by our Lord. They are the reflection He makes upon this part of the case. Those who, like the unjust Steward, live only for this world, as if this world were all,' are wiser, in the things of this world, than those who profess to be enlightened are, in the things of that better world which is to come. Those take more pains to win earth, than these to gain Heaven. "They are less provident in heavenly things than those are in earthly. . . . The world is better served by its servants than God by His."2 The one may learn a lesson even from the other;3 may learn to be as careful concerning the things eternal, as these are about things temporal; learn to provide against the time to come for their souls, as these do for their bodies. This direct lesson the Lord adds. "Mammon, though a word of foreign origin, was a familiar term, in the language of the ancient Jews, for riches," so often, as in this case, unrighteously acquired. Of our money however, if we have money, or of any other talents committed to our trust, we may make to ourselves friends if properly employed, in works of true charity." These are here personified, and represented as receiving us, when we fail and die, not into mere temporary shelter, which is all that the children of this world with all their plotting can procure, but into everlasting habitations. The Lord bids them consider the end. We are all in some sense stewards. Nothing that we have is our own. We are but stewards. Everything we have is intrusted to us by God, to be laid out according to His directions. It is false for a man to say he may do what he will with his own. We have nothing that we can call our own. 2 8 Ps. xvii. 14; Phil. iii. 18, 19. 3 If the original of v. 8 were rendered "unto" or "towards their own generation," the reference to the debtors in the parable would be more plain. 1 Tim. vi. 18, 19. 5 A Plain Commentary. "In reading, a stress should be laid upon friends, and also upon mammon of unrighteousness. Of this latter, so 9 All that we have is God's often really our enemy and injurious to us, we may, by a right use of it, even make a friend. We may make friends even of the mammon of unrighteousness; "make good of bad, and friends of foes."-Macbeth, II. iv. 7 St. Matt. xxviii. 34-36, 40. It is a question whether another reading which gives "when it," i.e. the mammon, 66 'fails," be not the right one. 92 Esdras ii. 11. property. We are His stewards. Soon we shall be called to give account of our stewardship. We know not how soon, or how suddenly. And death leaves no room either to dig or to beg, for labour or for prayer. He who has proved himself unworthy of a smaller, may not look for a larger trust.3 Those who have not made a good use of that wealth, here called unrighteous because so often unrighteously employed -as if it were our own, to be devoted to selfish ends, instead of being intrusted to us by God, to be laid out to His glory, -they must not look for those riches which alone are worthy of the name. If we have not been faithful in the things of another, how can we expect to have that recompense of reward which we may enjoy for our own, that which shall never be taken away from those to whom it is given? We cannot expect the Lord and Master we have wronged to give it, and who else is there to look to? The Lord concludes by repeating His former saying, as to the vanity of the attempt to serve at once two such rivals for the possession of our hearts as God and Mammon.4 CCCLXXV. PHARISEES REPROVED. St. Luke xvi. 14-18. And the Pharisees also, who were covetous, heard all these things: and they derided him. And he said unto them, Ye are they which justify yourselves before men; but God knoweth your hearts: for that which is highly esteemed among men is abomination in the sight of God. The law and the prophets were until John: since that time the kingdom of God is preached, and every man presseth into it. And it is easier for heaven and earth to pass, than one tittle of the law to fail. Whosoever putteth away his wife, and marrieth another, com St. Luke xii. 46. 2 Bengel. 1 Cor. iv. 2; St. Luke xii. 42-44; St. Matt. xxv. 14-30. St. Matt. vi. 24. mitteth adultery: and whosoever marrieth her that is put away from her husband committeth adultery. The late discourse had been addressed to Disciples, but in the hearing of certain Pharisees. These, being covetous, derided a Teacher who condemned covetousness. Their conduct on this occasion was unseemly enough for the Lord to take notice of it. So turning to them, He describes to them their character. By their profession of superior sanctity they were for ever justifying themselves before men, who seldom look beyond the outside of things. To these they seemed scrupulously just,' anything but like that unjust steward. But God knew their hearts, knew the depth of extortion and excess, of hypocrisy and iniquity, which lay hidden there.2 The Lord notes also the difference between God's estimate of things and man's.3 Men highly esteem riches, but he who waxes rich by crooked ways is abominable in the sight of God. Those very things for which the Pharisees were held in honour might prove the cause of their rejection. And the sentence may be applied to other men and other matters. The Law and the Prophets, for which the Pharisees professed so much zeal, are merged now, He again reminds them, in a new dominion; marked, as the Scriptures themselves witnessed,5 by the mission of the Baptist, who as a herald proclaimed the commencement of the Church of Christ. Into this even penitent Publicans were admitted, were even pressing; crowding into that Kingdom in which everyone was welcome. Still let them not suppose that there was any antagonism between Law and Gospel. No part of the Law, how minute soever, (as signified by those tittles or turns of its letters about which the Scribes were so careful,) should, He again declares,' fail of its accomplishment. One might more easily imagine 32 Cor. x. 18; 2 Tim. ii. 15; 1 Sa. xvi. 7. 