Page:Sermons on the Ten Commandments.djvu/158

 is meant an inordinate desire of possessing wealth, property, material things. This desire may be called the rising passion of the present age; and it is one which every spiritual-minded man will endeavor to resist in himself, and check in others. The wish to obtain a competency of worldly goods is orderly and proper, provided that in the pursuit of that wish the life be kept within the strict bounds of honesty and uprightness, and the desire itself be held ever in subjection to the desire for higher and heavenly things, and be conjoined with trust in Divine Providence, and a submission to the Lord's will. But the desire for property is sinful, when it becomes the ruling passion of the mind, when higher things are made subservient to it, and especially when the effort to realize its ends leads the man to the employment of any fraudulent and deceptive arts. Then it becomes a deadly sin. and is called "love of the world."

The love of the world," says the Doctrine of the New Church, "consists in wishing to appropriate to one's self the wealth of others by artifices, and in placing the heart in riches, and in suffering the world to draw and lead it away from spiritual love, which is love towards the neighbor,—and consequently from heaven. Those are in the love of the world, who desire to appropriate to themselves the goods of others by various artifices, particularly by means of cunning and deceit, esteeming their neighbor's welfare of no importance. Those who are in that love, covet the goods of others; and, so far as they do not fear the laws and the loss of reputation which they regard for