The Baltimore County union. [volume] (Towsontown, Md.) 1865-1909, 1872-05-11
WHAT rs HE WORTH?


Worth is an old word, and running through
many languages. 1t means ''that quality of
anything which makes it valuable" From that
it comes to mean "virtue, " "merit."
Now man is largely being Of perversions and
subversons. He turns aside. or overturns things.
He pervers words, meanings, uses, Influences /;
be subverts principles, virtues, laws, orders, and
reconstructs without regard to fact or truth to
satisfy whim or passion, and so fills language as
life with oppositons and falseness, destroys the
real virtue not of words only but of facts, not of
separate things but of principles. Sometimes
life and every thing in it looks TO be morally, in
the condition earth and waters and skies were
when chaos reigned SO thoroughly have men
taken and mixed up all virtues and values, so
have they bejuggled words and ideas, so turned
them upside down and inside out This word
'acorth' has had just this treatment. What the
dictionaries say of it and what men in the world
make of it two very separate things
And what men make of it isone of the strangest
inversion of values Calling themselves Chris
tans, and knowing worth to be moral quality,
they have turned about and put the stamp of
worth where the Gospel signet never is. 1t is on
places and houors and titles and exploits on
the gettings of one kind and another thst bring
men out into notice. 1t is on what IS ottside
7 ma nut here BY circnmstance, no sa~'
side him on what is hung on hiI.' uot w.
grows out of him. With Jesus the fundamental
truth is that worth is 10 deeds, deeds whose tap
root is nurtured of his spirit. The man of worth
to him would be the man-whatever his posi-
tion, color or advantage--from whose life should
exude the aroma of love and of loyalty. II he
were now entering into this city, inquirng who
in it are worthy, he would pass BY lofty houses
! and stoop before humble doors. Plethoric money
| bags and large bank-accounts would mean notb-
| ing to him. OF every man he would ask-just
as the final judge will-~hat is his worth, what
| in himself is he? What has be made himself into
| Lower men have done that, have established that
| criterion The first Napoleon made it his first
inquiry, "What has he DONE" not what is his
family? what is his blood =? what is his purse
but what has be done? Mostly men don't put it
that way When a new comes to a place
the anxiety is to know not if he has good
character, if he will be good citizen or neigh
Dor, not as to his worth, but what he is worth.
| OF men all about you the talk and the rating,
the measuring and the gauging is ny financial
reputation. The property qualification, discard
ed at the polls is the yrannic test in life and the
income tax was God send TO inqusitive Amer
icanism because it compelled man to tell tales
of himself, and every man felt little happier
when lie knew under oath-what his neighhor
was worth. lnquiStion into the state OF other
peoples pockets is 20 men what gossip and lea
are to most women or were before women got
tea and in the great marts OF life what is he
worth is the controlling question, rather than Of
what worth is he. And what it is in the market
that it is in society, that il gets to be very much
in the church. The same question, the same
standard. And when he comes TO die, mingled
with low tones at funerals aad comments on the
streets and little paragraphs in newspapers, is
that ubiquitous question, "What was he worth z"
snveled out on the pavement, in the paror, in
! l. so 6
token of respect. Taken in its simple natural,
first meaning the answer might many times well
be-while the gold account is pretty heavily in
his favor-"He is ut worth taking out and de-
Gently burying." The Easy Chair in a recent
Harper says alluding 10 the character of eptaphs,
Oh is still difficult TO discover where the bad
people are buried" Pre-eminently difficult if
the bad man have had money. Like charity it
covers multitude of sins, only it covers great
many more, and in covering manages TO excuse
or to glorify them. Mahomet said, that when
a man dies the people ask what property has he
left behind him +? But the angels as they bend
over his grave inquire, What good deeds hast
thou sent before ;hee?" So that you the
| Mohammedans share in our Christian in6rmity,
while their prophet would correct them by a
teaching that is not far off from the kingdom OF
Christ. | don't doubt that in Jerusalem street,
business men talked about Dives-what he was
worth but think when be came TO see the sores
his own dogs had licked healing on Abraham's
bosom, be bad different opinion Of what he was
worth when he took usury or had honor with
! usurers.
