and slave. They know that the only true wealth is life, since life, ever more perfect life, is the supreme and final end of action; and that, more than almost any other passion, greed—the love of money—destroys in men the power to form right estimates of life and conduct, for it forces them to look away from the perfecting of their own being and the good of their fellows to what is material and external, and therefore but incidental.
The fear of the poor is their poverty, says the book of Proverbs. This may mean that the helpless condition in which poverty places them is ever a source of anxiety and dread, but rather, I think, that this anxiety and dread are themselves poverty; while they who possess nothing but have faith and courage and love are rich enough and free enough from fear. The possessions to which we cling breed cowardice, but wealth of soul is confidence and strength. He who loves is rich, for love creates its world and fills the desert or the prison cell with a light and joy which the loveless, though they dwell in palaces, can never know. It is life's fairest flower and best fruit, and he, therefore, who gives new power of love gives new life and raises us to higher worlds. Hardly can a rich man feel that it were well if all were as he, but the wise and good are certain that what they know and love is the best any human being can know and love; that they who make themselves worth possessing and become masters of themselves have the truest and most gracious possessions.
What doth it avail a fool to have riches, asks Solomon, seeing that he cannot buy wisdom? Ruskin rightly says that all vices are summed up and all their forces consummated in the simple acceptance of the authority of gold instead of the authority of God, and preference of gain or increase of gold to godliness or the peace of God. Again, "Occult theft—theft which hides itself even from itself, and is legal, respectable and cowardly—corrupts the body and soul of man to the last fiber of them." Of what evils is not greed the fountain head? It darkens the mind, dulls the wits, hardens the heart, warps the conscience and perverts the understanding. It breeds hate, dissension, injustice and oppression; makes thieves, liars, usurers, cowards, perjurers, adulterators of food and drink
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