“Render therefore unto Cæsar the things which are Cæsar’s; and
unto God the things that are God’s.”—MATT. xxii. 21.
What things are Cæsar’s? Clearly the things which bear his image and
superscription; the things on which he has the right and the power to
imprint his mark.
What things are God’s? Clearly those things which bear His immediate
mark and superscription, which belong to the diviner part in man, which
are in man by the breath of the Divine inspiration, and which God
claims, and therefore has the right to claim directly and exclusively
for Himself. The Lord will not stand between Cæsar and that which bears
his image; let not Cæsar dare to stand between God and that in man which
bears His image, and which He claims to rule directly by His word and by
His Spirit indwelling in human hearts.
This text is constantly quoted to justify the refusal to pay to Cæsar
the tax, be it church-rate or anything else, which he may demand for the
support of a spiritual system, which we may not believe to be in
accordance with the Divine will. I confess that the teaching of our Lord
in these words seems to me to point in precisely the opposite direction.
The argument which one often hears is to this effect: Cæsar is intruding
into God’s province when he demands anything from us for spiritual uses;
this is a department with which he has nothing whatever to do, and we
are giving him that which is God’s if we yield to his claims. God alone
has the right to claim anything at our hand for spiritual uses; and we
are wronging Him, we are robbing the Lord of what political theologians
call His “crown rights,” if we give unto Cæsar one farthing for the
maintenance of any Church system or systems, or any spiritual operations
of any sort, since these are of the things which belong to God alone.
The argument of our Lord in these verses points surely the other way.
With Him the test of the demand is not the purpose, but the thing
demanded. If what is asked has Cæsar’s image on it, enough; let him have
it; the responsibility of using it rests with him. If Cæsar asks that
which has not his image upon it, which he cannot compel before his
tribunals or distrain by his officers, such as your judgment, your
conscience, and the support of your voice and your hand, obey God rather
than man. If you yield to Cæsar, yield because you see that it is right
in God’s sight, that it is a duty to God to yield to him; if you refuse,
refuse because to yield would be wrong in God’s sight, and then be
prepared to sustain your refusal even unto death.
Do not misunderstand the difficulty of the Jewish rulers, which was a
very real one. It was a case of conscience with them. They did not care
about the amount of the tribute, that was a small matter; but Cæsar was
a Gentile, idolatrous prince. Idolatry was the state religion of the
Roman empire. It was a bitter thought to the Jew that an idolater, one
capable of setting up his own image in the holy of holies, should rule
over him and exact his tribute. Was it not a betrayal of duty to God to
consent to it? Was it not right to suffer any extremities rather than
yield to the imperial claims? There was a party among the Jews who felt
so grievously the degradation and the burden on their consciences, that
they were in a chronic state of rebellion against Rome. They were always
seeking to foment the differences between their own and the Roman
government; and they were prepared to stake their own lives and the life
of the nation on their fealty, as they understood fealty, to God alone.
It was one of the questions most eagerly debated among them, which they
asked the Saviour to solve. A case of conscience,—conscience grieved by
being compelled to support a system of government other than that which
they believed had been ordained to them of God. Our Lord’s solution is
most original and striking; and it offers the clearest guidance to us
through the multitude of kindred perplexities which cannot fail to arise
by reason of the ever varying relations of the secular and spiritual
powers in every age of the world. (Matt. xxii. 15–22.) The image on the
tribute money settled the matter. This is _primâ facie_ evidence that
Cæsar has a right to claim it. The power of putting an image on the
money marks it as a thing between you and Cæsar. You accept it and use
it in daily life, at Cæsar’s hand. That image on the penny, the right of
coining money being represented by it, is the symbol of all the order
and benediction which flow to you from Cæsar’s rule; and Cæsar’s right
to exact it back again is distinctly a question between you and the
earthly monarch, into which you have no right to drag, for the purpose
of protest, the name of God. Cæsar is ordained of God to take visible
charge of this department, the order of civil society; and he and you
must settle between you the fair adjustment of his claims. A piece of
money bearing Cæsar’s image is no battleground for the rights of God.
Pay whatever Cæsar asks for his purposes, no matter what they may be, so
long as by using Cæsar’s mintage you give the stamp of your acquiescence
to his rule; and if his purposes seem to you to be wrong, fight him with
nobler things than pennies—with voice and pen, the free utterance of
opinion, and, if needs must be, in the last extremity, with swords.
