III.

Manhood is the gospel ideal of wealth, personal and national. The man sound in body, vigorous in mind, pure in heart, generous in purpose, loving in thought, active in labour, hopeful in spirit—that man is the standard unit in estimating the wealth of a people. Manhood is the supreme value; it is wealth of bodily health, wealth of intellect, wealth of love, wealth of diversity in gifts, wealth of adaptation, wealth of power to turn nature's treasures into a ready ministry of human progress. Manhood is the joy of the home, the strength of the State, the basis and substance of imperial power. The men who love righteousness and hate iniquity, who speak the truth and scorn falsehood, who live in charity and good-will, abhorring malice and evil-speaking, who think not merely of their own things, but also of the things of others, who find exhilaration in industry, who wrest from the physical world secrets which lighten human burdens and sweeten human conditions, who count not their lives dear to them if by sacrifice the sorrow of the world shall be turned into joy—such men are wealth in the noblest sense. The secret of wealth is not in the mine, or in the factory; not in the fruitful field, or in the page 6 counting-house; not in the laboratory, or in applied science; but in the pure and enlightened conscience—that is, in Christian manhood.

We are familiar with the notion that material possessions constitute wealth; and no doubt we are too often called upon to deplore the destruction or the wasteful use of the material resources of wealth. Sheep and cattle perish in droughts, or by floods; wheat-fields are bereft of crops; the pastures are burnt up; mines are wastefully worked, or let lie idle in the cruel grip of speculation—businesses are badly managed, or hurled into bankruptcy by the mysterious surprises of the money market; enterprises that promised well are brought to ruin by the sheer perversity of man; and when such disasters come nigh us and touch us with the stinging friction of personal interest, we promptly and with sympathetic vigour cry "Loss! loss! huge loss! And we have sorrowful apprehension of the misery, perchance widespread misery, which lies behind it all. This is natural, and distinctly human.

But we should have as prompt and as sympathetic an apprehension of the huger disasters which, as a people, we are suffering through the chronic waste of manhood. Of late years, it is true, we have advanced far in the better appreciation of the national importance of sane and capable human life. Child-life not only receives our pity, but has also safeguarding legislation and the protection of public sentiment. We are more intelligently and jealously careful about the health conditions of labour. Moreover, when we hear of catastrophes involving loss of life on land or sea, we are not slow in the expression of our desolation of feeling. We count as heroes those who risk their lives to save the life of others. All honour to the brave; and so be it for ever. But we have a long way to go yet before we shall have reached a just appreciation of the true value of human life, either from the strictly personal or the national standpoint; we are yet far from an intelligent and passionate recognition of the unmeasured waste of wealth whose tragedy moves with such painful eloquence under our eyes, in almost every moment of our working existence. Our page 7 reformatories, our prisons, our aslyums, ah! what painful lessons they mournfully teach us. What man of vital sensibility can regard without emotion the degradation and corruption of manhood through ignorance and vice, through evil environment, bad laws and bad customs, through wilful indulgence in selfish pleasure and other kinds of sin? Physical strength and bodily comfort, intellectual power and imaginative resource, moral sanity and spiritual beauty, all that constitutes the glory of man and provides joy in work, peace of home, fulness of inspiration, subtilty of invention, mutual confidence and brotherhood—all are lost to the national wealth through the degradation and depravity of manhood. What a portentious study! The gospel ideal bends over it—yes, broods over it, as the Saviour over Jerusalem, weepingly, but not without hope. For the gospel is the power of God unto salvation. Its grand objective is man. Its divine purpose is to build him up into strong and virtuous being.