Private property seems ingrained in the fibre of our civilization. It was sanctioned by the Law which said, “Thou shalt not steal,” and “Thou shalt not covet.” The New Testament ratifies both those commandments. The gospel puts a check on avarice and profusion by insisting on the moral claims of others; but it never tells Lazarus that he may rob the rich man, either by fraud or by force. Whatever else the Lord Jesus was, He was certainly no leveler, abolishing all personal possessions.
Our Lord has made all things new by coming as He came, by being what He was, by doing what He did. The Incarnation changed the axis of the world. Perhaps the most revolutionary feature of Christ’s advent was this, that for our sakes He became poor. Jesus the Messiah was born in a stable as a poor woman’s child, in order that He might not be marked out by rank or fortune among the sons of men. He came in such guise to prove that the poorest laborer’s baby is just as dear to God as any little prince born in the purple of a palace.
His life at Nazareth carried on the lesson. In that obscure town, He was schooled in all the patient drudgeries of the poor. A narrow home has no privacy, so He went out on to the hillsides to find it. He chose His friends from among common people. Probably in all His life He never had $20 to call His own. In the end He borrowed a winding-sheet and a grave. Those hands which the nails pierced had grown hardened with daily toil for daily bread. Those parted garments were a workman’s clothes. That thorn-crowned forehead was wet with the sweat of labor for many a year before His sweat was as it were great drops of blood.
No details in the Gospels appear more affecting than those which reveal the literal hardness of our Lord’s earthly lot–how He hungered, how He thirsted and begged a cup of cold water from a stranger, how the Son of Man had not where to lay His head. Here is the idea which has arrested and enthralled men–the thought of the unsearchable poverty of Christ.
And yet this abasement impresses us more, perhaps, than it weighed on our Lord Himself. For He always treated money as a kind of accident, of no real account. As He moved among men, it never crossed His mind that their wealth or penury made the smallest difference in His sight. The riches which Christ renounced and the poverty which He embraced are not to be reckoned in terms of “corruptible things, as silver and gold.” Compared with the passion of His love, nothing else on earth seriously matters.
When we turn to examine our Lord’s positive teaching, we are startled to find how often and how urgently He speaks about money. To begin with, He lays immense emphasis on this: that the things which a man possesses serve as a subtle test of character. We are entrusted with property because it forms part of our moral and spiritual discipline. It is a stewardship for which we must give strict and solemn account. To be found faithful in the unrighteous mammon, in our dealing with material wealth, is one great guarantee of our fitness for the true riches. A man’s real self comes out in the way in which he thinks about his money, and talks about his money, and handles his money.
It is astonishing how many of Christ’s sayings form a sermon on the text, “Take heed and keep yourselves from covetousness.” Again and again He warns men against the dangers of wealth. Riches, He tells us, are a terrible responsibility, a cleaving entanglement and temptation. Two of His most searching parables, which shake the heart with fear, describe the doom of men who had great possessions. The vision of judgment shows us Lazarus comforted and the rich man tormented–so it appears–as the outcome and sequel of their respective misery and self-centered luxury on earth. And the prosperous farmer who plans to pull down his barns and build greater is ruined by success; he grows sleek and secularized in his prosperity, and wakes up in the unseen world a naked, bankrupt soul. When our Lord singles out one among all the principalities and powers of evil as a Christian’s deadliest foe, He tells us peremptorily, “Ye cannot serve God and Mammon”–not Astarte, nor Moloch, but Mammon.
Let us frankly confess that among Christ’s hard sayings none are so difficult to understand and carry out as certain parts of His teaching regarding money. The Sermon on the Mount, for instance, which seems to forbid litigation and war and taking oaths, leaves just as little room, apparently, for the pursuit of gain. Here we cannot even attempt to indicate how that Sermon may be harmonized with the complicated problems of human relationships. But at least it is plain that we still need the warning which our Lord uttered so sternly and so often against the love of wealth.
Money, in itself, may become a blessing, and the instrument of things better still. It can bestow leisure, and freedom from anxiety, and opportunities to travel and to choose friends, and power to accomplish large practical good. But we discover too often that money creates a shriveled nature, a corroded conscience, a self-centered soul. It is true, indeed, that the deadly sin of covetousness can rankle in those who are poor. A cobbler may be niggardly and envious. A wealthy capitalist may be generous and simple hearted, by the grace of God. Yet there comes a special danger lest, if riches increase, we set our hearts upon them.
Men’s besetting sins are said to vary with their age. The characteristic temptation of youth is sensuality; in middle life it is ambition; in advancing years it is avarice. It is melancholy to observe how many people become close-fisted as they grow old. Have we not known such persons in the Christian Church–fervent and kindly, but unable, it seems, to part with money?
Every generation has a characteristic blind spot on its retina. What we need is to recover this aspect of Christ’s example and teaching which we neglect and ignore because it seems so incongruous with the spirit of the age. When modern Christians regain their Lord’s point of view with regard to money and begin to look at it with His eyes, a wonderful change will come about. We shall not then find it difficult to reverence a saint in shabby clothes, or to give him a chief place in our synagogue, even though he may work at a carpenter’s bench, like his Master.
The Church at present concentrates much of its energies on raising funds. We are tempted to measure ecclesiastical success in terms of hard cash. But the real potency of the Church depends on something utterly different. Christ’s cause has never yet stood still for sheer lack of funds. If our Lord came among us now and found His disciples so busy with schemes for raking shekels into His treasury, so eager to mend the world by making everybody more comfortable, He would say, “Ye are careful and cumbered about many things: but one thing is needful–and that one thing is not comfort, it is not money.”
Even worldly men cannot help paying secret homage to the beauty of unworldliness. There is an irresistible charm about Lacordaire’s ideal of “a great soul in a small house.” If we try to recall the individuals who have exerted the most profound and spontaneous personal influence, we think of those who were alike in the supreme grace of detachment: they simply did not care about money. There is a true instinct which makes us feel thankful when we hear that some eminent Christian has been content to die poor. The right attitude of soul with regard to riches is higher than renunciation. It is a glorious indifference about money. The love of Christ can constrain us to think as He thinks and to feel as He feels about the world’s golden prizes–not grudgingly, but with the glad detachment of those whose heart and treasure are elsewhere.