COVETOUSNESS
4. COVETOUSNESS
"For the wicked boasts of his heart's desire, and blesses the covetous — whom the LORD abhors." Psalm 10:3
" Covetousness , which is idolatry" Colossians 3:5
"For of this you can be sure: No immoral, impure or covetous person — such a man is an idolater — has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God." Ephesians 5:5
"People who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge men into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs." 1 Timothy 6:9-10
The Bible makes short work of our apologies for sin . It gives no comfort to those people who take an easy view of transgression and are always ready to palliate crime. Covetousness, for instance, in the widest sense of the word, is a sin common to multitudes; it may sometimes attain to the proportions of a national offence; a whole people may be absorbed in the pursuit of gain, and this will be considered natural and justifiable and advantageous to the State — yet this is, at bottom, the sin of the covetous; and the covetous are they whom God abhors. In what abhorrence, then, must many things be held above, which we deem indispensable to success in life?
We have made some progress on our way from one circle to another of the Kingdom of Sin. We have been in the house of the Proud , and in the house of the Violent ; now we come to another region, where other sinners work out their destruction.
God resists the proud;
He refrains the angry;
but the covetous He abhors .
There must be something peculiarly base in Covetousness, that it should inspire Almighty God with deep disgust and indignation.
Covetousness is the inordinate desire for acquisition, the eagerness for gain. It is the sin of him who proposes to himself the heaping up of riches and the acquisition of property — and makes that the sole end and object of existence. The essence of this sin is this, that it is done without order or moderation, and with no motive which could keep the hands clean and purify the heart. The desire of acquisition is not wrong; it is a natural instinct; it is the spring which lifts men out of barbarism and makes them civilized beings. A man has a natural right to property — to the just return of his labor — to the enjoyment of whatever he may acquire by toil and thrift. But the inordinate desire of riches or wealth — the reckless pursuit of them — the wish to possess them solely for the pleasure or power that they bring — the joining of house to house, or of field to field — in the intense selfishness which takes no thought, meanwhile, for the interests of others or the commandments of God; these pervert a natural and innocent desire, into a degrading and demoralizing sin.
Covetousness consists, then, of an eager and passionate wish for wealth and property, with no high, honorable, or worthy object in view.
It is also the sin of those who, already in possession of this world's goods, by gift, inheritance, or successful toil, sit comfortably down in the midst of them, bent mainly or only on this one thing — to enjoy their life. And therefore, among these people whom God abhors, we find striking contrasts, and a motley variety.
Here are some who hoard up money, as their hundreds grow to thousands, and their thousands to hundreds of thousands, and their hundreds of thousands to millions — living all the while in poverty, if not in squalor, and grudging every cent that they have to spend.
Others again, though enormously wealthy, do nothing praiseworthy with their wealth; it merely stimulates the desire of selfish enjoyment; they spend money freely, but only on themselves, on dresses, and equipage, and entertainments, on villas, and yachts, and horses — toward which luxuries that same passion inclines them, which leads others to the abject humiliation of the miser's life.
And between these extreme specimens in this gallery of criminals, we see the dense throng who rest not day or night, in their struggle for wealth — who think, who dream of nothing else; who sacrifice time, health, friends, honor, and conscience to success in that pursuit; who live in nervous apprehension of loss, or elation in the case of gain. There is a great difference in these unfortunate beings:
the miser , afraid of his shadow, and hiding his gold and banknotes under a board in the floor, or locking them up in safe deposit vaults, where he can count them at leisure again and again;
the fine lady who airs her splendor in her afternoon drives, and displays her person at the opera and the ball;
the egregious youth who passes among his admirers for an Adonis on the credit of his income or accomplishments; the slave to business, who works on and on and never stops, with the gilded prize before him.
But in reality they are of the same heart and the same blood. The ruling passion in each is the acquisition of property, or its selfish enjoyment . The love of money, for itself, and for the advantage which it can command. They belong to the same circle in the Dark Kingdom of Sin; the recording angels write the same bitter things against them all.
