St James, among the first Christians.

The church is met for worship; or rather perhaps to sit in judgment on a dispute between two contending parties, who, according to the directions of the apostles, have referred their difference to the decision of the church rather than of heathen judges. The court is constituted; the case is called; the clients enter. One is sumptuously attired; good living in his shining face, and wealth upon his back; the gold ring that glitters on his white, soft hand bespeaking his condition; he advances with pomp and dignity. But what is this other object that the same door admits? — a moving heap of rags. Hunger in his haggard cheek, sorrow in his sunken eye, his whole mien and bearing betraying a crushed and broken spirit; it is a poor man in vile raiment, with a starving wife and children perhaps at home. The law of God, in directing judges how to act in such circumstances, utters no uncertain sound. Its noble words are, “Ye shall not respect persons in judgment: ye shall hear the small as well as the great; ye shall not be afraid of the face of man.” That in one place; this in another: “Ye shall do no unrighteousness in judgment; thou shalt not respect the person of the poor, nor honour the person of the mighty; in righteousness shalt thou judge thy neighbour.” Thus spake God; and in the case put by St James, a right-minded judge would lean to neither side, but with steady hand hold the balance even — neither allowing pity for the poor man on the one hand, nor respect for wealth on the other; to sway his decision, to turn the scales. These noble and divine instructions, which contrast so strikingly with the old practice of Scotland, where it used to be said, “Show me the man, and I will tell you the law,” and deserve to be written in bright letters of gold on the walls of every court, were admirably embodied in the figure which the old Egyptians gave to justice. She was symbolised by a human form without hands — to indicate that judges should accept no bribe; and not without hands only, but sightless — to indicate that the judge is to know neither father nor mother, nor wife nor child, nor brother nor sister, nor slave nor sovereign, nor friend nor foe, when he occupies l6o RICHES.

the seat of justice. He is not to see the client, but only to hear the cause; and, uninfluenced either by fear or favour, to decide that upon its merits.

But in the assembly of which St James gives us a picture, the hideous form of Mammon sits enthroned above Christ and the law of God. Indicating their bias, and inflating the pride of wealth, neither, on the one hand, teaching the proud man that his lofty airs go for nothing there, and that their eyes are not to be dazzled by the flash of his ring; nor, on the other hand, telling the poor client to hold up his head like a man, and be assured that his vile raiment will not tempt them by an unjust judgment to defile the purity of their ermine, they invite the first to a place of honour, and say to the other, Stand back! stand there! or if you will sit, sit on the floor under my feet! — feet, some one might whisper, that shall trample on you because you happen not to be rich, but poor. Betraying by this conduct an undue regard to wealth, let them be beacons to warn us off a shore where many have made sad and unlooked-for shipwreck. Christ was poor; and let us not forget that poverty is the lot of many of the excellent ones of the earth; that if it comes not through our vices, it is the cup our Father has mingled for us; and that many of those on whom wealth looks down in haughty contempt, God has chosen to be rich in faith, and heirs of the kingdom which He hath promised to them that love Him.

Years ago, a trial took place in the highest judicial court of our country, which shook this kingdom to its centre, and drew on it the eyes of the world. A queen was on her trial. On that occasion, a great man, with the passions and power of the Crown arrayed against him, stood up boldly in her defence; and, confronting royalty as a rock confronts the surging sea, flung back the threats with which they attempted to deter him from his duty, saying, with defiant air and attitude, “An advocate is to know no person on earth but his client.” But a judge is not even to know the clients. He is to know nothing but the cause. It appears, however, that such judges did not preside in the court that incurred the censure of St James: — “My brethren,” he says, “have not the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory, with respect of persons. For if there come unto your assembly a man with a gold ring, in goodly apparel, and there come in also a poor man in vile raiment; and ye have respect to him that weareth the gay clothing, and say unto him, Sit thou here in a good place; and say to the poor, Stand thou there, or sit here under my footstool; are ye not then partial in yourselves?” In these words the apostle charges them with having respect of persons. Nor was it, strictly speaking, respect for persons these first Christians showed; it was something worse, meaner, baser still — it was respect merely for dress, attire, gay clothing, a gold ring. It was not moral worth that procured one of them a distinction which was denied to the other — it was but the wealth of which the raiment and the ring were tokens.

