s' Corner" in Westminster
Abbey, it has been said, commemorates a glorious company of paupers. And
even in America, the land of the millionaire and multi-millionaire, the
names that are graven on the nation's heart, and which men delight to
honour, are not its Vanderbilts, or its Jay Goulds, but Lincoln, and
Grant, and Garfield, and Webster, and Clay.

This is not mere "curb-stone rhetoric"; I speak the words of soberness
and truth. Would that they in whose blood the "narrowing lust of gold"
has begun to burn might be sobered by them! In the name of Jesus of
Nazareth, and of all the noblest of the sons of men, let us deny and
defy the sordid traditions of mammon; let us make it plain that we at
least do not believe "the wealthiest man among us is the best."
"Godliness with contentment," said the apostle, "is great gain;" and
though these are not the only worthy ends of human effort, yet he who
has made them his has secured for himself a treasure which faileth not,
which will endure when the gilded toys for which men strive and sweat
are dust and ashes.

It is further worthy of note that it was always the rich rather than the
poor whom Christ pitied. He was sorry for Lazarus; He was still more
sorry for Dives. "Blessed are ye poor.... Woe unto you that are rich."
This two-fold note sounds through all Christ's teaching. And the reason
is not far to seek. As Jesus looked on life, He saw how the passionate
quest for gold was starving all the higher ideals of life. Men were
concentrating their souls on pence till they could think of nothing
else. For mammon's sake they were turning away from the kingdom of
heaven. The spirit of covetousness was breaking the peace of households,
setting brother against brother, making men hard and fierce and
relentless. Under its hot breath the fairest growths of the spirit were
drooping and ready to die. The familiar "poor but pious" which meets us
so often in a certain type of biography could never have found a place
on the lips of Jesus. "Rich but pious" would have been far truer to the
facts of life as He saw them. "The ground of a certain rich man brought
forth plentifully," and after that he could think of nothing but barns:
there was no room for God in his life. "The Pharisees who were lovers of
money heard these things; and they scoffed at Him;" of course, what
could their jaundiced eyes see in Jesus? And even to one of whom it is
written that Jesus, "looking upon him loved him," his