The Bible renders education the service of inspiration, and it renders it the service of proper restraint. When any one faculty of human life becomes a monarch it always makes for trouble. Zeal without knowledge tends to breakage; knowledge without zeal tends to waste. The Bible does not make intellect all. Man has mind, and he must use that. Man has sensibility, and he must use that. Man has will, and he must use that. Man must get the truth out of his integral self rather than out of his fractional self. The man who does not use his heart and will in the gaining of truth is just as faithless as is the man who will not use his mind. Without attempting to use psychological terms with exactness, we may say that Jesus brought in the reign of the practical intellect, which gets truth from all there is of man. Even as truth comes not from the naked will of God, nor yet out of his cold thought, but rather out of the full nature of the Infinite, so truth finds man, not at some one point of his being, but in the glowing center of his whole life.
We may assert, also, that the Bible saves education from frigidity. Tennyson speaks of “the freezing reason’s colder part.” We all know the meaning of the phrase. Jesus putinto the search for truth the mood of humility. The method of learning was obedience. Obedience is the organ of intellectual vision as well as of spiritual vision. The method of Jesus was not merely for the spiritual life, as men speak in their fragmentary way; it was a universal method. It takes humility to make the beginnings of a scholar, and weariness and shame of ignorance, and faith in an intellectual empire, and a high trust that the mind is made for truth, and the truth for mind. Ere we have done, we have a huge creed wrapped up in our intellectual processes. But the creed has been saved from its cold pride. The Bible says in one of its marginal readings, “Knowledge puffeth up; love buildeth up.” Knowledge alone may be swollen with pride, and the higher demand of the Bible would save from that disaster. This gives us the clue to more than one biblical sentence. There is a “science falsely so called.” There is a sense in which “not many wise after the flesh are called.” These implied warnings are not the cries of prejudice. They stand for the effort to touch learning with humility, which alone can save it from being distant and icy.
The good Book rescues education from a selfish inaction. There was a living and serving element in Jesus’s relation to the intellectual life. He did not deal in barrenmetaphysics or in helpless abstractions. His truth went to work. He fastened it to life’s burdens, and they were lifted. He dropped it amid life’s problems, and they were solved. He cast it against life’s temptations, and they were defeated. He attached it to life’s duties, and they were fulfilled. He sought those truths with which men had to dwell. He never attempted to set forth the essential mystery of things. He was no dealer in an intellectual cure-all. He spoke with authority and yet with reverent limitation. There was a great reserve in his explanations. Yet in the realm where men must live their present lives, Jesus gave enough truth to keep men busy all their days. Here again comes in the question of dynamic. Men sometimes prate about their “love of truth.” The intellectual life, like the religious life, may be guilty of cant. It takes more than an open mind to get the truth; it takes a working mind. Truth does not come to the passive man by way of transfer. One teaching of the parable of the virgins is that, while the coarser goods of life may be transferred, the finer goods of life must be won by spiritual effort. It takes dynamic to secure a real intellect. Perception may see a truth, but only inward power can use the truth. Jesus conferred that power. He gave us the truth in the doctrine about God. He gave usthe way in the spirit of obedience. He gave us the life in the willingness to make the truth the servant of the world for the sake of Christ.
This leads us to the biblical idea of consecrated intellect. As we have often failed to indicate the sin of needless ignorance, so have we failed to point out the sin of an unconsecrated mind. All truth can be dedicated to Christ. His great call to-day is for more men with the highest culture placed under the thrall of his grace and under the guiding power of the Spirit whom he sends—more Luthers from Wittenberg, more Wesleys from Oxford, more Pauls from Gamaliel’s school; more men from all our modern seats of learning who will know that gifts of learning can be placed at the service of the King and that all science and philosophy and literature may be placed at the foot of the Cross. In the coming day of the Christian intellect
Mind and heart, according wellMay make one music as before,But vaster.
The Bible and Work
The frank purpose of the present lecture is to discuss the relation of the Bible to the moral and spiritual aspects of work. The aim is not a study in economics. Without doubt the Bible stands for justice; and without doubt, also, the intent of the Bible is to make just men. But the great Book does not give an infallible table of wages; neither does it offer any sure rules whereby we can determine the working value of any particular individual. It declares that “the laborer is worthy of his hire,” and it leaves the details to be wrought out by men whom it summons to the spirit of justice and love. Interested as we may be in the economic problems of our day, we must still rejoice that the Bible does not surrender its work of inspiration in an effort at mechanical guidance. The wage scale must necessarily vary with the conditions of living; and, therefore, a textbook of money wages would have made a cumbersome volume with most of its pages as lifeless as the Book of the Dead. The very suggestion ends in ridiculousness.The effort of the Bible is not to give directions for working machines, but to give motives to working men. It is not a taskmaster, but a task-inspirer.
True toil of whatever sort is in need of inspiration. It must go by system and by schedule, and the element of monotony makes itself felt. The man leaves his home six mornings of the week and takes up his accustomed task. The bell calls him to work at an appointed hour, and it dismisses him by the demand of the clock. The husband goes to the store or office or factory to do the same things again and ever again, while the wife goes about the household duties that have engrossed her on thousands of previous days. One of the victories of life is to be a worker and not to be a drudge. We have all known people who have not won that victory. Their work is a grim necessity. It is not acquainted with poetry or with music. When the idealist speaks of the man who sings at his toil, they sneer at his sentimentalism or they doubt his sincerity. Work is a ceaseless grind; it is a dreary round; it is a hard compulsion. The poet who wields a pen may tell the man who wields a pick that work is joy and refreshment and liberty, but the sour toiler will regard his teacher as a condescending comforter. The complaint of many people is not simply thatthey must make bricks without straw, but that they must make bricks at all. In their vocabulary pleasure contrasts with labor because labor itself is pain. They are weary in their work and weary of their work. The only ideal for this sort of laborer is that he may labor so successfully as to be able some day to get on without labor. This man is the drudge.
Oddly enough, he has had his theological partners. There have been Bible students who have held that all work is a penalty of the Fall. They say that when God said to Adam, “In the sweat of thy face thou shalt eat bread,” he entered toil among the punishments of life. Undoubtedly sin adds to the hardship of work, especially if the sin be the sin of a wrong attitude. Thorns and thistles do prosper more around the broken gate of the sluggard. The earnest expectation of a groaning and travailing creation does wait for the revealing of the sons of God. Discontent puts its evil reflex on the muscles. The rebellious worker is ever the tired worker. But even the literal story of Eden does not give the ideal of worklessness. Adam had been placed in the garden “to dress it and to keep it.” Wherever God places the man, he places the task for the man. Any other conception of life is unworthy and utterly irreligious. A silly theology that puts a premium on idlenessis not born of the God that “worketh hitherto.” Still the view that work is a curse persists even after the theory that encouraged the view has gone to the discard. The sanctified escape the fret of work, but they do not escape its fact. The Perfect Life, as we shall later see, was the life of a Worker.
