ercise their callings mainly for the sake
of financial gains; nor to regard as their own their skill, or
inspiration, or learning. But as yet the butcher, the baker, the grocer,
the banker, the manufacturer, the promoter, are not supposed to be on
this plane. They are urged to compete, even to the extent of putting
their rivals out of business, in defiance of an old Jewish maxim, "He
that taketh away his neighbor's living slayeth him," and in face of the
Lord's Prayer in which we ask not for "my daily cake," but for "_our_
daily bread." They are expected to consider profits, dividends, wages,
as the chief end in their callings; and if out of their gains they
devote a portion to public uses, that is charity on their part. A few
individuals are undoubtedly superior to the ideal set before them, and
are as truly dedicated servants of the community as any physician or
minister of the gospel, but they are a small minority; and the false
ideal ruins characters, and renders the commercial world a battlefield,
instead of a household of co-working children of God.

It scans international relations, and finds patriotism still a pagan
virtue. Mr. Lecky calls it "in relation to foreigners a spirit of
constant and jealous self-assertion." When a tariff is under discussion,
high, low or no duties are advocated as beneficial for the industries of
one's own country, regardless of the welfare of those of other lands.
The scramble for colonies with their advantages to trade, the
imperialistic spirit that seizes possessions without respect to the
wishes of their inhabitants, the endeavor to secure in other countries
special concessions or large business orders at an extraordinary profit,
are all sanctified under the name of patriotism. The peace of the world
is supposed to be maintained by keeping nations armed to the teeth, so
that rival powers will be afraid to fight, and huge armies and navies
are labelled insurance against war. A sentence in a letter of Erasmus
has a singularly modern sound: "There is a project to have a congress of
kings at Cambrai, to enter into mutual engagements to preserve peace
with each other and through Europe. But certain persons, who get
nothing by peace and a great deal by war, throw obstacles in the way."
The armament argument for peace has been given its _reductio ad
absurdum;_ but it is by no means clear that the world-wide war will free
the nations from the burdensome folly of keeping enormous armies and