of under-publican, and probably had more education than his companions.
He followed Jesus as readily as the fishermen. “And after these things
he went forth, and saw a publican named Levi, sitting at the receipt of
custom: and he said unto him, follow me. And he left all, rose up, and
followed him. And Levi made him a great feast in his own house.” It was
not a heap of torn nets which Matthew left, but a position, a stipend,
secure and increasing earnings. Giving up riches is easy for a man who
has almost nothing. Among the Twelve Matthew was certainly the richest
before his conversion. Of no other is it told that he could offer a
great feast, and this means that he made a greater and more meritorious
sacrifice by his rising at the first call from the seat where he was
accumulating money.
Matthew and Judas were perhaps the only ones of the Disciples who knew
how to write, and to Matthew we owe the first collection of Logia or
memorable sayings of Jesus, if the testimony of Papia is true. In the
Gospel which is called by his name, we find the most complete text of
the Sermon on the Mount. Our debt to the poor excise-man is heavy:
without him many words of Jesus, and the most beautiful, might have been
lost. This handler of drachma, shekels and talents, whom his despised
trade must have predisposed to avarice, has laid up for us a treasure
worth more than all the money coined on the earth before and after his
time.
Philip of Bethsaida also knew how to reckon. When the famished multitude
pressed about Him, Jesus turned to him to ask what it would cost to buy
bread for all those people. Philip answered Him: “Two hundred pennyworth
of bread is not sufficient for them.” He was later to become a
proclaimer of his Master’s fame. He it was who announced to Nathaniel
the coming of Jesus, and it was to him that the Greeks of Jerusalem
turned when they wished to speak to the new Prophet.
Nathaniel answered Philip’s announcement with sarcasm: “Can there any
good thing come out of Nazareth?” But Philip succeeded in bringing him
to Jesus, who as soon as He saw him, exclaimed, “Behold an Israelite
indeed, in whom is no guile! Nathaniel saith unto him, Whence knowest
thou me? Jesus answered and said unto him, Before that Philip called
thee, when thou wast under the fig tree, I saw thee. Nathaniel answered
and saith unto him, Rabbi, thou art the Son of God; thou art the King of
Israel. Jesus answered and said unto him, Because I said unto thee, I
saw thee under the fig tree, believest thou? thou shalt see greater
things than these.”
Less enthusiastic and inflammable was Nicodemus, who, as a matter of
fact, never wished to be known as a disciple of Jesus. Nicodemus was
old, had been to school to the Rabbis, was a friend of the Jerusalem
Sanhedrin, but the stories of the miracles had shaken him, and he went
by night to Jesus to tell Him that he believed that He was sent by God.
Jesus answered him, “Verily, verily, I say unto thee, except a man be
born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” Nicodemus did not
understand these words, or perhaps they startled him. He had come to see
a miracle worker and had found a Sybil, and with the homely good sense
of the man who wishes to avoid being taken in by a fraud he said, “How
can a man be born when he is old? can he enter the second time into his
mother’s womb and be born?” Jesus answers with words of profound
meaning, “Except a man be born of water and of the spirit, he cannot
enter into the kingdom of God.”
But Nicodemus still did not understand. “How can these things be?” Jesus
answered, “Art thou a master of Israel and knowest not these things?”
Nicodemus always respected the young Galilean, but his sympathy was as
circumspect as his visit. Once when the leaders of the priests and the
Pharisees were meditating how to capture Jesus, Nicodemus ventured a
defense: “Doth our law judge any man, before it hear him, and know what
he doeth?” He took his stand on a point of law. He spoke in the name of
“our” law, not at all in the name of the new man. Nicodemus is always
the old man, law-respecting, the prudent friend of the letter of the
law. A few words of reproof were enough to silence him. “They answered
and said unto him, Art thou also of Galilee? Search and look: for out of
Galilee ariseth no prophet!” He belonged by right to the Sanhedrin, but
there is no record that he raised his voice in favor of the accused when
He was conducted to Caiaphas. The trial was at night and probably to
avoid the contempt of his colleagues and his own remorse for the legal
assassination, Nicodemus remained in his bed. When he awoke Jesus was
dead, and then, forgetting his avarice, he bought a hundred pounds of
myrrh and aloes to embalm the body. He who brought others to life was
dead, but Nicodemus, although not literally dead, would never know that
second birth in which he could not believe.