It is hard to tell, in these days of doubt and moral confusion, how much reverence men retain for the Holy Scriptures. But if they do believe them to be the Word of God, some expressions therein contained must have a particularly alarming sound. "The love of money," says the apostle, "is the root of all evil." Is this so? What then of our own time, and our own city and country? Walk through any town — and see if there is a stronger love, than that of money? Is not that love the leading motive? Is it not in all classes, high and low, young and old, men and women alike? And this love, says God, is "the root of all evil." It ought to frighten us to remember this, and to think what share we ourselves may have in the cultivation of this root of bitterness, and in the deadly mischief that comes up from it, day by day.
One of the curses of this age is the haste to get rich. There are two ways of acquiring wealth; one is that of steady and honest, hard work — it is the right way, but it takes a long time, The other way is a short cut; it is the path of clever trickery and dubious expedient, of gambling processes and deceitful devices — and that is the wrong way.
And in the third of the deadly sins, is contained the perfect diagnosis of that disease of our time, of the beginnings of the malady, its course, and progress, and its end. Covetousness is the goal which sets these wretches a-running, and keeps them at their speed; the desire not only to get rich, but to get rich in the shortest possible time.
To buy and sell, to barter and exchange, is no sin — society could not exist without such transactions. To make one's profit by buying and selling, or by any legitimate work, is no sin — civilization could not have come without capital, and capital is the slow acquisition of labor. But there are hollow and fictitious transactions which lie outside of lawful business, as when, for example, it comes to betting on contingencies, and gambling in securities which are not in a man's possession, and of which he will never have a sight. When it demoralizes the public to see the profit that ensues; when one man agrees to sell at a future day what he does not own and may not be able to get, to another man who is to make or lose as the scale happens to turn, and takes the risk in the dark; and when this beautiful arrangement is made simply for the purpose of speculation, and is reducible to a mere bet between the two on a contingency — what shall we say of the men who engage in such transactions, and of those who approve and gladly would imitate? This is not legitimate business; it does not belong to fair and honest trade.
These men are gamblers ; no other term describes them correctly. And gambling is a sin, whatever form it take; to bet on the value of stocks and bonds, of gold or grain, is the same thing as betting on cards or dice, the speed of a horse, or the accuracy of a shot. And the motive is to make money fast — not by honest toil, not by patient and laudable toil, but by cross-cuts and roundabout ways, and in whatever way promises the quickest results. And this is covetousness, in a degrading form; and if laws could be made to check and stop proceedings of this nature, it would be a blessing to the public.
I cite this as one instance only of the working of the passion to get rich in a hurry; to have great wealth, with the least possible delay; a passion which robs men of the sense of honor and effaces the image of God in the soul. And the worst of it is this: that the people seem to be judicially blinded on the subject — no moral sense is left — they apologize, excuse, shrug their shoulders, and go on without fear. Everyone is prepared to make his bet; to make his little venture; to turn a penny if possible; anything to make money, to make it quickly, so that we may have the good of it before we die. And as is the case in sinners of other classes, so with these — people the most unlike are drawn together in the bonds of this transgression. The unprincipled millionaire is own brother to the little street vagrant who plays pitch and dice on the sidewalk; both are doing substantially the same thing. The adventurer who leaves off the pursuit of agriculture in the East, and goes off West to pick up salted diamonds in Arizona, or wash gold in the mines of California — is impelled by the same motive as the bank robber who mines partition walls, and attacks hardened steel — hoping to get in a few hours what the same amount of industry, skill, and perseverance would have enabled him to get as an honest man, though not so fast.
It is the love of money which is the root of all evil; and every day gives proof of this in the deplorable annals of crime and the lowering of the standard by which the public measure the acts of men.