If Cæsar asks your homage to his idol, the bending of your knee, or the
acclamation of your voice, the answer is clear,—Thy image and
superscription are not here; my knee is for my God, my voice is for my
God; and all the powers of the universe cannot bend the one or awaken
the other without my will. Here I follow the Divine precedent:
“Nebuchadnezzar spake,” etc. (Dan. iii. 14–18.) But if Cæsar asks my
pennies for any purpose which he comprehends within the aim of his
government, let him have them; they clearly belong to his sphere. I
scorn to hold back what his force can wring from me the next moment;
they are his, the responsibility of taking them is his, and the
responsibility of using them is his. If I am not satisfied with his use
of them, I have nobler means of protest and influence; or, in the last
extremity, I can go forth from his empire and have done with him and his
pennies for ever.
This is the principle on which it seems to me right to act in
church-rate matters. Suppose that one were living in a neighbourhood in
which the church of the district had been built under a special act of
parliament, to be paid for by a rate levied on the householders during a
term of years. It would be our duty to pay year after year our share of
the tax which parliament imposed. The money asked for has Cæsar’s image
and superscription on it: by using it we consent to Cæsar’s sway. We
have no right to pick and choose which claims of a government we will
honour, and which we will refuse. We get the good of the government as a
whole, and we pay its claims as a whole, always endeavouring by moral
means to secure that the adjustment shall be righteous and fair. And so
it may become a clear duty to pay for the building of a church which we
never enter, and whose minister regards our ministry as an unauthorized
and mischievous intrusion on his sacred domain. If the Church, by
Cæsar’s ministry, will have our tribute money, we say, Take it; and if
the demand be very harsh or peremptory, we say, Take it, in very scorn.
But God forbid that we should ever consent to belong to a Church which
can condescend to take tribute by force of the unwilling, and which
gives the adversary thereby such strong temptation to blaspheme.
Such seems to me to be the bearing of this principle on this and kindred
questions. It seems to me distinctly to enjoin on us the course which it
is constantly quoted as denouncing. The money Cæsar needs, for the
carrying on of his government in the best way he can, is the first
charge on the property which the order of civil society suffers us to
possess and enjoy. God claims none till Cæsar is satisfied; for Cæsar’s
claim is His ordinance. Having satisfied Cæsar, take counsel with him
about the rest.
But these reflections open up many, some of them perplexing, questions,
on which this seems to me a good opportunity to offer some brief remark.
1. Does not Christ in this place seem to recognise some divided
allegiance—man under two masters, owing duty to Cæsar, owing duty to
God? Will he not be puzzled perpetually to determine their limits, and
to settle what is secular and what is sacred? and is there not something
repugnant to the very essence of Christianity in the idea that man at
any moment, in any relation, can have to do with another being than God?
Is not God the sole Lord of his being and of his life? What can be
Cæsar’s, in contradistinction to that which is God’s? I think I have
learnt from the Scripture, and I am always preaching the doctrine, that
God claims the man in his wholeness; that body, soul, and spirit,
riches, knowledge, power, and love, all belong to Him; that there is but
one empire, one service, one King; that life is simple, simple as the
infinite God. “_Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and
soul, and mind, and strength_,” “_and Him only shalt thou serve_.”
“_This do, and thou shalt live._” What claim can Cæsar have on man then,
which is not also God’s claim? What tribute can one pay to Cæsar, which
is not also paid to God? None, absolutely none. The Lord recognises no
divided allegiance; His words rightly understood are in perfect harmony
with the doctrine of His own sole and supreme lordship over every
thought, every passion, and every possession of man. “_Render unto Cæsar
the things which are Cæsar’s._” Why? Who ordains it? Who has the right
to demand it? God. Within the sphere of Cæsar’s government, obey him,
not because Cæsar can force you, but because God will have you; make it
a part of your Divine obedience, to obey wisely and loyally as a subject
and a citizen; and consider that Cæsar claims your service within the
sphere which belongs to him, as the ordained minister and representative
of God. There is no secular and sacred since Christ appeared. It is all
sacred. Civil obedience is an ordinance of the Church. The Scripture
bears most explicit witness to these principles wherever it touches on
the relations of civil society and its institutions. (1 Pet. ii. 13–17;
Rom. xiii. 1–7; 1 Tim. ii. 1–4.) It is God’s institution. He sustains
it; He, through the ruler, claims your tribute; the result, the order
and progress of society, is His work. Innocent III. was right, though in
a sense of which he little dreamed. The moon has its own relation to the
earth; but they have a common relation to the sun. The moon’s orbit is
included in the earth’s orbit; but the sun sways and balances both of
them, and there is not a movement of the moon in obeying the inferior
earthly attraction which is not also an act of obedience to the superior
sphere. So God has set us under rulers, in societies, as a kind of
interior province of His kingdom; but our loyalty as subjects, our duty
as citizens, are alike part of the one duty which we owe to God. There
is no schism in the body of our service, no double authority in our
Lord’s realm. The two worlds, the two services, the two spheres, are one
in Christ. “_One is your Master, even Christ._” “_Thou shalt worship
Him, and Him, only shalt thou serve._”
2. It is needful to inquire how far this principle of obedience is to
carry us.