Nicodemus is the eternal type of the luke-warm who will be spewed out of
the mouth of God on the day of wrath. He is the half-way soul who would
like to say “Yes” with his spirit, but his flesh suggests to him the
“No” of cowardice. He is the man of books, the nocturnal disciple who
would like to be a follower of the Master, but not to appear as one; who
would not mind being born again, but who does not know how to break the
withered bark of his ageing trunk; the man of inhibitions and
precautions. When the man of his admiration was martyred and killed and
His enemies were satisfied, and there was no more danger of being
compromised, then he comes with balsams to pour into those wounds which
were inflicted partly by his cowardice.
But the church to reward his posthumous piety has chosen him to become
one of her saints. And there is an old tradition that he was baptized by
Peter and put to death for having believed, too late, in Him whom he did
not save from death.
LAMBS, SERPENTS, AND DOVES
Those whom Jesus sent out to the conquest of souls were rustic
countrymen, but they could be mild as sheep, wary as serpents, simple as
doves—sheep without cowardice, serpents without poison, doves without
lustfulness.
To be stripped of everything was the first duty of such soldiers.
Seeking the poor, they should be poorer than the poor. And yet not
beggars, for the laborer is worthy of his hire; the bread of life which
they were to distribute to those hungering for justice deserved wheat
bread in return. The laborers should set out on their wonderful work
destitute of possessions, taking nothing for their journey save a staff
only, no scrip, no bread, no money in their purse. They should be shod
with sandals, clad in a single garment. The metals are a burden which
weighs down the soul. The sheen of gold makes men forget the sun’s
splendor; the sheen of silver makes them forget the splendor of the
stars; the sheen of copper makes them forget the splendor of fire. He
who deals with metals weds himself to the earth and is bound fast to the
earth. He does not know Heaven, and Heaven does not recognize him.
It is not enough to preach love of poverty to the poor, or to talk to
them about the sumptuous beauty of poverty. The poor do not believe the
words of the rich until the rich willingly become poor. The Disciples
destined to preach the beauty of poverty to both poor and rich were to
set an example of happy poverty to every man in every house on every
day. They were to carry nothing with them except the clothes on their
backs and the sandals on their feet. They were to accept nothing; only
the small piece of daily bread which they would find on the tables of
their hosts. The wandering priests of the goddess Siria and of other
Oriental divinities carried with them, along with the sacred images, the
wallet for offerings, the bag for alms, because common people do not
value things which cost them nothing. The apostles of Jesus, on the
contrary, were to refuse any gift or payment, “Freely ye have received,
freely give.” And as one of the disguises of wealth is merchandise, the
messengers of the Kingdom were to renounce even a change of garments,
sandals and staff; were to dispense with everything except the barest
essentials.
They were to enter into the houses, open to all in a country where the
locks and bolts of fear were not yet known, and which preserved some
remembrance of nomad hospitality—they were to speak to the men and the
women who lived there. Their duty was to announce that the Kingdom of
Heaven was at hand, to explain in what way the kingdom of earth could
become the Kingdom of Heaven, and to explain the one condition for this
happy fulfilling of all the prophecies,—repentance, conversion,
transformation of the soul. As a proof that they were sent by One who
had the authority to demand this change, they had power to heal the
sick, to drive away with their words unclean spirits,—that is, the
demons, and the vices which make men like demons.
They commanded men to renew their souls and at once with all the power
which had been given them they aided them to commence this renovation.
They did not leave them alone with this command, so difficult to
execute. After the prophetic word, “The Kingdom is at hand,” they began
their labors; they worked to restore, to cleanse, to make over these
souls which had been abandoned by their rightful shepherds. They
explained what it was necessary to do to be worthy of the new Heaven on
earth and they lent a hand at once to the work. In short, to complete
the paradox they assassinated and brought to life. They killed the old
Adam in every convert, but their words were the baptism of the second
birth. Pilgrims without purses or bundles, they carried with them truth
and life,—peace.