Admitting, as we all must, that work is sometimes tragic because it lacks its proper outer reward, we may still contend that often its deepest tragedy is a wrong attitude of spirit. Doubtless much of this comes from maladjustment. Some idealists believe that if every man were given his own task, every man would be happy at that task. Kipling so states it in the “L’Envoi” of “The Seven Seas.” He sees the good time when there shall be an adjustment between man and his task. The lower motives for work shall all be done away, and the one satisfying motive shall abide.
And only the Master shall praise us, and only the Master shall blame,And no one shall work for money, and no one shall work for fame,But each for the joy of the working, and each in his separate star,Shall draw the thing as he sees it, for the God of things as they are.
Ideal as this is, it gets a response from us all.Besides there are some foretokens of this age of joyful toil. Usually these are seen most clearly in work that has a relation to beauty. The woman works cheerfully at her fine embroidery, and she works just as cheerfully over the flowers in her garden. With men the form of toil that stands for genuine achievement often becomes not only a pleasure but a veritable passion. Where a spiritual motive allures, work frequently becomes the gladness of life. Agassiz declined to accept the remunerative call to lecture by saying, “I am only a teacher. I cannot afford to make money.” Wesley poured back into his work all the results of his work and died a poor man whereas he might have become rich. In America college professors have been known to save their meager salaries in order that they might return their slight estates to endow more fully the institutions for which they labored. They received from their work so that they could give back to their work.
The more we study cases of this fine sort, the more will we be impressed that the workers labored under the biblical sense of life. The men just mentioned were all profound believers in God, and they lived their lives as under his eye. Hence they saw their portion of work as a part of the infinite whole that makes for the kingdom of God. There is astory of a workingman who, standing on the street opposite the Cathedral of Cologne, was overheard saying, “Didn’t we do a fine job over there?” Turning about, the listener saw a rough hand pointing at the wonderful cathedral. “What did you do?” he asked the man. The reply was, “I mixed the mortar for several years.” The tale was told by the thoughtless as being humorous. It is, however, serious and beautiful. That workman had gotten the vision of himself as a partner in a plan that covered centuries of grand toil. He was a helper of God in the fashioning of his temple. In reality he had joined the company of Hiram and of Solomon. Now all honest work must have a direction that is both long and high. It reaches down into the years of men. It reaches upward into the heart of God. Precisely this idealism is needed in order that toil may be redeemed from its drudgery. George Eliot gives us a striking illustration of it in her tribute to Stradivari, the maker of violins. This immortal mechanic is said to have had a reverence for his labor. He felt that, whereas God gave men skill to play, God depended on Stradivari to furnish the instruments. He was the partner of the Most High. God had chosen Stradivari as a helper. Hence he could say,
God be praised,Antonio Stradivari has an eyeThat winces at false work and loves the true,With hand and arm that play upon the toolAs willingly as any singing birdSets him to sing his morning roundelay,Because he likes to sing and likes the song.
We may not all have this attitude toward our work, but we are all idealists enough to wish that we felt just that way. The singing workman is not altogether a figment of the imagination; neither is his spirit impossible in the day that now is. The men who regard work as a blessing, and not as a penalty and a curse, are found in many trades and professions. They are the forerunners of the Eden life. Certainly the main teaching of the Bible, that labor is designed to aid in the bringing in of the kingdom of God, must give to the honest laborers in every realm an exalted joy.
This primary consideration is joined by the human examples of the Bible. We find in its pages a procession of workers, and from this procession God selects many of his chosen leaders. Moses was tending his flock on the hillside when the voice of the Lord summoned him to his manifold leadership. Saul was seeking his father’s cattle when he found the kingdom of which he was to be king. David was busy in the sheepfold when the prophet called him to his work as warrior andmonarch. Ruth was gleaning in the fields, in her pathetic effort to care for her widowed mother-in-law and herself, when she found her way into happiness and into the ancestry of our Lord. Gideon was beating out wheat in the wine press when he was drafted for the campaign that was to break the power of the Midianites. Elisha was plowing with twelve yoke of oxen when the mantle of Elijah was cast over his shoulders. Nehemiah was serving as cupbearer to the king when he evoked from Artaxerxes the permission to return and rebuild the walls of his beloved city. Amos was among the herdsmen of Tekoa when the word of God took him captive and sent him to his prophetic career. These are the instances in the Old Testament where mention is made of the form of toil from which God called men to some spiritual service. Without doubt the full record would show that other signal servants received their commissions while they were faithfully performing their duties on threshing floors, out in the fields, and within counting-rooms.
The New Testament is less specific in its descriptions, but it often gives us the like hint. Matthew was at the seat of custom when he was invited into the fellowship of the disciples that he might tell men of the eternal exchange. James and John were engaged intheir occupation as fishermen when they heard the voice on the shore and pulled their boat over the blue waves that they might become fishers of men. The shepherds were in faithful watch over their flocks by night when they heard the evangel of song and were startled by the message of peace. The illustrations make us feel that the favorite meeting place of God with man is the meeting place of man with his work. A motto says that “the best reward of good work is more good work to do.” The providence of God upholds the motto. The Bible shows a preference for the workers as against the shirks. It puts the premium on industry, whether the type of toil be manual or spiritual.
Here, as in all other themes of real life, we come to Christ for our highest teaching and our best example. We have noted elsewhere that he made the home the illustration of our relations with God; and we now note that he made the common work of earth the illustration of our responsibility for service to God. This he did so often and so urgently that we are driven to feel that work was not only the form of illustration but also the form of service itself. How many parables did he gain from the ways of toil? He would say, “The kingdom of heaven is like unto—,” and straightway his hearers’ minds were sent tothe places where men wrought for their daily bread. In most places the blanks can be supplied by some form of employment. “The kingdom of heaven is like unto—” a merchant and his pearls; a sower and his field; a woman and her leaven; a fisherman and his net; a husbandman and his vineyard; a merchant traveler and the intrusted talents. Where his words were used as deft and quick illustrations rather than as lengthy and formal parables, he gathered his material from the realms of toil. The builder and the house; the shepherd and the sheep; the axman and the tree; the tailor and the cloth; the housewife and the coin; the rich man and his steward; the woman and her grinding; the man and his plowing; the watchman and his vigil; the husbandman and the vine; all these entered into his speech as showing what God would expect of men. Here we have almost a cyclopedia of labors. Inasmuch as Jesus commended the qualities shown in these various phases of service, we are allowed to think that he regarded the legitimate occupations of everyday life as both representing and fulfilling the kingdom of God. Nor will reverent thought be satisfied with any less comprehensive view. There would be a dread of living if we were made to feel that the work which we must do, both to meet our own sense of self-respect andto provide for the needs of ourselves and our beloved, was either in opposition to the grace of God or stood for neutral territory between the realms of good and evil. The teaching of Jesus saves us from that practical atheism. He allows every honest man to take the oft-repeated phrase, “The kingdom of heaven is like unto—,” and to complete a portion of its meaning from his own form of labor. If a man is engaged in any task that makes sacrilege and blasphemy when it is used to fill out the sentence, then let that man look well to his own heart and life. Every man’s work should serve as a parable of Christ.