Here, then, in the very house of God, these Christians bowed the knee to Mammon; and, like the spaniel that licks the hand that beats it, they crouched to the power that smote, persecuted, and oppressed them. How mean that was! To what baseness will the love of money make men stoop!

The scene fires the apostle’s just indignation. It bursts out in these exclamations: — “Ye have despised the poor! Do not rich men oppress you? Do not they blaspheme that worthy name by which ye are called?” This injustice, viler than the poor man’s raiment — this cringing, crouching, creeping baseness, shows how the love of money, the inordinate regard for wealth, demeans men, demoralises them; and what need we, in this busy, trading, commercial country, have to guard against a passion that has enslaved the sovereign on the throne; corrupted the judge on the bench; seduced the priest at the altar; and which, almost more than any other passion, is so incompatible with piety, that the apostle St John says, “If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.”

This passion appears among us in the inordinate desire after riches.

What a scene of bustle, and hurry, and trouble, and toil we live in! It is not for bread to eat, and raiment to put on — nature’s wants are few and simple. It does not accord with the unambitious prayer of our Divine Teacher, Give us day by day our daily bread. As on the turf, where, abreast each other, with foaming bits, and panting sides, and distended nostrils, high-mettled horses strive which shall first reach the winning-post, so is that race for riches in which we see the law of God, the cross of Christ, the interests of the soul, the wellbeing of the body as well as of the soul, trampled under foot by the eager competitors. Were the crown of heaven, all sparkling with the gems of redemption, hung aloft on the goal, and were there but one crown to a crowd of candidates, people could not be more earnest, eager, bent upon their object. How they run, and sweat and toil, to the whip and spur of this master-passion! — not seldom meeting the fate of the poor race-horse, that, distancing his fellows, and reaching by wide and rapid strides the goal, drops dead in the moment of triumph. How many embitter, and how many shorten their life in pursuit of a wealth they live not to enjoy — leaving people, as they carry the rich man with parade and costly pomp to his grave, to moralise on his folly, and exclaim, Vanity, vanity, all is vanity!

This desire, which is so apt to grow into an incontrollable passion, has no warrant in Scripture. The Scriptures teach us to pray, and pray earnestly, to be saved, good, wise, holy, kind, lovers of God and man; but nowhere to be rich — and a man should never try to be what he cannot pray to be. Indeed, we are taught to pray, not for, but against riches. And so men pray; but how often, like one who rows a boat, do they look one way and pull another? It is not uncommon for people to say that ministers should not be rich; and some take good care, as far as they are concerned, that they shall not — muzzling the ox that treadeth out the corn. When pleading the cause of my poorer brethren, not seeking riches for them, but only a competency, and that those that serve at the altar should live by the altar, the response I met from one who “fared sumptuously every day,” was — Oh, ministers should not be rich; it is not good for them. But was Agur’s prayer intended only for the lips of ministers? On the contrary, I believe that riches were less dangerous in their hands than in those of most other men. Brought more than others in contact with the poor and needy, they would be more l66 RICHES.

likely to make a generous, and hedged round by the sacredness of their office, they would be less likely than many to make a vicious use of their wealth. At any rate, other men have as much need as the ministers of religion to pray with Agur, “Give me neither poverty nor riches,”

But some say, the tide of fortune flows in on us — the money comes unprayed for, and unsought. If so, if it flows in on you, then let it flow out from you in as full a stream. Be like yonder lake, that, refusing to be surcharged with water when thunders are pealing and lightnings are flashing among the dark hills, and a thousand foaming torrents leaping down their sides, pour a flood into its bosom, ere long pours forth a corresponding flood at its exit; and, giving to the earth as it gets from heaven, swells the river, that, rising on its banks and rushing from the glen, winds its bright and blessed way onward to the sea.

