648 sents no enigma. With all his attrac tive traits, this man was a slave. Money was not his servant, hut his master; and because God alone is to he supreme, our Lord had no alternative. He must de molish this man’s idol, and when He dealt a blow at his money the idolatry became apparent, and the slave of greed went away sorrowful, clinging to his idol. It was not the man’s having great possessions that was wrong, but that his possessions had the man; they possessed him and controlled him. He was so far the slave of money that he could not and would not accept freedom by the breaking of its fetters. His “ trust” was in riches— how could it be in God? Behind all disguises of respectability and refinement, God sees many a man to be an abject slave, a victim held in bonds by love of money; but covetous ness is idolatry, and no idolater can en ter the kingdom of God. How few rich men keep the mastery and hold money as their servant, in absolute subordina tion to their own manhood, and the mas terhood of the Lord! IV. The Law of Recompense We ascend a step higher, and consider our Lord’s teaching as to the law of recompense. “ Give, and it shall be given unto you” (Luke 6:38). We are taught that getting is in order to giving, and consequently that giving is the real road to getting. God is an economist. He entrusts larger gifts to those who use the smaller well. Perhaps one rea son of our poverty is that we are so far slaves of parsimony. The future may reveal that God has been withholding from us because we have been with holding from Him. It can scarcely be said by any careful student of the New Testament that our Lord encourages His disciples to look or ask for earthly wealth. Yet it is equally certain that hundreds of devout souls who have chosen voluntary poverty for His sake have been entrusted with im mense sums for His work. George Mul-
THE KI NG ' S BUS I NE S S ler conducted for over sixty years en terprises requiring at least some hun dred and twenty-five thousand dollars a year. Note also the experiences of William Quarrier and Hudson Taylor, and D. L. Moody and Dr. Barnardo. Such servants of God, holding all as God’s, spending little or nothing for self, were permitted to receive and use millions for God, and in some cases, like Mul ler’s, without any appeal to men, look ing solely to God. This great saint of Bristol found, in a life that nearly rounded out a century;-that it was safe to give to God’s purposes the last penny at any moment, with the perfect assur ance that more would come in before another need should arise. And there was never one failure for seventy years! V. Superior Blessedness Kindred to this law of recompense is the law of superior blessedness. “ It is more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35). Paul quotes this as a saying of our Lord, but it is not to he found ’in either of the Gospel narra tives. "whether he meant only to indi cate what is substantially our Lord’s teaching, or was preserving some pre cious words of our Great Teacher, other wise unrecorded, is not important. It is enough that this saying has the au thority of Christ. Whatever the blessed ness of receiving, that of giving belongs to a higher plane. Whatever I get, and whatever good it brings to me, I only am benefited; but what I give brings good to others— to the many, not the one. But, by a singular decree of God, what I thus surrender for myself for the sake of others comes back even to me in larger blessing. It is like the moisture which the spring gives out in streams and evaporation, returning in showers to supply, the very channels which filled the spring itself. VI. Computation by Comparison We rise a step higher in considering God’s law of computation. How does He reckon gifts? Our Lord teaches us
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