Ruskin
declared that there is no wealth but life. We have outlived that. A
full bank account and an empty house--that is our modern wealth. The
rich flaunt their riches in a world seething with discontent. And the
aforetime quiescent masses now demand that Mammon should smile on them.
Society may perish, but they must have their full share in the largesse
of Mammon. On the altar of that god duty and patriotism are laid as
the meet offering. 'Great is Mammon,' is the burden of the praise of
our day. And what a god before whom to bow the knee!

It is only when I go on pilgrimage to-day to the grotto in the rock in
which the asses were stabled in Bethlehem and to the stall where the
Child is laid that I can realise the vulgarity and the meanness of
Mammon. Out of that manger there issued a power compared to which all
other influences that moulded men are as the rushlight to the sun; in
that stable lies the fountain out of which sprang the river that has
borne on its bosom for nineteen centuries all of beauty and of truth
and of love wherewith humanity has been blessed; and yet all that came
out of the direst poverty. Mammon had no smile for the greatest and
most radiant thing in all the world's history. Money secures at least
food and shelter, and it was because they had none that the innkeeper
shut them out. If they could have showed him a purse full of gold
pieces, he would soon have made room. And all the life of this Jesus
was woven after that pattern. The cheapest food sold then were
sparrows. It was because He was often sent to buy them that He knew
that two of them were sold in the market place for a farthing. The
patched garment is the symbol of poverty--or used to be! And He knew
all about garments being patched and patched until they were past
mending. At the eventide when the boy James brought a coat to be
mended He heard His mother say with a weary sigh: 'I have mended this
again and again: nobody can keep boys in decent clothes; so different
from girls; a new patch will just tear a bigger hole in the old.'
Often He saw His mother cast a half-farthing into the treasury, for she
had nought else. The tax-gatherer comes, and there isn't a coin to
pay. Jesus gave much, but He never gave any money, for He had none to
give. He was homeless for three years, deemed mad by His family, with
no place where to lay His head. A grave given in charity receives Him
at the last. The place of Jesus from th