Faith & Spirit Quote by Logan Pearsall Smith

A dagger disguised as a proverb, this line doesn’t merely warn against divided loyalties; it questions the psychological bargain that makes “divided loyalties” feel tenable in the first place. Smith borrows the biblical opposition of God and Mammon (not just “money,” but money as a rival faith) and then twists it: the punishment for trying to have both isn’t simply moral failure, it’s metaphysical disillusionment. You don’t end up serving two masters. You end up with one, and the one that remains is the one that pays.

The intent is diagnostic, not devotional. As a critic of manners, Smith is less interested in theology than in self-deception: the respectable person who wants spiritual purity and material security without admitting that one will inevitably be instrumentalized. The subtext is brutal: in a culture where Mammon reliably delivers promotions, comfort, and social legitimacy, “God” becomes a decorative idea - a language of conscience used to launder ambition. When you attempt to reconcile them, the experiment doesn’t reveal a complicated ethics; it reveals that your “God” was always contingent, a sentiment that evaporates under pressure.

Context matters. Writing in the long shadow of Victorian moral seriousness and into a modern era increasingly defined by capitalism’s practical triumphs, Smith captures a familiar shift: faith not exactly refuted, but crowded out by incentives. The irony lands because it treats unbelief as a consequence of compromise. You don’t lose God in a grand philosophical crisis. You lose Him in the mundane arithmetic of wanting more and calling it virtue.