Let it not be forgotten that we owe to the spirit of Covetousness, some evils which take an uglier shape every hour, and threaten the security of the people and the stability of our free institutions. It is indirectly at the bottom of that labor agitation whereby, for a long time, one class in the community has been harassing and aggravating all other classes. That agitation is the result of dissatisfaction and discontent , produced by the sight of overgrown fortunes acquired hurriedly by dubious arts, and used for selfish purposes; of gigantic monopolies which enrich their managers and prevent competition; of corporations formed and controlled for the advantage of a few against the interests of the public. These are evils, and great evils, and no one is to blame for being vexed with them.
But the remedies proposed are worse than the grievances themselves; such as the formation of irresponsible organizations, so constituted that their acts, if they venture to act, amount to a conspiracy against the nation and defiance of the law; the investiture of individuals with powers not consistent with the public safety; powers much greater than those of the revolutionary committees in the bloodiest days of history; powers which it is hardly imaginable that any man would try to exercise here and today, and which, if they should be exercised, would amount to a subversion of the rights of the citizen, and would be comparable only to the most desperate deeds of autocratic tyrants.
Covetousness, which made the evil, is responsible for that evil, and also for the proposed methods of abating it — methods abhorrent to the Law of God and the natural sense of justice, and involving a general assault on the freedom and peace of millions of unoffending people, and an attempt to paralyze every department of commerce, industry, and trade! Such are the latest workings of this deadly sin, from which may God send the nation some speedy and perpetual deliverance.
Each of the Deadly Sins has its peculiar way of corrupting the heart.
Of Covetousness , the result is to make men sordid and base, envious and discontented.
Pride builds up strong characters; strong, at all events, however offensive.
Anger puts men out of themselves; yet in doing so it invests them with a certain fierceness and terror, and makes them formidable to the view.
But the covetous are low down, in the room of the mercenary, the avaricious, the greedy, and dishonest. Their sin is one which kills the life of the soul faster and more surely than either of the former sins; it kills the religious life, it kills the intellectual life.
It is, moreover, a hopeless malady. The proud may become meek, the furious gentle, as was the case with those wrathful sons of Zebedee who were transformed into apostles of peace and love. But what can help the soul which Covetousness devours? That was the sin of Judas Iscariot. There are instances of haughty men who have humbled themselves before Almighty God, becoming as little children; there are cases of adulterers and impure who have learned to loathe themselves and their past, and, in the prayer, "Make me a clean heart, O God" — have found pardon, pity, and help, and have become preachers of purity and holiness. Envious men have grown charitable — and slothful men have been changed to valiant soldiers of Christ and the Church. But what hope is there for a mercenary, avaricious, covetous soul? Is it in vain that Holy Scripture and uninspired writers unite in warnings of the peril of the love of riches? "The love of money is the root of all evil," exclaims the apostle. "How hard it is for those who have riches enter into the Kingdom of Heaven!" It is the voice of the Lord Himself. O thrice banned and awful sin, against which God and man, Christian and pagan, thus take up their parable, and of which the condemnation rings from age to age along the range of human life!
Woe be to us! For surely in this place, and this great city, it is one of our characteristic sins . Think what pains are taken to train the children in the art of calculation. Arithmetic, figures, numbers; sums to be done on the blackboard, and sums to be done in the head; mental arithmetic, the habit of rapid and accurate computation. Instinct tells them that this art is of the highest value — the grand object in life is to make money, and the science of figures is essential to that design. Look at the colleges throughout the land; especially those of recent origin, or those which have adopted modern ideas. The classics and the humanities have comparatively few disciples. What cares the average youth for the fine arts, and divine philosophy? They may be very fine and very divine, but they do not bring us money; and money is the one thing needful; whereof let us select such studies as shall help us most in its pursuit.
