SIGNS OF THE TIMES.

31

rooted habits of our times. The pursuit of wealth has superseded the chivalry of former days, and the vulgar "main chance" is now the paramount power. Where baronial towers once frowned or smiled over half a pro vince, the stupendous laboratories of trade are now erected. These piles at once crowd and deflower some of the remotest glens, which do not now send forth their streams to fertilize, but too often rather their moral abominations to pollute. Hence opulence is fast supplanting the old nobility, or attracting much of its homage. The heroes of the hot-blast, or the spinning-mule, are superseding the memories of Cressy, or even of Waterloo, and the men whose names are Norman, or who boast of the blood of royal progenitors, are sometimes overshadowed by others who founded their house and their fortunes by the labour of their own hands, and the sweat of their own brow. These things plainly betoken the ascendancy of wealth, though on the other hand, they often conduct to the gambler's dice-box, his suicide, and his grave. The Marquis Mirabeau once exclaimed, in an aristocratic paroxysm- "There is no longer that worship of respect for ancient extraction, whose omnipotence is now-a-days unknown; there is no longer the prostration before old families and grand crosses of Malta; in a word, this province, wholly subdued by the ink-stand, has more animals armed with pens than twenty-andtwo well regulated kingdoms ought to have containedthe race most venomous and most pestilent for a feudal lord." The complaint is yet more applicable to our times. Finally, we wish to contemplate this subject here as

entering very largely into our probation as moral beings. We are upon trial as the stewards of God. Our contributions are to be spontaneous. Shall they, then, be stinted, or shall they be generous? The problem to be solved is-Will God's creatures act as if they were free to use his gifts without consulting Himself? Because he has not bound us by stringent rule, shall we neglect the constraints of his love, and turn our liberty into licentiousness? Shall we selfishly lower our giving to a minimum, or with integrity of heart, and the eye fixed upon the Cross, exalt it to a maximum? Every soul is working out that problem under the eye of the Great Proprietor; and blessed is the man who appeals to the Counsellor for wisdom, for without his guidance, we are sure to cleave to the dust. To separate between sheer covetousness, and the pretexts behind which it hides,for example, the love of enterprise and other commendable motives, is as difficult a task as to decide where one tint of the rainbow terminates and the next begins. The wisdom which comes from above alone can direct,

-for even conscience may at last be enlisted on the side of the covetous. There are or have lately been places in America where theft was not reckoned theft, because it was common. Even Christian churches smiled connivance at the sin-and such moral phases demand the solemn study of the friends of truth.*

Let us now consider, then, both our perils and our safeguards.

* Mercantile Morals, by W. H. Van Doren, p. 69.

THE DIAMOND-ITS VALUE

33

CHAPTER II.

THE RULING PASSION-MONEY-MAKING.

"Woe to him that increaseth that which is not his! how long? And to him that ladeth himself with thick clay."-HAB. ii. 6.

The diamond an emblem of wealth-Crime encouraged-Sin actually sold for money-Papal taxes for crime-The Slave Trade-Bendigo-Exceptions to the general passion for riches-Their cause-Growth of liberality -Examples-Light and shade-The great conspiracy-Attempts to remedy the evil-The needlewomen-Commercial crashes-Unavailing as a check-Still hope.

There is a diamond in existence which has been foolishly valued at two hundred and twenty-four millions sterling. Though that is far beyond its worth, even although it should prove to be a real gem, the very naming of a sum so vast sufficiently attests the value. which is attached to such possessions. And after mentioning that fact, it is needless to refer to other diamonds, valued at three millions, at two millions, and similar sums;-enough to say, that some of them are ranked by the princes who possess them, side by side with the most fertile province of their realms.

And what is a diamond? It is alike the ornament of beauty, and the boast of royalty, and has been described as an empire made portable; it is signalized far

C

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THE GRAND PURSUIT.

above gold and all else that is deemed precious or beautiful by men; and yet what is a diamond? A competent judge teaches us to reply-It is only a piece of coal; it can be reduced to a cinder, and dissipated into that noxious gas which ascends from the most fetid marsh, or bubbles up from the filthiest quagmire.

Now, a possession so prized, yet so perishable, is a fit emblem for the wealth which multitudes pursue with breathless haste, and which is not seldom deemed the only thing worth pursuing at all. Men's hearts are set, their days and their nights are spent, their souls and their bodies are exhausted, they compass sea and land, all to acquire what they reckon as precious as the diamond a thing really as perishing as the exhalations of a marsh. Generation follows generation in this headlong pursuit, unwarned and untaught by ten thousand disappointments; and whether it be the fable of Midas, turning all that he touched into gold, or the scrutiny of the alchymist for the substance which was to accomplish the same coveted result, or the sleepless scheming of those who have made money their god, and the pursuit of it their life-long object-all alike proclaim how completely man is the victim or the slave of a thing which in its best and most concentrated state, can be reduced to fragments by a blow, or to an offensive odour by heat.

But far more than this. It is not merely an error that men commit, it is a deep degradation that they inflict, in yielding tothe furor for wealth. In the pursuit of money, or this world's goods in some of their countless

A TARIFF FOR CRIME.

35

forms, multitudes have reduced deceit to system; "they devise iniquity and work evil upon their beds; when the morning is light they practise it." Fraud has extensively become the rule, and is perpetrated with the precision of a science by many upon whom the world still smiles with approbation.* In order to accomplish its object, covetousness has leagued with the abandoned and the outcast. Flesh and blood have been bought and sold. Liberty, life, and death-all that man either holds dear or shudders at, have had their price attached to them, while Rome perfected the nefarious system in her palmy days, by vending even crime, and literally making merchandise of the souls of men. She has supplied the nations with a terrible tariff by which they may understand the price for which they can venture with impunity upon robbery, or murder, or any nameless crime. From the slave coast, stained with the massacre and extinction of whole tribes, to the scene where the midnight assassin perpetrates his deed of blood for some booty which will scarcely purchase more than a mess of pottage, one passion goads men-one demon reigns; at the bidding of covetousness man's soul and God's truth are equally trampled on and defied. It has even been confessed without a blush that were men in business to do to others as they wish others to do to them, all would be bankrupt together. As the miners at Bendigo sometimes appear of a gold colour, from the nature of the

* See examples in a Lecture, On Gold and Gold-seekers, by the Hon. and Rev. H. M. Villiers; at large in The Bible in the Counting-House, and The Successful Merchant.

+ Mercantile Morals, by W. H. Van Doren, p. 73.