The Baltimore County union. [volume] (Towsontown, Md.) 1865-1909, 1902-08-30
A WARNING AGAINST GREED AND AMBI-
TI0N.

The need of money comes home
with vastly increased force to the
man who has to earn that money
himself, and it requires hard strug-
gle for him to retain his ideals amid
the pressure of immediate physical
want. Still harder it is for him to
retain his ideal where those about
him are SO engaged in the winning of
bread that success in this seems to
them the one test of power which
marks man as stronger than his
fellows.
But for the man who has passed
this first set of temptations toward
materialism, and who has learned to
make living without sinking all his
ideals therein, there waits a more
subtle set of temptations-the tempta-
tions of ambition. If you have pass
ed successfully the tests of the first
hard years of life in the office or the
shop, you will find wide fields of sue
cess opening before you. Where will
you seek that success? Is it to be in
the accumulation of large fortune
no longer as means Of physical COM
fort, bu; as a means of influencing
the actions of others? Shall it be in
a social position among your fellow
men? Shall it be in political office
and in the conduct of the affairs of
the natior? Each of these ambitions
has in it much that is noble.
The millionaire, the social leader,
the political chieftain, all have in
their hands enormous power for good.
1t is just because of the existence of
this power that the danger comes
close home, and comes home closest
to the very strongest among us, of
subordinating all other ends to these
immediate objects. The strong man,
if he worships money, is offered the
promise of many millions of dollars :;
if he worships political power, the
prizes of Office stand before his hand.
Whether they are more surely gained
in this way than any other I shall
not undertake to say but certain it
is that the devil will be at hand to
show you overwhelming reasons to
believe that is the only way in which
they can be gained-that you can
commune with the object of your
worship only by falling down at his
feet, and forgetting that there is any
other god.
This is no common temptation, no
vulgar craving for bread to satisfy
hunger no equally vulgar, though
more intellectual desire for authority
over ones fellows. It is the desire
of the strong man, conscious of his
power, to assert that power in the
face of all nature. To do something
out of the common run of work,
something whose possibilities have
been unrealized by the vulgar mind
this is the dream which all GREAT
men cherish and to whi C b some
Of them subordinate everything else.
To dazzle the world by campaigns
like those of Napoleon, by achieve
ments in literature like those of
Goethe, or to achieve the almost mi
raculous discoveries which have
awaited the pioneers in literature and
science-these are prizes to attract
the ambition and unsteady judgment
of any man. And even among those
who do not delude themselves with
the belief that they are set apart from
the common lot, the temptation to
sacrifice all other considerations to
those of professional ambition and to
sink the man in the achievement
comes with forces well nigh ire
sistib1e.