All Saints' Day and Other Sermons

by Charles Kingsley

This is but a guess on my part. But all other explanations are only guesses likewise, because we do not know how business was transacted in those days and in that country. We do not know whether these debtors were tenants, paying rent in kind, or traders to whom goods had been advanced, or what they were. We do not know whether the steward was agent of the estate, or house steward, or what he was. But this we do know—that to mend one act of villainy by committing a fresh one, is not wisdom, but foolishness; and we may be sure that our Lord would never have held up the unjust steward as an example to us, or quoted his master’s opinion of him, if all he did was to commit fraud on fraud, and make bad worse, thereby risking his own more utter ruin. And this view of the parable surely agrees with our Lord’s own lesson, which He draws from it. “And I say unto you, Make to yourselves friends of the mammon of righteousness.” But what does that mean? Wise men have been puzzled by that text as much as by the parable; but surely our Lord Himself explains it in the verses which follow: “He that is faithful in that which is least, is faithful also in much; and he that is unjust in that which is least, is unjust also in much.” He that is faithful. The unjust steward was commended for acting wisely. Now, it seems the way to act wisely is to act faithfully—that is honestly. Our Lord bids us copy the unjust steward, and make ourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness. Now, it seems, He tells us that the way to make friends of men by money transactions is to deal faithfully and honestly by them. This then was perhaps why the Lord commended the unjust steward, because he had been converted in time, and seen his true interest; and for once at least in his life become just. He had found out that after all, honesty is the best policy; as God grant all of us may find out if any of us have not found it out already. Honesty is the best policy. Faithfulness, as our Lord calls it, is the true wisdom. And in that, as our Lord says, the children of this world are wiser in their generation than the children of light. The children of this world, the plain worldly men of business, find that to conduct their business they must be faithful, diligent, punctual, accurate, cautious, business-like. They must have practical common sense, which is itself a kind of honesty. They must be men of their word, just and true in their dealings, or sooner or later, they will fail. Their schemes, their money, their credit, their character, will fail them, and they will be overwhelmed by ruin.

And that is just what too often the children of light forget. The children of light have a higher light, a deeper teaching from God, than the children of the world. They have a great insight into what ought to be; they see that mankind might be far wiser, happier, better, holier than they are; they have noble and lofty hopes for the future; they desire the welfare and the holiness of mankind. But they are too apt to want practical common sense. And so they are laughed at (and deservedly) as dreamers, as fanatics, as foolish unpractical people, who are wasting their talents on impossible fancies. Often while their minds are full of really useful and noble schemes, they neglect their business, their families, their common duties, till they cause misery to those around them, and shame to themselves. Often, too, they are tempted to be actually dishonest, to fancy that the means sanctify the end; that it is lawful to do evil that good may come; and so, in order to carry out some fine scheme of theirs, to say false things, or do mean or cruel things, not for their own interest, but, as they fancy, for the cause of God: as if God, and God’s cause, could ever be helped by the devil and his works. And so they cast a scandal on religion, and give the enemies of the Lord reason to blaspheme. So it was, it seems, in our Lord’s time—so it has been too often since. The children of light—those who ought to be of most use to their own generation—are sometimes of least use to it, through their own weaknesses and follies. They will not remember that he that is not faithful in that which is least, in the every-day concerns of life, is not likely to be faithful in that which is greatest; that if they will not be faithful in the unrighteous mammon—that is, if they cannot resist the temptations to meanness and unfairness which come with all money transactions, God will not commit to them the true riches—the power of making their fellow creatures wiser, happier, better. If they will not be faithful in that which is another man’s—in plain English, if they will not pay their debts honestly, who will give them that which is their own—the inspiration of God’s indwelling Spirit? Would to God all high religious professors would recollect that, and be just and honest, before they pretend to higher graces and counsels of perfection.

This lesson, then, I think our Lord means to teach us. I do not say it is the only lesson in the parable; God forbid. But I think that our Lord’s own words show us that this is one lesson. That, however pious we are, however enlightened we are, however useful we wish to be; in one word, however much we are, or fancy ourselves to be, children of light, our first duty as Christian men is the duty which lies nearest us—that of which it is written: “If a man know not how to rule his own house, how shall he take care of the Church of God?” And again, “If any provide not for his own and specially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel.” Our first duty, I say, as Christian men, is to be just and honest in money matters and every-day business; and over and above that, to be generous and liberal therein. Not merely to pay—which the very publicans in our Lord’s time did—but to give, generously, liberally; lending, if we can afford it, as our Lord bids us, hoping for nothing again; and remembering that he who giveth to the poor lendeth to the Lord, and whatsoever he layeth out, it shall be repaid him again.