If the money has Cæsar’s image and superscription, let him have it; he
has a right to it, and in recognising that right we are fulfilling so
far our duty to God. Here is a clear and simple principle: but is it a
sufficient guidance? does it provide for all the possible exigencies of
social and political life? How about the right of resisting Cæsar, when
he rules unrighteously? How about John Hampden’s refusal of the
ship-money, and the grand and glorious struggle which it inaugurated, by
which our liberties were won? This is a very grave and important
question, and one which, having voluntarily selected such a subject as
this, we have no right to pass by. There is a Divine precedent here. (1
Kings xii. 12–24.) What is it which is ordained of God in government?
Not any particular king, nor any particular form or institution, but the
good of men in the order of civil society. This it is at which God aims,
and to this end kings and institutions are His ministers. The king or
institution which may best assure this end is the open question in the
settlement of which God demands the concert and co-operation of mankind.
Every king, every magistrate, every political institution, has a certain
Divine sanction, inasmuch as it is the keystone of the arch which He has
built, and under whose sheltering dome we live and work. But a keystone
which, instead of securing the arch, threatens its stability, has no
Divine sanction longer than for the time during which it can be
successfully replaced or repaired. The Divine shield is cast, not around
the particular king, but around the society and the civilization of
which he is the head. It is only in the unity of the society that the
Lord’s sanction upholds him; let him mar that unity or distract it, and
God passes to the side of those who are seeking to set up a new and real
keystone in his room. There is nothing like the duty of passive
obedience to tyrants implied in the text, or enjoined in the word of
God. “_Render unto Cæsar the things which are Cæsar’s_,” while Cæsar is
the recognised lord. In those crises of history in which Cæsar has to be
weighed in the balance, in which the question has to be tried, Who is
king and by what rule shall he reign? godly men have to keep clear
before the mind’s eye what God means by human society, what He aims at,
and to help Him, yes, help Him to secure it. If no Cæsar be worth
recognising, or Cæsar be altogether too bad to be borne, then refuse his
tribute, resist his myrmidons, draw the sword of the Lord and of Gideon
to strike for deliverance. The Lord is the Cæsar of such an hour; the
Captain of the Lord’s host, His sword drawn in His hand as at Jericho,
is in these times of revolution busy among men. They best honour Cæsar
and serve Christ in such hours, who have the clearest eye for the good
of the commonwealth, and who prepare the way for the reign of a Cæsar
who, like David, shall rule according to the will of God. The sacred
sense of the obligations of a subject or a citizen which those cherish,
who have learnt from Christ “by whom kings reign and princes decree
judgment,” and who know that obedience to the powers that he is a form
of obedience to God, makes them patient, beyond the measure of mere
political patience, of the weaknesses, follies, and sins of the men who
occupy the world’s high places; while it makes them stern and firm as
death when God has pronounced the sentence of deposition, and has bared
the avenging sword and committed it to their hands. These are the men
who, like Cromwell, do their work with a terrible force and
completeness, and who read lessons in God’s name to Cæsars, which remain
doctrinal through all time.
3. Surely our Saviour intends us to understand how little money, or
anything with Cæsar’s image and superscription upon it, can do to make
or to mar the fortunes of God’s kingdom, which spreads and rules like
the dawn, like the moisture in the south wind, like the blush of spring,
like the splendour of summer, like everything that is quickened by the
breath of God. Tribute! We are always perplexing ourselves about
tribute—a steady stream of regular contributions, a flood-tide of
golden gifts. It is our measure of power. Quite other is Christ’s. His
power flashes like lightning from one part under heaven, and shineth to
the other part which is under heaven. The world flashes into light,
glows into life in a moment, when the times of refreshing, of
quickening, come down from God. Men catch it from each other’s eyes,
each other’s lips. It spreads as flame, and gathers strength as it
widens its circuit. Money, social and political influence, the force of
this world, all that seems solid and potent to men while they are
enacting the masque of life which we call living, faint back like
rushlights in the lightning’s flash, like aged institutions in the hour
of revolution, when the breath of the Spirit as at Pentecost is falling
on the world. I speak, and I am quite sure the sacred writers spoke, in
no scorn of money. No _thing_ is base: we keep our hate, our scorn, for
base spirits, not for things. But for money Paul must have starved, and
the kingdom must have perished in its birth. What the Lord means us to
understand is that money is the inevitable satellite of higher things.
