will have little difficulty in this
matter. The real trouble is not in the matter of expenditure but in the
matter of gain. The ethics of business are very far from being the
ethics of the Gospel, and we are often frankly told by those engaged in
business that it cannot be successfully conducted on the basis of the
ethics of the Gospel, That it is not so conducted is sufficiently
obvious from a cursory scanning of the advertising columns of any
newspaper or magazine. The ideal of the business world is success.
Naturally, one cannot carry on an unsuccessful business, but need it be
success by all means and to all extents? Are there no limits to the
methods by which business is to be pushed, except legal limits? If there
is no room for Christian ethics in the business world there can be but
one end; competitive business will lead the civilisation that it
controls to inevitable disaster. Our Lord said: "Take heed and beware of
covetousness; for a man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the
things that he possesseth." And He went on to speak a parable which has
come to be known as the Parable of the Rich Fool. The "practical man"
may be as angered as he likes by this teaching, but in his soul he knows
that our Lord was right. When such things are pointed out from the
pulpit the "practical man" says: "What would become of the Church were
it not for the rich and the successful?" I think that the answer is that
in that case the Church would no more represent the rich and would have
a fair chance of once more representing Jesus Christ.

It may seem at the first sight that of the mortal sins lust was not
represented here upon the Sorrowful Way; but that, I think is but a
superficial analysis of the nature of lust, thinking only of some
manifestations of it. There is however one sin that has its roots deep
in lust which psychologists tell us is one of its commonest
manifestations, and that is cruelty. Lust is not always, but commonly,
cruel; and the desire to inflict pain on others is a very common form of
its expression. There are sights we have seen or incidents we have read
of, it may be a boy torturing an animal or another child, it may be a
shouting mass of men about a prize-ring, it may be soldiers sacking a
town,--when the action seems so senseless that we are at a loss to
account for it; but the account of it lies in the mystery of our
sensual nature, in the ultimate animal that we are. The savage joy that
is being