THE PILGRIM’S PROGRESS: THE TRAGEDY OF A SILVER MINE

Evening Star, Issue 19794, 18 February 1928, Page 2

THE PILGRIM’S PROGRESS: THE TRAGEDY OF A SILVER MINE

This incident in Bunyan’s great drama is one of its most impressive episodes. Pr6bably the most illuminating commentary on it would be the files of the newspapers of Dunedin, or anywhere else, when a new mine has been discovered or a mining boom started, n If wo were able to announce this evening the finding of a rich gold mine or q silver mine in Otago the issue of the d ‘ Star ’ would bo sold out in an hour. j 1 ’ And if the discoverer were to arrive in the city he would be one of the most interesting men in Dunedin. Wo are not able to make such an announcement, but, with the help of Bunyan, we are going to do something quite as n important. We are going to tell our e readers how they may know a good h thing in mining when they see it, or, ? at any rate, how they can infallibly o determine a bad thing when it is t offered to them. * * * * The first point is to notice the location of the mine where this tragedy took place. If we miss that we miss the significance of the whole episode. It was situated in a “little hill called Lucre,” at the “ further side of a delicate plain called Ease.” But the important point is that the place was a “ little off the road to the Celestial

City.” That is the thing to be noted. It was also “a rare and attractive place, but it required a little bending k from the straight road to got to it.” * This is the infallible test of a mine of ’ gold or silver, of money or wealth, t Bunyan’s sanity is here again visible. He does not say that money is not to be desired, or that sharebroking or mining is not a legitimate thing. What he says is that if their acquirement leads aside from the upper way, from . straight dealing, there is a tragedy I ahead for those who yield to it. What ' form the tragedy may take lie does not strictly define. He merely says that what happened to those who in his time were attracted off the straight road to the delicate plain called Ease and the hill of Lucre was this; “ Going too near tho brim, tho ground under them broke, and they were slain; some also were maimed there, and could not to their dying day be their own men again.” This is not ancient history. It may be the commonplace of ethics or the platitudes of tho pulpit. But commonplaces and platitudes arc never out of order till their truths are wrought into the life. As we Lave already said, the best commentary ou Bunyan’s words is the files of the daily newspapers. Wo have not to search tho city with candles to find examples of tho tragedies of which Bunyan speaks—tho tragedies of men and women who turned off from tho straight in order to get rich quick, and have pierced themselves through with many sorrows. Some were slain, some maimed, some escaped death, but they wore never the same men again. » * * * As Christian and Hopeful were pushing on past this delicate plain called Ease and the hill of Lucre a Mr Dennis, a sharebroker, “ gentleman like, saluted them.” “Hello,” ho says; “ come here, turn aside for a minute, and I will lay you on a good thing in mining and money.” “What thing,” asks the Pilgrim, “so deserving as to turn us out of tho way?” A most admirable query to address to oneself when one is tempted to clo a little wrong to gain a great right. One recalls here a striking illustration of this in Alary Garth in ‘ Middlcmarch.’ Her rich, old, penurious relative, Foathcrstone, whom she had been nursing, is dying. He wants to give Iris money to tier, and she wants the money badly—wants it not for herself, but for her impoverished lover and parents. It only needs a. littlo deception, a slight swerving from the path of rectitude, and it is hers. Nobody need know anything about it except herself and the old man whose lips will soon be sealed by death. It was a, dreadful trial. But she was firm. She said nobly: “No, sir; I will not let the close of your life soil the beginning of mine.” ft is the right answer to the question which we should always put to ourselves in such circumstances: “What tiling so deserving as to turn us out of the way?” « * ♦ * But let us hear what this “ gentlemanly ” stockbroker has to urge in favor of his mining shares. Ho says: “Here is a silver mine, and some digging it for treasure. If you will come, with a little pains you may richly [provide for yourselves.” Hopeful suggested to his companion that they should go and sec the thing, but the latter put down his foot and said it was dangerous, and ho had heard of many who came to grief there. Demas continued to urge the business, but the Pilgrims finally determined to have nothing to do with it. The reasons were obvious. First, the mine was “ a little off the straight road.” That ought to have been enough to condemn the venture. Then they were promised that with just “ a little pains they could richly provide for themselves.” This is another infallible test by which to judge the ethics of money-making. Any method of acquiring wealth which enables one to do it quickly, without long and honest toil, is generally ruinous in the end. It is this because it is wrong, and it is wrong because it is robbery, and it is robbery because society is organised on' the basis of reciprocal service. Every commodity represents work, and every exchange of commodity that is honest and fair represents an' equal amount of work. When an exchange is made that does not conform to this equality of service robbery takes place. What obscures this from us is the use of money. But money is only crystallised labor, and when it is secured with but little or no pains there is no just exchange of Service, and a blow is struck on the foundation on which organised society refits. Hence gambling is anti-social, for it is the acquirement of riches with “ but little pains,” and giving no reciprocal return. It is true that a great deal of modern business falls under the same category. But this does not justify the gambler; it only condemns the business so conducted. It is a very ancient ordinance that it is only by the sweat of the brow or the brain that a living is to be made, and that they who will be rich at all hazards with but little pains fall into many foolish and destructful lusts that ruin body and soul. A plant may grow faster than it can make wood, and so winds and weather destroy it. This explains why children who inherit great wealth without the experience which consolidated character in their fathers are