But Jesus was not simply the doctrinaire of toil; he was its exemplar. The emphasis here is usually placed upon the fact that Christ was a carpenter. He transformed crude materials into useful tools. An overdone stress on this point is itself a confession that manual toil needs an apologist! The significant thing is that such a stress is wholly absent from the speech and attitude of Jesus. With him carpentry seems to have been a natural part of life. He never refers to it as something that he had outgrown. His backward look toward the occupation of his youth betrays no condescension, like to that occasionally seen in so-called self-made men! After he had left the carpenter’s bench hesaid, “I work.” When he saw the night closing down about him, the brevity of the working day became an incentive to more work, and he said, “I must work.” Even in the agony we can catch the exultation of the cry, “I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do.” It was his meat to finish his “work.” Jesus did the appointed task for each period of his life. Then he passed on to the task of the next period without the least hint that the varying tasks were not joined in the harmony of the divine purpose. The work of his life was like his garment; it was all of one piece. From the building of the Nazareth cottage on to the building of the “many mansions,” there is no consciousness of contradiction. With Jesus the working life was a unity.
And at the risk of being mechanical in the use of bungling divisions we may declare that Jesus entered into all the large divisions of toil. The note of universality is seen here as it is seen elsewhere. We have been told that the three forms of temptation that Jesus encountered on mountain top and temple pinnacle exhaust all the types. It has been said, too, that the thankfulness of Jesus is directed toward all the channels by which the good of life can flow in upon us. This same characteristic of universality appears in the workof Christ. As a carpenter he worked upon material things. As a healer he worked upon the bodies of men. As a teacher he worked upon the minds of men. As a preacher he worked upon the souls of men. All the workers of the world can be brought into one of these divisions, and so all true workers can enter into partnership with Jesus. We call him the Carpenter, the Great Physician, the Greatest Teacher, the World’s Saviour! The manual toilers claim him. The doctors claim him. The teachers claim him. The evangelists claim him. He is at home in the shop, in the hospital, in the schoolroom, and in the temple. All the classes of toilers can appeal to the sanction of his example.
Still we must again assert that these clumsy divisions were not emphasized by Jesus himself. There has been an age-long debate, ofttimes degenerating into a wrangle, as to the relative hardships of the different forms of labor. Men who cling to their occupations will still declare that those occupations have trials beyond all others. Into this debate Jesus did not enter. He never set one form of toil against another by entering into any comparisons or contrasts. As he experienced all the general forms of labor, so did he honor all forms. In his view they were all good and all cooperative. On the surface they may seemto be rivals, but in the center they are actual partners in the divine program. Hence Jesus passed from one realm of work to another with little sense of transition. Carpenter, Healer, Teacher, Preacher, he was ever the servant of the Kingdom. Faithfulness, honor, industry, efficiency, patience—in short, all the virtues were possible in any good way of work. The life of Jesus unites all our types of labor in a divine purpose and rebukes that quarrelsome spirit which so often sets the manual laborers and the mental and moral laborers in opposition. The hand cannot say to the head, “I have no need of thee,” nor can the head utter the like speech of egotism and self-sufficiency. The workers are all one body, and every one members of another.
So do we find Jesus putting himself with willing sacrifice into his varying tasks. He had said to his parents in Jerusalem, “Wist ye not that I must be amid my Father’s matters?” and then he went into what men call the silent years. But they were not wholly silent. The attentive can hear the sound of the hammer. The point is that in passing from the Jerusalem temple to the Nazareth shop Jesus did not depart from his Father’s business. We may all resent the particular descriptions of the quality of his work as a carpenter; and we may be quite content inour faith that all his work was done faithfully and well. Holman Hunt’s “Shadow of the Cross” relates Jesus’s work in the shop to his sacrificial character. At the end of a weary day the Nazareth Carpenter extends his arms to relieve his weariness. The sunshine coming through the window casts his shadow on the wall in the form of a Cross. His mother glancing in through another window sees the Cross foreshadowed there and gets her glimpse of the sword that should enter her own heart. Nor did Jesus escape hardship and exhaustion when he became a healer and teacher of the people. The crowds thronged him wherever he went. The hillside became like an open-air hospital. The multitudes hung upon his words of instruction. Some have said that one reason why he commanded men who were healed or who were told the deeper secret of his nature that they “should tell no man,” was that he might avoid the greater press of the throngs. Be that as it may, we are surely justified in saying that he gave himself lavishly to the work of each period. In each section of his life his action said, “I must work.”
It would be easy, however, to overstate Jesus’s relation to work. He did not labor all the time. Knowing how to toil he knew likewise how to rest. Men may plead theexample of Satan against a vacation season, but they cannot plead the example of Christ! He rested after he had worked and in order that he might work again. When the crowd became importunate and the drain upon his power had become severe, he sought the desert and in its quiet restored himself for the new labors. He bade his weary disciples to come apart to the spot of respite. He was the exemplar of proper rest even as he was the exemplar of proper work. Industrious men often need one lesson even as lazy men need the other. There are persons who are greedy of toil. They are as avaricious for it as the miser is for gold. They are what Carlyle would call “terrible toilers.” They die before their time because they work after their time. Jesus knew this danger. He wished to guard against it by keeping the Sabbath for man. He wanted to save the resting place between the weeks because he wanted to save man to his best self and work. He prescribed the working day and the shop, and he prescribed the resting day and the desert.
We need not be surprised, then, to find that the new day puts the emphasis on the sanctification of common work. Professor Peabody gives the contrast between two well-known poems as illustrating a change that has come over the personal side of the social question.A generation since Lowell gave us his “Vision of Sir Launfal.” The hero of this poem, after traveling in many lands, finally finds the holy grail in the cup which he had filled for a way-side beggar, while the more personal presence of Jesus is discovered in the beggar himself to whom the searcher has given alms. The characteristic of the new day is seen in Van Dyke’s “The Toiling of Felix.” The hero of this later poem, after seeking the direct vision of his Lord in caves and deserts of idle contemplation, at last secures the coveted revelation as he enters gladly into a life of toil and particularly as he flings himself into the swollen river to rescue a fellow laborer. Felix finds that there is a holy literalness in the words which he found on the piece of papyrus as a recovered gospel of Christ:
Lift the stone, and thou shalt find me;Cleave the wood, and there am I.
