4. Christian Liberality in the Distribution of Property, illustrated and enforced. By J. G. Pike. 18mo. pp. 156. London, (Religious Tract Society,) 1836.

FEW of our readers can require to be informed of the history

of these publications. Early in 1835, the munificent prize of one hundred guineas was offered, by public advertisement, to the author of the best Essay upon the Love of Money; the adjudication being entrusted by the pious Donor, Dr. Conquest, to the Rev. Dr. J. P. Smith, and the Hon. and Rev. Baptist Noel. The manuscripts were to be sent with sealed letters containing the address of the writer; and due care was taken that, prior to the decision of the umpires, there should be afforded no ground for conjecture as to the names of the candidates, who were no fewer than one hundred and forty-three. They appear to have had no hesitation in adjudging the prize to the Author of the treatise entitled, "Mammon "; since discovered to be the Rev. John Harris of Epsom, Author of "The Great Teacher"; a volume which obtained from us its meed of warm approbation *. His present performance, to whatever criticism it may be open, will support the estimate formed of his abilities; and no one, we apprehend, will feel disposed to arraign the impartiality or the competency of the decision which has assigned to this Essay the palm.

The Essay is divided into three Parts. In the first, Selfishness, as being the source of Covetousness, is shewn to be the great antagonist of Christianity. The second and principal part is occupied with the consideration of Covetousness as the prevailing form of the giant sin of selfishness. In the third, Christian Liberality is explained and enforced as the only antidote to the evil.

In the original Advertisement, it was stated, that the work wanted is one that will bear on selfishness, as it leads us to live to ourselves, and not for God and our fellow men.' The Author has therefore very properly commenced by shewing, that selfishness is in direct opposition to the spirit, and tendency, and design of Christianity, and that its operation has, to a great extent, frustrated the glorious intention of the Divine Founder of the Church. In this part of the Essay, however, Mr. Harris does not appear to the best advantage. He declaims where he should have been occupied in clearing his ground, and in drawing more definitively and broadly the distinction between self-love, or the desire of happiness, and selfishness, or the disregard of the happiness of others. Selfishness, he tells us, is fallen self-love',

* Eclectic for Dec. 1835. Art. II.

self-love in excess, blind to the existence and excellence of God, and seeking its happiness in inferior objects, by aiming to 'subdue them to its own purposes.' Now, we do not object against this description, that it has no pretensions to the precision of a definition, for nice definitions are out of place in morals; but is the sentiment correct? Is selfishness the excess of selflove? How can vice be the desire of happiness in excess, or the absence of benevolence and piety be the excess of a legitimate principle? Selfishness, as involving disobedience, may be represented as opposed to piety; for the creature who makes himself or his own happiness his highest end, forgets the conditions of his being, and his relation to his Maker. But what we generally understand by selfishness, is not a preference of self to God, but the negation of benevolent regard for others. To make the word synonymous with impiety, is to generalize away its specific meaning. A man who loves only himself is selfish; and his selfishness is criminal, because it excludes the love of others.

In the section on the forms of selfishness in the Church,' bigotry is defined as the selfishness of the creed', while other forms are described as 'the selfishness of the pulpit'—' of the pew of the closet'-' of the purse'. But bigots are not always selfish; men of narrow minds and narrow creeds are not uniformly destitute of benevolence; while there are many sincere Christians, not chargeable with being under the prevailing influence of selfishness, who are nevertheless far from being sufficiently alive to the claims of the world at large upon their sympathy and active exertions. It seems to us, then, injudicious to attempt to reduce under one generic term various species of fault or criminality which rather require to be discriminated. If every sin that can be named is only a modification of selfishness', selfishness ceases to be a distinguishing quality, and we must no longer speak of a selfish man, because all men are selfish. But to resolve unbelief, sloth, and even idolatry, into this disposition, appears to us mere rhetoric.

