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 the spirit 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 the tax 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 of England 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 anxious desire 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 human appetite 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 the forests. 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 poetic genius 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 be crowded 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 is certain 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 whole problem 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.” Then there 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 you before 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 “must not 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, which drown 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. The other 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 not meant 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. The contrast 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, the heart 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 no evidence 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 is the 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.”

We now face the utterance of Christ with reference to a double mastery over life. He asserts that “no man can serve two masters,” without love for the one and hatred for the other. When he seeks for the power that is most likely to contest with God for the allegiance of man he selects Mammon. Hence he states the dilemma without modification, “Ye cannot serve God and Mammon.” He did not select Pleasure as the opponent of God, nor Ambition, nor Impurity, nor Dishonesty. He saw clearly that Mammon had the greatest power to draw men into life-long “service.” Other sins might be occasional contestants, but the sin of greed was the constant foe seeking to cleave the loyalty of men. Jesus did not say that we could not serve God with Mammon. Elsewhere he says the very opposite of that. But he did say unequivocally, “Ye cannot serve God and Mammon.” Perhaps these six words, more nearly than any other, give us the heart of Jesus’s teaching about wealth. They state in simple and direct form the alternatives for many lives. We can serve God with Mammon. We can serve God or Mammon. We cannot serve God and Mammon. What Christ states as an impossibility many men try to accomplish. We see the vain efforts daily—men putting their greatest diligence into the market place as an end, with an occasional tribute to the temple. This is the most frequent form of the “double life.” It is the poor compromise of a half-hearted or tenth-hearted service. Jesus said that God or Mammon must win the whole man. The God and the god cannot dwell in the same heart. Jesus here thrusts us back to the original biblical principle: God is the Absolute Owner. He will not share his rule. He will not partition his empire. Mammon must yield to God. Thus Jesus enters all markets and counting rooms and banks with his demand for undivided hearts and undivided lives.

There is another saying of Jesus which is more frequently quoted, both because it is in itself so radical and because it is accompanied by a vigorous figure of speech. Besides these two attractions, the words have an appealing setting in a human life. The young ruler comes to Jesus with his eager question. He stands before the Lord as a fine type of promising manhood—fresh, alert, clean, and even reverent. He is able to say, without rebuke, that from his youth up he has kept the commandments and that his life has moved on a high grade of morals. The record tells us that “Jesus, looking upon him, loved him.” But in this instance, instead of meeting the young man’s question with the demand for a new birth, as Jesus did with Nicodemus, or with the acceptance of hospitality, as Jesus did with Zaccheus, Jesus asked that he sell all his goods and give to the poor, and that then he should follow the Lord in his homeless life. Often the comment omits this last demand. It may be that it is the more important demand, and that it is the reason for the minor requirement. Other disciples had left all in order to follow Jesus; and this man was now asked to do likewise. Evidently the teaching here has the individual quality. Christ knew that the young man had set his heart on his riches, and that the only way to a true discipleship was through utter surrender.

We cannot read the story without feeling a measure of sympathy for the young ruler; and we may confess that we ourselves would scarcely have been equal to the severe test. The situation, however, can be estimated in another way—not by our imagination, but by our admiration. Certain men in Christian history have done exactly what Jesus asked this young man to do. John Wesley did it; making much money, he continued to live on his allowance of twenty-eight pounds a year and gave the rest to a needy world. When he was an old man he wrote to the assessor that his taxable property consisted of two silver spoons at Bristol! Saint Francis of Assisi gave up all his earthly possessions. At the altar of the church he deliberately took poverty as his bride. The heroes of complete renunciation have been many; and the world’s verdict has not been that they were fanatics. They heard the call of God that they should surrender all and give to the various kinds of poor; they heeded the command, and they won their fame by their surrender. We can make a more direct test than this. If this young man had heeded Christ’s word, and had given all that he had to the poor, and had followed the Lord—what would have been the result? Would he have won the world’s admiration by his self-renunciation? Would he now be known only by the virtually anonymous title of “a certain ruler”? We can see that he was offered a wonderful opportunity. He would have been enrolled among the saints of the early church, if he had risen to the higher choice. An English writer has pointed out that the young man was not angered by the word of Christ; he was “saddened.” He went away “sorrowful,” and his sorrow was for himself. He went back to his riches and was lost to the sight of the world. He is now known even anonymously only because he had a brief conversation with One who had not where to lay his head.

