That contrast is threefold, as you observe, 'that which is least.'
or, perhaps better, 'that which is very little.' and 'that which is
much.' That is a contrast in reference to degree. But degree is a
shallow word, which does not cover the whole ground, nor go down
to the depths. So our Lord comes next to a contrast in regard to
essential nature, 'the unrighteous mammon' and 'the true riches.'
But even these contrasts in degree and in kind do not exhaust all
the contrasts possible, for there is another, the contrast in
reference to the reality of our possession: 'that which is
another's'; 'that which is your own.' Let us, then, take these three
things, the contrast in degree, the contrast in kind, the contrast
in regard to real possession.
First, then, and briefly, mental and spiritual and inward blessings,
salvation, God, are more than all externals. Our Lord gathers all
the conceivable treasures of earth, jewels and gold and dignities,
and scenes of sensuous delights, and everything that holds to the
visible and the temporal, and piles them into one scale, and then He
puts into the other the one name, God; and the pompous nothings fly
up and are nought, and have no weight at all. Is that not true? Does
it need any demonstration, any more talk about it? No!
But then comes in sense and appeals to us, and says, 'You cannot get
beyond my judgment. These things are good.' Jesus Christ does not
say that they are not, but sense regards them as far better than
they are. They are near us, and a very small object near us, by the
laws of perspective, shuts out a mightier one beyond us. We in
Manchester live in a community which is largely based on, and
actuated and motived in its diligence by the lie that material good
is better than spiritual good, that it is better to be a rich man
and a successful merchant than to be a poor and humble and honest
student; that it is better to have a balance at your bankers than to
have great and pure and virginal thoughts in a clean heart; that a
man has done better for himself when he has made a fortune than when
he has God in his heart. And so we need, and God knows it was never
more needed in Manchester than to-day, that we should preach and
preach and preach, over and over again, this old-fashioned
threadbare truth, which is so threadbare and certain that it has
lost its power over the lives of many of us, that all that, at its
mightiest, is very little, and that this, at its least, is very
much. Dear brethren, you and I know how hard it is always,
especially how hard it is in business lives, to keep this as our
practical working faith. We say we believe, and then we go away and
live as if we believed the opposite. I beseech you listen to the
scale laid down by Him who knew all things in their measure and
degree, and let us settle it in our souls, and live as if we had
settled it, that it is better to be wise and good than to be rich
and prosperous, and that God is more than a universe of worlds, if
we have Him for our own.
But to talk about a contrast in degree degrades the reality, for it
is no matter of difference of measurement, but it is a matter of
difference of kind. And so our Lord goes on to a deeper phase of the
contrast, when He pits against one another 'the unrighteous mammon'
and 'the true riches.' Now, there is some difficulty in that
contrast. The two significant terms do not seem to be precise
opposites, and possibly they are not intended to be logically
accurate counterparts of each other. But what is meant by 'the
unrighteous mammon'? I do not suppose that the ordinary explanation
of that verse is quite adequate. We usually suppose that by so
stigmatising the material good, He means to suggest how hard it is
to get it--and you all know that--and how hard it is to keep it, and
how hard it is to administer it, without in some measure falling
into the sin of unrighteousness. But whilst I dare say that may be
the signification intended, if we were to require that the word here
should be a full and correct antithesis to the other phrase, 'the
true riches,' we should need to suppose that 'unrighteous' here
meant that which falsely pretended to be what it was not. And so we
come to the contrast between the deceitfulness of earthly good and
the substantial reality of the heavenly. Will any fortune, even
though it goes into seven figures, save a man from the miseries, the
sorrows, the ills that flesh is heir to? Does a great estate make a
man feel less desolate when he stands by his wife's coffin? Will any
wealth 'minister to a mind diseased'? Will a mountain of material
good calm and satisfy a man's soul? You see faces just as
discontented, looking out of carriage windows, as you meet in the
street. 'Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.' There is no
proportion between abundance of external good of any kind and happy
hearts. We all know that the man who is rich is not happier than the
poor man. And I, for my part, believe that the raw material of
happiness is very equally distributed through the world, and that it
is altogether a hallucination by which a poor man thinks, 'If I were
wealthy like that other man, how different my life would be.' No, it
would not; you would be the same man. The rich man that fancies that
because he is rich he is 'better off,' as they say, than his poor
brother, and the poor man who thinks that he would be 'better off'
if he were richer than he is now, are the same man turned inside
out, so to speak; and common to both of them is that fallacy, that
wealth and material good contribute much to the real blessedness and
nobleness of the man who happens to own it.
