THE KING’S BUSINESS
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scription, “money-lovers!” The time has come when, in the judgment of all too many, education is looked upon as the favored avenue to commercial success. In an address before the Chi cago University, some time since, Ambassador Bryce.said truly: “The ardor with which the study of physi cal sciences is now pursued for prac tical purposes must not make us forget that education has to do a great deal *more than turn out a man to succeed in business.” The simple truth is that the man who wants what he calls "a business education,” demanding nothing broader, desiring nothing deeper than the discovery of a method of money-making, is destined to the direst disappointment. His philoso phy of life is paganistic, and his pros pects are painful disappointments. A writer says: “The Paganism of our day is only the recrudescence due to the astonishing discoveries of powers and possessions, which seem to offer to mankind unbounded physical en joyment. But it is a delusion. The piles of money, the indulgence of the appetites bring no more satisfaction to-day than they did to Petronius or Apicius. The motor car can no more offer permanent delight than the chariot in which the Roman noble drove furiously along the Appian Way. The world cannot satisfy your heart with its infinite variety of beauty and interest! For the indi vidual it is evanescent. It fades as you behold it, because the eye grows dim and the heart sickens.” Philip Mauro, the famous attorney- at-law, now converted and made an Evangel of God, relates, his personal experience in these words: “I came to a saving knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ May 24, 1903. For many years previous to that time I had been drifting steadily away from even a formal profession of Christ. There was no aspiration in my soul
beyond the gratification of self; and all the exertion which I was putting forth had for its sole object the ac quisition and accumulation of means for ministering to that gratification ■ through life. I do not except from this category the consideration be stowed upon my family (who would, doubtless, give me a good character as an indulgent husband and father), for I count these as within the defini tion of ‘self.’. The things which I valued, such as reputation, the good opinion of men, success in business enterprises and the like, engrossed my time and thought, and beyond these, which were all of a temporal nature, there was no object in view. I can now clearly see that I had un consciously made money a god to trust in and to bestow my affections upon, and can, therefore, comprehend the statement of Scripture that ‘cov etousness is idolatry.’ ” He makes this additional admission: “I was thoroughly discontented, desperately unhappy, and becoming more and more an easy prey to gloomy thoughts and vague, undefinable apprehensions. No longer could I find mental satis faction and diversion in the places and things which once supplied them. My gratifications had been largely of an intellectual order, and my mind had been much occupied in efforts to pierce the veil of the material uni verse, and to discover what, if any thing, lay concealed behind it. This quest had carried me into the do mains of science, philosophy, occult ism, theosophy, etc., etc. All this pursuit had brought nothing more reliable than conjecture, and had left the inquirer after the truth, wearied, baffled and intellectually starved. Life had no meaning, advantage, purpose or justification; and the powers of the much-vaunted human intelelct seemed unequal to the solution of the sim plest mysteries.”
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