The ranks of labor are “the dusty regiments of God.” The Lord, being a worker, is mindful of his own:
Born within the Bethlehem manger where the cattle round me stood,Trained a carpenter of Nazareth, I have toiled and found it good.
The good work of the world is the work ofChrist. There is really no contrast between sacred and secular; the actual contrast is between the sacred and the wicked.
They who tread the path of labor, follow where Christ’s feet have trod,They who work without complaining, do the holy will of God.···········This is the Gospel of labor—ring it, ye bells of the kirk,The Lord of Love came down from above to live with the men who work.
The inevitable drift of this emphasis on the working experience of Jesus has swept admiration away from the monastic life. The “religious” are not those who shun the world of toil in order that they may gain the world of personal peace and salvation. The modern saint is not a Simon the Stylite. Saint Francis of Assisi projects himself into the admiration of the twentieth century because he was a worker rather than a recluse. The attitude toward monasticism among the healthier and more energetic peoples goes further than this: there is a feeling that in the last analysis the religious hermit is spiritually selfish. That is deemed a poor kind of religion which forsakes a world in order to save one’s soul. The argument that the recluses may render the world the service of constant prayer does not appeal to those who know that work is itselfa form of prayer; and that in Jesus prayer and work lived together in harmony. A better understanding of the religion of Christ demands that its followers shall be socially efficient. If Jesus is to be the world’s example, more and more men and women will find in their legitimate toil one of the sacraments of life.
Already we have come to feel that the Bible doctrine of work, especially as that doctrine is incarnated in Christ, lays stress upon the man as well as upon his task. It asks, “What is the man doing with his work?” It also asks, “What is the work doing with the man?” The reflexes of activity often become a topic of teaching. Paul said that the man reaps the harvest of his own sowing. Jesus said, “With what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.” This is much as if he had said that in the upper realms of living action and reaction are equal and in opposite directions. He told his disciples that, if they pronounced the benediction of peace upon a house unfit or unwilling to receive it, the benediction should return to them again. The meaning is that no work done with the right spirit can really fail. The poets give this idea currency. George Herbert declares that a servant with the proper clause in his creed makes “drudgery divine”:
Who sweeps a room as to thy lawMakes that and the action fine.
He had already implied that such a servant made himself fine. Mrs. Browning emphasizes the need of a serious purpose in work when she uses her picturesque description:
I would rather dance at fairs on tight ropeTill the babies dropped their gingerbread for joy,Than shift the types for tolerable verse, intolerableTo men who act and suffer. Better farPursue a frivolous trade by serious meansThan a sublime art frivolously.
It is “better far” because our seriousness comes back to dwell with us; and our frivolousness does the same. Many of the parables get their meaning from this certainty of reaction. The good shepherd is good because he does his work well, and the return of his work makes him better still. Just as physical work reacts on the muscles, so that sometimes men exercise without any outward object in view, even so does the moral spirit of work come back to dwell with the man and to make his last estate either better or worse. Our bodies are built into strength by a series of reactions, and our spirits evermore receive their own with usury.
This idea, as we have observed in another connection, has wrought some marked changesin the social program. It has largely superseded almsgiving by workgiving. Scientific charity seeks to remove the causes of poverty, knowing that this is the sure way to remove poverty itself. The conviction is that a day’s work with a day’s pay is far better for the man than a day’s pay without the day’s work. In the latter case the man loses both independence and self-respect, while in the former case he keeps both of these and gains in addition the rebound of faithful labor. The tramp, or the man with the heart of a tramp, always fails. Outwitting others, he outwits himself more truly. He plays tricks on his own soul. The weakness of his life settles back into his spirit. He drags with him always his evasions and neglects. Scamping his toil, he scamps his own soul. All shoddy material gets built into his own being. He erects a dishonest house for another, but with it he erects an evil structure in which he himself must live. So it is that a man’s work may be his blessing, or it may be his vengeance.
While this idea has its terrible side, it has also its side of glory and comfort. It provides amply for the failure of the faithful. Goldsmith says that “Good counsel rejected returns to enrich the giver’s bosom,” just as Jesus says the declined benediction of peace comes back to the true disciple. It followsthat for the good workman there is no real failure. The house that he has builded may go up in smoke and flame, but the industry and honor that fashioned its walls and fashioned themselves in the making of the walls cannot be destroyed. The fortune that he has gathered may take wings and fly away, but the deeper treasures that have been garnered by fair-dealing in the marketplace abide in the deposit of the heart. Jesus said, “Your hearts shall rejoice, and your joy no man taketh from you.” We see here that there are possessions that human power cannot remove. They have been woven into the self. The treasure house is too deep for the touch of man. A minor poet tells us:
I’ve found some wisdom in my questThat’s richly worth retailing;I’ve found that when one does his bestThere’s little harm in failing.
He corrects this mild statement in his concluding verse. He wanted riches, but he was rich without them; he wanted to sound the depths with his philosophy, but his ship sailed on anyhow; he wanted fame; but he discovered the secret of greatness without it; and so he adds the lines which declare that the failing of the faithful not only does “little harm,” but even that it furnishes its own enrichment of the real life:
I may not reach what I pursue,Yet will I keep pursuing;Nothing is vain that I can do;For soul-growth comes from doing.
David “does well” that it is in his heart to build the Lord’s house, even though the honor be passed on to another. The good purpose helps to make the good man; and the good purpose that expresses itself in work is sure of the inner reward. This conception may be twisted into a soft gospel for the inefficient; but the evident purpose of the Bible is to offer it as a comforting gospel for the faithful.
It would be easy to follow the guidance of the Concordance as it notes the word “work” in the Epistles. All of the conceptions that have thus far been treated reappear in the apostolic writings. The symbol of everyday work is constantly lifted to the highest. We do not need to see Paul bending over the sailcloth and thrusting his needle into the canvas ere we know that he is a worker. His whole life was one of toil. He was not slothful in his apostolic business; and the fervor of his spirit would have been a good example to the ancient mechanic or merchant. He saw good men as his colaborers with God. He saw the men that he helped to make good as a husbandry that he was cultivating for the Lord, as a building that he was fashioning forChrist’s sake. The cure for thieving was work. He that stole was to steal no more, but was to work with his hands the thing that was good; and the benevolent motive was to impel to work that the former thief might have something to give to the needy. It was of the hard toil of servants that Paul said, “Whatsoever good thing any man doeth, the same shall he receive of the Lord.” It is the idea of reaction again; God suffers no faithful worker to lose his reward. The apostolic rule is very thoroughgoing in dealing with laziness. “If any will not work, neither shall he eat.” This rule may be an offense to the idle rich, but it appeals to the sense of justice. Perhaps some day society will be skillful enough to starve its tramps and shirks until they flee to toil as to a refuge.
