Much, however, as Christ has to say concerning the noble uses to which
wealth may be put, it is not here, as every reader of the Gospels must
feel, that the full emphasis of His words comes. It is when He goes on
to speak of the perils of the rich, and of our wrong estimates of the
worth of wealth, that His solemn warnings pierce to the quick. Christ
did not live, nor does He call us to live, in an unreal world, though
perhaps there are few subjects concerning which more unreal words have
been spoken than this. The power of wealth is great, the power of
consecrated wealth is incalculably great; and this the New Testament
freely recognizes; but wealth is _not_ the great, necessary,
all-sufficing thing that ninety-nine out of a hundred of us believe it
to be. And when we put it first, and make it the standard by which all
things else are to be judged, Christ tells us plainly that we are
falling into a temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and hurtful
lusts; we are piercing ourselves through with many sorrows. For once at
least, then, let us try to look at money with His eyes and to weigh it
in His balances.
Christ was Himself a poor man. His mother was what to-day we should call
a working-man's wife, and probably also the mother of a large family.
When, as an infant, Jesus was presented in the Temple, the offering
which His parents brought was that which the law prescribed in the case
of the poor: "a pair of turtle doves or two young pigeons." When He came
to manhood, and entered on His public ministry, He had no home He could
call His own. In His Father's house, He said, were many mansions; but on
earth He had not where to lay His head. Women ministered unto Him of
their substance. We never read that He had any money at all. When once
He wanted to use a coin as an illustration, He borrowed it; when, at
another time, He needed one with which to pay a tax, He wrought a
miracle in order to procure it. As He was dying, the soldiers, we are
told, parted His garments among them--that was all there was to divide.
When He was dead, men buried Him in another's tomb. More literally true
than perhaps we always realize was the apostle's saying, "He became
poor."
Who, then, will deny that a man's life consisteth not in the abundance
of the things which he possesseth? Yet how strangely materialized our
thoughts have become! Our very language has been dragged down and made a
partner with us in our fall. When, for example, our Authorized Version
was written in 1611, the translators could write, without fear of being
misunderstood, "Let no man seek his own, but every man another's
_wealth_" (i Cor. x. 24).[51] But though the nobler meaning of the word
still survives in "well" and "weal," "wealth" to-day is rarely used save
to indicate abundance of material good. When Thackeray makes "Becky
Sharp" say that she could be good if she had £4000 a year, and when. Mr.
Keir Hardie asks if it is possible for a man to be a Christian on a
pound a week, the thoughts of many hearts are revealed. There is nothing
to be done without money, we think; money is the golden key which
unlocks all doors; money is the lever which removes all difficulties.
This is what many of us are saying, and what most of us in our hearts
are thinking. But clean across these spoken and unspoken thoughts of
ours, there comes the life of Jesus, the man of Nazareth, to rebuke, and
shame, and silence us. Who in His presence dare speak any more of the
sovereign might of money?
This is the lesson of the life of the Best. Is it not also the lesson of
the lives of the good in all ages? The greatest name in the great world
of Greece is Socrates; and Socrates was a poor man. The greatest name in
the first century of the Christian era is Paul; and Paul was a
working-man and sometimes in want. It was Calvinism, Mark Pattison said,
that in the sixteenth century saved Europe, and Calvin's strength, a
Pope once declared, lay in this, that money had no charm for him. John
Wesley re-created modern England and left behind him "two silver
teaspoons and the Methodist Church." The "Poets' Corner" in Westminster
Abbey, it has been said, commemorates a glorious company of paupers. And
even in America, the land of the millionaire and multi-millionaire, the
names that are graven on the nation's heart, and which men delight to
honour, are not its Vanderbilts, or its Jay Goulds, but Lincoln, and
Grant, and Garfield, and Webster, and Clay.
This is not mere "curb-stone rhetoric"; I speak the words of soberness
and truth. Would that they in whose blood the "narrowing lust of gold"
has begun to burn might be sobered by them! In the name of Jesus of
Nazareth, and of all the noblest of the sons of men, let us deny and
defy the sordid traditions of mammon; let us make it plain that we at
least do not believe "the wealthiest man among us is the best."
"Godliness with contentment," said the apostle, "is great gain;" and
though these are not the only worthy ends of human effort, yet he who
has made them his has secured for himself a treasure which faileth not,
which will endure when the gilded toys for which men strive and sweat
are dust and ashes.
It is further worthy of note that it was always the rich rather than the
poor whom Christ pitied. He was sorry for Lazarus; He was still more
sorry for Dives. "Blessed are ye poor.... Woe unto you that are rich."
This two-fold note sounds through all Christ's teaching. And the reason
is not far to seek. As Jesus looked on life, He saw how the passionate
quest for gold was starving all the higher ideals of life. Men were
concentrating their souls on pence till they could think of nothing
else. For mammon's sake they were turning away from the kingdom of
heaven. The spirit of covetousness was breaking the peace of households,
setting brother against brother, making men hard and fierce and
relentless. Under its hot breath the fairest growths of the spirit were
drooping and ready to die. The familiar "poor but pious" which meets us
so often in a certain type of biography could never have found a place
on the lips of Jesus. "Rich but pious" would have been far truer to the
facts of life as He saw them. "The ground of a certain rich man brought
forth plentifully," and after that he could think of nothing but barns:
there was no room for God in his life. "The Pharisees who were lovers of
money heard these things; and they scoffed at Him;" of course, what
could their jaundiced eyes see in Jesus? And even to one of whom it is
written that Jesus, "looking upon him loved him," his great possessions
proved a magnet stronger than the call of Christ. It was Emerson, I
think, who said that the worst thing about money is that it so often
costs so much. To take heed that we do not pay too dearly for it, is the
warning which comes to us from every page of the life of Jesus. Are
there none of us who need the warning? "Ye cannot serve God and mammon;"
we know it, and that we may the better serve mammon, we are sacrificing
God and conscience on mammon's unholy altars. And to-day, perhaps, we
are content that it should be so. But will our satisfaction last? Shall
we be as pleased with the bargain to-morrow and the day after as we
think we are to-day? And when our last day comes--what? "Forefancy your
deathbed," said Samuel Rutherford; and though the counsel ill fits the
mood of men in their youth and strength, it is surely well sometimes to
look forward and ask how life will bear hereafter the long look back.
"This night is thy soul required of thee; and the things which thou hast
prepared whose shall they be?"--not his, and he had nothing else. He had
laid up treasure for himself, but it was all of this world's coinage; of
the currency of the land whither he went he had none. In one of Lowell's
most striking poems he pictures the sad retrospect of one who, through
fourscore years, had wasted on ignoble ends God's gift of life; his
hands had
"plucked the world's coarse gains
As erst they plucked the flowers of May;"
but what now, in life's last hours, are gains like these?
"God bends from out the deep and says,
'I gave thee the great gift of life;
Wast thou not called in many ways?
Are not My earth and heaven at strife?
I gave thee of My seed to sow,
Bringest thou Me My hundred-fold?'
Can I look up with face aglow,
And answer, 'Father, here is gold'?"
And the end of the poem is a wail:
"I hear the reapers singing go
Into God's harvest; I, that might
With them have chosen, here below
Grope shuddering at the gates of night."
Wherefore let us set not our minds on the things that are upon earth;
let us covet earnestly the best gifts; let us seek first the kingdom of
God; and all other things in due season and in due measure shall be
added unto us.[52]
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