The problem of social purity is, of course, related to another human passion. But there has crept into the vocabulary of the people a suggestive phrase, "commercialized vice." There is the general feeling that, if the element of monetary profit could be taken from the loathsome trade, the problem would be much nearer its solution. Hence we have our Red Light Abatement Laws by which we seek to make it dangerous for men to rent their property for the traffic in virtue. On the legal side the present efforts at the solution of the problem all strive to fix a set of conditions, making commercially unprofitable the house of her whose feet take hold on death. If, as is earnestly contended by some, low wages tend to furnish the recruits for the pitiable ranks of the trade in bodies, we have another commercial factor in the campaign. Explain it as we may, it is still true that money makes the unholy alliances. It is no marvel that the Bible has sent down to all the centuries its phrase, "the mammon of unrighteousness." Of course, many will overstate the case of American greed. The Almighty Dollar is not our God. Our passing celebrities may be mere millionaires, but our permanent heroes were quite more than traders. If we have seemed more commercial than other peoples it has been because a new continent gave such sweeping opportunities for wealth. Some one has said that it is an evidence of the degeneracy of our period that the word "worth," which once had a noble and inner significance, is now controlled by the market. The fact that the word has gone downhill is taken to mean that the people who use it so have gone downhill too! But these verbal arguments are not reliable. While the word "worth" has dropped somewhat from its old glory, the word "talent," which once had merely a monetary significance, has mounted to a higher meaning. The one word is just as good a witness as the other. The truth is that we meet to-day the world-old problem. The evidence of this lies in the fact that the Bible dealt with the problem in emphatic fashion. It lists for us the victims of greed: Lot, Gehazi, Ananias and Sapphira, Simon Magus, the young ruler, Judas. We shall find in its pages some general principles by which it seeks to warn wealth away from pitfalls and to send it forth to service.