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The Creative Power of Money. 
 
 Baweriand The searchlights of war have revealed many hidden things, illuminating 
 
 much that was obscure and dark in the past, searching out unsuspected 
 
 possibilities. danger, guiding and directing for the future. Perhaps the light has 
 
 revealed, as never before, the almost unsuspected power and the extra- 
 
 ordinary possibilities of money. Four years ago the budgets and expenditures of to-day 
 
 would have surpassed imagination; we did not realise that the wealth was there, 
 
 whether in form of credit or coin; we should have denied the possibility of using it, 
 
 of bringing it into real circulation. The money of the War! Now it takes the form 
 
 of the silver bullet, a weapon offensive and defensive ; now it appears as the medium 
 
 of mercy, healing, saving, restoring ; now it is the “ big shilling,” a sign and symbol of 
 
 profiteering. Yet, in whatever guise, it has proved its power for destruction or con- 
 
 struction, for self or for others. No wonder, then, that in ancient times men recognised 
 money as of supernatural origin. 
 
This is no dead metal, they argued, but something with a life and 
 
 A living force. force of its own, able to create, able to destroy ; so they coined 
 
 their money in a temple, and named it after a goddess. We can 
 
 imagine the goddess on her throne, with the stream of metal breaking into a spray of 
 
 coins at her feet, as she looked down with anxious and troubled eyes on the throng of 
 
 worshippers, for her temple could never have lacked devotees. Was it for good 
 
 or ill that the stream of wealth went forth, for happiness or sorrow, cruelty or kindness, 
 
 greed or love, division or unity 2 And still the marvellous stream flowed on, as it 
 
 ever flows through the arteries of the world, for health or poisoa, with a swift move- 
 ment that is pictured in such words as circulation, current coin, the currency. 
 
 God’s gift for ny war has taught us that hoarding is anti-social, though few have 
 ( e€ power to stem the stream and hoard ; it passes, as it is, too 
 God’s work. quickly through our fingers. Yet hoarding is not confined to hidden 
 | stocks of jam and flour secure in a top attic, or to gold pieces buried 
 
 in the garden. All power given for the use of the world and diverted to self-interest 
 
 or individualist aims is hoarded power. The napkin in which the talent is hidden may 
 
be the wrappings of modern luxury, and the burial may well be in the deep soil of 
 self. Gop shares with us all the great powers that determine human experience, and 
 means us to share them in our turn. We have our portion given us as a father makes 
 an allowance to his son, not only to do with as we like, but to enable us to take our 
 share of a common responsibility. Whether it be intellect or position, money, or life 
 itself, it is ours to spend or save, to waste or hoard, to use for our own advantage as 
 profiteers, or for the good of all. Of course the gifts are divine ; of course they should 
 be used divinely, with such lavish participation as GoD Himself displays in Nature, 
 or, in more humble illustration, as men share in the trenches one with another, friend 
 and prisoner alike. 
 
 The War of Four years ago, in a critical moment of great danger and great fear, 
 
 one nation called upon the world : and the world answered. From 
 
 Ideals, East and West, North and South, men of all creeds, of different 
 
 colour, of widely differing circumstances, came hastening to the rescue 
 
 of freedom, of honour, of civilisation. The, as yet, uncivilised races were one with us 
 
 in ideals that could only be read by them as in a glass darkly. Life, money, treasure, 
 were offered for our service, and, under Gop, the victory dawned. 
 
The call of Now the world calls back to England. Civilised and uncivilised 
 peoples plead for our help, even though they have still but a dim 
 the World. perception. “Are you going to hoard your trade,” they cry, 
 “ exploiting us and our products for your own advantage ? Are you 
 going to hoard your education, contemptuously content that we remain in ignorance >? 
 Are you going to hoard your healing, apathetic as to our sufferings, but clamorous over 
 your own little finger-aches ?”’ ‘Once upon a time, when the claims of the world were 
 put before Englishmen, they used glib phrases such as ‘‘ Charity begins at home.” But 
 the outer world held a finer philosophy of life, for which we may thank Gop to-day, 
 
 for without it we should not have passed on to victory. 
 
 Materiali But the world is waiting for something greater than trade or education 
 ateriausm healing. Surely we need offer no apology now, when we claim that 
 a failure. the whele world awaits a true gospel, a spiritual principle of life, a 
 certain hope in our sorrow, a firm foundation of brotherhood. We 
 
 are sickened with the cruel failure of a materialist civilisation, and yet there still remain 
 
 only two alternatives in our plans for reconstruction : even the League of Nations must 
 
lay its foundation on the one or the other, for there is no choice but between the 
 material and the spiritual. 
 