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Mr. Harris is, indeed, apt to be too rhetorical; nor can we forbear to enter our grave protest against the unlicensed freedom of his diction in speaking of the acts of Deity. He must forgive us for saying, that the entire strain of the first section is utterly discordant with the deep-toned reverence with which it becomes us to speak of the purposes of the Almighty. Such expressions as, he must enlarge the sphere of his beneficence';-on that 'occasion he chose to diversify the form of his love," &c.;- had 'his great idea been realized";- the mere outline of the scene as sketched by God';-are revolting to our taste; and still more strongly must we object against such phraseology as, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit embarked their infinite treasures in the cause of human happiness'. We cannot, nor

do we wish to bring ourselves to admire such language as this; and we conjure the Author, by the high talent which he has displayed, and the reputation he has already gained, to rein in his pen, and eschew these audacities of composition, to which even the sobriety of common-place were preferable. We are aware that the pages of Chalmers and Jacob Abbott would furnish. similar specimens of this bold and florid style of theological writing; and we mention their names, because, characteristically different as they are from each other, Mr. Harris occasionally reminds us of both. Admirable, however, as is the eloquence of the Scottish pulpit orator, and striking and original as are the writings of the American moralist, we scarcely know which were the more dangerous model to a young writer.

To return to the subject before us. In the Second Part, the nature of Covetousness is thus described.

If selfishness be the prevailing form of sin, covetousness may be regarded as the prevailing form of selfishness. This is strikingly intimated by the apostle Paul, when, describing the "perilous times" of the final apostacy, he represents selfishness as the prolific root of all the evils which will then prevail, and covetousness as its first fruit. "For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous.”

In passing, therefore, from the preceding outline of selfishness in general, to a consideration of this form of it in particular, we feel that we need not labour to magnify its importance. A very little reflection will suffice to show that, while the other forms of selfishness are partial in their existence, this is universal; that it lies in our daily path, and surrounds us like the atmosphere; that it exceeds all others in the plausibility of its pretences, and the insidiousness of its operations; that it is, commonly, the last form of selfishness which leaves the heart; and that Christians, who have comparatively escaped from all the others, may still be unconsciously enslaved by this. If there be ground to fear that covetousness "will, in all probability, prove the eternal overthrow of more characters among professing people than any other sin, because it is almost the only crime which can be indulged, and a profession of religion at the same time supported ;" and if it be true also, that it operates more than any other sin to hold the church in apparent league with the world, and to defeat its design, and rob it of its honours, as the instrument of the world's conversion; surely nothing more can be necessary to reveal the appalling magnitude of the evil, and to justify every attempt that may be made, to sound an alarm against it.

Covetousness denotes the state of a mind from which the Supreme Good has been lost, labouring to replace him by some subordinate form of enjoyment. The determinate direction which this craving takes after money, is purely accidental; and arises from the general consent of society, that money shall be the representative of all property; and, as such, the key to all the avenues of worldly enjoyment. But as the existence of this conventional arrangement renders the possession of some amount of property indispensable, the application of the term

covetousness has come to be confined almost exclusively to an inordinate and selfish regard for money.

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Our liability to this sin arises, we say, from the perception that money answereth all things". Riches in themselves, indeed, are no evil. Nor is the bare possession of them wrong. Nor is the desire to possess them sinful, provided that desire exist under certain restrictions. For in almost every stage of civilization money is requisite to procure the conveniences, and even the necessaries of life; to desire it therefore as the means of life, is as innocent as to live. In its higher application it may be made the instrument of great relative usefulness; to seek it, then, as the means of doing good, is not a vice, but a virtue. But perceiving that money is so important an agent in society;-that it not only fences off the wants and woes of poverty, but that like a centre of attraction it can draw to itself every object of worldly desire from the furthest circumference; -the temptation arises of desiring it inordinately; of even desiring it for its own sake; of supposing that the instrument of procuring so much good must itself possess intrinsic excellence. From observing that gold could procure for us whatever it touches, we are tempted to wish, like the fabled king, that whatever we touch might be turned into gold.