The desire for riches, while unscriptural, is, in many instances, in the highest degree irrational. Hoarding is a strange insanity. I discover divine wisdom in the hoarding habits of some animals; in the honey the bee stores up in waxen cells, and in the wealth of nuts the brisk and merry squirrel packs up in the hollow tree. Their supply of food is uncertain; and, with more than suffices for present wants, God teaches them through their instincts not to waste the bounties of nature, but lay them up for a time of need. And though it seems foolish in the dog who has a kind master, and gets his regular meals, yet it rather amuses us than otherwise to see him, under the influence of instincts which domestication has dulled rather than destroyed, steal away into the garden, and, cautiously looking round to see that he is unnoticed, scrape up the soil with his paws to bury a bone for future use. This hoarding is the natural habit of the animal — the true instinct of his wild life — of value to the dog. But for a man with ample means, possessing already more than he can require or use, to hoard up wealth — clothes when the poor are naked, food when the poor are hungry, money when others have not wherewithal to buy a meal, and children, to use the touching words of Scripture, are crying for bread, and their mothers have none to give them, is, to say nothing of its inhumanity, a species of madness. Cui bono? What l68 RICHES.

is gained by it? Nothing. Nothing can properly be called a man’s own but what he can use. There is no profit of it under the sun. God has no respect for persons; in His eyes wealth is not worth; and you may know how little God thinks of money by observing on what bad and contemptible characters He often bestows it. Forfeiting man’s- respect as well as His, the greedy, griping, grasping lose the shadow as well as the substance; despised by the great and detested by the humble, they live unloved, and die unmourned. Yet to that miserable end the craving for wealth brings us, unless we are kept by the grace of God. There is a witchery about money -making, as well as gambling, against which those who make it honestly, and use it well, and save only what is wise and prudent, cannot be too much on their guard. He who is saving money should look well to the saving of his soul. He is mounted on a steed which has often run away with its rider. He is sailing on the rim of a whirlpool which is apt to draw him in; and where, though the water seems smooth as oil, and placid as a lake, he may detect this fatal tendency — ay, and catch the distant roar of its devouring vortex. He is working at a machine which, without constant care, will draw in his finger; and after that his hand; and then his arm; till by and by spectators stand aghast to see his body whirled round, a bloody, mangled, lifeless mass. Make wise and prudent provision for the future; yet let it be your daily and most earnest prayer that God would keep you from forgetting the great future of eternity, or allowing carefulness for this world to grow into carelessness of the next — into that love of money which is the ruin of so many souls, and which the word of God declares to be the “root of all evil.”

This undue regard for wealth may be seen in the conduct of parents.

The foremost thing with them should be the spiritual and eternal interests of their children — otherwise the authors shall prove the curse of their being. Carry them in the arms of prayer to Christ. Seek not that they may be great, but good. Care not though their names are not in the temple of fame, if they are found in the Book of Life. Teach them to strive not so much for the honours of the school, or of their profession, as for the “honours that come from God only,” Train the branches upward; guide their aspirations heavenward; point them to the skies. Let their ambition rise above an easy or prosperous life, to a useful one. Teach them to spurn the maxims of the world, and live for others — loving and loved. What though they have a humble home on earth if they have a mansion above the stars; though they are poor in this world’s goods if they are rich in faith; though their road below be rough and flinty, if it conduct them to the cross of Calvary, and by that to the gate of heaven and the bosom of God.

Yet, alas! how often are children sacrificed to wealth? Crimes that were done at the altars of Moloch are repeated at the shrines of Mammon. To come down from generalities to matters of actual and every-day life, see in these, among many other things, the undue regard paid to wealth, and the gross neglect of higher interests.

Parents eagerly seek rich marriages for their daughters.

