The Poetical Works of Thomas Moore :: :: University of Virginia Library

Happy London, one feels, as one reads o'er the pages,
Where Saints are so much more abundant than sages;
Where Parsons may soon be all laid on the shelf,
As each Cit can cite chapter and verse for himself,

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And the serious frequenters of market and dock
All lay in religion as part of their stock.
Who can tell to what lengths we may go on improving,
When thus thro' all London the Spirit keeps moving,
And heaven's so in vogue, that each shop advertisement
Is now not so much for the earth as the skies meant?

According to the late Mr. Irving, there is even a peculiar form of theology got up expressly for the money-market. “I know how far wide,” he says, “of the mark my views of Christ's work in the flesh will be viewed by those who are working with the stock-jobbing theology of the religious world.” “Let these preachers,” he adds, “(for I will not call them theologians), cry up, broker-like, their article.” Morning Watch.—No. iii. 442, 443.

From the statement of another writer, in the same publication, it would appear that the stock-brokers have even set up a new Divinity of their own. “This shows,” says the writer in question, “that the doctrine of the union between Christ and his members is quite as essential as that of substitution, by taking which latter alone the Stock-Exchange Divinity has been produced.” —No. x. p. 375.

Among the ancients, we know the money-market was provided with more than one presiding Deity—“Deæ Pecuniæ (says an ancient author) commendabantur ut pecuniosi essent.”