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VI.

All this I have said by way of illustrating and emphasising the gospel conception of manhood as the wealth of our people. Manhood, not money, is the standard; distinctly not money. Just for the moment, think how gross the popular conception of wealth is. "This man has money, houses, lands, and other possessions. He is wealthy. Ah! would not Australia be a grand country if every man in it had such potency of wealth? If we were all rich we should all be happy." So many are foolish enough to talk in this fashion. They do not think, they do not realise, what a reeking desolation Australia would be if their dreams of riches could materialise. The money lust is a chief curse, if not the chief curse, of our time. The madness of a nightmare befouls the waking hours of the day. This money lust is a cruel demon. To it we rightly attribute the heartless abuses of the competitive system of commerce—abuses which grind the human being till he sweats blood. "Commerce is war," says one. "Business is robbery," says another. "I am after dividends all the time," says a third. Thus and thus men in their selfish madness speak. Business is business; and religion is outside of it; philanthropy is outside of it. But why stop here? Why not add, man-hood is outside of it?

One of the most evident outgrowths of the money lust is seen in the depraved sensuality of the over-rich. Through the apotheosis of wealth, corruptions of the basest sort eat the soul of good out of man. The sore-tried powers of invention fail in the quest of fresh pleasures and beguiling excitement, but the ponderous staleness of wealth remains—a woeful object. A marble mausoleum does not redeem an unprofitable life.

To the money lust we attribute the vile dishonesty which infests so many mines, factories, and business establishments. There you have inspectors, detectives, and searchers, check upon check, precaution upon precaution, watch upon watch, all to prevent the leakage caused by the page 11 borings of this canker-worm. Where money rules, dishonesty has a marketable value. And the cynic chuckles over the ancient insult to human integrity, that every man has his price.

It is the money-lust that gives vitality to the huge insanity of gambling, a vice which knows every nook and cranny of deceit, laughs at law, and defies the strictest scrutiny of the police.

It is the money-lust that makes home-life bankrupt, thus destroying a sacred institution which has in it the assured promise of the best and most abundant blessings for mankind.

And yet there are those who exalt silver and gold to the loftiest position as the standard of civilised prosperity—lucre and not manhood. But the Gospel of Jesus Christ resolutely stands by manhood.

Even if we consider material products as the main substance of national wealth, the perfecting of man's moral integrity would assure not less wealth, but more. The time and material now wasted through idleness, carelessness, inefficiency, and ignorance would be saved. Through equitable dealing the products of skill and labour, of expert knowledge and business facilities, would be more generously distributed. The comforts obtainable by money, instead of being crowded round the few in superfluity and dissipated in criminal wastefulness, would be shared by the many. Common-sense cannot fail to see that if those who handle capital, and those who are wage-earners or sharers in profit, were alike animated by the spirit of the gospel, the present demoralising agitations and conflicts must cease; the excess of riches here, and of poverty there, the gluttony of self-indulgence in high places, disease, bitterness of soul, and despair in obscure places, must come to an end.