MO^EY AKD THE KINGDOM. 261 



One of the grave problems before us is how to make 

 great material prosperity conduce to individual advance- 

 ment. The severest poverty is unfavorable to morality. 

 Up to a certain point increase of property serves to ele- 

 vate man morally and intellectually, while it improves 

 him physically. But, as nations grow rich, they are 

 prone to become self-indulgent, effeminate, immoral. 

 The physical nature becomes less robust, the intellectual 

 nature less vigorous, the moral less pure. The pam- 

 pered civilizations of old had to be reinvigorated, from 

 time to time, with fresh infusions of barbaric blood— a 

 remedy no longer available. If we cannot find in Chris- 

 tianity a remedy or preventive, our Christian civiliza- 

 tion and the world itself is a failure ; and our rapidly in- 

 creasing wealth, like the "cankered heaps of strange- 

 achieved gold," will curse us unto destruction. 



But the recognition of God's ownership in all our sub- 

 stance is a perfect antidote for the debilitating and cor- 

 rupting influence of wealth. It prevents self-indulgence, 

 and the apprehension of religious truth implied in such 

 recognition affords the strongest possible motives to sac- 

 rifice and active effort of which men are capable. A 

 hundred years ago poverty compelled men to endure 

 hardness, and so served to make the nation great. Now 

 that we are exposed to the pampering influence of 

 riches. Christian principle must inspire the spirit of 

 self-denial for Christ's sake, and the world's sake, and so 

 make the nation greater. 



Where that spirit obtains, Mammonism and materi- 

 alism, as well as luxuriousness, lose their power, and 

 wealth, instead of being centralized, is distributed. So 

 that Christian stewardship, so far as it is accepted, 

 affords perfect protection against all the perils of wealth. 



Our cities, which are gathering together the most dan- 

 gerous elements of our civilization, will, in due time, 

 unless Christianized, prove the destruction of our free 

 institutions. During the last hundred years, the instru- 

 ments of destruction have been wonderfully multiplied. 

 Offensive weapons have become immeasurably more 