Yes, my friends, we must all needs take our Lord’s advice—make to yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness, that when ye fail, they may receive you into everlasting habitations. When ye fail—literally, when you are eclipsed, as the sun is eclipsed. That must happen to all of us, to the best, the wisest, the most famous. Each must be eclipsed, and passed in the race of life, and forgotten for some younger man. Each in turn must fail. One may fail in money—the mammon for which he toiled may take to itself wings and fly away; or he may fail in his plans, noble plans, and useful though they seemed; and he may find, as he grows old, that the world has not gone his way, but quite another one; or he may fail in health, and be cut down and crippled, and laid by in the midst of his work. And even if he escapes all these disasters, he must needs fail at last, by mere old age, when the days come “when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them;” when the sun and the light are darkened, and the clouds return after the rain, when the strong men bow themselves, and those who look out of the windows are dark; and he shall rise up at the voice of a bird, and fears shall be in the way, and the grasshopper shall be a burden, and desire shall fail: because man goeth to his long home, and the mourners go about the streets. Think for yourselves. What would you wish your end to be—lonely, unhappy, without the love, the respect, the care of your fellow-men; or surrounded by friends who comfort your failing body and soul on earth, and receive you at last into everlasting habitations?

Make friends, make friends against that day, whether or not you make them out of the mammon of unrighteousness. If you have been unrighteous, bring friends back to you, as the steward did, by being just and fair, by confessing your faults freely, by doing your best to atone for them. And if you have no share in the mammon of unrighteousness, still make friends. Make them by truth and justice, make them by generosity and usefulness. To ease every burden, and let the oppressed go free, to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and what the very poorest can do—comfort the mourner; to nurse the sick, to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and so keep ourselves unspotted from the selfishness of the world—This is that true Religion, acceptable in the sight of God the Father—and happy he who has so served God. Happy for him, when he begins to fail, to see round him attached hearts, and grateful faces, hands ready to tend him, as he has tended others. And happier still to remember that on the other side of the dark river of death are other grateful faces, other loving hearts, ready to welcome him into everlasting habitations—and among them, and above them all, one whose form is as the Son of Man, full of all humanity Himself, and loving and rewarding all humanity in His creatures, saying, “Inasmuch as ye did it to one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto Me.”

SERMON XLIII. THE RICH AND THE POOR

Chapel Royal, Whitehall, 1871.

Proverbs xxii. 2. “The rich and poor meet together: the Lord is the maker of them all.”

I have been asked to preach here this afternoon on behalf of the Parochial Mission Women’s Fund. I may best describe the object for which I plead, as an attempt to civilise and Christianise the women of the lower classes in the poorer districts of London and other great towns, by means of women of their own class—women, who have gone through the same struggles as they have, and who will be trusted by them to understand and to sympathize with their needs and difficulties. These mission women are in communication with lady-superintendents in each ecclesiastical district. These are, I understand, usually the wives of small tradesmen, or of clerks. They, again, are in communication with ladies at the West End of London, who are willing to give personal help and money for certain objects, but not indiscriminate alms. And thus a series of links is established between the most prosperous and the least prosperous classes, by means of which the rich and the poor may meet together, and learn—to the infinite benefit of both—that the Lord is the maker of them all. Considering this excellent scheme, I could not help seeing as a background to it, a very different and a far darker scene. I could not help remembering that during these very days, the poorer classes of another great city had taken up an attitude full of awful lessons to us, and to every civilized country upon earth. We have been reading of a hundred thousand armed men encamped in the suburbs of Belleville and Montmartre, with cannon and mitrailleuses, uttering through their organs, threats which leave no doubt that the meaning of this movement is—as some of them boldly phrase it,—a war of the poor against the rich. There is no mistaking what that means. This madness has been stopped for the time, we are told, principally (as was to be expected), by the superior common sense of their wives. But only, I fear, for a time. Such men will go far, if not this time, then some other time. For they believe what they say, and know what they want. They have done with phrases, done with illusions. They are no longer deceived and hampered by party cries against this and that grievance, real or imaginary, the abolition of which the working classes demand so eagerly from time to time, in the vain belief that if it were only got rid of the millennium would be at hand. They have done long ago with remedial half-measures. Landed aristocracy, Established Church, military classes, privileged classes, restricted suffrage, and all the rest, have been abolished in their country for two generations and more: but behold, the poor man finds himself (or fancies himself, which is just as dangerous) no richer, safer, happier after all, and begins to see a far simpler remedy for all his ills. He has too little of this world’s goods, while others have too much. What more fair, more simple, than that he should take some of the rich man’s goods, and if he resists, kill him, crying, “Thou sayest, let me eat and drink, for to-morrow I die. Then I too will eat and drink, for to-morrow I die?” And so will the rich and poor meet together with a vengeance, simply because neither of them has learnt that the Lord is the maker of them all.

This is a hideous conclusion. But it is one towards which the poor will tend in every country in which the rich are merely rich, spending their wealth in self-enjoyment, atoned for by a modicum of alms.