Mammon

“ You turn towards it and come suddenly upon another aspect of Mammon, more strange than anything pictured by Hogarth—in the street a jostling mass of human beings, fantastically garbed, wearing many-coloured caps like jockeys or pantaloons, their heads thrown back, their arms extended high as if in prayer to some heathen deity, their fingers working with frantic symbols, their voices crying in agonised frenzy, and at a hundred windows in the great buildings on either side of the street little groups of men and women gesticulating back as wildly to the mob below. ”

“ We have only to look at him with eyes cleansed by gazing at the Child in the manger and we realise how tawdry a god this Mammon is. What can he do for us? Nothing of any worth. He has never minted a coinage which can buy the inspiration of a noble thought, which can purchase love for the starved heart, or can endow a man with the vision and the faculty divine. One has but to consider a moment and he will realise the poverty-stricken condition of Mammon's devotees. They can command speed on earth or in the air; they can fly a hundred miles an hour ”

“ Yea, none did love him—not his lemans dear— But pomp and power alone are woman's care, And where these are light Eros finds a feere; Maidens, like moths, are ever caught by glare, And Mammon wins his way where seraphs might despair. ”

“ Oh! my friends, many a hard knock, and many a cross-buttock have I given the arch bruiser of mankind—aye, and all for your dear sakes—pull—do pull off those gay garments of Mammon, strike the devil a straight-forward blow in the mouth, darken his spiritual daylights. At him manfully, give it him right and left, and I'll be your bottle-holder—I ask nothing but the money, which you'll not forget before you go.' ”
“The true spirit moved him,” said Bob, “and a very laudable one too; but he very emphatically deprecated the votaries of Mammon.” ”

“ And as in a vision, she saw sacks of gold, and wagon loads of silver, and bundles of scrip, and handfuls of banknotes all being hastened into the blackness of the shaft and disappearing there. It was as if Mammon, the ever-hungry, ever-demanding, sat at the foot, refusing to be appeased. ”

“ In every age there have been too many lukewarm in religion, to whom the same enquiry might be addressed, for there has ever been the same disposition to make a compromise between God and Mammon. They are unwilling to forfeit all hope of the fair “inheritance of the saints in light;” they are afraid to encounter the awful terrors of the blackness of darkness for ever; still the world, with its seductive pleasured and engrossing cares, takes a strong hold upon the heart, and is like a withering blight upon the blossoms and fruit of genuine piety. ”

“ The battle of life has to go on, and the best troops have run away. On the other hand, a great many persons have made a master of Mammon. They are simply the slaves of money. That is the vulgar materialism of the modern world. But Jesus says that neither of these attitudes towards Mammon is the Christian relation. The Christian is to make a friend of Mammon; to welcome it, and to use it, to discover the good in it and learn its lessons; to mould it into the higher uses of life. Here is a potter working in his clay. It is a coarse material which he uses and his hands grow soiled as he works ”

“ Stillinghast, while the old, grim look settled on his face again. He went away, down to his warehouse on the wharf, to grip and wrestle with gain, and barter away the last remnants of his best and holiest instincts, little by little; exchanging hopes of heaven for perishable things, and crushing down the angel conscience, who would have led him safely to eternal life, for the accumulated and unholy burthen of Mammon. ”

“ To do his common sense justice he had never had the least intention of attempting to. Without any prevarication as far as his own feelings were concerned, he had quite honestly chosen to serve Mammon. Having decided thus far, he banished the very memory of any other possible master. He did not exist for him. Mammon, in that it meant place, and power, and money, was the only god he wanted to serve. ”

“ Must another sacrifice bleed before the shrine of Mammon, and another head lie crushed beneath the heel of that monster—his disciple?
Come on with me, and see the end; push further still, there is a labyrinth ahead to attract and to excite; from mind to mind crackles the electric spark: and when the heart thrillingly conceives, its children-thoughts are as arrows from the hand of the giant, flying through that mental world—the hearts of other men. Fervent still from its hot internal source, this fountain gushes up; no sluggish Lethe-stream is here, dull, forgetful, and forgotten ”

