INFLUENCE OF MUNDANE WEALTH IN THE WORLD TO COME.
According to the Spiritual Code, riches elevate or degrade according to the virtue displayed in their acquisition and employment.
908. The great object of the more prudent and calculating portion of mankind, is to provide for that old age which they all hope to attain, or, if it be not reached, to provide the means for themselves or families which may insure a comfortable if not luxurious support, in case sickness or mutilation should deprive them of the power of making money, or competency to earn wages.
909. But how precarious and fleeting are any such worldly advantages, when compared with those of an eternal home, where every thing desirable may be had without causing a drop of sweat to fall from the brow! Let the description of the higher spheres be compared with any earthly paradise, which, besides inferiority in every attribute which can render it attractive, is open to all the ills of mental and bodily suffering to which flesh is heir. If there be any objection to the consequences of a due appreciation of the bliss which we may expect in the spirit world, it would seem to be founded on its tendency so to enfeeble our interest in this world, as to deter the human efforts on which this sphere is, under God’s laws, mainly dependent for improvement. But then, as a matter of principle, in order to merit elevation in the spirit world, exertion may be induced in this; and exertion thus originating, can never be perverted to the perpetuation of those wrongs now so often forming the steps to human aggrandizement. The subjugation, the pillage, and extirpation of mankind, will never be induced by considerations founded on the desire to accumulate treasure in heaven.
910. There is hardly in respect to any subject, more error than in the estimate made of persons who strive to acquire wealth. The question lies not in the zeal with which it may be sought, but in the object for which it is desired. Although the maxim that the end justifies the means, be immoral when extended so far as to palliate any dereliction of the cardinal virtues, does it not hold good so long as the means employed are consistent with these virtues? Is it not charitable honestly to seek the pecuniary means of being charitable? Is it not liberal to seek the means wherewith to be liberal? Hospitable, to seek the means to support hospitality? Is it not the duty of each man to promote the welfare of his wife and children, by seeking the means wherewith to house, clothe, and feed them, and, moreover, to educate them intellectually as well as morally? Since, when destitute of education, a man is little above a brute, surely it must be meritorious to seek the means of educational improvement, both for ourselves and for those by whom we are surrounded; but more especially for those who are so dependent on us, that it can only through us be attained.
911. That part of the Lord’s prayer which deprecates temptation, is perhaps of pre-eminent importance; since where there is one man who goes through the world honestly by resisting temptation, there are hundreds who preserve their honesty by avoiding temptation: by so providing pecuniary means in due time, as not to be placed between the alternative of starving, begging, cheating, or stealing.
912. In our republic it will be found that while the acquisition of wealth enables one individual to raise his family by educational superiority, the offspring of another, by the loss of fortune, sink into the mass of illiterate labourers; so that there is a perpetual undulation by the educational influence of money. Though public schools may extend the advantages of education to the poor, yet want drives the educated youth to loathsome drudgery, made more painful by the enlargement of his views resulting from education.
913. To the consequence of hereditary noblemen hereditary wealth is essential, having vastly more influence than titles. In those countries where titles exist without associated wealth, they have scarcely any weight. However incompetent money may be to give importance to an uneducated commoner, a cotton-spinner, by educating his son and giving him his fortune, may prepare him to sway an empire; when, had his father been a pauper, the premier might have lived among those so eloquently described by Shakspeare’s Henry the Fourth, as upon “uneasy pallets stretching them.” How different from those perfumed chambers and canopies of costly state, to which this spinner’s boy was actually enabled to climb through the education and position resulting from paternal affluence!
914. Civilization elevates those who have the advantages of education, and who are either professionally employed in intellectual pursuits, or have leisure to cultivate science and literature from taste. But the same division of human labour and enterprise which gives intellectual pursuits to a few as a profession, gives to the mass occupations inconsistent with the cultivation of their intellectual powers. Those who are engaged in the humblest species of industry, living from hand to mouth, have little or no time to spare from that which their necessities imperatively require; and the bodily fatigue incurred during working hours, makes repose from all exertion the primary object.
915. But the situation of the poor, ignorant, and uneducated labourer in civilized society, is rendered worse than that of an equally ignorant and uneducated barbarian, by contrast with his educated neighbours. The lowest savage has as much scholastic education as his chief, while the civilized labourer may be in the rear of an educated child of five years of age. Thus the absolute evil is made relatively still greater. When any man reflects on these facts, can he be otherwise than anxious for those means which are necessary to put his offspring upon a par in learning with those of others in the same community?
916. Early in life, it is manifest to every one who does not enjoy pecuniary affluence, that any species of indulgence which he may desire requires money for its attainment. Even the command of leisure for any enjoyment requires money, since, if obliged to work to earn his bread, a man may not have leisure for any other object.
917. Among the most rational motives for the pursuit of wealth is the love of independence. “Thy spirit, Independence, let me share—lord of the lion heart and eagle eye!” In this sentiment every noble soul must participate. How many have had, like the apothecary in Shakspeare’s tragedy, to allow their poverty to rule, instead of honest will! How many have been induced to “earn their daily bread by their daily shame!”
918. Prudent, thoughtful, honest men, who do not choose to live houseless, without clothes, nor upon the sweat of other men’s brows, turn from the paths of amusement, of sensual enjoyment, from the love of literature or science, or from the observation and investigation of nature’s beauties and miracles, in order to get, through wealth, the power, and honest right to indulge. But while pursuing this great object, in the first instance only as the means of attaining other objects, good or bad, they grow old in the chase; their passions burn out, while avarice originates as it were from their ashes, not, phœnix-like, to replace one parental being, but a horrid monster, having nothing in common with a plurality of progenitors, but the selfish, ardent love of money, unmitigated by any redeeming aspiration. A being so actuated—or, in other words, a miser—would certainly find it as difficult to reach a higher sphere in the spirit world, as it were for a camel to get through the needle’s eye.
919. As swine accumulate fat to bequeath to those to whom they leave their carcasses, so the avaricious accumulate wealth, to hoard until it can no longer be retained. They die with an immense amount of negative sin; since all their omissions to do good, which is within their power, is carried to their debit in the spirit world. Their poverty in the spirit world will be proportioned to their ill-used wealth in this temporal abode.
920. When this is well brought home to mankind, there will be less avarice, and fewer of those crimes which arise from selfish cupidity, or ambition.