It is peculiar that the end of the Bible should have been misconceived, even as the beginning, in its teaching concerning work. We have discussed the heresy that declares that work is a penalty of sin. There is another heresy which pictures heaven as a place of everlasting idleness. If we select certain of the descriptions of Revelation, it is easy to see how the error arose. Yet in each of the weird pictures of the eternal city there is one sentence at least that hints at heavenly service. For energetic souls no other conception willbe satisfying. Surely inactivity is not the goal of a redeemed race. Shortly before his death Mark Twain published in a magazine a satire on the usual idea of heaven. Introduced in a dream to the city of our hope, he was told by an attending angel to take his seat on a cloud and to occupy himself by wearing a crown and holding a harp. Soon becoming weary of this do-nothing life, he came down to the golden streets. He was asked to keep for a time the crowns and harps of the passers-by, and he noted that the way was strewn with these rejected ornaments! Some good people may have been offended by the satire; and some whose life has been filled with weariness will insist that heaven must offer rest. So indeed it must. One suggestive passage says concerning the souls of those that were slain for the testimony of Christ that they should “rest yet for a little season.” Those that have come out of great tribulation are given service as a reward of their tribulation. “Therefore are they before the throne of God and serve him day and night in his temple.” In the later description the land of rest is seen as a land of work, and “his servants shall serve him.” The race does not look back to a workless Eden; neither does it look forward to a workless heaven. Kipling puts it well for either here or there:
We shall rest, and, faith, we shall need it,Lie down for an eon or two,Till the Master of all good workmenShall set us to work anew.
The ideal of the Bible is service, and that ideal is not rejected when life comes to its crowning.
One of the great hymns of the church gives to the worshipers in a sanctuary the Bible’s Gospel of Work:
Yet these are not the only wallsWherein thou mayst be sought;On homeliest work thy blessing fallsIn truth and patience wrought.Thine is the loom, the forge, the mart,The wealth of land and sea;The worlds of science and of art,Revealed and ruled by thee.Then let us prove our heavenly birthIn all we do and know,And claim the kingdom of the earthFor thee, and not thy foe.Work shall be prayer, if all be wroughtAs thou wouldst have it done;And prayer, by thee inspired and taught;Itself with work be one.
The biblical ideal for earth sends men forth to their daily tasks, while the biblical ideal for heaven breaks its reserve sufficiently to show us a City wherein the saints at rest are likewise the saints at work.
The Bible and Wealth
The word “wealth” as used in this discussion does not mean simply great riches; it rather means those outer and visible means which have a certain purchasing power and which gain their value from that fact. The word is relative at best. A wealthy man of fifty years ago would by many be deemed a poor man now; while, in the individual estimate, one man’s poverty would be another man’s riches. We have all discovered, too, that persons may be tested by their attitude toward little as well as by their attitude toward much. The man who breaks down in his use of a thousand dollars is not likely to recover his conscience in his use of a million dollars. There is high authority for the belief that he that is faithful in a few things can be trusted with rulership over many things. This principle will apply to riches quite as well as to cities. We must necessarily take at large discount the vigorous attack that is made on great wealth by the man who is narrow and selfish in his use of moderate wealth.One ray of light falling into a dark dungeon will test a man’s attitude toward light; and so the real personal attitude toward one coin may become the revelation of a human heart.
All of us must live within the realm of material endeavor. Six days of the week are given by the average man in an effort to win worldly goods. If, as is generally supposed, Jesus went back from the temple scene in Jerusalem when he was twelve years of age and worked in the village carpenter shop until he was thirty, he spent eighteen years in a remunerative employment ere he entered upon the three years of public ministry. It is a mechanical conception again; but it is interesting to observe that the proportion of his years spent in his trade is the same six sevenths of the time that most men must spend in the effort to gain the necessaries or luxuries of life. One has only to stand on the streets of the city in the early morning and see the throngs as they move to their places of work to appreciate how large a part the wage motive plays in actual living. Each day many millions of men and women go down to the various marts in order that in the evening time they may come back from the struggle with increased gains. If the Bible takes an attitude toward the spirit that dominates work it must also take an attitude toward thespirit that dominates the object of work. It would be small use to have men made right toward toil if they were to be twisted in their relation to the proceeds of toil. We should expect, then, that the Bible would give some explicit teaching to individual men concerning the right attitude toward wealth; and when we turn to the Holy Book this expectation is fully met.
Beyond this, the social consequences of wealth are manifold and important. To see this point clearly exemplified in a wide field, we have but to study the history of the wars waged by our own nation. At some point every one of these great struggles has been caused by a false relation to wealth. Just where we locate that false relation will depend somewhat upon our prejudices; but the dilemma in each case is such that we are driven to locate it somewhere. The French and Indian War was a military debate as to whether the English or the French should gather the furs in the region of the Upper Ohio and should secure the profits in the world’s markets. In the settlement of that issue many lives were sacrificed. The War for Independence was caused by taxes—not, as many people suppose, by a tax on tea alone, but by a long series of taxes covering many years. If the English had a right to levy thetax and if the tax was just, then the colonists were greedy. If, on the other hand, the Americans refused to pay an unjust tax, inspired in their rebellion by a lofty spirit of liberty, then the English were the greedy party. The War of 1812 was caused by the seizure of our vessels on the French coast and related to freedom of commerce. The dilemma is the same as before. Some one was at fault in that commercial war. A wrong attitude toward property caused the long-drawn-out struggle.
Our later wars show the same form of contest. Historians declare that the war with Mexico was occasioned by the desire to extend slavery territory; by the nation’s lust for the enlargement of her borders; and by certain debts owed to citizens of the United States by citizens of Mexico. All of these motives touch somewhere on gold. The Civil War grew from the same “root of all evil.” Northern men aided in bringing African slaves to this land in order to turn forced labor into money, while Southern men continued African slavery because it was deemed necessary for the production of cotton. The cry “Cotton is king” was not always spoken above a whisper, but as a slogan it caused some fierce struggling. Boston merchants helped to mob Garrison. The sentiment ofEngland flowed against the North because it was thought that the abolishing of slavery would demoralize the markets of the world. The hooting crowds that Beecher faced in England were unconsciously influenced to their hostile attitude by a commercial argument. The whole struggle was broadened and heightened until words like “liberty” and “unity” put a moral passion into the fray. But, while the nature of the government and the question of human rights were to be settled, the primary occasion of the contest was commercial.
