LUXURY, EXTRAVAGANCE, AND WEALTH-WORSHIP.
By T.
Speaking of present-day conditions, a recent New York World editorial says:— “It is a moment of luxury and craze for luxury, of extravagance and craze for extravagance, of ostentation and craze for ostentation, of wealth and wealth-worship. The few thousands constituting the ‘triumphant classes,’ and their intimates and retainers who live at their fringes and upon their crumbs, are in a high fever of money-madness. They are drunk with the strong wine of prosperity. The work-a-day millions—small merchants, farmers, small-salaried men, wage-earners, and the like—have a share in the good times which permits comfort and saving against lean years and bony years, but does not permit prodigality. They are infected with the current frenzy, are being made dizzy by the sight and the fumes of the wine that drips and trickles from the banquet-board and rivulets along the floor. Is not this a time when optimism needs the restraint of prudence, when loosening moral obligations call for the salutary contrast of rigid principle?” Any one can not have the ordinary amount of intelligence and live in this world anywhere, without being aware of the fact that the foregoing paragraph9does not overdraw the real facts in the case. Indeed, it would be difficult for the facts to be overdrawn by any truthful language that it is within the power of man to use. Leaving the subject of Bible prophecy out of the question altogether, it should be apparent that these conditions of “wealth-worship,” this craze for luxury, extravagance, and ostentation, must of necessity bring the ruin of the world. No nation has ever been able to resist it. In the very nature of things it can not be done. Wealth-worship, extravagance, ostentation, and luxury, are great breeders of dishonesty and every form of corrupting vice. There are noble examples of wealthy men and women who rise above the sordid and the base, and who use their influence and their money in doing good. But they are the exception, and the great ruling mass of wealth is turned in the downward direction. The men who have these great fortunes are usually very careful what they do directly, but too often their money is used to corrupt officials, defeat justice, and generally to advance the wrong. The standard is too low. Money is sought for its own sake. Money becomes a god, and is worshiped. In this way “wealth-worship” has in it all the debasements of any other form of idolatry. Men ought to be thinking about the purport of these things to-day, and not allow themselves to be swept along with the hilarious throng into the abyss of ruin.