Wealth is weighed against worth; and in the estimation of many outweighs it. The happiness of children is cruelly sacrificed, or never consulted in these wretched money-matches. The only plain rule which Scripture lays down in regard to marriage is trodden in the dust. Not forbidding the bans where there are differences of rank, or fortune, or race, or colour; the apostle says, “Be not unequally yoked together with unbelievers.” Yet see the court paid to a man who has neither brains in his head, nor generosity in his heart, nor piety in his soul, but only money in his purse — the money, not the man, the true attraction. With hand and heart cruelly divorced, many a poor girl is sacrificed at the marriage altar. She wears chains of slavery in the gold she wears 1 Not less than yon dark negress who, rudely handled, stands blushing, or with swimming eyes fixed on her lover, weeps on the auction-block, this fair creature is sold for gold; not by a master but by her parents; not by heathens but by Christians; and in a land, too, where the soil boasts such liberty, that the bondsman who touches it is free. Forced, perhaps, to part with the true gem of a kind, true, attached, and loving heart for these dead things, the diamonds that, flashing on her attire, blind others’ eyes to the desolation within her soul, are the marks of her bondage. Compared with parents that sacrifice their children for money, a title, rank, estates, how noble the Hebrew chief! Jephthah sacrificed his daughter, but not for gold. He offered her up on the sacred altar of his country. Patriotism dictated, and piety demanded the sacrifice; he said, I have opened my mouth unto the Lord, and I cannot go back. Still, though animated by the purest motives, and sustained by the highest principles, it was in the bitterness of his heart, he stood over the gentle sufferer, meekly bending her head to the stroke, to cry, Alas, alas, my daughter! But the bitterness of that hour is not to be compared with the self-reproach and wretchedness of him who, sacrificing his child for money, has broken her heart; giving her to some ungodly man, has ruined her soul; and is left to cry in unavailing regrets, Alas, alas, my daughter!

The undue regard of wealth appears in the lucrative positions parents seek for their sons.

How and where, in what profession, business, town, country, their children will make most money, and find the surest, shortest road to fortune, is the only consideration with many — and the chief one with some whose Christian character might have warranted us to say, “We hope better things of you.” In this matter how may we ask of many unquestionably devout and pious parents, What do ye more than others? How rare is it, for instance, to find Christians in affluent circumstances educating a son for the ministry; like Samuel’s mother, dedicating a child to the service and house of God! Ever and anon the churches lift up a loud and urgent cry for more volunteers to storm the breaches God’s providence is making in the walls of Heathendom, for more missionaries to carry the cross to pagan lands, for more candidates to supply the lack of service at home; and all this, while other professions are overstocked, and Christian parents are sending off their sons by thousands every year to seek wealth beyond the wide seas, in inhospitable climes, and on heathen shores. Why is this so? It cannot be because the office of the ministry is not respectable. In influence and dignity, the pulpit yields to no place under the sun. Others hold their commission from the Sovereign, but the minister of the gospel holds his from the King of kings and Lord of lords; and fills an office of such dignity as in the eyes even of the world to impart a measure of respectability to its holder, though he may have no claim otherwise to respect. But it is not lucrative. There is the key to the mystery. It is usually a poor office; and pity ’tis ’tis poor! and thus, though Christ was poor, and made Himself poor to make us rich, those for whom He gave His blood, refuse Him their sons. Let Christians blush to read the story of the rude clansman who, after seeing six stalwart sons fall defending his chief, called for his seventh and last boy, his Benjamin, to fight and die with him in the noble but hopeless struggle.

In the profession of the ministry, it is true men may save souls; but in others, they will save money. In this they may win jewels for Christ’s crown, but in these they may hope to array wife and daughters in the glittering pride of jewellery. In training a son for this office, they will place him in circumstances the most favourable to virtue and piety; still, though removed far from a father’s care, and a mother’s prayers, and the means of grace, in secular occupations, in lands where he hears no Sabbath-bells, or amid the temptations of great cities, where no one cares for his soul, he may make a fortune — and so money carries it over the highest and holiest considerations. The youth is launched forth on the world. The helm is in the grasp of a feeble hand. The storm of temptation comes. His father’s parting prayer, his mother’s last tender look, and the holy recollections of home, still fresh in his mind, he makes an effort to hold on in his virtuous career; but by and by he gives up the unequal struggle, and with “youth at the prow and pleasure at the helm,” drives on to ruin — becomes a total wreck. What a fate for a parent to weep! What a sorrow for his life! As he recalls the image of the boy whom he sacrificed to the love of gold, how will remorse wring from his heart more than the bitterness of David’s cry, O my son Absalom! my son, my son Absalom! would God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my son!

