PURSUIT OF WEALTH.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume III, Issue 128, 15 October 1875, Page 14

PURSUIT OF WEALTH.

It is not surprising that our young men become easily inflamed with an inordinate desire for property. They see its power in the world j that wealth can hire the strong, retain the learned, and secure honor, or at least place, in society. Hence pride seeks money, to give it elevation ; vanity seeks it, to attract the admiration and excite the envy of ' others ; and avarice seeks it, to fall down and worship it. Money itself is good ; in the words of Solomon, "It answereth. all things ;" not only luxury, but comfort, convenience, necessity demand it. And yet the acquisition of it is beset with moral perils. In our insane eagerness to be rich, we delude ourselves with the idea that gold can fill and satisfy the soul. We regard no calamity so great as pecuniary want. The boy has his money-box, and he. learns to hoard as he learns' to speak. " The chief end of man/ he is taught, is to make a good bargain. He is fired with a passion to set up in business for himself prematurely, and to rush into every path that seems to open into a boundless accurntilation of wealth. Two tempters stand before the young man, and beckon him to 1 ; follow them. First, a reckless speculation. Under this influence, men are ready to invest their all in projects, the greater portion of which are chimerical. Bales of goods and risks of commissions are staked at the table j and even many kinds of business, once followed with honesty, moderation, and a" healthy success, are now pursued as games of chance. Not a few merchants thus spread out their business till it gets beyond their control ; they over-buy goods ; they live beyond their means, trusting that at last everything -will come right. So eager are they for all possible investments, that, as one said, " If it were proposed to build a bridge to Tophet, the shares would readily be taken up." But soon every mercantile project so founded totters to its fall, and great is the fall thereof. Others, in their passion for sudden accumulation, practise secret frauds, and imagine that there is no harm in them, so long as they are undetected. But in vain will they cover up their transgression, for God sees it to the very bottom ; and let them not hope to keep it always from man. In the long web of events, "be sure your sin will find you out." He who is carrying on a course of latent corruption and dishonesty — be he engaged in some mammoth "speculation, or involved only in some lesser private transactions — is sailing in a ship like that fabled one of old, which comes ever nearer and nearer to a magnetic mountain, "that will at last draw every nail out of it, and scatter its timbers to the waves. Faith in God and all trust in man will eventually be lost, and he will get no reward for his guilt. The winds will sigh forth his iniquity ; and " a beam will come out of the wall," to convict and smite him. Better the noble resolution of Franklin. "My years roll round," said he, writing to his honored mother, in early manhood, " and the last will come, when I had rather have it said ' he lived usefully/ than that ' he died rich. 3 " — ' Young Crusader.'