The question is sometimes asked how the teaching of Jesus concerning
money is related to that strange product of civilization, the modern
millionaire. The present writer, at least, cannot hold with those who
think that Christ was a communist, or that He regarded the possession of
wealth as in itself a sin. Nevertheless, it is impossible not to
sympathize with the feeling that the accumulation of huge fortunes in
the hands of individuals is not according to the will of Christ. Mr.
Andrew Carnegie is reported to have said that a man who dies a
millionaire dies disgraced; and few persons who take their New Testament
seriously will be disposed to contradict him. But, inasmuch as all
millionaires are not prepared like Mr. Carnegie to save themselves from
disgrace, the question is beginning to arise in the minds of many,
whether society itself should not come to the rescue--its own and the
rich man's. No man, it may be pretty confidently affirmed, can possibly
_earn_ a million; he may obtain it, he may obtain it by methods which
are not technically unjust, but he has not earned it. Be a man's powers
what they may, it is impossible that his share of the wealth which he
has helped to create can be fairly represented by a sum so vast. If he
receives it, others may reasonably complain that there is something
wrong in the principle of distribution. And unless, both by a larger
justice to his employees, and by generous benefactions to the public, he
do something to correct the defects in his title, he must not be
surprised if some who feel themselves disinherited are driven to ask
ominous and inconvenient questions.
This, however, is a matter which it is impossible now to discuss
further. Turning again to Christ's sayings about money, we may summarize
them in this fashion: Christ says nothing about the making of money, He
says much about the use of it, and still more about its perils and the
need there is for a revised estimate of its worth. Following the example
of Christ, it is the last point of which I wish more especially to
speak. But before coming to that, it may be well briefly to recall some
of the things which Christ has said touching the use of wealth. Wealth,
He declares, is a trust, for our use of which we must give account unto
God. In our relation to others we may be proprietors; before God there
are no proprietors, but all are stewards. And in the Gospels there are
indicated some of the ways in which our stewardship may be fulfilled. I
will mention two of them.
(1) "When thou doest alms"--Christ, you will observe, took for granted
that His disciples would give alms, as He took for granted that they
would pray. He prescribes no form which our charity must take; we have
to exercise our judgment in this, as in other matters. Obedience is left
the largest liberty, but not the liberty of disobedience; and they who
open their ears greedily to take in all that the political economist and
others tell us of the evils of indiscriminate charity, only that they
may the more tightly button up their pockets against the claims of the
needy, are plainly disregarding the will of Christ. If what we are told
is true, the more binding is the obligation to discover some other way
in which our alms-giving may become more effective. The duty itself no
man can escape who calls Christ Jesus Lord and Master.
(2) But wealth, Christ tells us, may minister not merely to the physical
necessities, but to the beauty and happiness of life. When Christ was
invited to the marriage-feast at Cana of Galilee, when Matthew the
publican made for Him a feast in His own house, He did not churlishly
refuse, saying that such expenditure was wasteful and wicked excess.
When in the house of Simon the leper Mary "took a pound of ointment of
spikenard, very precious, and anointed the feet of Jesus," and they that
sat by murmured, saying, "To what purpose is this waste? for this
ointment might have been sold for above three hundred pence and given to
the poor," Jesus threw His shield about this woman and her deed of love:
"Let her alone; why trouble ye her? She hath wrought a good work on Me."
These words, it has been well said, are "the charter of all undertakings
which propose, in the name of Christ, to feed the mind, to stir the
imagination, to quicken the emotions, to make life less meagre, less
animal, less dull."[50] Do not let us speak as though the only friends
of the poor were those who gave them oatmeal at Christmas, or who secure
for them alms-houses in their old age. There is a life which is more
than meat, and all heavenly charity is not to be bound up in bags of
flour. He who strives to bring into the grey, monotonous lives of the
toilers of our great cities the sweet, refining influences of art, and
music and literature, he who helps his fellows to see and to love the
true and the beautiful and the good, is not one whit less a benefactor
of his kind than he who obtains for them better food and better homes.
Man shall not live by bread alone, and they who use their wealth to
minister to a higher life serve us not less really than they who provide
for our physical needs.