15 the time to get rich ; death is the winding up of a speculation ; Heaven is a mart with golden streets ; hell a debtor's prison for unsuccessful men; the chief aim of man is to glorify gold and enjoy it forever." The very temples of God were places of moneychanging, and the priest at the altar an alchemist with a crucible in its holy fire, seeking the philosopher's stone. The public, in a word, were mad for gold, and when gain becomes the grand popular end and aim—the summum bonum—the highest and ultimate good—then has avarice become the spreading leprosy of the social state, and all things fair and noble and of good report sicken and die, as in the breath of the pestilence. I speak not these things invidiously. I but say what we all know. We were, proverbially to the world, and consciously to ourselves, fast sinking into the unleavened sordidness of avarice. Like the Hebrews at Mount Sinai, we had torn off our ornaments of honor and honesty—the jewels of price which our fathers brought through the flood—and cast them into the raging fires of covetousness and then came forth a golden image, and with songs and dances we worshiped the calf! Meanwhile this insane greed of gain was naturally and necessarily working out our ruin—for by an immutable law of life, wealth begets luxury, and luxury palsies the strength and digs the graves of nations. There was indeed an hour, "only just past, when it seemed that this dire palsy of avarice had
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