The undue regard to wealth appears in the desire of parents to bequeath riches to their children.

If parents, without any respect to the spiritual, looked only to the temporal interests of their children, they would not be so anxious to leave them wealth. Few greater misfortunes could befall a youth than to be left a fortune. How would that event increase his danger; and, filling a father’s heart with new fears, cast a dark shadow over the hopes he had begun to cherish of his son! The world presents temptations enough to youth without that. It needs a steady foot and a cool head to stand on the edge of a dizzy cliff; a steadier hand than most young men possess to carry a full cup. With few, or almost no exceptions, they have a roaring sea of temptations to swim through; and to how many has their wealth proved a bag of gold, which a foolish parent’s hand has tied round the neck of the unhappy youth? We have watched their course, and seen their heads, after a brief struggle, go down beneath the wave; while those who had nothing but their own exertions and God’s blessing to depend on, finding in that emptiness a life-buoy, have struck out manfully for the land, and stood alive on the shore of a sea thickly strewn with the drowned bodies of others, to thank God that they had had a hard battle to fight, arid the yoke to bear in their youth. Look around and see who those are that stand on the heights of their profession, or business! With few exceptions, they are those whom riches did not tempt to be idle; who wrought under the spur of a sharp necessity; whose purses were lighter than their hearts; who, receiving little else from a father but a good education and an honourable name, had no portion of goods to spend “on harlots and riotous living” — hand over hand, by their own manful exertions, they have climbed to the positions of honour, affluence, or usefulness they fill.

Now, look on the other hand to the common — not universal, but common fate of those for whom anxious parents have laid up stores of wealth! In how many instances has it proved their ruin; Well and truly does the Psalmist say, “He heapeth up riches and knoweth not who shall gather them.” It is well he does not. He sleeps, but it might disturb him in his grave to see how recklessly squandered is all that he carefully gathered!

M that the portions he left are spent with the prodigal’s folly without being followed by the prodigal’s repentance; and that no inscription so describes his life and befits his tombstone, as — Vanity, vanity, and vexation of spirit! He has enriched his children; and ruined them. He sowed the wind, and they reap the whirlwind; and may use in hell the words of one who, mourning the dissensions that a fortune they succeeded to had bred among her brothers and sisters, the deplorable wrecks which it had made of youths once full of promise, exclaimed, as she wrung her hands — Oh, that wretched money! that wretched money!

Let us not be misunderstood. It is the duty of parents to make a prudent provision for their children, and against the accidents of life. An apostle, speaking of him who provides not for those of his own house, says, that he “is worse than an infidel, and has denied the faith.” That man certainly commits a crime against his children who rears them in the habits of affluent circumstances, and leaves them beggars at his death. Such conduct, however common, is inexcusable and cruel in the upper classes. And it is unwise and wrong in the humbler, not to make honey or hay when the sun shines; and stand prepared for days when the right hand has lost its cunning, and the brawny arm its strength, and the back that bore itself erect under the burden of life’s daily toil, bends beneath the weight of years. Only let money be kept in its own place. Its place is in your hands, not in your affections. Lodge it in the bank; but not in your heart — keep that for God. Gold is a good servant; but a bad, base, exacting, cruel, despotic master. Be on your guard; if it is not your servant, you must be its slave. Well does the Bible pronounce the love of it to be “the root of all evil.” It drew Lot into Sodom, from whose fiery ruin he escaped but by the skin of his teeth. Demas was an apostle, arid it made him an apostate. It turned Judas into a traitor, and, loading his name with eternal infamy, sank his soul into eternal’ perdition. Money cannot be safely made, or safely saved, but by those who through grace receive and use it as a gift from God; who would not give one red drop of a Saviour’s blood for all “l8o RICHES.

the gold of banks; who amid all other questions of profit and loss, are most impressed and most occupied with this, — What shall it profit a man though he gain the whole world, if he lose his own soul? What shall a man give in exchange for his soul?