Nor was the war with Spain any exception to this rule. If we absolve the United States from any motive of greed in our claim that the struggle was purely humanitarian in its character, we must still grant that the heavy taxes assessed against her Western colonies by the Spanish government led to the series of revolutions that occasioned our interference. Thus do we find that somewhere in the heart of each war there was the lurking passion for gold. When we make up the mournful lists of the many thousands whose lives have gone out in these contests, we can debit them against the spirit of greed. Milton in Paradise Lost represents that the rebellion in heaven was caused by the like lust, and that Satan’s eyes were ever bent in anxiousdesire toward the very gold of the streets! Milton’s imagination concerning heaven stands for the historical fact about earth. The demon of greed is usually the demon of war.
The great problems of current national life all trench upon the same influence. If money be not the principal in each of them it comes in as an important confederate. The tariff problem, the currency problem, the canal tolls problem, the trust problem—all these are quickly classified by their names. The cleavage between American political parties for the last fifty years has been made by a wedge of gold. Tariff, or coinage, or trusts—these have been the large words of political speech. In the problems that have a more apparent moral bearing the same commercial element appears. The Labor Problem is with us quite as acutely as it was with the Romans when long ago the plebeians left the city and camped on the hillsides, leaving the patricians to do their own manual toil. Whether the employer gives too little or the employee asks too much in any given struggle, the demon of greed plays his part again. In the Temperance Problem the case is even clearer. Distillers and brewers and saloonists do not enter their trade because they thereby add either to their social standing or to their moral peace. We cannot eliminate from the problem the factor of the humanappetite that craves a stimulant; at the same time we know that the motive for the business itself comes from the lure of gold. That gleam invites many men into a path which, as they themselves know well, cannot lead to any large political preferment or to any great personal admirations.
The problem of social purity is, of course, related to another human passion. But there has crept into the vocabulary of the people a suggestive phrase, “commercialized vice.” There is the general feeling that, if the element of monetary profit could be taken from the loathsome trade, the problem would be much nearer its solution. Hence we have our Red Light Abatement Laws by which we seek to make it dangerous for men to rent their property for the traffic in virtue. On the legal side the present efforts at the solution of the problem all strive to fix a set of conditions, making commercially unprofitable the house of her whose feet take hold on death. If, as is earnestly contended by some, low wages tend to furnish the recruits for the pitiable ranks of the trade in bodies, we have another commercial factor in the campaign. Explain it as we may, it is still true that money makes the unholy alliances. It is no marvel that the Bible has sent down to all the centuries its phrase, “the mammon of unrighteousness.”
Of course, many will overstate the case of American greed. The Almighty Dollar is not our God. Our passing celebrities may be mere millionaires, but our permanent heroes were quite more than traders. If we have seemed more commercial than other peoples it has been because a new continent gave such sweeping opportunities for wealth. Some one has said that it is an evidence of the degeneracy of our period that the word “worth,” which once had a noble and inner significance, is now controlled by the market. The fact that the word has gone downhill is taken to mean that the people who use it so have gone downhill too! But these verbal arguments are not reliable. While the word “worth” has dropped somewhat from its old glory, the word “talent,” which once had merely a monetary significance, has mounted to a higher meaning. The one word is just as good a witness as the other. The truth is that we meet to-day the world-old problem. The evidence of this lies in the fact that the Bible dealt with the problem in emphatic fashion. It lists for us the victims of greed: Lot, Gehazi, Ananias and Sapphira, Simon Magus, the young ruler, Judas. We shall find in its pages some general principles by which it seeks to warn wealth away from pitfalls and to send it forth to service.
The first of these principles is that God is the only and absolute Owner. Our human conceit makes for us another theory, and our legal codes write out that theory in complicated formulas. We have our “clear titles” and our “quitclaim deeds.” Formal records at a courthouse tell men that we “own” houses and lands, while formal certificates assert our right to so many shares of stock or so much value in bonds. The Bible confronts our complacency with its plea for the ownership of Another. God has the only clear titles! God has never put his signature to a quitclaim deed! The courthouse record is a temporary convenience; the higher record gives the eternal fact. “The silver and the gold” are God’s. “The cattle on a thousand hills” are God’s. “The earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein.” There is here not merely the assertion of a property ownership, but an assertion of the ownership of the very men who think that they own the property! The sea and the land are the possessions of God. So spiritual a prelude as that to the Gospel of John claims a divine dominion, while many words could be quoted from both Testaments which make God the one august Possessor. The history of all our materials leads us back to God alone. He fashioned the wood in theforests. He stored the coal and iron in the hills. He packed the fertility in the soil. When we look for the source of the medium of exchange we must go back of men to God himself. We pursue the gold coin to the bank, and then to the mint, and then to the mine, only to hear the silent proclamation of the gold itself that it is of God. When congregations sing:
All things come of thee, O God,And of thine own have we given thee,
it is not an instance of poetic license in reverence; it is sober fact expressed in worship.
The claim of the Bible for the divine ownership is still more comprehensive. All property is his; all men are his. There is, too, a bent of human power which God confers. We are in the habit of speaking of “gifted” men. The meaning of the word in its usual connection must be that God gives certain powers to men—to one the power of poetry, to another the power of moving speech, and to another the power of scientific and inventive insight. Now there is a suggestive verse in Deuteronomy which declares that it is the Lord God that “giveth thee power to get this wealth.” The “thee” is collective and refers to the people; but the rule applies as well to the individual. There is no reason for supposing that poeticgenius or oratorical genius or inventive genius is a gift, while financial genius is an achievement. Yet there are probably no men who are more inclined to call themselves “self-made” than are the men who pass from poverty into vast wealth. Their complacency would be diminished, and their humility would be increased, if they perceived that all property belongs to God, that they themselves belong to God, and that their “power to get this wealth” comes from God. We find, then, that the first sweeping principle which the Scriptures give concerning wealth is that God is its inclusive and ceaseless owner.
The second principle follows as a matter of course. God being the absolute owner, man is a trustee, a lessee, a borrower. When the man in the New Testament asked, “Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own?” he may not have reached a worthy definition either of “lawful” or of “mine own.” He may have deemed a loan a final gift, a lease a purchase, a possession a creation, a stewardship an ownership. It is just this error that more than any other leads to the abuse of wealth. We treat it as “personal property,” and the “personal” looks selfward rather than Godward. This was the blunder of the foolish rich man. His ground brought forth plentifully. His crops could not becrowded into his granaries. He resolved to tear down his barns and to build greater. He told his soul to eat, drink, and be merry, for that it had much goods laid up for many years. Then came the sentence of eviction. In a moment the man discovered that he was a tenant and not an owner. “Whose shall those things be which thou hast provided?” This is the question that every man of means must ask. Wills are never shrewd enough to secure the property for the dead. Jesus said that the man who acted on the idea that wealth was his own was a “fool.” He missed the primary point of the divine ownership, and he missed the secondary point of the human trusteeship. All his work was based on impossibilities; and surely this is the supreme foolishness.
