Riches are over-
estimated in the Old Testament: the good and successful man
receives too many animals, wives, apes, she-goats and peacocks.
The values are changed in the New: Christ counsels a different
perfection and promises another reward. He does not censure the
man of great possessions, but He points out that his riches will
hamper him in his progress to the Kingdom of Heaven and that he
would do better to sell all; and He concludes with the penetrating
words:
"Of what profit is it to a man if he gain the whole world and lose
his own soul?"
The soul here is freedom from self.
Lord Rosebery was too thin-skinned, too conscious to be really
happy. He was not self-swayed like Gladstone, but he was self-
enfolded. He came into power at a time when the fortunes of the
Liberal party were at their lowest; and this, coupled with his
peculiar sensibility, put a severe strain upon him. Some people
thought that he was a man of genius, morbidly sensitive shrinking
from public life and the Press, cursed with insufficient ambition,
sudden, baffling, complex and charming. Others thought that he was
a man irresistible to his friends and terrible to his enemies,
dreaming of Empire, besought by kings and armies to put countries
and continents straight, a man whose notice blasted or blessed
young men of letters, poets, peers or politicians, who at once
scared and compelled every one he met by his freezing silence, his
playful smile, or the weight of his moral indignation: the truth
being that he was a mixture of both.
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