Jesus saw the young man’s retreating figure and then spoke his own “sorrowful” exclamation, “How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of God!” The account in the Gospel of Mark indicates that the disciples were “amazed” by the saying, just as the men of the world have wondered ever since. Seeing this amazement, Jesus added, “Children, how hard is it for them that trust in riches to enter into the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.” It was a startling figure of speech—an hyperbole, as the later conversation with the disciples would show, unless, indeed, the saying refers to a certain gate of the city through which only the unburdened camel could enter. This figure of speech has held the attention of the world for centuries. Strangely enough, the nineteenth century had a peculiar illustration of an accommodated meaning of the word “needle.” We cannot help wondering what the people of many generations hence would think if they were to read in ancient history that in the latter part of the nineteenth century a certain millionaire paid more than one hundred thousand dollars for bringing Cleopatra’s “needle” to America. Superficial as the suggestion is, it illustrates the manner in which a figure of speech could easily be pulled off into a path of false literalism.

But if we take the view that the expression was either a vivid hyperbole or the description of a local gate, the warning still abides in strength. It is hard for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God. It is sometimes very hard for him to remain there when his entrance into the kingdom preceded his entrance into wealth. Experienced pastors will tell us that not many wealthy are called. Yet Jesus distinctly declared that the rich could enter into the Kingdom. The disciples, “astonished out of measure,” said, “Who, then, can be saved?” Jesus replied, “With men it is impossible, but not with God: for with God all things are possible.” It is not right that the man who clamors against the rich should omit this assurance from the teaching. Jesus says that a rich man can be brought into the Kingdom. He offers this as one of the evidences of the divine omnipotence—that the power of God can break through the complacency, the self-content, the tangle of materialism, and can win men from the idolatry of gold to the love and worship of God.

This message of Jesus to the young ruler, and through him to the world, is not always welcome to the ears of the rich. The religious teacher may be tempted to discount its meaning and to relieve in some way the severity of the words. Yet an age of growing wealth needs this lesson, and needs it with an increased emphasis. The trend of the Bible serves as a commentary on the same lesson. If the Bible is to serve as the book of guidance, then we are justified in saying that the path of material wealth is the path of spiritual peril.

If we halted our lesson here, we should be guilty of a partial use of the Bible. The fourth principle of the great Book is that the stewardship of wealth offers glorious opportunities. It offers the opportunity of aiding the poor. John wrote, “Whoso hath this world’s good, and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him?” It offers the opportunity of caring for the unfortunate, as illustrated in the parable of the good Samaritan. When Jesus uttered this parable, he laid the foundations of many hospitals. It offers the opportunity of paying personal tributes of affection, as exemplified in the offering to the Lord of the precious ointment. It offers the opportunity of furnishing honest employment as a field of personal fidelity, as taught in the parables of the talents and the pounds. It offers the opportunity of projecting our influence to the ends of the world, as taught by those who aided Paul on his missionary journeys and by those who sent gifts whereby the gospel should be promoted in all the earth. But the Bible does not give any set of rules for the use of wealth. It asserts the primacy of God. It commands the spirit of love. It stresses the probationary character of possessions. It declares in the word of Christ that any man makes a disastrous bargain who gains the whole world and in the transaction loses himself.

Finally Jesus relates our use of money to the eternal issues. He does this in a very simple and direct way, and in the form of an imperative. In the more skilled translation of the Revised Version we read, “Make to yourselves friends by means of the mammon of unrighteousness, that when it shall fail, they may receive you into the eternal tabernacles.” It appears here that worldly possessions may be either “the mammon of unrighteousness” or the maker of everlasting friendships. By the right use of gold and silver men can people the gates of heaven with welcomers. “It shall fail,” says Christ, referring to wealth. “They may receive you,” he says, referring to those human lives that are our only permanent investments. The final emphasis of Jesus in giving the very crown of the Bible teaching concerning wealth, great or small, is that his followers shall so use the coin stamped with the image of some earthly CÆsar as to produce in men and women and children the image of the heavenly Lord. The lower commerce is to serve the higher commerce. Faneuil Hall may keep its market place, but it must be subordinated to that upper room wherein men learn the lessons of truth and liberty and righteousness. The Age of Gold can help to make the Golden Age. The problem of wealth will not be solved until all men hold their riches as willing trustees of Him who himself was rich and who for our sakes became poor, that we through his poverty might be rich.