The money-making spirit gives their very look to the streets and the structures which line them. How do trade and commerce flourish, and how meager are the signs of reverence for literature and art! Let us walk about. See what great buildings are here; palaces, indeed, magnificent, oppressive in height and grandeur; and yet not one has a word to say, a sound to utter, to the mind or the soul . These superb piles of masonry are the monuments of the triumph of Material rather than Intellectual wealth; they bear all over the escutcheons and insignia of business; at their feet merchandise is piled in heaps; we think of nothing as we pass, but commerce and trade. Now, commerce and trade are excellent things in themselves, but they are not the all-in-all to man; and wherever and whenever they are made the all-in-all, and higher interests are neglected or forgotten, woe to that place and woe to that people! It is well to build these great structures to serve the need of a business community, but there ought to be other structures sacred to the Fine Arts, to Philosophy, to Letters, to Religion; and these ought to be much larger and grander, and still more magnificent; and where that is not the case, and such are few, and comparatively poor and humble — we know that men sacrifice the higher to the lower; that with them the last is first, and what should stand first is last.
Again, consider how people live. It is not living. It is madly racing and tearing along, lest any should be left behind. We live here as no people ever lived or ought to live, the victims of what they call "enterprise" and "activity;" of what is really a prodigal expenditure of brain-force and muscle, and" whatever else men "have to waste; and the general motive power of this enterprise and activity is that same desire of this world's goods which drives men onward at their furious rate. It is accounted the greatest of all evils to be poor; all means are lawful which promise wealth; nothing is worth having unless it can be turned to gold. Soft names must be invented to disguise the real character of fraud, crime, and corruption; at the worst, offences must be condoned, for who among us has a right to cast a stone? Time is short, and the time to enjoy life is short; let us make haste and get whatever the world can give, before we go hence and leave it forever.
Who is he who would pass one's life in an atmosphere created by work and material exercise only, and in a society which appears to exist merely for the sake of amassing wealth, and in which the evidence is clear that this incessant addiction to one object and one idea is draining out the spiritual and religious life, and slowly poisoning the public heart?
Sometimes a dreadful feeling comes over a man, as if he were becoming slowly but surely stifled; as if he were contaminated by perpetual contact with those who have no high aim in existence; living it all out here, and getting nothing that will last after they die. Of material possessions only, is the saying true, that "we brought nothing into this world and can carry nothing out." That is not true of man's intellectual and spiritual acquisitions; much that he now possesses, he shall keep in another world; gains from the right use of grace, from holy culture, are good to him hereafter. His character is his own forever; his habitual thoughts, his moral convictions; what high ideas, what lofty aspirations, what pure desires he derived from any source — from art, from reverent science, from spiritual philosophy — may be his still after he goes hence; for these belong to that part of our nature which cannot die. But what is to become of the mammon of unrighteousness? What of those arts and appliances whereby it was acquired and increased? It is conceivable that one who has cultivated his mind in higher and useful studies, even though they were not distinctively religious, may gain thereby something which he can carry with him into another state, something which, by God's divine alchemy , may be transmuted into a better thing, and set to his credit hereafter.
But it is not conceivable that anything should be left which came of covetousness and avarice, and the sordid lust of acquisition ; that there can be a place in the treasure-house above for that which a man earned here by gambling in stocks, by betting on rises and falls, by driving sharp bargains, by false swearing as to values, by the hocus pocus of margins and corners, by using trust funds fraudulently, by persistent accumulation of wealth with no intention to turn it to account for the benefit of the age — it is not conceivable that anything good can come of this cauldron of doubled toil and trouble beyond the tomb. And therefore a man of better mold and finer fibre, who, in the midst of such things bodily, is yet at heart uncontaminated by them, must have hours when he feels like one suffocating and choking, and wishes that he knew how he could get out of them, and crawl away, with whatever vitality is left, to some place where he could attend to higher things, and breathe a more wholesome air — and live as one made in God's image ought to live, and prepare for the life of the world to come. Thus has many a soul protested against the sin of the age, and thus does the victim shudder as he sees the hand lifted to strike him to the heart.
But these soul-smitten and conscience-convicted are in a small minority — and so are likely to remain for many a day. Not while the world lasts will the Kingdom of the Vices be broken up, and still shall this demon of Covetousness lord it over us, and draw the foolish into his net; and greatly shall he multiply his allies among the infatuated rich, and the lean and envious poor. Consent, admiration, and approval still attend the lust for gain. For Dives, who sits in purple and fine linen, and fares sumptuously every day — there shall be a secret veneration — perhaps not secret but openly confessed — and for the rich fool who said to his soul: "Soul, you have much goods laid up for many years; take your ease, eat, drink, and be merry." Such men as these, it will be asserted, have drawn the real prizes in the lottery of life, and have the better part, the only part worth having, as things go.