“And when ye come into an house salute it,” and this was the salutation,
“Peace be with you.” Those who received them gained peace, those who
rejected them continued their bitter warfare. Coming away from the house
or from the city which had not received them, they were to shake the
dust from their feet, not because the dust of the houses and of the
cities of those who were not willing to hear them was contaminated, but
because shaking it from their feet is a symbolic answer to their
deafness and niggardliness of soul. You have refused all, and we will
not accept anything from you, not even the dust which clings to our
sandals. Because you, made of dust and fated to return to dust as you
are, will not give a moment of your time, nor a piece of your bread, we
leave behind us the dust of your streets, down to the least grain.
SPEAK YE IN LIGHT
In their faithfulness to the sublime paradox of Him who sends them, the
apostles bring peace and at the same time war! All men are not capable
of conversion. In the same family, in the same house, there are some who
will believe and others who will not. And there will spring up between
them division and warfare, the hard price with which absolute and stable
peace can be secured. If all men should listen at the same moment to the
voice, if all could be transformed on the same day, the Kingdom of
Heaven would be founded in a twinkling of an eye, with no bloody preface
of battles.
Furthermore those who do not wish to change themselves, because they do
not understand the news, or believe themselves already perfect, will
attack the converters and accuse them before tribunals. Representatives
of wealth and of the old law will be cruel to the poor who are teaching
the new law to the poor. The rich are not willing to concede that their
wealth is dangerous poverty; the scribes are not willing to admit that
their learning is only deadly ignorance.... “They will scourge you in
their synagogues.... But when they deliver you up, take no thought of
how or what ye shall speak.” Jesus is sure that the poor fishermen,
though they have never studied in the schools of eloquence, will find
for themselves great words in their hour of accusation. One thought,
when it is a great thought and profoundly fixed in the heart, engenders
of itself all the derivatory and accessory thoughts, and with them
perfect form in which to express them. The arid-hearted man who has
nothing in himself, who has faith in nothing, who does not feel, burn,
and suffer, though he may have studied long with the sophists of Athens
and the rhetoricians of Rome, is incapable of improvising one of those
powerful and illuminating answers which trouble the conscience of the
hardest judges.
They are to speak therefore without fear and without hiding anything of
what has been taught them. “What I tell you in darkness that seek ye in
light, and what ye hear in the ear, preach ye upon the housetops.” With
these words Jesus does not ask his Disciples to be more daring than he
has been. He has spoken in the darkness, that is obscurity; He has
spoken to them, to His first faithful followers, but what He has said to
them along deserted roads and in solitary rooms they are to repeat as He
Himself has given them the example, on open squares of cities before
crowds of people. He has whispered the truth into their ears, because
the truth at first might alarm those not prepared for it, and because
there were so few of the Disciples that there was no need to cry aloud.
But this truth must be cried out now from the heights, in order that all
may hear it, in order that there may be no one to say on that Day that
he has not heard it.
Men can kill the body of the man who spreads the truth abroad, but they
cannot kill his soul; from the death of a single body thousands of new
souls will be born into life. But not even your body will die, because
there is One who protects it. “Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing?
and one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father. But
the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear ye not therefore, ye
are of more value than many sparrows.” The birds of the air who do not
sow, do not die of hunger; you who do not carry even a staff shall not
die at the hands of your enemies.
They have with them a secret so precious that the flesh which contains
it will not be allowed to perish. Jesus is always with them, even though
from afar. What is done to them is done to Him. A mystic identity is
created for all eternity between Him who sends them out and those
disciples who are sent. “And whosoever shall give to drink unto one of
these little ones, a cup of cold water only in the name of a disciple,
verily I say unto you he shall in no wise lose his reward.”
Jesus is the fountain of living water destined to quench the thirst of
all the weary, and yet He will take account also of the cup of water
which shall have quenched the thirst of the least among His friends.
Those who carry with them the water of truth, which purifies and saves,
may need some day a cup of the stagnant water buried at the bottom of
village wells. Any person who will give them a little of this ordinary,
material water will have in exchange a well-spring which intoxicates the
soul more than the strongest wine.
