ngs.' Now, I do not quite
believe them. I have seldom seen the man who cheated his neighbour,
who would not cheat his own brother if he had a chance: but so they
say. And, if they be religious people, they will quote Scripture,
and say,--Ah! it is the fault of the unrighteous mammon; and, in
dealing with the unrighteous mammon, we cannot help these little
failings, and so forth: till they seem to have two quite different
rules of right and wrong; one for the saving of their own souls,
which they keep to when they are hearing sermons, and reading good
books; and the other for money, which they keep to when they have to
pay their debts or transact business.

Now, my dear friends, be not deceived: God is not mocked. God
tempts no man. Man tempts himself by his own lusts and passions.
God does not tempt us when he gives us money, puts us in the way of
earning money, or spending money. Money is not bad in itself;
wealth is not bad in itself. If mammon be unrighteous, we make
money into mammon, when we make an idol of it, and worship it more
than God's law of right and justice. We make it unrighteous, by
being unrighteous, and unjust ourselves.

Money is good; for money stands for capital; for money's worth; for
houses, land, food, clothes, all that man can make; and they stand
for labour, employment, wages; and they stand for human beings, for
the bodily life of man. Without wealth, where should we be now? If
God had not given to man the power of producing wealth, where should
we be now? Not here. Four-fifths of us would not have been alive
at all. Instead of eight hundred people in this parish, all more or
less well off, there would be, perhaps, one hundred--perhaps far
less, living miserably on game and roots. Instead of thirty
millions of civilized people in Great Britain, there would be
perhaps some two or three millions of savages. Money, I say, stands
for the lives of human beings. Therefore money is good; an
ordinance and a gift of God; as it is written, 'It is God that
giveth the power to get wealth.' But, like every other good gift of
God, we may use it as a blessing; or we may misuse it, and make it a
snare and a curse to our own souls. If we let into our hearts
selfishness and falsehood; if we lose faith in God, and fancy that
God's laws are not well-made enough to prosper us, but that we must
break them if we want to prosper; then we turn God's good gift into
an idol and a snare; into the