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THOUGHT FOR YOUR LIFE.'
"When the Child whose birth we celebrate with glad hearts this day,
grew up to be a man, He said this. Did He mean it?--He never said
what He did not mean. Did He mean it wholly?--He meant it far beyond
what the words could convey. He meant it altogether and entirely.
When people do not understand what the Lord says, when it seems to
them that His advice is impracticable, instead of searching deeper
for a meaning which will be evidently true and wise, they comfort
themselves by thinking He could not have meant it altogether, and so
leave it. Or they think that if He did mean it, He could not expect
them to carry it out. And in the fact that they could not do it
perfectly if they were to try, they take refuge from the duty of
trying to do it at all; or, oftener, they do not think about it at
all as anything that in the least concerns them. The Son of our
Father in heaven may have become a child, may have led the one life
which belongs to every man to lead, may have suffered because we are
sinners, may have died for our sakes, doing the will of His Father
in heaven, and yet we have nothing to do with the words He spoke out
of the midst of His true, perfect knowledge, feeling, and action! Is
it not strange that it should be so? Let it not be so with us this
day. Let us seek to find out what our Lord means, that we may do it;
trying and failing and trying again--verily to be victorious at
last--what matter WHEN, so long as we are trying, and so coming
nearer to our end!
"MAMMON, you know, means RICHES. Now, riches are meant to be the
slave--not even the servant of man, and not to be the master. If a
man serve his own servant, or, in a word, any one who has no just
claim to be his master, he is a slave. But here he serves his own
slave. On the other hand, to serve God, the source of our being, our
own glorious Father, is freedom; in fact, is the only way to get rid
of all bondage. So you see plainly enough that a man cannot serve
God and Mammon. For how can a slave of his own slave be the servant
of the God of freedom, of Him who can have no one to serve Him but a
free man? His service is freedom. Do not, I pray you, make any
confusion between service and slavery. To serve is the highest,
noblest calling in creation. For even the Son of man came not to be
ministered unto, but to minister, yea, with Himself.
"But how can a man SERVE riches? Why, when he says to riches, 'Ye
are my good.' When he feels he cannot be happy without them. When he
puts forth the energies of his nature to get them. When he schemes
and dreams and lies awake about them. When he will not give to his
neighbour for fear of becoming poor himself. When he wants to have
more, and to know he has more, than he can need. When he wants to
leave money behind him, not for the sake of his children or
relatives, but for the name of the wealth. When he leaves his money,
not to those who NEED it, even of his relations, but to those who
are rich like himself, making them yet more of slaves to the
overgrown monster they worship for his size. When he honours those
who have money because they have money, irrespective of their
character; or when he honours in a rich man what he would not honour
in a poor man. Then is he the slave of Mammon. Still more is he
Mammon's slave when his devotion to his god makes him oppressive to
those over whom his wealth gives him power; or when he becomes
unjust in order to add to his stores.--How will it be with such a
man when on a sudden he finds that the world has vanished, and he is
alone with God? There lies the body in which he used to live, whose
poor necessities first made money of value to him, but with which
itself and its fictitious value are both left behind. He cannot now
even try to bribe God with a cheque. The angels will not bow down to
him because his property, as set forth in his will, takes five or
six figures to express its amount It makes no difference to them
that he has lost it, though; for they never respected him. And the
poor souls of Hades, who envied him the wealth they had lost before,
rise up as one man to welcome him, not for love of him--no
worshipper of Mammon loves another--but rejoicing in the mischief
that has befallen him, and saying, 'Art thou also become one of us?'
And Lazarus in Abraham's bosom, however sorry he may be for him,
however grateful he may feel to him for the broken victuals and the
penny, cannot with one drop of the water of Paradise cool that man's
parched tongue.
"Alas, poor Dives! poor server of Mammon, whose vile god can pretend
to deliver him no longer! Or rather, for the blockish god never
pretended anything--it was the man's own doing--Alas for the
Mammon-worshipper! he can no longer deceive himself in his riches.
And so even in hell he is something nobler than he was on earth; for
he worships his riches no longer. He cannot. He curses them.
"Terrible things to say on Christmas Day! But if Christmas Day
teaches us anything, it teaches us to worship God and not Mammon; to
worship spirit and not matter; to worship love and not power.
"Do I now hear any of my friends saying in their hearts: Let the
rich take that! It does not apply to us. We are poor enough? Ah, my
friends, I have known a light-hearted, liberal rich man lose his
riches, and be liberal and light-hearted still. I knew a rich lady
once, in giving a large gift of money to a poor man, say
apologetically, 'I hope it is no disgrace in me to be rich, as it is
none in you to be poor.' It is not the being rich that is wrong, but
the serving of riches, instead of making them serve your neighbour
and yourself--your neighbour for this life, yourself for the
everlasting habitations. God knows it is hard for the rich man to
enter into the kingdom of heaven; but the rich man does sometimes
enter in; for God hath made it possible. And the greater the
victory, when it is the rich man that overcometh the world. It is
easier for the poor man to enter into the kingdom, yet many of the
poor have failed to enter in, and the greater is the disgrace of
their defeat. For the poor have more done for them, as far as
outward things go, in the way of salvation than the rich, and have a
beatitude all to themselves besides. For in the making of this world
as a school of salvation, the poor, as the necessary majority, have
been more regarded than the rich. Do not think, my poor friend, that
God will let you off. He lets nobody off. You, too, must pay the
uttermost farthing. He loves you too well to let you serve Mammon a
whit more than your rich neighbour. 'Serve Mammon!' do you say? 'How
can I serve Mammon? I have no Mammon to serve.'--Would you like to
have riches a moment sooner than God gives them? Would you serve
Mammon if you had him?--'Who can tell?' do you answer? 'Leave those
questions till I am tried.' But is there no bitterness in the tone
of that response? Does it not mean, 'It will be a long time before I
have a chance of trying THAT?'--But I am not driven to such
questions for the chance of convicting some of you of
Mammon-worship. Let us look to the text. Read it again.
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