cursed by it. You can no more make money suddenly and not be harmed by it than you can grow from a child to a man in a month. • * * * Let us see how Bunyan presents this to us. The Pilgrims declined to buy shares at the price Demae asked for them—that of turning oft’ a little from the straight road and getting them with only a little .pains. But By-End and his company took the bait at once. And what happened? Just what we have said. As Bunyan puts it: “Now, whether they fell into the pit by looking over tho brink, or whether they wont down to dig, or whether they wer© smothered iry. the bottom by the damps that commonly arise there—of these things I am not certain. But this I observed: they were never again seen in tho way.” Bunyan with his maul sagacity increases the terror of their doom by leaving it to be enacted in the obscurity of twilight. They may have grown rich or they may have become beggars. Maybe they fell into the pit and died as a fool dieth, or maybe they were maimed, as so many are, losing their freedom of thought and power of vision, becoming slaves of narrow ideals and sordid hopes, or maybe they were smothered by the foul air of the mine. For the passion for money when it is not held in leash by a sense of stewardship has a peculiar power ef choking the higher life in a man. There is about many such lives a disagreeable lack of freshness. They lose the capacity for frank and simple pleasures and for appreciating Nature and

Nature’s ways and things. But Bunyan ' leaves their individual fates in obscurfiity. Only one thing is certain; “They ■ I were seen no more upon the road.” ■ That is what we have called ‘The Tragedy > of a Silver Mine.’ In one form or another it is being enacted every day. ; Look for a moment at the loading figure 1 of this mining company—Demas. He l belongs to the history of St. Paul. ’ When the curtain lifts and ho appears ; for the first time on the stage he stands

' there along with “Luke, the beloved 1 physician.” Ho is a young man lull of ; energy and of hope. He faces tho 1 odium, even the danger, of being a 1 Christian. He shares tho wide sympai tides, the risks, the faith, and comradeship of the great Apostlo of the Gentiles. He sends his message of goodwill to the Colossian Church: “Luke, tho beloved physician, and Demas greet yon.” That is the first scene in ihe drama of his life. Years pass, strenuous, sifting, suffering years. St. Paul is an old man now. He is in prison. He is waiting for death. He is writing Ida last letter. We look over his shoulder and read: “Demas hath forsaken me, having loved this present world.” .In Runyan’s story he makes tho love of the world in the case of Demas to take the form of money. What ultimately happened to him and tho others who bought his shares “I do not know. But this 1 know: they were seen no more upon the road.” “ The love-.of money,” writes the aged apostle in another letter, perhaps with Demas in his eye, “ is a root of all kinds of evil.” “When a man begins to love money,” says a modern writer, “he soon begins to love nothing else.” It is a passion so easily acquired and so desperately difficult to control. a * v * It is significant to see when Banyan locates the temptation. It is not at the early stages, but near the end'of the pilgrimage, when Demas ami Go. appear on tho road. It is another of the evidences of Runyan's psychological sanity. For the passion for moneygetting is the last passion to die out of the regenerate heart. It is a passion which needs the keenest watching in our clay. For tho dominant ambition among most of us is not that we may be wise, hut that we may bo wealthy. In Christ’s Beatitudes we have another “ Blessed are the rich, for theirs is everything.” But it is a beatitude that, unless carefully conditioned, mayblast instead of bless. We need not waste our pity, as has been rightly said, I over characters of the By-End, Hokl-the-World, and Gripe-Man stamp, who then came to the end of their journey upward. Onr regrets must linger rather over men and women like Demas, who in their earlier stages, gave promise of nobler things, hub which never came to fruitage in their later years. Their bright and ardent youth was slowly suborned and finally subdued by a shining metal with all tho witcheries which it holds. And so they are scon no more upon the road. We hoped for better things. But it is over as a talc once told; All fallen the blossom which no fruitage bore, All lost the present and the future time, All lost the lapse that went before— So lost till death shut to the opened door; So lost from chime to everlasting chime, So cold, so lost for ever, evermore. Such was ‘ The Tragedy of a Silver Mine ’ and such were its causes. The story, in its essentials, might have i been copied from yesterday’s newspaper.