1 St. Matt. xxiii. 23. 2 St. Matt. xxiii. 25–28. "Ye have angels' faces, but Heaven knows your hearts."-King Henry "O, what may man within him hide, 4 St. Matt. xi. 13. Is. xl. 3-5; Mal. iv. 5; St. John i. 23; v. 38, 39, 46. 6 St. Matt. xi. 12; St. Luke xiv. 21-23. 7 St. Matt. v. 17-20. Heaven and earth disappearing, as indeed one day they will,' than such a failure of God's ordinance as this. And, as an example, He "reiterates the decision which He had before given on a point much controverted among" these same Pharisees; 3 alluding, it might be, to Herod's adultery with his brother Philip's wife, "which the Pharisees had tacitly sanctioned," 2 but which the Baptist had reproved. With all their professed zeal for the Law they were found ready to sacrifice Matrimony to Mammon." The evil which certain of these more than tolerated is intolerable in Christ's Church. "Men cannot make her approve that which Christ condemns, or condemn that which He approves." 5 CCCLXXVI. THE RICH MAN AND LAZARUS. St. Luke xvi. 19-21. There was a certain rich man, which was clothed in purple and fine linen, and fared sumptuously every day: and there was a certain beggar named Lazarus, which was laid at his gate, full of sores, and desiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich man's table: moreover the dogs came and licked his sores. 6 The Lord continues His teaching to His disciples, in the audience of the Pharisees, who seem silenced for the time. He adds another of His more detailed parables, which illustrates the moral He had drawn from the one preceding,' and which conveys a lesson to both rich and poor. The rich man in this parable is not singled out as a monster of wickedness. 12 St. Pet. iii. 10. 2 Alford. 3 St. Matt. v. 31, 32. 4 Bp. Wordsworth. Quesnel. It is indeed a scandal to our legislature, which however is not now even professedly Christian, that the preceding sentence no longer holds true, "The good which the law did not presume to hope for, is become the common law of Christians." 6 V. 1 above. 1 V. 9 above. We are not told that he had made his money by any unlawful means; nor, though he fared sumptuously every day, that he was guilty of any particular excess. His sin was simply selfishness, which had its root in an evil heart of unbelief. He took so much thought for his own ease, that he could take no thought for the real uneasiness of others. This same carefulness for himself, and carelessness of the condition of his poor neighbour, proceeded from a want of faith in that lasting world which is to come, for which this transitory world is but a preparation. "Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die,"-this is virtually his licentious language, the sum of his selfish and short-sighted creed; atheist in practice, whatever he might be in profession; without God in the world; living as though He were not; his only thought, about the things of this life which perish with the using. Life is not to him the time of trial, nor this world a place of probation to determine our position in the next; nor wealth a talent, entrusted to us as stewards, by the supreme Lord of all, to be turned to the best account. These with him are never things to be used to the glory of God, to the good of men; but merely so many ways and means of self-pleasing, instruments only for the indulgence of self. But one day shall be an awakening. This idle dream must have its end. With an awe-ful precision scene follows scene in the process of the parable. We may see the stages. A selfish life, an inevitable death, a just judgment. The rich man, we may note, is never mentioned by name; but the beggar has his name. It is ennobled and recognised for ever in the Church of God. His desires were humble enough. A very little would have satisfied him. If those who never deny themselves anything would but consider how many absolutely want what they actually waste, what they In defiance of the profounder teaching of the parable, there have not been wanting those who, "wise above what is written," have presumed to invent a name for the rich man, as for the impenitent thief, and have pretended to show the ruins of his house at Jerusalem. It is better perhaps not even to call him, as is com monly done, Dives; lest this should be taken for a proper name. Abp. Trench notes it as "a striking evidence of the deep impression which this parable has made on the mind of Christendom, that the term lazar should have passed into so many languages as it has, losing altogether its signification as a proper name." |