This lesson is impressed upon men when they return to their former places of residence after an absence of many years. They recall who “owned” yonder house, yonder farm, yonder lot, yonder block. The old “owners” are gone, and the new “owners” have come. Changes of apparent ownership have been entered in the civil records; but these in their turn will be changed. The procession of trustees moves down through the millenniums; above the trusteeships is one changeless Owner. “We brought nothing into this world, and it iscertain we can carry nothing out”—this is the surest of edicts. It is said that one of the wealthiest of men in our nation called his wife to his bedside just before he passed away and asked her to sing to him, “Come, ye sinners, poor and needy.” The man knew that in a few moments he would be stripped of every earthly possession. It was a pungent reply made when one man asked another how much a certain rich man had left—“All he had!” was the response. Even so. Whenever any person shall make a stout claim for his ownership of property, it is a wholesome lesson if he be asked to postpone the discussion for a hundred years!
The law of giving is compulsory. We may defer surrender, but we cannot avoid surrender. The hand may grasp for fourscore years, but its final act will be to “let go” of every earthly object. The loan must be returned. The trusteeship must be dissolved. The lease must be transferred. The account must be rendered. Directly all that remains of the gold is the reflex of gold. We may decide when to give, to what to give, in what spirit to give; but we may not decide whether we shall give. There is lasting truth in the much-quoted epitaph: “What I spent I had. What I saved I left behind. What I gave away I took with me.” In this respect the wholeproblem of life is the problem of a faithful stewardship. This is the teaching of what we may call the commercial parables. We are responsible for the use of our talents and pounds to an authority higher than our own. The trustees pass away. The Owner abideth forever.
The third biblical principle declares that this stewardship is attended by grave temptations. For a hasty reading the New Testament judgment will seem like a reversal of the Old Testament judgment. The ancient record often traces a relation between piety and prosperity. Jacob’s proposal at Bethel reads like a bargain struck in the market place. The book of Job was meant to correct this error and to drive from the world those needless suspicions that would be directed against the sick and the poor. In the vigorous debate with his friends the patriarch declines to plead guilty to the charge that his bodily ills and property losses are the results of his sins. But although the commercial value of piety may often be found among Old Testament motives, still there is a constant offset. The period of plenty is described as accompanied by a “leanness of soul.” The deeper insight of the psalmist saw the end of the man “who made not God his strength, but trusted in the abundance of his riches.” Thenthere stood before him the perplexing sight of prosperous wickedness, the bad man spreading himself as the green bay tree and having everything that heart could wish. Slowly the artificial nexus that had been fashioned between piety and prosperity and wickedness and misfortune was broken, and men began to seek for the different types of reward in their own fields. More stress was laid upon the methods by which wealth was gained, and more upon its charitable uses. The prophets came to thunder against a false outer prosperity and to give their advance hints of the wealth of the kingdom of God.
In its warnings the New Testament is still more emphatic. The word “riches” becomes most often a symbol of the higher wealth of spirit. It is made over into deeper meaning. Besides, the early Christian leaders saw the enticing dangers of wealth. Visits to Ephesus or Corinth or Rome made them see how multitudes could be caught in the snare of riches, while examples among the Jews gave them the same lesson with a personal emphasis. There were likewise some concrete illustrations of a most forbidding kind. Judas betrayed Jesus for thirty pieces of silver. The lust of the treasury had betrayed him ere he betrayed his Lord. The first persecution of the Christian Church was caused by greed. It is written,“And when her masters saw that the hope of their gains was gone, they caught Paul and Silas, and drew them into the market place unto the rulers.” Soon the two missionaries are beaten with rods and are taken to the inner prison. The second persecution of the church was caused by the same spirit of greed. Demetrius, the silversmith, makes his appeal to his fellow-craftsmen: “Sirs, ye know that by this craft we have our wealth. Moreover ye see and hear, that not alone at Ephesus, but almost throughout all Asia, this Paul hath persuaded and turned away much people, saying that they be no gods, which are made with hands: So that ... this our craft is in danger to be set at naught.” As is the custom of men with the commercial heart, he lifted the issue to a specious height and made his plea for Diana of the Ephesians!
With the memory of Christ’s betrayal and of the first two persecutions of their brethren fresh in their memories, it is no marvel that the New Testament writers began to stress the perils of greed. The work of Luke as a physician had doubtless given him an intense sympathy with the poor, and his Gospel records eagerly our Lord’s warnings to the rich. James in his Epistle fairly bristles with indictments against the rich. He asks: “Do not rich men oppress you, and draw youbefore the judgment seats? Do not they blaspheme that worthy name by the which ye are called?” When he wrote thus did he have visions of Ephesus and Philippi? Later he breaks into violence, “Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you. Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are moth-eaten. Your gold and silver is cankered; and the rust of them shall be a witness against you, and shall eat your flesh as it were fire.” The later verses indicate that he saw their injustice to the poor laborers and heard the cries which these poor had sent “into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth.” Severe as the indictment is, we can see how it was prompted by memory as well as by scenes of recent greed. Moreover, we have all known modern cases to which the language would apply. If the Bible is to be complete, it must give room to such indignant words as these.
The records would show that Paul included among his friends men and women of worldly means; still his words of chiding and warning are not withheld. He writes of a “cloak of covetousness.” He had seen men don that cloak—by their paltry excuses for withholding gifts; by their effort to make an intent for the future stifle a present cry for help; by a deft transfer of income to principal which “mustnot be disturbed”; by the plea that luxuries were necessities; by a recital of past generosities; by setting one good cause against another. All these modern cloaks Paul doubtless found in the wardrobes of long ago. He carries the charge against covetousness on until he identifies it with heathenism. He writes of the “covetousness which is idolatry,” and in yet another place he speaks of the “covetous man who is an idolater,” as if he wished to make the charge personal. Idolatry is the worship of something less than God. When, therefore, any man bows down to idols of silver and gold erected in banks rather than by temple altars, he joins the ranks of the idolatrous. He may be even worse than those idolaters who strive to reach beyond their hideous images if haply they may feel after God and find him. These words of Paul are urgent warnings that covetousness may destroy personal genuineness and may defeat spiritual worship. Greed may shut us away from both man and God.
But the apostle’s strongest word is given in his counsel to Timothy, a young man whose ideals he would seek to mold. We can imagine the impression the advice made upon the susceptible youth when he read Paul’s letter in rich and worldly Ephesus. “They that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and hurtful lusts, whichdrown men in destruction and perdition. For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.” It is a modern account again. The twentieth century has already given thousands of illustrations of the same apostasy. As for the wide statement that “the love of money is the root of all evil,” we have but to review these pages to find the commentary. Every item in the catalogue of crimes finds a partner in greed. Intemperance, lust, war, thieving, murder, betrayal, persecution, untruthfulness—all these grow from the root of greed. No heedless joking about the “root” can vacate the language or permit “the love of money” to declare its innocence.
