THE USES OF PROSPERITY. T HERE is a trace of mediEevalism
in all that poetry about the "sweet uses of adversity." The idea exists, no doubt, in Christianity itself, for the first object of that creed is to raise man out of subjection to the external conditions of his life, and make the improvement of his relation to the supernatural his one governing impulse; and the rich or happy man is therefore warned that all he enjoys is fleeting, and the poor or unhappy man is consoled by the thought that his poverty or unhappiness is endurable if only he will raise his glance above his immediate environment. Nevertheless, a good deal of the praise of pain is traditional only. Through. out the Middle Ages, as throughout the first two centuries, the misery of the subject class was so deep and so permanent that the religious thinkers found it difficult to reconcile it with the attributes of God the Merciful, and, as the readiest method, exaggerated the praises of the endurance and submis- sion which spring from suffering, and their ideas consequently became part of the common body of thought among Christian mankind. That was probably beneficial for a time, but at present it tends to produce a kind of hypocrisy which is not favourable to faith. Everybody is saying that prosperity is a snare, and everybody trying to be prosperous. Moreover, everybody recognises that the effort to be prosperous tends, if widely diffused, to the general good of mankind, and yet a great many, especially of the clergy, talk at times as if prosperity, and especially exceeding prosperity, must through some inherent vice in it be bad for the spirit. They might as well say that plumpness was morally bad as contrasted with thinness. We have no doubt that prosperity frequently is a cause of moral evil, more especially among Asiatics, to whom the Christian teachers at first were directly speaking. Their special temptation in times of prosperity is to swell, not exactly with pride, but with fatness, with a conscious indul- gence of the flesh, and a kind of insolence which does not spring so much from cruelty, or even callousness, as from a wish to realise to themselves that they have succeeded and are not as the crowd. Any one who has met rich Jews of the baser type— there are plenty of other types—will recognise at once the temper that we mean. Among Western men, however, prosperity has its own spiritual benefits. It does not, it is true, justify the remark of a small shopkeeper who said of a departed customer, "He had a sweet and Christian nature, for he had a large income," but it does develop the kindness of spirit which we all recognise as Christian, does tend to abolish, or at least diminish, envy, jealousy, and that acrid bitterness which marks large classes in this country who are incapable of grudging others their success, but are savagely discontented and doubtful if Providence is fair because of their own failure. There are men in thousands, probably in millions, among us
in whom the good impulses never quite conquer the evil until they are fairly prosperous, and can think untormented by the bitter disappointment—for it is disappointment which stings them even more than suffering—produced by continuous failure. The Churches go on saying that it is poverty which makes men worthy of the kingdom of heaven, and it is true so far as suffering well borne is the equivalent of acceptable virtue; but we should like to ask a question of all the great employers of labour in the kingdom. Do they really and
It honestly think their foremen less likely to be Christians than their average employes ? because if they do not they might reconsider conclusions as to the spiritual virtue of inadequate wages. We will not say, with a Bishop of the last generation, that "it is hard to be a Christian on less than a pound a week," because we know that not to be true, but we will say that the man who has the pound—taking that as the minimum wage for half-skilled labour—has usually a greater readiness to let the Christian side of him come uppermost, has more charity, more pity, more power of being sympathetic. That side of Christianity is only one side—a fact our philan- thropists are in danger of forgetting—but still it is one side. The struggle, when there is absolutely too little, produces such a deadly form of selfishness—or, to be fair, shall we say self- absorption ?—the selfishness which always presents itself in the light of positive duty. The Samaritan on two shillings a day has trained himself to believe that to save the oil, even when the wounded want it, is his rightful part in the great economy. We should even question, though the opinion we know will produce a shower of remonstrances, whether the prosperous had not, as a rule with large exceptions, the broader minds. We should distrust a lawyer's advice who was sitting on pins, or who was bent on concealing the sharp pangs of toothache, and that is the position, at least very frequently, of men who are suffering from the pangs of adversity. They have a difficulty in thinking temperately, and with full consideration for the other side, because they are so sharply pricked. It is not just when he is badly hurt that the soldier sees that the man who wounded him feels it his duty to be his foe, and deserves no personal bate, nor is every man capable of Lord Palmerston's comment on the saddler who County- Courted him. "I sha'n't leave him," said the large-hearted Irishman to his groom, "he'd never have got his money without it." It is, at all events, admitted that it is good for the mind to rule the body, and it does not cora- pletely rule it when the body is in pain. The easy-chair has its own temptations and drawbacks; but to deny that the man who sits in it can think more steadily and patiently than the man who is sitting on an iron rail is, we think, to deny facts in order to believe a preconceived theory. We may believe the Trappist to be a saint; but the Trappist is not the man whom wise men of the world, intent on securing justice to all alike, would place in the judgment-seat.
We make these remarks because we read speculations as to the effect which the present marvellous prosperity of Great Britain will have on the national character, and they are almost always gloomy. There is, we fully admit, reason for some of the gloom. Prosperity tempts all the Northern tribes to get exhilaration from drink, which is bad for them ; and the English, when they have funds, have a tendency to waste them which is almost maddening to the more far- sighted. Nor could we truthfully deny that when ignorant Englishmen or Irishmen are prosperous—it is not quite so with Scotchmen — they betray a tendency to recklessness, that is, to want of self-control in all directions, which is in many of its manifestations evil. The average Englishman is strongest when a little sad, and, curiously enough, is when in that mood decidedly least vulgar; but there is another side to it all. The national mood grows sweeter in prosperity, and temper is one of the distinctly evil qualities which teachers of religion fail most discreditably to restrain. It makes of its victim everyday, sometimes all day, an unjust judge. Then pros- perity gives courage, sharpens the spur to enterprise, and in a multitude of cases—not all, unfortunately—increases the faith in the beneficence of the higher powers. We should say for ourselves, too, that in Britain, America, Germany, and Northern France it distinctly increased industry, men working harder because the result is pleasanter, and though we are unable to reckon industry quite as highly as some moralists do, holding that the man who meditates is often as good as the man who toils, still work is, among the races with an instinct for it, a valuable antiseptic. Prosperity, too, among the majority diminishes, though it does not extinguish, greed, which among very poor races, and classes, often acquires an unnoticed intensity which is a positive provocation to crime. They have an ugly saying in Southern France that the parents of very poor peasants " do not die old," and supposing it false, as we hope it is, just think of what it suggests as to the poisonous effect of greed upon the very poor. And, lastly, we should say, though some will think the saying cynical, that as happiness softens the heart, general prosperity tends to a wider-spread spirit of philanthropy. Christianity does not despise facts, the gift of the widow's mite was treated as an unusual as well as admirable thing, and when pennies are as shillings even the English, who next to the Scotch are the best givers in the world, turn their regards inwards and become—prudent or selfish, as you will. On the whole, we should doubt whether suffering, and especially protracted and, so to speak, mean suffering, improved more people than it deteriorated; but Providence must be wiser than we, and its first and most unalterable decree is that without painful and monotonous labour, pursued whether the conditions are favourable or otherwise, there shall be nothing for man to eat. "Plough thou or die of famine." No degree of pros- perity will relieve him from that, the first of the eternal " musts," and some suffering therefore must be essential to his mental building up.
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