The ancient world found it very difficult to keep money even after it was got. There were almost constant wars involving the dire stripping of the unprotected country districts, and the siege and devastation of cities. In those times almost everything was fragile. It was never easy to discover any form of wealth that was surely abiding. Even if the besom of an invading army did not sweep away the labor of years, still there were other enemies to be feared. Tyrants were, always on the watch for ways of relieving wealthy men of their treasures. There were robber bands lying in wait for the traveler, and neighborhood thieves found it a small matter to break into private houses and to steal hidden money. It was no uncommon thing for men to dig in the ground and hide the talent which they had saved, or to bury the pearl of great price, or other precious jewel, in a field. If one invested his wealth in garments, then another enemy was to be feared. The moth is as old as clothes, and he got in even where the thief failed to break through.
The problem of getting an indestructible money-bag was, thus, a problem of first importance. A journey to Jericho might any day reduce a man to primitive conditions, or a passing army might make him a beggar, or the visit of a thief might strip him of all his living, or the silent work of a brood of moths might ruin the savings of years. There were no perdurable purses, no nonbreakable banks, no irreducible forms of wealth.
Christ evidently recognized that there was a value in money. He did not apparently demand from his follower the absolute renunciation of ownership. He expounded no new theory of economics. But he was profoundly impressed by the moral havoc and the social calamities caused by the excessive ambition for, and pursuit of, wealth. He saw how the mad rush for money and the overvaluation of it killed out the noblest fundamental traits of the soul, and, more than all else, he felt the tragedy of human lives being focused with intensity of strain and fixed with burning passion on the pursuit of such pitiably fragile treasures—money-bags of all sorts waxing old and becoming incapable of holding the hoard that absorbed the whole life.
Christ, then, proposes a new kind of purse, an indestructible and immutable treasure-bag—“make for yourselves bags that wax not old.” Such purses are not on the market, they cannot be purchased, they must be woven by each person for himself, and they must be woven, if at all, out of the stuff of life itself. We here pass over, as so often in Christ’s teaching, from extrinsic wealth to intrinsic, from the wealth which men merely possess to the kind of wealth which they can themselves be. We once more find ourselves brought to an inner way of living, where the issue is no longer how to accumulate goods, but rather how to become good. The problem is the problem of what men live by. We are called to loosen our grip on perishable treasures only that we may tighten our hold on heavenly, i.e. spiritual, treasure. We are shown the folly of spending a life building barns for expanding earthly possessions, while we are taking no pains to make ourselves rich in God.
What is it, then, that men live by? What will prove to be imperishable wealth, whether we are in this world, or in any other world of real moral issues? It is obviously not money, for men often live nobly after the money-bag has waxed old and after the bank has failed, and it is our most elemental faith that life blossoms out into its consummate richness after all earthly affairs come to a complete close, and after every penny of visible wealth has been left forever behind. Money is plainly not intrinsic treasure; love is, goodness is, joy is. A beloved disciple, in a moment of inspiration, announced the profound truth that love is “of God.” Men wrongly divide love into two types, “human love” and “divine love,” but in reality there is only love. Wherever love has become the nature of the soul, and it has become “natural” now to forget self for others, to seek to give rather than to get, to share rather than to possess, to be impoverished in order that some loved one may abound, there a divine and Godlike spirit has been formed. And we now come upon a new kind of wealth, a kind that accumulates with use, because it is a law that the more the spirit of love is exercised, the more the soul spends itself in love, so much the more love it has, the richer it grows, the diviner its nature becomes. But at the same time, it is a fact that love is never complete, never reaches its full scope and measure until our love takes on an eternal aspect—until we love God in Himself or love Him in our loved ones. One reason why love is exalted by death is that we no longer love our immortal loved one in any narrow and selfish way; we love now for pure love’s sake, and the truest of all treasures which can be laid up in imperishable bags is this stock of unalloyed love for that which is most lovely—for God and for souls that are given to us to bring some of His nature closer to our human hearts.
Goodness is, of course, notoriously hard to define. It is never an abstract quality that can be described by logical concepts. It is a way of living, a way of acting, a way of working out relationships. It is, like love, a cumulative thing. To be good inherently means to be becoming better, to be on the way to an unattained goal of action, or of character. It is the glory of going on to be perfect like our Father in heaven. To be rich in goodness of character, therefore, is to be on the way to become ever richer, however long the journey lasts, however far the spiral winds, for goodness, like love, is of God, and steadily assimilates our imperfect human nature to the perfect divine nature.
Joy is, perhaps, not often thought of as one of the things men live by, as the soul’s eternal wealth. Life is so full of sorrow and pain that joy seems like a fleeting, vanishing asset. But that is because joy is confused with pleasure. True joy is not a thing of moods, not a capricious emotion, tied to fluctuating experiences. It is a state and condition of the soul. It survives through pain and sorrow and, like a subterranean spring, waters the whole life. It is intimately allied and bound up with love and goodness, and so is deeply rooted in the life of God. Joy is the most perfect and complete mark and sign of immortal wealth, because it indicates that the soul is living by love and by goodness, and is very rich in God.
II
OTHERISM
(Matt. VII. 1-12)