The apostles who go about with one garment, with a single pair of
sandals, without belts or wallets, poor as poverty, bare as truth,
simple as joy, are, in spite of their apparent poverty, diverse forms of
a king who has come to found a kingdom greater and happier than all
kingdoms, to bring to poor people wealth which is worth more than all
measurable riches, to offer to the unhappy a joy more profound than any
fleshly pleasures. It suits this new King, as it did the kings of the
Orient, to show Himself under many forms, to appear to men in diverse
garments. But the disguises which He prefers even to-day are these
three: Poet, Poor Man, and Apostle.
MAMMON
Jesus is the poor man, infinitely and rigorously poor. Poor with an
absolute poverty! The prince of poverty! The Lord of perfect
destitution! The poor man who lives with the poor, who has come for the
poor, who speaks to the poor, who gives to the poor, who works for the
poor! Poor among the poor, destitute among the destitute, beggar among
the beggars! The poor man of a great and eternal poverty! The happy and
rich poor man, who accepts poverty, who desires poverty, who weds
himself to poverty, who chants of poverty! The beggar who gives alms!
The naked man who covers the naked! The hungry man who feeds others, the
miraculous and supernatural, who changes the men owning false riches
into poor men, and poor men into those with real wealth.
There are poor men who are poor because they were never capable of
acquiring wealth. There are other poor men who are poor because they
give away every evening what they earned that day; and the more they
give the more they have. Their wealth, the wealth of this second class
of poor men, grows greater in proportion as it is given away. It is a
pile which becomes greater as more is taken away from it.
Jesus was one of these poor men. Compared to one of them, men materially
rich, rich as the world esteems wealth, rich with their chests of
talents, mina, rupees, florins, shekels, crowns, francs, marks, and
dollars, are only lamentable beggars. The money-changers of the forum,
the great feasters of Jerusalem, the bankers of Florence and Frankfort,
the lords of London, the multi-millionaires of New York, compared to
these poor men are only unfortunate beggars, despoiled and needy; unpaid
servants of a fierce master; condemned every day to assassinate their
own souls. The wretchedness of such indigence is so terrible that they
are reduced to pick up the stones that are found in the mud of the
earth, and grope about in filth. Theirs is a poverty so repugnant that
not even the poor succeed in bestowing on them the charity of a smile.
Richness is a curse like work, but a harder and more shameful curse. He
who is marked with the sign of wealth has committed, perhaps
unconsciously, an infamous crime, one of those mysterious and
unimaginable crimes which are nameless in human language. The rich man
is either under the burden of the vengeance of God, or God wishes to put
him to the test to see if he can succeed in climbing up to divine
poverty. For the rich man has committed the greatest sin, the most
abominable and unpardonable. The rich man is the man who has fallen
because of an exchange: he could have had Heaven and he chose Earth. He
could have lived in Paradise and he has chosen Hell. He could have kept
his soul and he has exchanged it for material things. He could have
loved and he has preferred to be hated. He could have had happiness and
he has desired power. No one can save him. Wealth in his hands is a
metal which buries him alive under its icy mass; it is the tumor which
consumes him still alive in his corruption; it is the fire which burns
him and reduces him to a terrible, black mummy, a blind paralytic, black
mummy, a ghostly carrion which everlastingly holds out its empty hand in
the cemeteries of the centuries, begging in vain for the alms of
charitable remembrance.
For him there is only one salvation: to become a poor man, a true and
humble poor man; to throw away the horrible destitution of wealth in
order to enter again into poverty. But this resolution is the hardest
that the rich man can take. The rich man by the very fact that he is
sickened by wealth cannot even imagine that the entire renunciation of
wealth would be the beginning of redemption, and because he cannot
imagine such an abdication, he cannot even deliberate on it, cannot
weigh the alternatives. He is a prisoner in the impregnable prison of
himself. To liberate himself he must first be free.
