MONEY-GETTING.

Temuka Leader, Volume I, Issue 83, 2 October 1878, Page 3

MONEY-GETTING.

M.-.ney is n good thing, of which every man shonU try to secure enough to avoid dependence upon others, either for his bread or his opinions; but it is not so good a thing that, to win it, one should crawl in the dust, stoop to a mean or dishonourable action, or give his conscience a single pang. Moneygetting is unhealthy when it impoverishes the mind, or dries up the sources of spiritual life; when it extinguishes the sense of beauty, and makes one indifferent to the wonders of nature and art ; when it blunts the moral sense and confuses the distinction between right and wrong, virtue and vice ; when it stifles religious impulse, and blots all thought of God from the soul. Moneygetting is unhealthy, again, when it engrosses all one's thoughts, leads a man to live coarsely and meanly, to do without books, pictures, music, travel, for the sake of greater gains, and causes him to find his deepest and most soulsatisfying joy, not in the culture of his heart or mind, not in doing good to himself or others, but in the adding of coin to coin, in the knowledge that the money in his chest is piled up higher and higher every year, that his s<C.ount at the bank is constantly growing, that he is adding bonds to bonds, stocks to stocks, and may say to himseltf " Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years." Let every one, then, who wishes to get on in the world, justly estimate the value of money. Let him neither, on the one hand, make it the only guage and object of success, nor, on the other, affect for it a philosophic contempt which the necessities of life will compel him to unlearn. Let strive for a mere living, nor (unless he has a rare genius for money making) for a great fortune, but gather gear, as Burns says— By every wile That's justified by honour. Not for to hide it in a hedge ; Not for a train attendant, But for the glorious privilege Of being independent. W. Mathews.