All Saints' Day and Other Sermons

SERMON XLII.  THE UNJUST STEWARD

Eversley, 1866.  NINTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY.

Luke xvi. 8.  “And the Lord commended the unjust steward, because he had done wisely.”

None of our Lord’s parables has been as difficult to explain as this one.  Learned and pious men have confessed freely, in all ages, that there is much in the parable which they cannot understand; and I am bound to confess the same.  The puzzle is, plainly, why our Lord should seem to bid us to copy the conduct of a bad man and a cheat.  For this is the usual interpretation.  The steward has been cheating his master already.  When he is found out and about to be dismissed, he cheats his master still further, by telling his debtors to cheat, and so wins favour with them.

But does our Lord bid us copy a cheat?  I cannot believe that; and the text I should have said ought to give us a very different notion.  We read that the lord—that is, the steward’s master—commended the unjust steward.  What?  Commended him for cheating him a second time, and teaching his debtors to cheat him?  He must have been a man of a strange character—very unlike any man whom we know, or, at all events, any man whom we should wish to know—to have done that.  But it is said—he commended him for having acted wisely.  Now that word “wisely” may merely mean prudently, sensibly, and with common sense.  But if the master thought that to cheat, or to teach others to cheat, was acting either wisely or prudently, then he was a very foolish and short-sighted man, and altogether mistaken.  For be sure and certain, and settle it in your minds, that neither falsehood or dishonesty is ever either wise or prudent, but short-sighted, foolish, certain to punish itself.  Such teaching is totally contrary to our Lord’s own teaching.  Agree with thine adversary quickly, He says, while thou art in the way with him, lest he deliver thee to the Judge.  If thou hast done wrong, right it again as soon as possible; for your sin will surely find you out, and avenge itself.  Give the devil his due, says the good old proverb.  Pay him at once and be done with him: but never think to escape out of his clutches, as too many wretched and foolish sinners do, by running up a fresh score with him, and trying to hide old sins by new ones.  Be sure that if the steward cheated his master a second time, the master was foolish and mistaken, and as it were a partner in the steward’s sin by commending him.  But if so; why does our Lord mention it?  What had our Lord to do, what have we to do, with the opinion of so foolish a man?

It seems to me that the only reason for our Lord’s using the words of the text, must be, that the master was right, not wrong, in commending the steward.  But it seems to me, also, that the master could be right only, if the steward was right also—if the steward had done the right and just thing at last, and, instead of cheating his master a second time, had done his best to make restitution for his own sins.

But how could that be?  We know nothing of what these debtors were.  All we know is that one believed that he owed the Lord a hundred measures of oil; and another believed that he owed him a hundred measures of wheat; and that the steward told one to put down in his bill eighty, and the other fifty.  Now suppose that the steward had been cheating and oppressing these men, as was common enough in those days with stewards, and has been common enough since; suppose that he had been charging them more than they really owed, and, it may be, putting the surplus into his own pocket, and so wasting his master’s goods—that the one really owed only eighty measures of oil, and the other really owed only fifty of wheat; what could be more simple, or more truly wise either, when he was found out, than to do this—to go round to the debtors and confess: I have been overcharging you; you do not owe what I have demanded of you; take your bill and write four-score, for that is what you really owe?

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.

I said a modicum of alms.  I ought to have said, any amount of alms, any amount of charity.  Throughout the great cities of Europe—in London as much as anywhere—hundreds of thousands are saying, “We want no alms.  We intend to reconstitute society, even at the expense of blood, so that no man, woman, or child, shall need the rich man’s alms.  We do not choose, for it is not just, that he should take credit to himself for giving us a shilling when he owes us a pound, ten, a hundred pounds—owes us, in fact, all by which he and his class are richer than us and our class.  And we will make him pay his debt.”

I do not say that such words are wise.  I believe them to be foolish—suicidal.  I believe that it is those who patiently wait on the Lord, and not the discontented who fret themselves till they do evil, who will inherit the land, and be refreshed in peace.  I believe that all those who take the sword will perish by the sword; that those who appeal to brute force will always find it—just because it is brute force—always strongest on the side of the rich, who can hire it for evil, as for good.

I only say, that so hundreds of thousands think; so they speak, and will speak more and more loudly, as long as the present tone of society endures,—good-natured and well meaning, but luxurious, covetous, ignoble, frivolous, ignorant; believing—all classes alike, not only that money makes the man, but worse far—that money makes the woman also; and all the while half-ashamed of itself, half-distrustful of itself, and trying to buy off man by alms, and God by superstition.

So long as the great mass of the poor of any city know nothing of the great mass of the rich of that city, save as folk who roll past them in their carriages, seemingly easy while they are struggling, seemingly happy while they are wretched, so long will the rich of that city be supposed, however falsely, to be what the French workmen used to call mangeurs d’hommes—exploiteurs d’hommes—to get their wealth by means of the poverty, their comfort by means of the misery of their fellow-men; and so long will they be exposed to that mere envy and hatred which pursues always the more prosperous, till, in some national crisis, when the rich and poor meet together, both parties will be but too apt to behave, through mutual fear and hate, as if not God, but the devil, was the maker of them all.

These words are strong.  How can they be too strong, in face of what is now passing in a neighbouring land?  Not too strong, either, in view of the actual state of vast masses of the poor in London itself, and indeed of any one of our great cities.

That matter has been reported on, preached on, spoken on, till all other civilized countries reproach Britain with the unique contrast between the exceeding wealth of some classes and the exceeding poverty of others; till we, instead of being startled by the reproach, take the present state of things as a matter of course, a physical necessity, a law of nature and society, that there should be, in the back streets of every great city, hordes of, must I say, savages? neither decently civilized nor decently Christianized, uncertain, most of them, of regular livelihood, and therefore shiftless and reckless, extravagant in prosperity, and in adversity falling at once into want and pauperism.  You may ask any clergyman, any minister of religion of any denomination, whether the thing is not so.  Or if you want to read the latest news about the degradation of your fellow-subjects, read a little book called “East and West,” and judge for yourselves, whether such a population, numbered by hundreds of thousands, are in a state pleasing to God, or safe for those classes of whom they only know that they pay them wages, and that these wages are as small as they can be forced to take.  Read that book; and then ask yourselves, is it wonderful that, in one district, before the mission of the society for which I plead was established, the poor used seriously to believe that it was the wish and endeavour of the rich to grind them down, and keep them poor.  We, of course, know that the poor folk were mistaken but do we not know, too—some of us—that there are political economists in the world, who, though they would not willingly make the poor poorer than they are, are still of opinion that it is good for the nation, on the whole, that the present state of things should continue; that there should be always a reserve of labour, in plain English, a vast multitude who have not quite work enough to live on, ready to be called on in any emergency of business, and used, to beat down, by their competition, the wages of their fellow-workmen?  Is this theory altogether novel and unheard of?  Or this theory also, that for this very reason, Emigration, which looks the very simplest remedy for most of this want,—while nine-tenths of the bounteous earth is waiting to be subdued and replenished by the poor wretches who cannot get at it—that Emigration, I say, is an unnecessary movement—that the people are all wanted at home—to be such as the parson and the mission women find them?