216

PIOUS FRAUDS DETECTED.

And yet, while men, thus entangled in the meshes which the love of money spreads, were living in unprincipled extravagance at the expense of their dupes, and revelling in luxuries purchased by money feloniously obtained, they were after all just proving the falsehood of their religion-the sincerity of their hypocrisy, or the success of their self-deception. The sarcasm might be true, that while they subsisted on wholesale plunder, they assumed to be pious far beyond their neighbours, the presiding and directing spirits at every meeting for religious or charitable purposes. But all this

only renders more clear the knavery to which men who were once honourable and upright may descend, when they surrender themselves to the power of moneythe real sovereign of many souls, and while the mind of this empire expresses the conviction that from extravagance to fraud, from fraud to theft, from theft to transportation, is a law of progression, it at the same time comments on the truth of God, which declares that "he who makes haste to be rich shall not be innocent." All this fraud and felony, this disgrace and misery, this beggary of the widow and the orphan, this wholesale knavery, would be prevented did men trust less to mercantile honour-a gossamer thread wherewith to bind a lion-and more to the simple truth of God, which condemns alike the miser, the spendthrift, and the pharisaic felon.*

When we look around us upon life, the sights of woe which meet us on every side are often such as seem to *See ante, p. 129.

forbid us ever to smile. There is the little one wailing out its spirit, and hastening to die almost as soon as it began to live. There is the man of vigour laid low amid his strength, and his home made one of anguish. There are widowhood, and orphanage, and sorrow crowding upon sorrow. There is genius prostituted, and trained to pander to the vilest passions. There is hypocrisy mimicking religion, and superstition seeking to extirpate truth. But none of these can occasion a deeper sadness to the man who knows the claims of God, than the widespread conspiracy which is formed against Him. Avarice and prodigality, youth and age, the high and the low, the learned and the ignorant, the living and the dying, all alike join in that conspiracy, till grace "makes them to differ." The most that they will do is to treat the cause of God as men treat an obtrusive pauper, to whom they throw a pittance not so much to relieve his want, as to free themselves from his importunity. In the soul which the Spirit is teaching, benevolence should be like a well of water springing up to everlasting life. In the souls of worldly men, even benevolence is earthly— it is the dried mummy, not the living man.

218

THE SAFETY-VALVE.

CHAPTER XI.

"MY WILL."

"He shall lean upon his house, but it shall not stand; he shall hold it fast, but it shall not endure."-JOB viii. 15.

The Safety-valve-Two views of Wills-Heirs bribed to rejoice-Examples-Squandering by Heirs-Maxims in making Wills-" Mammon" quoted-Distribution one law-Hoarding another-Appeal to Christians-Cowper-Lord Bacon-The Reign of Death-May I diminish my

Capital?

THE last will of some among the wealthy forms a kind of safety-valve for the escape of uneasy feelings regarding the use of property. With the Bible in their hand, and the love of Christ depicted there, men cannot quietly live and die without some sense of responsibility on the subject. On the other hand, many are not disposed to yield yet to the full influence of that love, and a will is not seldom the method adopted to escape from the sense of present duty. Some, however, delay, not from the motive now mentioned, but solely from the want of decision, or of a clear perception of what is due to survivors. A duty which is confessed to be binding is thus often deferred from day to day, till death at once terminates the procrastination, and either destines the property of the departed to litigation, or

THE PRESENT TIME THE BEST.

219

renders it the source of heartburnings and feuds, where peace should ever prevail. Who cannot recal such

cases? or recalling them, who does not deplore the results to which they led? Families have been divided, and widows left in double anguish, all because men do not sufficiently feel their obligation to arrange their worldly affairs. Thorns, moreover, have been planted in the pillow of many a death-bed, and the last struggle has been rendered more painful both to the sufferer and to those who loved him, by duty neglected, and dispeace and trouble entailed. Of no earthly duty is it more certain that the present day is the accepted time, and it is obvious unwisdom to neglect it.

But upon this subject two suggestions occur

First, as to the tendency of some to delay disposing of their property till they can no longer retain it, every one may see that this is consistent with an avarice as grasping as that of John Elwes the miser, while it seems a misnomer to call that a will, which is postponed till, in one respect at least, the testator has no will in the matter. To keep all that I possess till death is about to wring it from my grasp, seems tantamount to declaring that I will contest the title of the Supreme Proprietor, or disregard his purposes till my last breath, and when wealth is thus

To the very verge of the churchyard mould,"

that is proof enough that God's will is not supreme. The poor are still sent empty away; the cause of humanity, the spreading of the truth, and the great

220

A DEAD MAN'S BOUNTY.

work for which the Saviour died, are all neglected, that the covetous man may continue covetous still, even till death shall have done its work upon him. Responsibility is thus devolved upon posterity, and not a few unconsciously bribe their heirs to rejoice when they die. "All that the miser has gotten together with perpetual pains and industry is not wealth, but a collection which he intends to keep by him more for his own diversion than any other use. . . He makes no conscience of anything but parting with his money, which is no better than a separation of soul and body to him."*

We have already referred to cases which shew how different is the conduct of many of God's stewards. One man is known who began life in comparative poverty, but as his God "gave him power to get wealth," he gave away not less than nine thousand pounds to the cause of humanity and of truth. He knew that a dead man's bounty is seldom highly prized, for it would have been no bounty at all had the dead been able to prevent it. He acted like Sir Isaac Newton, whose charities his biographer describes as unbounded, and who was wont to say, that " They who give nothing till they die never give at all." He felt that it would have been grossly inconsistent to starve the poor while he lived, only that he might feed them more plentifully when he died, and remembered how poetry combines with revelation to warn us when it tells of

"Dying rich :

Guilt's blunder, and the loudest laugh of hell."

* Butler's Remains, Vol. II.