And that interior conviction of the supreme value of a handsome income and the means to enjoy this present state, will no doubt continue to dictate the course of men and women in the important decisions of life. Parents will still educate their children in those principles; they will bring up their daughters with the idea that their first business is to get rich husbands, so that they shall not cast a second look on any man unless he can give a house, and a carriage, and jewels, and the paraphernalia of a luxurious existence. And men will hunt after heiresses, who, however, are few and rare; and so, until they can be found and captured, men will live without wives, but not without female companions in their stead, such as may be bought and kept for money — God pity the miserable creatures and have mercy on their souls!
Yes, moreover, the married will take care to have small families, because it costs too much to bring up children; and rigid economy shall be the rule in every direction, except that of self-indulgence , wherein no limits are set to reckless and extravagant display.
Thus is life poisoned at its spring and fountain-head , and hearts grow dry and hard; and what beauty is left shall be deceptive, having promise neither of this world nor of that which is to come. Men and women shall lose their fresh springs of romance and idealism, and, far from admiring and loving whatever things are pure, honest, and of good report — they shall come to despise them, and laugh at them and at those who do admire them, with a hollow and ghastly laugh, wherein is the note of total loss of that which it is soul-death and spirit-death to lose. You may find, not far away, those who mock at the poetic, sneer at the romantic, scoff at the ideal, and scowl at religion; and they sink lower and lower down, nor do they know what is the matter. But we know that it is simply this, that Covetousness , the third of the Mortal Sins, has them under that iron heel with which it grinds the manhood and the womanhood out of them, and treads their life to the earth, and lays their honor in the dust.
What shall be done for the aged? From one point, only can help be had; from the quarter of Christian Principles and Christian Faith. And yet, why turn that way? Men will laugh you to scorn and refuse to listen. Let me state, by way of conclusion — those old ideas, those fundamental principles, which this stiff-necked generation rejects and denies.
It was thought, of old, that the distinction between the Rich and the Poor was made by Almighty God, that He intends that it shall always exist, that there shall always be rich people, and that the poor shall never cease out of the land.
It was thought, of old, that as the earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof, the rich are His stewards and hold their wealth in trust, for the good of the entire community and not for their own selfish behalf — so that to spend much on self, and little for others — is to rob God and man together.
It was thought, of old, that covetousness is idolatry, that God abhors the covetous, and that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.
It was thought, of old, that the estate of poverty is honorable and desirable, because the Son of Man chose it when He came into this world.
It was thought, of old, that for a rich man to sell all that he had, and give to the poor, and take up the cross and follow Christ, was the grandest thing that he could do, and that God would reward that act with the crown of eternal glory.
It was thought, of old, that, the rich being liberal, bountiful, and humble-minded — and the poor content — each class would help, and bless, and love the other.
These were the old ideas, whereby they fought the devil of Covetousness, Avarice, and Prodigal Display . Go forth and proclaim them now in market-place and street, to our own rich and poor; and harken to the sound of derisory laughter, the rattle of jeer and jest with which they will be received by a people formed on modern ideas and wedded to the current theories of the day.
Never mind: thence comes help, and only thence. We point you to Jesus Christ, who of His own will became poor and needy — to His saints, who followed him in that thing — to kings, nobles, Christians, who laid aside crown, sword, mansion, title, and rank, to live and die and be buried among the poor — to men and women, in all ages, who had such thoughts in their hearts and groped about for a way to carry them into effect. Set these up as a sign to the nations; they may be spoken against; but keep silence and leave all to God. The sign shall stand, to warn, to cheer, to enlighten, when the current sets toward the side of storm and night, and when the ignorant crowd hurries past descending to the gates where they that enter must leave all hope behind.