Spirits in earnest movement sweep it with them in their course, as the
earth sweeps its atmosphere. Give us hearts of fire, fire that kindles
and flashes from heart to heart, from peak to peak of the human; and
what work will wait long for gold? Men who in common levels of interest
dole out their tens and hundreds, and feel some dull glow of
satisfaction stirring the stagnation of their hearts, scatter forth
their thousands when God fires their spirits, and their whole being is
alive and thrills with joy. Money! nothing greatly spiritual was ever
made by money, or was ever marred by money in this world.
There is a touch of scorn in the Saviour’s words, “_Shew me the tribute
money_.” Scorn of the vain worldly mind that was perplexing itself about
tribute, while the love of God and the belief in judgment were fast
dying out of human hearts. One sacred conviction in their hearts would
have answered the question, and lifted them above the sphere of
tribute—as Paul was lifted—into the region of that kingdom which would
sweep Cæsar’s as a satellite in its sphere. Did the Lord foresee sadly
the scene from which a few dark days divided them, when they would yield
to Cæsar—these men, who were groaning and haggling over the
tribute—absolutely everything that was God’s? (John xix. 7–16).
The leader of the band who turned the world upside down witnessed this
confession, “_Silver and gold have I none; but such as I have give I
thee: in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk_.” They
were poor as beggars, but richer in power to draw forth the treasures
of this world than kings. What king’s command could have wrought this
miracle? “_And the multitude of them that believed were of one heart and
of one soul: neither said any of them that ought of the things which he
possessed was his own; but they had all things common._” (Acts iv. 32.)
In truth, this love of Christ is the universal solvent. Nothing remains
any man’s own when once the heart is touched by this Divine fire. It
melts all selfish separations and appropriations, as sun warmth the
bonds of winter, and quickens in the universal human heart the glow and
circulation of the spring. Nothing starves in summer for want of the
bread that perishes; supplies lie thick everywhere around. And no Divine
work stays for lack of the gold that perishes, when once the sun of the
Divine love has loosed men’s hearts from the winter of their isolation
and selfish grasping care. Don’t worry about the tribute. “_Trust in the
Lord, and do good_,” and things will right themselves at once. Tribute
will pour into the treasury, and even the exactors shall become
ministers and yield their willing aid. “_Thine officers shall become
peace, and thine exactors righteousness._” “_Kings shall be thy nursing
fathers, and queens thy nursing mothers._” “_Violence shall be no more
heard in thy land, wasting nor destruction within thy borders_,” if the
King is in thy palaces; if thy heart, soul, and hand are loyally devoted
to Christ. I often think, in these days of grand Christian institutions,
with their vast fixed incomes and endowments, and all the magnificent
apparatus without which it seems to us the Lord’s kingdom must perish
out of this land and out of the world, of the little company who trudged
wearily about the highways of Palestine, seeking their morning meal from
the fig-tree by the wayside, and lodging wherever a poor cottager’s
faith and love gave them shelter for a night, and who,—beggars as to
the things which were Cæsar’s, but filled as never men were filled
before or since with the things which were God’s, faith, hope, joy,
truth, wisdom, and Divine charity—went forth in this their might and
re-made society: the grandest revolution in the history of this
universe, accomplished by its beggars and, as the world thought, its
fools. And the fact repeats itself in every revolution. Let a man in any
age go forth with the fire of God in him; and the force he wields, the
mastery he wins, the new life he quickens in a nation, in a world, pours
silent contempt on gold. The gold is gathered, as spirit gathers flesh
about it and becomes incarnate; so all that belongs to Cæsar’s sphere is
at the commandment of that which comes straight from God’s and glows
with the inspiration of His life. Gifts of a splendid lavishness in such
seasons are abundant; and strangely enough the givers feel enriched
unspeakably by the joy of giving, enlarged immeasurably by
impoverishment, and increased by abnegation. The richest in such seasons
are those who give most, not those who have most. A wonderful sense of
the glorious wealth of a heart which has a guest-chamber for Christ, and
whose pulses beat joyously as the free tide of the Divine love flows
through and over it on all around, kindles men’s souls to a new
conception of riches. It fills the beatitudes with a wonderful meaning,
and shows the sorrows and straits of poverty overflowed by the riches
and joys of God.