APPLIED CHRISTIANITY.

CHRISTIANITY AND WEALTH.

THE Christian economists of America are confronting a great problem. The wealth of the country is increasing at a prodigious rate. Every census shows the population multiplying, and wealth multiplying much faster than the population. In 1860 the estimated valuation of all the property, real and personal, in the United States was a little over $16,000,000,000; in 1870 it was a little more than $24,000,000,000; and between these dates came a wasting war, with the destruction of a million of producers, and the extinguishment of property in slaves reckoned at $1,500,000,000. The census estimates for 1880 put the wealth of the nation at $43,642,000,000, and make the United States the richest nation in the world, exceeding Great Britain by several hundred

millions. Signs of this increase of wealth appear on every hand: railroads, factories, farm buildings and machinery, warehouses and docks, long lines of wholesale stores and retail shops, great financial institutions - banks, insurance companies, trust companies for the storage and use of capital; houses going up in the cities and the towns by the hundred thousand, many of them palaces; equipages, furniture, rich costumes, costly works of art. The one impression made upon the mind of the philosophical observer who makes a tour of the watering-places, and notes the scale on which multitudes of his fellow-citizens are living, is that this is a rich country. He may doubt whether these people can all afford to spend so much; but the money is here, else they could not be spending it. It may not all rightly belong to them, but it is in their hands, and no one can see the floods of it that are poured out without feeling sure that there must be oceans of it.

In 1860 the census told us that if all the property of this country were equally divided, there would be for every man, woman, and child about $514. In 1870 the share of each would have been $624. In 1880 the valuation per capita is $814. The population increased during these twenty years a little more than 59 per cent., the wealth a little more than 170 per

cent. These figures are reduced to a gold basis, and do not take into account the fluctuations of an inflated paper currency.

This increase of wealth appears, in a somewhat less marked degree, in the mother country. The national wealth of England in 1860 was estimated at $26,000,000,000; in 1870 at $34,000,000,000; in 1880 at $13,000,000,000.

It is easy to discover a part, at least, of the sources of this swelling flood of wealth. Vast areas of fertile land in this and other countries have been brought under cultivation; better methods of agriculture have added to the productiveness of the lands cultivated (the production of cereals in this country in 1879 was considerably more than twice that of 1869); mines have been developed on an enormous scale, yielding untold stores of the precious and the useful minerals; the discovery of petroleum has added another to the great staples of commerce; natural gas adds a tremendous force to the development of our mechanical industries; railroads, pushed in every direction, unlock the resources of new countries and bring their wealth to waiting markets; steamships sail from every shore with the contributions of all the continents to the world's trade; above all, machinery, driven by steam, or falling water, or imprisoned air, or electricity, is multiplying

the power of man to turn the crude products of the earth into forms that shall serve his needs or gratify his desires.

The world is fast growing richer; of this there can be no doubt. And what has the Christian moralist to say about it? Does the ethical system of which he is the expounder authorize him to say anything, and if so, what? Should he teach that this increase of wealth is a good thing or an evil thing; a blessing to be rejoiced in, or a misery to be deplored?

One fact thrusts itself in our faces as soon as we ask this question: this great increase of wealth is visible mainly, after all, in Christian lands. We said that the world is growing rich, but it is our world the world with which we are brought into closest political and commercial relations-of which this is true; it is not true of the teeming populations of Africa, save of those tribes that have received Christianity; of them it is true. It is not true of China, nor of India, nor of Persia, nor of Turkey to any great extent.

I have referred to the change wrought, in respect of wealth, in the tribes that have lately received Christianity. This is a notable phenomenon. When we wish to prove the beneficent nature of Christianity we often mention this. Pointing to such a people as the Hawai