'But the passion for money exists in various degrees, and exhibits itself in very different aspects. No classification of its multiplied forms, indeed, can, from the nature of things, be rigorously exact. All its branches and modifications run into each other, and are separated by gradations rather than by lines of demarcation. The most obvious and general distinction, perhaps, is that which divides it into the desire of getting, as contradistinguished from the desire of keeping that which is already possessed. But each of these divisions is capable of subdivision. Worldliness, rapacity, and an ever-craving, all-consuming prodigality, may belong to the one; and parsimony, niggardliness, and avarice, to the other. The word covetousness, however, is popularly employed as synonymous with each of these terms, and as comprehensive of them all.' pp. 51-55.

There are two words in the New Testament which are indifferently rendered covetousness ; πλεονεξία and φιλαργυρία. The latter occurs only at 1 Tim. vi. 10; but the adjective formed from it is found at Luke xvi. 14., and 2 Tim. iii. 2. The etymology determines its meaning to be specifically, love of money or wealth, the auri sacra fames'; and Calvin renders it by avaritia. It is this vice which is represented to be the root of all sorts of mischiefs' or crimes. The former is a term of more general and comprehensive import, which is more properly rendered covetousness or cupidity. Schleusner defines it, 'cu'piditas plus aliis acquirendi et possidendi.' Some expositors, indeed, have maintained that the vice intended under this name at Eph. v. 3. and Col. iii. 5, where it is stigmatized as a

*

* In fact, the notion of covetousness seems to include envy and rapacity.

species of idol-worship, is more nearly akin to the others which are there mentioned, (πopvela, anabagoia,) and that it denotes concupiscence or sensuality: the description of the selfish sensualists at Rom. xvi. 18. is adduced in support of this interpretation. Calvin, who injudiciously renders this more general term by avaritia, finds an ingenious reason for its being thus ignominiously branded with the name of idolatry, rather than ambition or any other vice to which that description might seem equally applicable: Quia morbus iste latè patet, et quasi suâ contagione occupat plurimorum animos: neque morbus judicatur: quin 'potius laudatur communi opinione: ideo duriùs exagitari à Paulo, ut falsam opinionem ex cordibus nostris evellat.'* This explanation has the fault of being too ingenious: we do not deem it satisfactory. What the Apostle means by saying that the covetous man, or the sensualist (πλɛovénτnç), is an idolater, we should rather explain by the declaration of St. John, 1 Ep. ch. ii. ver. 15; and the vice in question we are disposed to regard as comprehending the three species of worldly desire which are there particularized. According to this view, the word stands for a love of mammon in the extended sense in which Our Lord uses that word, as implying the world and its possessions personified. Mammon was the name of an idol worshipped by the Syrians, corresponding to the Greek Plutus; and both the Greek and the Syriac appellations appear to have a similar derivation from words signifying abundance. The manner in which Our Lord opposes the service of Mammon, the object of this world's worship, to the service of the True God, (Luke xvi. 13, Matt. vi. 24,) at once illustrates and justifies the Apostolic declaration, that this love of the world is idolatry: and to that passage in the Gospels, St. Paul probably designed to allude.

This inquiry into the real nature of the Sin intended by the Scripture expression rendered Covetousness, cannot be thought superfluous; and we are a little surprised that Mr. Harris should not have deemed it requisite to ascertain the Biblical, rather than the popular import of the phrase. In proceeding to describe the various forms of Covetousness, he says:

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By worldliness, we mean cupidity in its earliest, most plausible, and most prevailing form: not yet sufficiently developed to be conspicuous to the eye of man, yet sufficiently characteristic and active to incur the prohibition of God. It is that quiet and ordinary operation of the principle which abounds most with excuses; which is

* Because this distemper is widely prevalent, and as it were by its contagion possesses the minds of great numbers; neither is regarded as a distemper, but is rather commended in current opinion: so as to be the more severely dealed with by Paul, that he might root out that false opinion from our hearts.'