The Exchange
“He that loveth silver shall not be satisfied with silver.”
THIS passage describes the vanity of riches. With the enjoyments of frugal industry it contrasts the woes of wealth. Looking up from that condition on which Solomon looked down, it may help to reconcile us to our lot, if we remember how the most opulent of princes envied it.
1. In all grades of society human subsistence is very much the same. “The profit of the earth is for all; the king himself is served by the field,”’ “What hath the wise more than the fool?” Even princes are not fed with ambrosia, nor do poets subsist on asphodel. Bread and water, the produce of the flocks and the herds, and a few homely vegetables, form the staple of his food who can lay the globe under tribute; and these essentials of healthful existence are within the attainment of ordinary industry. “The profit of the earth is for all.”
2. When a man begins to amass money, he begins to feed an appetite which nothing can appease, and which its proper food will only render fiercer. “He that loveth silver shall not be satisfied with silver.” To greed there may be “increase,” but no increase can ever be “abundance.” For, could you change all the pebbles on the beach into minted money, or conjure into bank-notes all the leaves of the forest; nay, could you transmute the solid earth into a single lump of gold, and drop it into the gaping mouth of avarice, it would only be a crumb of transient comfort, a cordial drop enabling it to cry a little louder, Give, give. Therefore, happy they who have never got enough to awaken the accumulating passion, and who, feeling that food and raiment are the utmost to which they can aspire, are therewith content.
3. It is another consideration which should reconcile us to the want of wealth: that, as abundance grows, so grow the consumers, and of riches less perishable, the proprietor enjoys no more than the mere spectator. “When goods increase, they arc increased that eat them; and what good is there to the owners thereof, saving the beholding of them with their eyes?” It is so far well that rank involves a retinue, and that no man can be so selfishly sumptuous but that his luxury gives employment and subsistence to others. On the other hand, it is also well that riches cannot retain in exclusive monopoly the pleasures they procure. A rich man buys a picture or a statue, and he is proud to think that his mansion is adorned with such a famous masterpiece. But a poor man comes and looks at it, and, because he has the aesthetic insight, in a few minutes he is conscious of more astonishment and pleasure than the dull proprietor has experienced in half a century. Or, a rich man lays out a park or a garden, and, except the diversion of planning and remodel ling, he has derived from it little enjoyment; but some bright morning a holiday student or a townpent tourist comes, and when he leaves he carries with him a freight of life-long recollections. The porter at the gates should have orders to intercept such appropriating sight-seers; for, though they leave the canvas on the walls, and the marble in the gallery, — though they leave the flowers in the vases, and the trees in the forest, they have carried off the glory and the gladness; their bibulous eyes have drunk a delectation, and all their senses have absorbed a joy for which the owner vainly pays his heavy yearly ransom.
4. Amongst the pleasures of obscurity, or rather of occupation, the next noticed is sound slumber. “The sleep of a labouring man is sweet, whether he eat little or much; but the abundance of the rich will not suffer him to sleep.” Sometimes the wealthy would be the better for a taste of poverty; it would reveal to them their privileges. But if the poor could get a taste of opulence, it would reveal to them strange luxuries in lowliness. Fevered with late hours and false excitement, or scared by visions the righteous recompense of gluttonous excess, or with breath suppressed and palpitating heart list ing the fancied footsteps of the robber, grandeur often pays a nightly penance for the triumph of the day. As a king expresses it, who could sympathise with Solomon: —
“How many thousands of my poorest subjects Are at this hour asleep! — Sleep, gentle sleep! Nature’s soft nurse, how have I frighted thee, That thou no more wilt weigh my eyelids down, And steep my senses in forgetfulness! Why rather, sleep, liest thou in smoky cribs, Upon uneasy pallets stretching thee, And hush’d with buzzing night-flies to thy slumber, Than in the perfum’d chambers of the great, Under the canopies of costly state, And lull’d with sounds of sweetest melody? Then, happy, lowly clown! Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.” *
5. Wealth is often the ruin of its possessor. It is “kept for the owner to his hurt.” Like that King of Cyprus who made himself so rich that he became a tempting spoil, and who, rather than lose his treasures, embarked them in perforated ships; but, wanting courage to draw the plugs, ventured back to land and lost both his money and his life: f so a fortune is a great perplexity to its owner, and is
* Henry IV., Second part.
t Procul dubio hie non possedit divitias, sed a divitiis possessus est; titulo rex insula?, animo pecunioe miserabilemancipium. — Valerius Muximus, lib. ix. cap. 4.
no defence in times of danger. And very often, by enabling him to procure all that heart can wish, it pierces him through with many sorrows. Ministering to the lust of the eye, the lust of the flesh, and the pride of life, misdirected opulence has ruined many both in soul and body.
6. Nor is it a small vexation to have accumulated a fortune, and when expecting to transmit it to some favourite child, to find it suddenly swept away. (Vers. 14 — 16.) There is now the son, but where is the sumptuous mansion? Here is the heir, but where is the vaunted heritage?