“ For here is the philosophy of mammon left to itself: when you get to be an old native, it is your business to die; if you don't know your business, you are left to find it out: what are you good for but to bury?
Let us slip over the smooth bay, for we must look into one of these caverns. Cross in this canoe, so narrow that we cannot get into it at all, but balance ourself on its rim and hold our breath for fear of upsetting. These odd-looking out-riggers are honest enough in theory, but treacherous in practice; and a shark has his eye on us back yonder. ”

“ Even the grovelling and worldly-minded, who affect to consider nothing holy but Mammon, can have fire struck out of their cold natures by the spell of those glorious syllables; for virtue, and valour, and that religious link which binds the soul to the spot where a mother’s dust reposes, are found, and will ever be found, to kindle warm admiration in every heart. ”

“ Let inventive men consider, Whether the Secret of this Universe, and of Man's Life there, does, after all, as we rashly fancy it, consist in making money? There is One God, just, supreme, almighty: but is Mammon the name of him?—With a Hell which means 'Failing to make money,' I do not think there is any Heaven possible that would suit one well; nor so much as an Earth that can be habitable long! In brief, all this Mammon- Gospel, of Supply-and-demand, Competition, Laissez-faire, and Devil take the hindmost, begins to be one of the shabbiest Gospels ever preached on Earth ”

“ He who from Mount Sinai, amid thunders and lightnings, uttered the words, "Thou shalt have no other gods before my face"—the same Jehovah, clothed with Humanity, and standing in the streets of Jerusalem, declared that those who worshiped Mammon broke this commandment, for they could not do that and serve God at the same time. Yet was Mammon never worshiped more ardently than at this day. The supreme love and pursuit of wealth is the great crying sin of this age, and carrying, perhaps, greater numbers down to the pit, than all other evils combined. ”

“ What is Mammon’s kingdom but a part of my great dominion? Yea, were I to loosen the bonds I have upon the subjects of Mammon and Pride, and even of Asmodai, Belphegor and Hypocrisy, no man would for an instant abide their domination. ”

“ Alas, poor Dives! poor server of Mammon, whose vile god can pretend to deliver him no longer! Or rather, for the blockish god never pretended anything—it was the man’s own doing—Alas for the Mammon-worshipper! he can no longer deceive himself in his riches. And so even in hell he is something nobler than he was on earth; for he worships his riches no longer. He cannot. He curses them.
“Terrible things to say on Christmas Day! But if Christmas Day teaches us anything, it teaches us to worship God and not Mammon; to worship spirit and not matter; to worship love and not power. ”

“ Because he saw everywhere people absorbed in their material interests, accumulating wealth, consecrating their lives to Mammon, folly and passion and neglecting their nobler natures, it made him doubt their fitness for an eternal existence, and he determined to know the truth at once by plunging into the invisible unknown. ”

“ Ask the old faithful servant of Mammon, whom Mammon has rewarded to his heart's desire, and in whom the acquisition of riches has only encreased his eagerness for acquiring more—ask him whether he has succeeded in training up his heir to the same service? He will tell you that the young man is to be found upon race-grounds, and in gaming-houses, that he is taking his swing of extravagance and excess, and is on the high road to ruin. ”

“ He was but seven-and-twenty, an age at which many men are not quite common—at which they are hopeful of achievement, resolute in avoidance, thinking that Mammon shall never put a bit in their mouths and get astride their backs, but rather that Mammon, if they have anything to do with him, shall draw their chariot. ”

“ Mammon's wheels are locked,—his treasure-chests have fallen into the mire;—and yet, on he goes, driving his jaded steeds over the poor, and weak, and helpless—ay, those that assisted him to load before he started at the mountain base. He must gain the top at all hazards as best he may ”

“ I have since then become thoroughly conversant with the fact that Mammon is infinitely the more powerful god of the two, when it comes to a tussle with Cupid, and that even very estimable people lose their judgment when called upon to choose between them. And yet, how can they honestly utter their marriage vows, when the heart is given away from the one they are marrying? Truly, life has many mysteries, which it were unprofitable work to attempt to solve! ”

