This is not mere “curb-stone rhetoric”; I speak the words of soberness and truth.  Would that they in whose blood the “narrowing lust of gold” has begun to burn might be sobered by them!  In the name of Jesus of Nazareth, and of all the noblest of the sons of men, let us deny and defy the sordid traditions of mammon; let us make it plain that we at least do not believe “the wealthiest man among us is the best.”  “Godliness with contentment,” said the apostle, “is great gain;” and though these are not the only worthy ends of human effort, yet he who has made them his has secured for himself a treasure which faileth not, which will endure when the gilded toys for which men strive and sweat are dust and ashes.

It is further worthy of note that it was always the rich rather than the poor whom Christ pitied.  He was sorry for Lazarus; He was still more sorry for Dives.  “Blessed are ye poor....  Woe unto you that are rich.”  This two-fold note sounds through all Christ’s teaching.  And the reason is not far to seek.  As Jesus looked on life, He saw how the passionate quest for gold was starving all the higher ideals of life.  Men were concentrating their souls on pence till they could think of nothing else.  For mammon’s sake they were turning away from the kingdom of heaven.  The spirit of covetousness was breaking the peace of households, setting brother against brother, making men hard and fierce and relentless.  Under its hot breath the fairest growths of the spirit were drooping and ready to die.  The familiar “poor but pious” which meets us so often in a certain type of biography could never have found a place on the lips of Jesus.  “Rich but pious” would have been far truer to the facts of life as He saw them.  “The ground of a certain rich man brought forth plentifully,” and after that he could think of nothing but barns:  there was no room for God in his life.  “The Pharisees who were lovers of money heard these things; and they scoffed at Him;” of course, what could their jaundiced eyes see in Jesus?  And even to one of whom it is written that Jesus, “looking upon him loved him,” his great possessions proved a magnet stronger than the call of Christ.  It was Emerson, I think, who said that the worst thing about money is that it so often costs so much.  To take heed that we do not pay too dearly for it, is the warning which comes to us from every page of the life of Jesus.  Are there none of us who need the warning?  “Ye cannot serve God and mammon;” we know it, and that we may the better serve mammon, we are sacrificing God and conscience on mammon’s unholy altars.  And to-day, perhaps, we are content that it should be so.  But will our satisfaction last?  Shall we be as pleased with the bargain to-morrow and the day after as we think we are to-day?  And when our last day comes—­what?  “Forefancy your deathbed,” said Samuel Rutherford; and though the counsel ill fits the mood of men in their youth and strength, it is surely well sometimes to