(a) Sense and flesh tend to make us think the visible and material the
best.
(b) Our peculiar position here in a great commercial centre powerfully
reinforces this tendency.
(c) The prevailing current of this age is all in the same direction.
The growth of luxury, the increase of wealth, and set of thought,
threaten us with a period when not only religious thought will fail, but
when all faith, enthusiasm, all poetry and philosophy, the very
conception of God and duty, all idealism, all that is unseen, will be
scouted among men. Naturalism does not fulfil its own boast of dealing
with facts; there are more facts than can be seen. So the first thing is
to settle it in our minds, in opposition to our own selves and to
prevailing tendencies, that truth is better than money, that pure
affections and moderate desires and a heart set on God are richer wealth
than all external possessions.
2. Desire that follows the corrected judgment. It is one thing to know
all this, another to wrench our wishes loose from earth.
3. A practical life that obeys the impulse of the desire. Christ's
command and prohibition here do not refer only to a certain course of
action, but to a certain motive and purpose in action, and to actions
drawn from these. If we obey Christ we shall lead lives obviously
different from those which are based upon an estimate which we are to
reject; but the main thing is to live and work with an eye to the
eternal, not the temporal, results of our doings. We are to administer
our lives as God does His providence, using the temporal only as means
to an end, the eternal. We are to live to be God-like, to love God, and
be loved by Him.
There is here the idea of which we are somewhat too much afraid, that
our life on earth adds to the rewards of blessedness in heaven. The idea
of reward is emphatically and often inculcated in Scripture, however
much a mistaken jealousy for 'the doctrines of Grace' may be chary of
it. We need only recall such words as 'They shall walk with Me in white,
for they are worthy'; or, 'Laying up in store for themselves a good
foundation'; or, 'Thou shalt have treasure in heaven.' If people would
only think of heaven less carnally, and would regard it as the
perfection of holiness, there would be no difficulty in the notion of
reward. Men get there what they have made themselves fit for here.
'Their works do follow them.'