The rich man does not belong to himself, but belongs to inanimate
things. He has not the time to think, to choose. Wealth is a pitiless
master who allows no other masters near him. The rich man cannot think
of his soul, bowed as he is under the care of his riches, under his
thirst to increase his riches, under the fear of losing his riches,
under the material joys which are offered to him by those pieces of
matter which are called wealth. He cannot even imagine that his sick,
suffocating, mutilated, worm-eaten soul needs to be cured. He has taken
up his abode in that part of the world which, according to contracts and
laws, he has the right to call _his_, and often he has not even the
time, the wish, or the power to enjoy it. He must serve it and take care
of it,—he cannot serve or take care of his own soul. All his power of
love is absorbed by these material things, which order him about, which
have taken the place of his soul, which have robbed him of all his
liberty. The horrible fate of the rich man lies in this double
absurdity: in order to have the power to command men he has become the
slave of dead things; in order to acquire a part (and such a very small
part!) he has lost the whole.
Nothing is ours as long as it is ours alone. Outside of himself man can
possess, actually own, nothing. The absolute secret of owning other
things is to renounce them. Everything is given to him who has refused
everything. But he who wishes to grasp for himself, for himself alone, a
part of the goods of this world, loses both what he has acquired and
everything else. And at the same moment he is incapable of knowing
himself, or possessing himself, making himself greater. He has nothing
more, not even the things which in appearance belong to him, but to
which in reality he belongs; and he has never had his own soul, the one
piece of property which is worth possessing. He is the most destitute
and despoiled beggar of all the universe. He has nothing. How then can
he love others, give to others himself and that which belongs to
himself, exercise that loving charity which would conduct him so soon to
the Kingdom? He is nothing and he has nothing. He who does not exist
cannot change. He who does not possess cannot give. How then can the
rich man, who is no longer his own, who has no longer a soul, transform
a soul, the only possession of mankind, into something nobler and more
precious?
“For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and
lose his own soul?” This question of Christ’s, simple like all
revelations, expresses the exact meaning of the prophetic threat. The
rich man not only loses eternity, but, pulled down by his wealth, loses
his life here below, his present soul, the happiness of his present
earthly life.
“Ye cannot serve God and mammon.” The Spirit and Gold are two masters
who will not tolerate any division or sharing. They are jealous; they
insist on having the whole man. And even if he wishes, the man cannot
divide himself in two. He must be all here, or all beyond worldly
things. For the faithful servant of the spirit, gold is nothing; for him
who serves gold, “spirit” is a word without meaning. He who chooses the
spirit throws away gold and all the things bought by gold; he who
desires gold puts an end to the spirit and renounces all the benefits of
the spirit: peace, holiness, love, perfect joy. The first is a poor man
who can never use up his infinite wealth; the other is a rich man who
can never escape out of his infinite poverty. By the mysterious law of
renunciation the poor man possesses even that which is not his—the
entire universe; through the hard law of perpetual desire, the rich man
does not even possess that little which he believes to be his. God gives
immensely more than the immensity which He has promised. Mammon takes
away even that very little which he promises. He who renounces
everything has everything given him; he who wishes a part for himself
alone, finds himself at the end with nothing.
When the horrible mystery of wealth is deeply probed, it is easy to see
why the masters of men have considered wealth the kingdom of the Demon
himself. A thing which costs less than everything else is bought by
everything else. A thing which is nothing, the actual value of which is
nothing, is bought by giving up everything, is secured by exchanging for
it the whole of the soul, the whole of life. The most precious thing is
exchanged for the most worthless.
And yet even this infernal absurdity has its reason for being, in the
economy of the spirit. Man is so universally and naturally drawn by that
nothingness called wealth that he could only be dissuaded from his
insensate search for it by putting a price so great, so high, so out of
all proportion that the very fact of paying it would be a valid proof of
insanity and crime. But not even the conditions of the bargain, the
eternal exchanged for the ephemeral, power for servitude, sanctity for
damnation, are enough to keep men away from the absurd bargain with the
powers of evil. Poor people do not rejoice that they are poor. Their
only regret is that they cannot be rich; their souls are contaminated
and in peril like those of the wealthy. Almost all of them are
involuntarily poor men, who have not known how to make money and yet
have lost the spirit; they are only poverty-stricken rich people who
have not as yet any cash.