We are, after all, not mere driftwood. We cannot change the flow of the stream, it is true, but we can battle against it ; and there are many matters in which we can effectually act in a spirit contrary to the spirit of the world. We can sometimes soften the rivalry which is the world's great principle. We can often act in co-operation and fellowship even in business matters. We can humanize our relations to our employees. If we have the mis- fortune to be very poor, we can guard ourselves from servility, we
356 THE GOLDEN MEAN
can cultivate a free and independent spirit, and we can watch against bitterness and envy. If we have the still greater mis- fortune to be very rich, we can anxiously study how to give away our wealth without harming those to whom we give.
^ The spirit of sacrifice is, we can see, the revelation of a larger life ; and because it is so, it is also a revelation of victorious power. The life is one, and through its action soul can reach soul. We have all been able from time to time, in the most expressive phrase, to enter into the griefs, the wrongs, the failures, of others, and as we have done so, we have found within our reach a power of relief and restoration proportioned to our power of sympathy. If we may dare to use the phrase, there is a virtue which goes out from him who truly feels for another to the object of his love, not without effort, not without loss. We must feel that which we alleviate. There is a sense in which we must pay for all we give. The instinctive pleasure which is felt in natural gifts, in wealth and strength, and beauty and rank and intellect, is a call and a promise, a call to grateful use, and a promise of effective influence. But all these things are not in themselves blessings in which we can rest, but opportunities of blessing. They must be consecrated in service before they can be a true joy to their possessors ; and everywhere there is the same condition of hallowing.^
4. Wise as Agur was, would he not have been wiser still if he had prayed, " Give me character, that whether thou sendest wealth or poverty, I may be strong and obedient and victorious " ? The varying ranks, vocations, and properties of human life are all evident as moral tests. God is trying our hearts by wealth and poverty, by neither, and in some lives by both, by what He gives and what He withholds, in fact, by every temporal circumstance. And at the judgment day He will deal with us, not according to the measure of our substance, but according to the nature of our works. That is the thought which should be uppermost in our minds, and not, as is so often the case, only vain calculations of our gains and our losses, of what others have and what we have not. The question is. Are we using aright that wliich we have, and glorifying our God with the means He has entrusted to us ? That is our first concern. And there is surely nothing which can so check the present-day unhealthy appetite for
' Bishop B. F. Westcott, The Victory of the Cross, 30.
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wealth, which can so silence the fretful complainings of the poor, which can so well impress upon our hearts the wisdom of this prayer, and which can so conduce to make life practical, content, and holy as such honest self-inquiry as this.
U Sir Henry Taylor, in his Notes on Life, has a remarkable passage about money. " So many," he says, " are the bearings of money on the lives and characters of mankind, that an insight which should search out the life of a man in his pecuniary relations would penetrate into almost every cranny of his nature. He who knows, like St. Paul, both how to lack and how to abound has a great knowledge ; for if we take account of all the virtues with which money is mixed up — honesty, justice, gener- osity, charity, frugality, forethought, self-sacrifice — and of their correlative vices, it is a knowledge which goes near to cover the length and breadth of humanity ; and a right measure in getting, saving, spending, giving, taking, lending, borrowing, and bequeath- ing, would almost argue a perfect man." ^
^ " I revere," Emerson says, " the man who is riches " ; " is " not "has." There is an ideal for you, the ideal of character, and, above all, that character which is formed after the pattern and by the grace of Jesus Christ. If Christianity had been dependent on circumstances, it would have died as soon as it was born. But because it reaches and touches the soul's true life, it lives and is still the renewing of the world and the hope of the future. The experience of the ages tells you that Jesus Christ can help you to be what is good and to do what is right. That is the essential ; all else is subordinate. And whether you find yourself on the splendid heights of wealth or in the hard and narrow lot of poverty, to be what is good and to do what is right is the highest and the most lasting success. " A man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth." " Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness ; and all these things shall be added unto you." Behold a wiser than Agur is here!^