 : Missionary work is the claim that universal brotherhood can only be 
 Christ the hese ig Te ? 
 achieved on spiritual principles. The world awaits the coming of the 
 uplifter . Lord Jesus Christ, not as yet in clouds of glory, but in the hearts of 
 men, of governments, of nations, and it is within our power to bring 
 Him whither He would come. Like some mystical extension of the Incarnation, we 
 must conceive Him, and bear Him, and bring Him forth in the humblest of human 
 groups, amid the peasants and the catile ; Gop will lead the kings, it may be, in His 
 own way, later. We bring Him, therefore, to the backward folk, the children of the 
 world ; to countries where womanhood is despised and crippled ; among wild folk as 
 ready with their threats and abuse as the people of Nazareth ; among the sheep, 
 scattered as those who have no shepherd. Wherever Jesus Christ comes, special 
 flowers rise up in His path. A mission hospital is opened in honour of the Great 
 Healer ; a school house is built in honour of One Who bade men think, and drew 
 them on by parable and question. Justice flourishes, cruelty dies away, and, best of 
 
all, the old tribal customs and superstitions pass, and the Christian home is established. 
 Bring but the Lord, and you bring a garden, for the desert and the wilderness blossom 
 as the rose wherever His footsteps pass. 
 
 But the garden must be watered. Everyone has some share of the 
 
 Our debt ; aS! 
 stream of money that rises from a common source. All prosperity 
 
 to others. even if I call mine poverty !—is part of the commonwealth. Work 
 
 as | may, the money that I earn is partly produced by others, and its 
 
 value, whether in spending or investment, depends wholly on the work of my brother 
 
 men. East, west, north, and south, they come to my bidding, whether in war or peace. 
 
 They die for me unseen, they stand between me and adversity, they keep danger and 
 
 starvation from my door, they enrich my life with untold benefits and luxuries. If I 
 
 have failed to remember this in past years, the War has surely opened my eyes and 
 
 my heart in this grave, thankful year of Peace. India, Africa, China, Persia, Arabia, 
 
 Japan—yet the list is too long to write in full, for every name recalls some note of 
 
 gratitude during the four years of war. Lo! the winter is past ; the rain is over and 
 
gone ; the flowers appear on the earth. The shadow of war has passed away, and our 
 comrades in arms are returning to their distant homes whence they came to our aid. 
 
 Can we not make our thanksgiving to Gop and to the world 
 A thank-offering. by an act of generosity that may well stand for ever as a 
 recognition that our present salvation has been wrought by 
 SOp7 and, our, brother men )\Can we not make’ come gift that may find its way 
 beyond the confines of our village or our borough, or even of our nation : through 
 which the sun of Gop’s F atherly love shall shine more brightly than through stained- 
 glass windows, by which His atoning Love may be known more surely than by crosses 
 and crucifixes? Societies sound dull organisations, but they are only the machinery 
 for the transmission of our gifts into the wide world, a channel through which they 
 circulate. And one of the oldest societies, the Society for the Propagation of the 
 Gospel, asks your co-operation in its Peace Thank-offering ; a society that has looked 
 over many baitlefields for over two centuries, but has also worked and helped and 
 advanced the greatest cause of all—the realisation of the brotherhood of man. 
 
The joy of Think that your money is coined in a holy place, that it is of divine 
 
 origin to serve the divine purpose. Money is such a joyful thing, 
 
 wealth. carrying joy along its channel; we have feared and condemned it 
 
 too long ; we have thought too little of its life-giving property ; we 
 
 have used it too often for death, in commerce and industry and war. We can divert 
 
 the currency so that it stands in poison-breeding, stagnant pools ; we can contaminate 
 
 the stream so that it carries death on the swift current ; we can let it drip away if we 
 
 will, in wasteful carelessness, from domestic taps. But wacan also set the current free, 
 
 so that, passing through the world, it brings to every man the life and the truth that 
 underlie those words that are stamped on all our English coms :— 
 
 THE GRACE OF Gop. 
 
 Issued from the 
 
 S.P.G Office, 15, Tufton Street, Westminster, S.W.1. 
 PRICE ONE PENNY. 
 
nee PEACE OFFERING FUND 
 
 PRAYER FOR THE S.P.G. THANK-OFFERING 
 
 © GOD, Who hast given the victory to us and our Allies; meccspalie accept 
 our praises for Thy loving-kindness to us, and grant that we who endeavour 
 _ to propagate Thy Gospel, may be enabled by the thank-offerings of Thy servants 
 so to forward the work of Thy Holy Church, thet those who know Thee not may 
 % be brought toa knowledge of Thy truth, thesush Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. 
 
 as PEACE _THANK- -OFFERING 
 
 Contributions may he paid through Loeal Associations or direct 
 
 To THE TREASURERS OF THE S.P.G., 
 ; 5 Tufton Street, Westminster, S.W.1. 
 
 (a) I have the ee to enclose in response to the penrenyine appeal, a Special Gift of 
 
 (b) I will soeihiag £ es fea: “per annum for years, 
 
 KINDLY STRIKE OUT THE PARAGRAPH WHICH DOES NOT APPLY 
 
 The Rev., ti) 
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 = * sheen Postel Orders, de. sent to. the S.P. G. Hidess should be made payable to " The Treasurers, S. P.G.,” or Beeeel 
 
 ie and crossed ¢ *Messrs, Drummond,’’