And yet even this infernal absurdity has its reason for being, in the economy of the spirit. Man is so universally and naturally drawn by that nothingness called wealth that he could only be dissuaded from his insensate search for it by putting a price so great, so high, so out of all proportion that the very fact of paying it would be a valid proof of insanity and crime. But not even the conditions of the bargain, the eternal exchanged for the ephemeral, power for servitude, sanctity for damnation, are enough to keep men away from the absurd bargain with the powers of evil. Poor people do not rejoice that they are poor. Their only regret is that they cannot be rich; their souls are contaminated and in peril like those of the wealthy. Almost all of them are involuntarily poor men, who have not known how to make money and yet have lost the spirit; they are only poverty-stricken rich people who have not as yet any cash.
For poverty, voluntarily accepted, joyfully desired, is the only poverty which gives true wealth, spiritual wealth. Absolute poverty frees men for the conquest of the absolute. The Kingdom of Heaven does not promise poor people that they shall become rich, it promises rich people that they shall enter into it when they become freely poor.
SELL EVERYTHING
The tragic paradox implied in wealth justifies the advice given by Jesus to those who wish to follow Him.
They all should give whatever they have beyond their needs to those in want. But the rich man should give everything. To the young man who comes up to ask Him what he ought to do to be among His followers, Jesus answers: “If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven.” Giving away wealth is not a loss or a sacrifice. Instead of this, Jesus knows and all those know who understand mankind and wealth that it is a magnificently profitable transaction, an incommensurable gain. “Sell whatsoever thou hast and give to the poor and thou shalt have treasure in heaven where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt and where thieves do not break through nor steal; for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow from thee, turn not thou away, for it is more blessed to give than to receive.”
Men must give and give without sparing, light-heartedly and without calculation. He who gives in order to get something back is not perfect. He who gives in order to exchange with others, or for other material things, acquires nothing. The recompense is elsewhere, it is in us. Things are not to be given away that they may be paid for by other things, but by purity and contentment alone. “When thou makest a dinner or a supper call not thy friends nor thy brethren, neither thy kinsmen nor thy rich neighbors, lest they also bid thee again, and a recompense be made thee. But when thou makest a feast call the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind; and thou shalt be blest, for they cannot recompense thee, for thou shalt be recompensed at the resurrection of the just.”
Even before Jesus’ time men had been advised to renounce wealth. Jesus was not the first to find in poverty one of the steps to perfection. The great Vaddhamana, the Jain, or triumpher, added to the commandments of Parswa, founder of the Freed, the doctrine of the renunciation of all possessions. Buddha, his contemporary, exhorted his disciples to a similar renunciation. The Cynics stripped themselves of all material goods to be independent of work and of men, and to be able to consecrate their freed souls to truth. Crates, the Theban nobleman, disciple of Diogenes, distributed his wealth to his fellow-citizens and turned beggar. Plato wished the warriors in his Republic to have no possessions. Dressed in purple and seated at tables inlaid with rare stones, the Stoics pronounced eloquent eulogies on poverty. Aristophanes puts blind Pluto on the stage distributing wealth to rascals alone, almost as though wealth were a punishment.
But in Jesus the love of poverty is not an ascetic rule, nor a proud disguise for ostentation. Timon of Athens, who was reduced to poverty after having fed a crowd of parasites with indiscriminate generosity, was not a poor man as Christ would have men poor. Timon was poor through the fault of his vainglory, to feed his own desire to be called magnanimous and liberal. He gave to everybody, even to those who were not needy. Crates, who stripped himself of all his property to imitate Diogenes, was the slave of pride: he wished to do something different from others, to acquire the name of philosopher and sage. The professional beggary of the Cynics is a picturesque form of pride. The poverty of Plato’s warriors is a measure of political prudence. The first republics conquered and flourished as long as the citizens contented themselves, as in old Sparta and old Rome, with strict poverty, and they fell as soon as they valued gold more than sober and modest living. But men of antiquity did not despise wealth in itself. They held it dangerous when it accumulated in the hands of the few, they considered it unjust when it was not spent with judicious liberality. But Plato, who desires for his citizens a condition half-way between need and abundance, puts riches among the good things of human life. He puts it last of all, but he does not forget it. And Aristophanes would kneel before Pluto if the blind God should acquire his sight again and give riches to worthy people.
In the Gospel, poverty is not a philosophical ornament nor a mystic mode. To be poor is not enough to entitle one to citizenship in the Kingdom. Poverty of the body is a preliminary requisite, like humility of the spirit. He who is not convinced that his estate is low never thinks of climbing high; no one can feel a zest for true treasures if he is not freed from all material property,—from that winding-sheet which blinds the eyes and binds down the wings.
When he does not suffer from his poverty, when he glories in his poverty instead of tormenting himself to convert it into wealth, the poor man is certainly much nearer to moral perfection than the rich man. But the rich man who has despoiled himself in favor of the poor and has chosen to live side by side with his new brothers is still nearer perfection than the man who was born and reared in poverty. That he has been touched by a grace so rare and prodigious gives him the right to hope for the greatest blessedness. To renounce what you have never had may be meritorious, because imagination magnifies absent things; but it is the sign of supreme perfectibility to renounce everything that you actually did possess, possessions that were envied by every one.