“ For curiously enough, according to the teaching of Don Evandro Baluffi, the curato of Santa Lucia, the more successfully you served Mammon, the more satisfactorily you were enabled thereby to serve God. How was a man to found a perpetual mass, with music and tapers of the larger size—or even without these luxuries, for that matter,—if he had not paid sufficient court to Mammon to secure the means of paying for it? ”

“ The eager looks of those that would get money, the troubled looks of those who have lost it, worst of all the gloating looks of them that have it, these are sure signs of the service of mammon. If in the church thou sayest to the rich man, 'Sit here in a good place,' and to the poor man, 'Stand there,' thou art a mammon-server. ”

“ He’s not far from his end and he’s lonesome. He hasn’t many friends—been too busy all his life to make any. He’s made heaps of money, though.”
“Well, he thought that since he couldn’t serve God and Mammon he’d better stick to Mammon,” said Miss Cornelia crisply. ”

“ Her beauty and her cleverness might have saved her, had she been of one of those "good families" whom fashionables the world over recognize, regardless of their wealth or poverty, because recognition of them gives an elegant plausibility to the pretense that Mammon is not the supreme god in the Olympus of aristocracy. ”

“ The stout angular woman had leapt to her conclusion. Much less money than had been expected—no signs of money having been spent and here, not the cunning knave whom she had expected, but a garrulous open fool, giving away what was perhaps a golden secret! Mammon, the greed of acquisitiveness, the voracious appetite for getting more, gleamed in her green eyes. ”

“ Then Mammon waxed wroth and cried: “Why, then, are men so eager to obtain a thing so evil? Why do they so complain when they have it not, and when they lose it, so upbraid?”
82
And when the knight answered these questions by telling of how in the old time man was content without riches, and how he had been corrupted by the lust of gold and silver, Mammon replied: “Nay, my son, let be these stories of ancient days. You who live in these latter times must be content to take your wage for the work you do. Come now, you shall have what you will of these riches ”

“ With ease you serve mammon every day and hour of your lives, and for God, you do not even ask yourselves the question whether you are serving Him or no. Yet some of you are at this very moment indignant that I call you servers of mammon. Those of you who know that God knows you are His servants, know also that I do not mean you; therefore, those who are indignant at being called the servants of mammon, are so because they are indeed such. ”

“ They were of course, as became people of fashion, regular and unwearied attendants of the church of Mammon, ordering all their judgments and ways in accordance with the precepts there delivered; but they were none of Mammon's priests or pew-openers, money-grubs, or accumulators. They gave liberally where they gave, and scraped no inferior to spend either on themselves or their charities. They had plenty, it is true; but so have many who withhold more than is meet, and take the ewe-lamb to add to their flock. ”

“ For mammon is, according to the Jewish language, which the Samaritans do also use, a covetous man, and one who wishes to have more than he ought to have. But according to the Hebrew, it is by the addition of a syllable (adjunctive) called Mamuel, [60] and signifies gulosum, that is, one whose gullet is insatiable. ”

“ MAMMON, a word of Aramaic origin meaning “riches.” The etymology is doubtful; connexions with a word meaning “entrusted,” or with the Hebrew matmon, treasure, have been suggested. “Mammon,” Gr. μαμωνᾶς (see Professor Eb. Nestle in Ency. Bib. s.v.) , occurs in the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. vi. 24) and the parable of the Unjust Steward (Luke xvi. 9–13) . The Authorized Version keeps the Syriac word. Wycliffe uses “richessis.” The New English Dictionary quotes Piers Plowman as containing the earliest personification of the name. ”

“ Probably he sincerely means both, but the latter much more than the former; he laments the breaking of the tools of Mammon much more than the breaking of the images of God. It would be almost impossible to grope in the limbo of what he does think; but we can assert that there is one thing he doesn't think. ”