us is its wealth. If Britain be only RICH, then she
must be safe and right.'

To which Moses, being a wise lawgiver, and having, moreover, in him
the Spirit of the Lord who knoweth what is in man, makes a
reasonable, liberal, humane answer.

Moses does not deny that wealth is a good thing. He does not bid
them not try to be rich. He takes for granted that they will grow
rich; that the national fruit of their good government will be that
they will increase in cattle and in crops and in money, and in all
which makes an agricultural people rich.

He takes for granted, I say, that these Jews will grow very rich;
but he warns them that their riches, like all other earthly things,
may be a curse or a blessing to them. Nay, that they are not good
in themselves, but mere tools which may be used for good or for
evil. He warns them of a very great danger that riches will bring
on them. And herein he shows his knowledge of the human heart; for
it is a certain fact that whenever any nation has prospered, and
their flocks and herds, and silver and gold, all that they had, have
multiplied, then they have, as Moses warned the Jews, forgotten the
Lord their God, and said, 'My power and the might of my hand hath
gotten me this wealth.'

And it is true, also, that whenever any nation has begun to say
that, they have fallen into confusion and misery, and sometimes into
utter ruin, till they repented, and turned and remembered the Lord
their God, and found out that the strength of a nation did not
consist in riches, but in VIRTUE. For it is he that giveth the
power to get wealth. He gives it in two ways: First, God gives the
raw material; secondly, he gives the wit to use it.

You will all agree that God gives the first; that he gives the soil,
the timber, the fisheries, the coal, the iron.

Do you believe it? I hope and trust that you do. But I fear that
now-a-days many do not; for they boast of the resources of Britain
as if we ourselves had made Britain, and not Almighty God; as if we
had put the coal and the iron into the rocks, and not Almighty God
ages before we were born.

And if they will not say that openly, at least they will say, 'But
the coal, and iron, and all other raw material would have been
useless, if it had not been for the genius and energy of the British
race.'

Of course not. But who gave them that genius and energy? Who gave
them the wit to find the coal and iron?

God; and God gave it to us