Crucified waving above their host, and ask of them : I Was it worth it, the struggle, the pain, the givingup? With one consent they return the answer, "Yes." "Would they do it and suffer it all over again?" we continue our questioning. Once more the answer-stronger, clearer-is, "Yes." "Have they received their reward at length?" "No-not at length,' for there never was a moment when they had it not." And the army passes on, chanting their song of triumph :

V

THE WORTH OF WEALTH

' The rich man's wealth is his strong city."-PROV. x. 15. He that trusteth in his riches shall fall."-PROV. xi. 28.

TO-DAY our studies in Proverbs bring us to a subject on which I venture to think that, for all our familiarity with it, there is more confusion than on most in people's mind's confusion, and unreconciled contradiction between theory and practice-I mean the worth of wealth. That is a very bad thing, because if once we believe that our religion teaches us a view which in every-day life we are totally unable to translate into practice, religion itself will lose its reality, and become at best only a kind of Sunday profession—a very empty profession of ideals we have not the slightest intention of following out or carrying into execution. That is almost the worst thing that can happen to religion; it would be far better to disavow it altogether as impracticable-then try and frame rules which with an effort we can keep, and try to observe them. That we should pretend to think poverty desirable, when all the while we regard it as nothing less than our bounden duty to protect ourselves and those dependent upon us against it, only lays us open to suspicion-just as when we profess the greatest eagerness to enter a heavenly home while as a matter of fact we take every care to

prolong our sojourn on earth. Do not let us utter sentiments or pretend to cherish them merely because they are supposed to be religious; and since this question of material possessions is always with us, let us look it straight in the face, and deal candidly with it and with ourselves.

It is true, to begin with, that our Lord's first beatitude, as recorded in Luke's Gospel, reads simply, "Blessed are ye poor," while in Matthew the blessing is pronounced upon the poor in spirit; it is true that the former version represents probably what Jesus said, but the latter tells us what He meant. The poor " had become in His time an almost technical term, which had reference not so much to material want or destitution as to a certain religious disposition -a disposition which was met among the toiling multitudes rather than the luxurious and pampered classes. Jesus did not mean that to live below the poverty line, unable to afford the necessaries of life, was a blessed condition; when He uttered the words which have so puzzled later generations, everybody understood their application, which was to spiritual attributes to that receptiveness, gratitude, trustfulness which flourish in humble dwellings rather than in town mansions and country houses. Jesus was deeply and constantly aware that there were grave dangers inherent in great possessions-that gold had a tendency to dazzle men's eyes, to blind them to spiritual realities, to impair their moral vision, to act as a dead-weight preventing the spirit from rising; He knew-as who does not?-that money is liable to abuse, but He nowhere condemned ownership in itself, neither did

He extol the poverty, e.g., of the prodigal in the far country-a poverty due to thriftlessness and riotous living as a state to be desired. On the contrary, He made the prodigal acknowledge that when he was in his father's house, on the prosperous farm with its warmth and plenty, he had been in a better place.

I say all this in order to remove, if I can, certain misconceptions of Christ's teaching which weigh heaviest upon tender consciences, as though He had condemned the owning of money or of those things for which money stands. It is never a case of choosing between commonsense and the Gospel; on the contrary, the Gospel is the highest and purest commonsense. Think of the widespread calamity involved in a Liberator smash, or the stoppage of payment by the Birkbeck Bank-think what it means to realise, as scores and scores of decent, thrifty folk did, when some minor Building Society failed in South London two or three years ago, that their savings had gone irretrievably, that the provision they had made for old age had vanished, and they had to begin the world over again : who will dare to add to such disaster the mockery of calling it blessed? And in every tragedy of suicide in middle-life, is not the first question put whether the victim was financially involved or harassed? We will not pretend to despise possessions or decry money, for the very good reason that it is indispensable: indispensable for the necessities and comforts of life; indispensable for the carrying on not only of every industry and business, but for all our philanthropic and religious agencies as well. A committee is formed for the promotion of Anglo-German friendship-and

its first step is to appeal for a fund with which to pursue an effective propaganda; on the other hand, let the income of a Missionary Society be diminished, and it has to curtail its sphere of action.

Well, now, from these preliminaries we turn to the Old Testament book with which we are principally concerned in these addresses, and we find that in its pages the subject of wealth looms pretty large, as is natural and indeed inevitable in a collection of aphorisms and counsels for the guidance of life. There is no affectation of contempt for possessions in these chapters, embodying as they do the experience of a race remarkable for its keen practical intelligence. You may remember what I observed on a previous occasion the writers of these proverbs have much to say about wisdom, but they mean no abstract philosophy, but the science and art of life. Thus, in the great eighth chapter, where Wisdom herself is speaking, bidding men to take fast hold of her, she commends herself in these terms: Riches and honour are with me, yea, durable riches." There is no reproach in wishing, by one's own honourable exertions, to rise from the ranks of ill-paid or slenderly-paid labour, to make and keep a comfortable home for those nearest to us, to have no need for material anxieties, to have a margin for books, for music, for travel, to be able to contribute to religious causes, and help support this or that movement we have at heart. To be able to do these things is a very creditable ambition; to take that ambition away would be to cut at the very root of civilised society. So the duty of industry, on which the writers of Proverbs so strongly insist, is reinforced