arf a warm
hand into a cold, hard, muscle-bound fist. It drains the warm blood from
the heart, and dries all the sweet, fragrant dew out of the spirit. The
hand suffers much. It is often stricken with a sort of palsy while in the
pocket, and cannot be withdrawn. Sometimes there is a violent cramp, or a
sort of pen paralysis that prevents the signing of the name--to certain
sorts of checks.

But if, on the other hand, it come into a man's possession accompanied by
a pure unselfish motive that _controls_, it comes the nearest to
omnipotence of anything we handle. Gold of itself seems to have the
puckering quality of a green persimmon. The green fruit will contract the
mouth to its smallest proportions. And unmellowed gold acts in the same
way upon the mouth of the pocket.

This is true of all gold and of all pockets. There are no exceptions. The
only possible way of effecting a change is to let a stronger power come in
and counteract the contracting power. Gold has the greatest contracting
power of any earthly substance. Its only sufficient counteractant is God.
God has the greatest expanding power known to angels or men. Gold
contracts. God expands. If God be the dominating motive power in a man's
life, then does gold come the nearest to omnipotence of any tangible
thing. It takes on the quality of Him who breathes upon it.

Jesus' Law for the Use of Money.

Jesus gives us the simple law for the right use of money. It is in that
sixteenth chapter of Luke. He is talking about the dishonest overseer of a
wealthy man's estate. His dishonest practices have been discovered, and he
is required to make a final settlement preliminary to his being
discharged. He has evidently been living extravagantly, for the loss of
position threatens him with beggary. Distressed to know what to do he hits
upon a farther extension of his dishonest practices, and uses the position
he is about to lose to buy up friends for his coming days of want.

As he tells the story Jesus adds this comment: "for the sons of this world
are for their own generation wiser than the sons of light." Practically
they go on the supposition that the present generation is the only one.
For the short space of years making up their own generation they are wiser
than the sons of light. But for the long space of all coming generations
they are the rankest fools. That is included by contrast in Jesus' words.
The man who in his use of money thinks only or chiefly o