Now a man is not to be confounded with his
money, or worth to be settled by ledgers. Man
| is not pocket book. 1t is bumillating the point
to which we come when we have nothing more
| to show for ourselves or to say Of another than
| what the bank vaults reveal humillating the
| ambition the man has, not TO have great grow
ing soul within him, but lengthening column
of figures in a book outside of him, some things
on piece of paper rather than things on his
heart, figures that are never going 10 be copied
into Gods record book. 1t is sad TO see how
men put the value OF themselves into that which
is not of themselves at all, which you strip them
of tomorrow and they are without worth, which
let them carry successfully down to the grave,
| they cannot take through it. 1t is the guinea
stamp they want not the manhood stamp. 1t is
mans rate not Gods rate. The trial
balance they go by is of dollars not deeds. Prof
it is a word to which they attach only
money value. 1t is forgotten that once this
question was put, "What shall it profit man to
gain the whole world and lose his own soul ~
All this is fearfully paltry, and yet the world
bestrid and hard ridden ny the idea. And you
will very hardly get it into mans acknowledge
ment that worth is every way separate from and
| independent OF money. The very boy on your
knees learns it that you put value on the worth
money will give you, while you talk something
higher. He reads you Pharisee that you are,
and grows to be Pharisee like you. Speech and
thought and habit and hope reek with it. just
| the hardest thing is ii to make the many see
worth where there is no money TO believe that
in honest, high-toned poverty is worth the Pea
bodys, and Stewards, and Rothschilds cannot
| nf In mr.
power, no Gospel power yet has been able to
master Worth is character. Character is cap
ital-the best capital, having which man is
never bankrupt. In debate in Parliament in
1928, Sir BENZ. RudyarG said, ''No man is bound
10 be rich or great, no. nor to be wise but every
man is bound to be honest" And honesty, you
know, is something more than not cheating or
stealing-is great broad virtue interpenetrating
every portion of the character, at the root OF
thought and affection and principle. ITO be
rich toward God" rather than to be rich in goods,
is to have worth. Worth is what man is, what
be does The men OF worth are the doers the
active men in all the various industries OF thought
and toll the men creating, producing in some
| field whose product is of value to man, and who
meanwhile keep close by their integrity, grow
ing inwardly 10 moralities and graces. find in
my Plurarch, one OF the finest compliments ever
paid to man in The application 0r these words
| ASSchylus wrote on Ampnlaraus
"His shield no emblem bears; his generous soul
Wishes to be, not to appear the best;
While the deep furrows of his noble mind
Harvests Of wise and prudent counsel bear''
As the words were pronounced in the theatre
every eye involuntariy turned to Aristides
Such honor bath worth when men have courage
and candor TO look thoroughly at it, weigh and
guage as men. This man whom they banished in
senseIess rage because everybody called nm
| sjust," they could so at better moment honor
That is what worth always does. II compels
homage Men forget it, pass it by, bow else
where, crown other things, but there always
comes the time when the worthy man gets
recogniiion-not by mobs, not by crowds, not
by votes, not by honors it may be, but when cir-
cumstance shall bring men to their last analysis ;
when crisis shall look for master; when all as
suming and glitter fail, when men fees out for re-
lance and for hope, the man of worth shall have
his hour, when the man of gold SHALL like the
idol Dagon, be PROSTATE and broken in his own
temple.
The world has long catalogue, and 1t in
creases--of men whose worth was their best, or
only wealth The writer Of the Hebrews gives
it in part Plutarch gives it noble array; Glib
bon and Mman and Motley and Macauay and
Prescott in their several provinces add to 1t.
Every mans experience gives in his mite. You
may read it every where that hstorys greatest
characters are those whose only regal title and
claim come of the kingly character in the man.
Sturdy and stern John Knox; genial and valiant
Luther ardent and gentle Wesley stubborn
vet riohteous Fox earnest and simple John