remost on every charitable
subscription list, so devoured by this mad love for money for its own
sake, that though they had already more money than they could spend, or
enjoy in any way soever, save by saying to themselves--I have got it, I
have got it--they must needs, in the mere lust for becoming richer still,
ruin themselves and others by frantic speculations? Have we not seen--but
why should I defile myself, and you, and this holy place by telling you
what I have seen; and what I hope, and hope alas! in vain, that I shall
never see again, among those who must needs serve God and Mammon? Has
not the love of money become such a chronic disease among us, that we can
actually calculate, now, when the disease will come to a head; and
relieve itself for a while: though alas! only for a while?

About every eleven years, I am informed, we are to expect a commercial
crisis; panics, bankruptcies, and misery and ruin to hundreds; a sort of
terrible but beneficent thunderstorm, which clears the foul atmosphere of
our commercial system at the expense, alas! not merely of the guilty, but
of the innocent; involving the widow and the orphan, the poor and the
simple, in the same fate as the rich and powerful whom they have trusted
to their own ruin. And yet we boast of our civilization and of our
Christianity; and hardly one, here and there, lays the lesson to heart,
but each man, like a moth about a candle, unwarned by the fate of his
fellows, fancies that he at least can flutter round the flames and not be
burned; that whoever else cannot serve God and Mammon, he can do it; and
holds, by virtue of his superior prudence, a special dispensation from
the plain warnings of Holy Scripture.

But every reasonable man knows what advantages money, and nothing but
money, will obtain, not only for a man himself but for his children; and
answers me--If I wish to rise in life, if I wish my children to rise in
life, how can I do it, without making money?

God forbid that I should check an honourable ambition, and a desire to
rise in life. We all ought to rise in life, and to rise far higher than
most of us are likely to rise. But I ask you to consider very seriously
what you mean by rising in life.

Do you mean by rising in life, merely becoming a richer man; living in a
larger house, eating, drinking, clothing, better; having more servants,
carriages, plate? Is that to be the highest triumph of all your labours?
Is that your notion o