7. Last of all, are the infirmity and fretfulness which are the frequent companions of wealth. “All his days also he eats in darkness, and suffers anxiety arid peevishness along with sickness.” You pass a stately mansion, and as the powdered menials are closing the shutters of the brilliant room, and you see the sumptuous table spread and the fire-light Hashing on vessels of gold and vessels of silver, perhaps no pang of envy pricks your bosom, but a glow of gratulation for a moment fills it: Happy people who tread carpets so soft, and who swim through halls so splendid! But, some future day, when the candles are lighted and the curtains drawn in that selfsame apartment, it is your lot to be within; and as the invalid owner is wheeled to his place at the table, and as dainties are handed round of which he dares not taste, and as the guests interchange cold courtesy, and all is so stiff and so common-place, and so heartlessly grand, — your fancy cannot help flying off to some humbler spot with which you are more familiar, and “where quiet with contentment makes her home.” Nay, how curious the contrast could the thoughts be read which sometimes cross one another! That ragged urchin who opened the common-gate, and let the silvery chariot through, — oh,” what a phantom of delight” the lady looked as in clouds of cushions and on a firmament of ultramarine she floated away! What a golden house she must have come from, and what a happy thing to be borne about from place to place in such a carriage, as easy as a bird and as brilliant as a queen! But, little boy, that lady looked at you. As she passed she noticed your ruddy cheeks, and she envied you. That glittering chariot was carrying what you do not know — a broken heart; and death-stricken and world-weary, as she looked at you, she thought, How pleasant to have lived amongst the blossomed May-trees on this common’s edge, and never known the falsehoods of fashion and the evil ways of the world!
We have glanced at the sorrows of the rich; some will expect that we should now descant on the sinfulness of riches. And a certain class of religionists, misunderstanding the Saviour’s precept, “Lay not up for yourselves treasures on earth,” have spoken of money as if it were a malignant principle, and have canonized poverty as a Christian grace. Fully carried out, this theory would prohibit the flagon of oil and the barrel of meal, and would reduce us all to the widow’s cruse and handful; — for it makes little difference whether the hoard be in kind, or packed up in the portable form of money. It would justify the life of the anchorite who has no funded property except the roots in the ground and the nuts on the trees; and it would suit very well such a state of society as Israel spent in the desert, when no skill could secure a week’s manna beforehand, and when the same pair of shoes lasted forty years. But as it was not for a world of anchorites or ascetics, — as it was not for a society on which the clouds should rain miraculous supplies that the Saviour was legis lating, — his words must have another meaning. And what is that? Live by faith. Look forward: look upward. Let nothing temporal be your treasure. Whether your abode be a hut or a castle, think only of the Father’s house as your enduring mansion. Whether your friends be high or low, coarse or refined, think only of just men made per feet as your permanent associates. And whether your possessions be great or small, think only of the joys at God’s right hand as your eternal treasure. Lead a life disentangled and expedite — setting your affections on things above, and never so clinging to the things temporal as to lose the things eternal.
Translated into its equivalent, money just means food and clothing, and a salubrious dwelling. It means instructive books, and rational recreation.
It means freedom from anxiety, and leisure for personal improvement. It means the education of one’s children, and the power of doing good to others. And to inveigh against it, as if it were intrinsically sinful, is as fanatical as it would be to inveigh against the bread and the raiment, the books and the Bibles, which the money procures. It would be to stultify all those precepts which tell us to provide things honest in the sight of all men; to do good and to communicate; to help forward destitute saints after a godly sort; to make friends of the unrighteous mammon.
And as there is nothing in the Bible to prohibit the acquirement of wealth, there is much to guide us in its right bestowment. Using but not abusing God’s bounties, the Christian avoids both the wasteful and the penurious extremes, and is neither a miser nor a spendthrift. With that most elastic and enlightened disciple, who knew so well how to be abased and how to abound, the believer can say, “I have learned in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content. Everywhere and in all things, I am instructed, both to be full and to be hungiy, both to abound and suffer need. I can do all things through Christ who strengtheneth me.”
It was a sultry day and an avaricious old man who had hoarded a large amount, was toiling away and wasting his little remaining strength, when a heavenly apparition stood before him. “I am Solomon,” it said, with a friendly voice; “what are you doing?” “If you are Solomon,” answered the old man, “how can you ask? When I was young you sent me to the ant, and told me to consider her ways; arid from her I learned to be industrious and gather stores.” “You have only half learned your lesson,” replied the spirit; “go once more to the ant, and learn to rest the winter of your years and enjoy your collected treasures.”* And this lesson of moderate but cheerful spending, nothing teaches so effectually as the Gospel. Reminding the believer that the life is more than meat, and the body more than raiment, it also suggests to him that meat and raiment are more than money; and by saving him from the idolatry of wealth, it emboldens him to use it: so that far from feeling impoverished when it is converted into some worthy equivalent, he can use with thankfulness the gifts which his Heavenly Father sends him. Within the bounds of temperance and forethought, he subscribes to the sentiment of our text, “It is good and comely to eat and to drink, and to enjoy the good of one’s labour; for the power to eat thereof and to take his portion is itself the gift of God.”
But Christianity teaches a lesson higher still. “Remembering the words of the Lord Jesus, how he said, It is more blessed to give than to receive,” the true disciple will value wealth chiefly as he can spend it on objects dear to his dear Lord. To him money is a talent and a trust; and he will feel it a * Lessing’s Fables.
line thing to have a fortune, because it enables him to do something notable for some noble end. And whether, like Granville Sharpe, he spends it in pleading the cause of the oppressed and the friendless; or, like Howard, devotes it to reclaim the most depraved and degraded; or, like Simeon, purchases advowsons in order to appoint faithful pastors; or, like Thomas Wilson, multiplies places of worship in a crowded metropolis; there is no fortune which brings to its possessor such a return of solid satisfaction as that which is converted into Christian philanthropy. Our houses tumble down; our monuments decay; our equipages grow frail and shabby. But it is a fine thing to have a fortune, and so be able to give a grand impulse to some important cause. It is a happy thing to have wealth enough to set fairly afloat an emancipation movement or a prison reform. It is a noble thing to be rich enough to provide Gospel ordinances for ten thousand people in a vast and world- wielding capital. It is a blessed thing to be “a man to whom God has not only given riches and wealth,” but so large a heart, — so beneficent, so brotherly, that his fruition of his fortune is as wide as the thousands who share it, and the reversion as secure as the heaven in which it is treasured,
December 1, 1850.