part for
him, the endeavour to do for him what we would like to have the Father
of us all do for us all.

XIV

Men and Mammon

_Riches and Righteousness_
_Religion and Business_
_The Moral End of Money-Making_

_Better a sweet failure than a sour success._

_An itching palm causes a crook in the fingers._

_Many a moral squint comes from a money monocle._

_The fortunate people are those who believe they are._

_We are always building bridges for things with wings._

_The best way to wipe out a friendship is to sponge on it._

_Many a man thinks he is pious when he is only petrified._

_A little plain honesty is worth untold professional holiness._

_The religion that runs to fever usually evens up with chills._

_Nothing is easier than being benevolent with other people's money._

XIV

RICHES AND RIGHTEOUSNESS

Let no man take it, that the statement on the inaccessibility of heaven
to the rich involves the opposite, how easily shall they that have
nothing enter in. The people who have lived pulseless lives are apt to
point to their poverty as the proof of their piety. But righteousness
is neither a matter of riches nor of rags. The great Teacher glorifies
neither. The qualifications for citizenship in His kingdom strike
deeper than that.

His words have nothing to do with the bitter envy of the demagogue who
denounces those who have earned that for which he would not labour. He
measures men not by that they have but by that they are. He looks
through both the fine linen and the tattered rags to the man. Money
interests Him only as it affects character. The question of riches and
poverty is not a matter of housing and eating, but what a man does for
himself and his world with that which he has.

Riches of themselves do not bar a man from heaven; but they full often
eat into his heart, become of absorbing interest, and so effectually
and forever blind the inner vision to the best things. It is not that
heaven has shut its gates, but that the love of money, the selfishness,
born of cupidity, has paralyzed those spiritual senses by which he
might have found his way therein.

The possession of wealth is not a sin; to some it has come almost
without effort, even against their wills; but it does constitute one of
the most severe tests that can be set before a soul. It increases the
difficulties of the right life, because it enlarges so greatly the
responsibilities. The grea