But then, perhaps, we have rather to regard this unrighteous mammon
as so designated from another point of view. You will remember that
all through the context our Lord has been insisting on the notion of
stewardship. And I take it that what He means here is to remind us
that whenever we claim any of our possessions, especially our
external ones, as our own, we thereby are guilty of defrauding both
God and man, and are unrighteous, and it is unrighteous thereby.
Stewardship is a word which describes our relation to all that we
have. Forget that, and then whatever you have becomes 'the
unrighteous mammon.' There is the point in which Christ's teaching
joins hands with a great deal of unchristian teaching in this
present day which is called Socialism and Communism. Christianity is
not communistic. It asserts as against other men your right of
property, but it limits that right by this, that if you interpret
your right of property to mean the right to 'do what you like with
your own,' ignoring your stewardship to God, and the right of your
fellows to share in what you have, then you are an unfaithful
steward, and your mammon is unrighteous. And that principle, the
true communism of Christianity, has to be worked into modern society
in a way that some of us do not dream of, before modern society will
be organised on Christian principles. These words of my text are no
toothless words which are merely intended to urge Christian people
on to a sentimental charity, and to a niggardly distribution of part
of their possessions: but they underlie the whole conception of
ownership, as the New Testament sets it forth. Wherever the
stewardship that we owe to God, and the participation that we owe to
men, are neglected in regard to anything that we have, there God's
good gifts are perverted and have become 'unrighteous mammon.'
And, then, on the other hand, our Lord sets forth here the contrast
in regard to 'the true riches', which are such, inasmuch as they
really correspond to the idea of wealth being a true good to a man,
and making him rich to all the intents of bliss. He that has the
treasures of a pure mind, of a lofty aim, of a quiet conscience, of
a filled and satisfied and therefore calmed heart; he that has the
treasure of salvation; he that has the boundless wealth of God---he
has the bullion, while the poor rich people that have the material
good have the scrip of an insolvent company, which is worth no more
than the paper on which it is written. There are two currencies--one
solid metal, the other worthless paper. The one is 'true riches,'
and the other the 'unrighteous mammon.'
Then there is a last contrast, and that is with regard to the
reality of our possession. On the one hand, that which I fondly call
my own is by our Lord stamped with the proprietor's mark, of
somebody else, 'that which is Another's.' It was His before He gave
it, it was His when He gave it, it is His after He has given it. My
name is never to be written on my property so as to erase the name
of the Owner. I am a steward; I am a trustee; it all belongs to Him.
That is one rendering of this word. But the phrase may perhaps point
in another direction. It may suggest how shadowy and unreal, as
being merely external, and how transitory is our ownership of wealth
and outward possessions. A man says, 'It is mine.' What does he mean
by that? It is not his own in any real sense. I get more good out of
a rich man's pictures, or estate, if I look at them with an eye that
loves them, than he does. The world belongs to the man that can
enjoy it and rightly use it. And the man that enjoys it and uses it
aright is the man who lives in God. Nothing is really yours except
that which has entered into the substance of your soul, and become
incorporated with your very being, so that, as in wool dyed in the
grain, the colour will never come out. What I am, that I have; what
I only have, that, in the deepest sense, I have not. 'Shrouds have
no pockets,' says the Spanish proverb. 'His glory will not descend
after him,' says the psalm. That is a poor possession which only is
outward whilst it lasts, and which ends so soon. But there is wealth
that comes into me. There are riches that cannot be parted from me.
I can make my own a great inheritance, which is wrought into the
very substance of my being, and will continue so inwrought, into
whatsoever worlds or states of existence any future may carry me.
So, and only so, is anything my own. Let these contrasts dominate
our lives.
I see our space is gone; I must make this sermon a fragment, and
leave what I intended to have made the last part of it for possible
future consideration. Only let me press upon you in one closing word
this, that the durable riches are only found in God, and the riches
that can be found in God are brought to every one of us by Him 'in
whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge,' of goodness
and grace. If we will make ourselves poor, by consciousness of our
need, and turn with faith to Jesus, then we shall receive from Him
those riches which are greatest, which are true, which are our own
in that they pass into our very being, in that they were destined
for us from all eternity by the love of God; and in having them we
shall be rich indeed, and for ever.