It was in fact because they found their own power and place threatened that the Jewish authorities were so determined on our Lord’s death.  Their sin from this point of view was the sin of covetousness.  This sin reaches its highest point when it is greed for power over other men’s lives and destinies, when it is ready to sacrifice the lives of others in order to gain or maintain its ends.  In this broad sense it is the most socially destructive of sins.  The wars of the world for these many years have been wars for commercial supremacy.  The world is being continually exploited by commercial enterprises which will stop at nothing to gain their ends.  Some day a history of the last two hundred years will be written which will tell the story of the commercial expansion of the world we call civilised, and it will be the most horrible book that has ever been written.  It will contain the story of the Spanish colonisation of America.  It will contain the history of the slave trade.  It will contain the history of the Belgian Congo, and of the rubber industry in South America.  It will contain the history of the American Indian and of the opium trade of India—­and of many like things.

But while we shudder at the world-torturing ways of the pursuit of wealth, of the world-wide seeking of money and power, we need not forget that the sin of covetousness is as common as any sin can be.  It is so common and so subtle that it is almost impossible to know how far one is a victim of it.  It is deliberately taught to us as children under the guise of thrift, which if it be a virtue is certainly one that the saints have overlooked.  We are constantly called on to strike a balance between what are the proper needs of life and what is an improper concentration of attention upon ourselves.  Waste of money, like waste of any other energy, is a sin; but it is a very nice question as to what is waste.  I think it a pretty safe rule to give expenditure the benefit of the doubt when it is for others, and to deny it when it is for self.

However, I imagine that those who are conscientiously trying to conduct their lives as the children of God will have little difficulty in this matter.  The real trouble is not in the matter of expenditure but in the matter of gain.  The ethics of business are very far from being the ethics of the Gospel, and we are often frankly told by those engaged in business that it cannot be successfully conducted on the basis of the ethics of the Gospel, That it is not so conducted is sufficiently obvious from a cursory scanning of the advertising columns of any newspaper or magazine.  The ideal of the business world is success.  Naturally, one cannot carry on an unsuccessful business, but need it be success by all means and to all extents?  Are there no limits to the methods by which business is to be pushed, except legal limits?  If there is no room for Christian ethics in the business world there can be but one end; competitive business