In addition to these positive statements sprinkled throughout the Book, there is a negative testimony that may well be given a hearing. If we were to search the pages for warnings against poverty we would find that the search was difficult and that it met with slight returns. The prayer of Agur in the book of Proverbs is, perhaps, the only assured instance. He pleads: “Give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with the food that is needful for me: Lest I be full, and deny thee, and say, Who is Jehovah? or lest I be poor,and steal, and use profanely the name of my God.” There is here a recognition of the peril of discontent in poverty, as well as of the peril of dishonesty, and the peril of a blasphemous indictment against God. We may take the warning at its full value. Some people of every age will need its plain speaking. But what shall we say of the biblical idea of the peril of wealth, when its chapters yield many scores of warnings as contrasted with this lonely warning about poverty? It would seem permissible to paraphrase a Bible comparison of persons and to say that poverty has slain its thousands but wealth its tens of thousands! Even this comparison falls short, if we measure it by the biblical proportion of teaching. The silence of the Bible gives us here a significant lesson.
We now approach the supreme authority in the teaching and example of Jesus. The elective method here will give a man the result he most wishes. The boisterous agitator can make choice of passages that will serve his harsh purpose, while the defender of his own unconsecrated surplus may quote us passages that give him great comfort. The one will tell us of Jesus’s words to the young ruler; of his command against laying up treasures on earth; and of a hard-and-fast interpretation of the parable of Dives and Lazarus. Theother will tell us of the praise bestowed on successful traders; of the inclusion of the wealthy among Christ’s friends and disciples; and of the law of the larger returns for the larger powers and larger industry so plainly enunciated in the parables of the talents and the pounds. The fragmentary method leads here to confusion and to the wildest partisanship. The teaching of Jesus must be taken in its completeness.
That teaching must, also, be judged by the attitude of Jesus toward men. The well-to-do were in his band of disciples. The father of John and James had servants; and when Jesus died on the Cross John had evidently a comfortable home to which the mother of Jesus was taken. Nicodemus was rich. Yet in his conversation with him Christ is not represented as making a demand that the ruler of the Jews should give up his wealth. The demand was far more comprehensive. Zaccheus was rich. But in the table conversation with the publican there is no call to voluntary poverty. Joseph of Arimathea was rich. Still he appears to have been numbered with the disciples and to have had the honor of providing the sepulcher for the body of Christ. All this would make it certain that some of our Lord’s teaching was directed toward an individual danger and so was notmeant for a universal application. The fact that Peter said to Simon Magus, “Thy money perish with thee,” does not warrant us in repeating the same words to every man who possesses some wealth. The rebuke was evoked by a personal and peculiar attitude. If the teaching of Jesus, as he dealt with rich men, varied in a marked degree, it is only reasonable to suppose that he was fitting his message to the individual subject. The fallacy of the universal has not yet departed from our treatment of the words of Christ.
But even when we take the whole of Jesus’s teaching rather than any fraction thereof, and after we have given full consideration to the personal element in his method, there is still a sobering remainder with which we must deal. The attempt to make the parable of Dives and Lazarus a straight contrast between the final fate of a rich man and that of a poor man cannot succeed. Lazarus was not sent to heaven because he was poor. He was not given a place in Abraham’s bosom on the ground of his poverty of circumstances, but on the ground of his wealth of character. Any other conclusion is abhorrent to the moral sense. Should poverty admit to heaven, some of the most unmitigated rascals are sure to meet the conditions of entrance. Nor was Dives sent to hell because he was rich. Thecontrast in earthly conditions of which Abraham reminds him cannot fairly be taken to mean that the reward of poverty is heaven and the penalty of wealth is hell. The meaning is that earthly plenty and earthly want cannot prevent the rounding out of God’s purposes. Condition will inevitably come to correspond with real character. Should any rich man be minded to plead with himself that his wealth was, in itself, any evidence that its owner was entitled to special privileges in the next world corresponding to his special privileges in this world, this parable would meet him with its needed corrective.
The command, “Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal,” has been taken by many as a literal command. Usually, however, those who so take it are ready to substitute a theory which would ask the community to break the literal demand by laying up treasures for us. We must read to the end of the passage. Jesus’s concern is about the heart. He wishes to establish the direction of the treasure because he knows that in this way the direction of the heart will be established. If money is hoarded with a selfish purpose, the heart goes to selfishness. If money is given for a holy cause, theheart goes into the cause. On the other hand, if money is saved in order that the provident parent may give his child a better fitness for life, the parental heart is invested in the child. If money is not hoarded at all, but is given for an evil cause, the heart takes that same evil direction. The emphasis of Jesus is spiritual again. The money does something with the heart, and the motive of either saving or giving determines the “heart action.” It is the law of action and reaction at work in another realm. Men say that the way to a man’s purse is through his heart; and men say well. Jesus, while accepting the statement that there can be no true benevolence that does not come from the heart, still says that often the way to a man’s heart is through his purse. It is one of those practical rules whose working we have seen many times. We persuade a man to send his money into a hospital, a college, a library, and his heart follows his money. The terrible thing that Jesus saw in selfish hoarding was just that; and the glorious thing that he saw in generous giving was just that. The good and the evil of earthly treasure is that it fixes the journeys of the heart; it makes a spiritual geography.
There is another word of Jesus about “the deceitfulness of riches.” The phrase piques us into a search for its meaning. There is noevidence that Christ meant that riches deceived us by flying away. The tricks which they play upon men are far more subtle than sudden departure. Jesus meant that riches remained with men and still carried on the deceiving work. We have all seen enough of life to know some of the deceptions. One friend began his business career with the idea that he would be content with a hundred thousand; he is now utterly restless with his million. Another friend gave to worthy causes a far larger proportion of his meager income in the day of struggle than he now gives of his plethoric income in the day of prosperity. Still another friend in the old days was simple and humble in all his attitudes toward life, while in the new days of wealth he has become proud in spirit and complex in his living. We have all seen men whose souls lessened as their riches greatened. All these are illustrations of Jesus’s teaching about “the deceitfulness of riches.” The tragic thing is that the men who are the victims of the deceitfulness are not aware of the sad inner effects. Men do not know that they are stingy; they are only prudent and economical! So runs the miserable deceit. It requires a moment of marked self-revelation to enable these men to classify themselves with truth. Over the Bank of England men read the words, “The Earth isthe Lord’s.” This describes the source of wealth. Over many financial institutions it might be good to put another motto as a reminder of a possible effect of wealth, “The Deceitfulness of Riches.”