THE UNJUST STEWARD. (Luke 16: 1-13.)

BY PERKIOMEN.

"There was a certain rich man." Who is he, and what is his name? "Mammon,”—I hold-not God, as is the fashion to say. The "rich man," in the first verse, is just as little the good Lord, as the other "certain rich man, which was clothed in purple and fine linen," means HIM, in the nineteenth verse. (Please refer to both; reflect and inwardly digest!) Mammon is the richest man I know. No matter how he acquired his wealth-he has it to a certainty. He-under or after God Himself-is the Great-Grand Possessor. He is the "Prince of this world." The devil, as a money-changer, as a "business-man," is ever and very fitly called MAMMON.

"Which had a Steward." Who is that Steward, pray? Man. Every man? Every unregenerate, unemancipated man, I say, is an employee of Mammon-a clerk-underlying steward of the great "Boss." Hence the very expressive term "worldling," as applied to all who live, toil and die in the exclusive service of this world's Usurper, my Lord Mammon. How many "stewards" does he not need and secure, indeed!

"And the same was accused unto him, that he had wasted his goods." When might that have occurred? When might it repeat itself? Plainly, just as soon as God's Spirit enters the Mammon-steward's heart and exiles the "Weltgeist," makes him disloyal towards his old master's interest, a defaulter, if you please, in Mammon's Bureau.

Should any one wonder, by whom he is informed on or "accused" at "headquarters," I am prepared to answer-by his fellow stewards. They are jealous and quick to detect the least treachery (as it must strike them), in the diverting of the proceeds, accruing from the world's goods, away from this Mammon's interests. How mad and wasteful seems the benevolent soul to a thorough-going worldling! Who more loud-mouthed in pronouncing him a bad housekeeper? The loyal worldling wants the steward impeached, who would dare to appropriate even the smallest portion of Mammon's treasures to the interest and glory of the next world.

"How is it that I hear this of thee? Give an account of thy stewardship; for thou mayest be no longer steward." The old

usurper, Mammon, will, of course, not tolerate a defaulting clerk. The accusation, investigation and dismissal follow each other rapidly. In Mammon's vast establishment, there is no pardon for the least overstepping of the rules and regulations of his "Business College." He is a brilliant financier. Being such, how can you expect him to wink at a misappropriation of funds? "This is my world," says the Great Market Master. "All that is therein belongs to me. By an almost primeval defalcation I became the owner. To beautify and enhance it in every way, is my ambition, and the duty of my legions of underlings and stewards. All hands must labor for the materialistic millennium. I will not tolerate the least bad-housekeeping. Not a cent for churches, or for any establishment, or enterprise, or movement, that aims at the interest of another world, sometimes called Heaven. I have no concern for that rival economy, save to withhold all supplies from out of my own treasury. To pray, labor and offer for the welfare of any other country, at an expense of this my own world, that is to be displaced as a traitor. Millions for earth and time, but not a farthing for any region outside or beyond. Reflect and obey, and hand over your port-folios."

"What shall I do? for my Lord taketh away from me the stewardship; I cannot dig; to beg I am ashamed." The Christian's perplexity now breaks in upon his soul. He is in this world, and

cannot leave just when he would. He sees the propriety of Mammon's words. He, too, feels that it is Mammon's world, however he may have come to own it. He believes, that a day will be, when the usurper will be dethroned and the legitimate king reign; but that day is, alas! not yet. "To remain in and under Mammon's yoke; to labor as a poor slave in the mine; to dig-dig -dig for Mammon, and my own bottomless tomb, to boot-that 1 cannot." All the works of man will prove abortive. Self-reliance in the matter of opposition to Mammon, is God-defiance, and means defeat. Like the man in the mine, the more diligently he toils, the deeper down he goes. "To beg I am ashamed." To continue in Mammon's service, as thousands are doing, and rely on an occasional and especially a final "Lord, Lord open unto us"that is the essence of meanness in the eyes of an upright soul. Whilst man's digging will but lower him, his begging abases him no less. "Of myself I can do nothing." Granted. Granted. "I can do all things through Christ strengthening me." Hence, it follows, that divided far from one another, the "digging" and the "begging" amount to nothing, but united and clasped in hands, they constitute a happy conforming to that exhortation, "work, while God worketh within you."

"I am resolved what to do, that, when I am put out of the stewardship, they may receive me into their houses." Some one part lay on him to do; freely will he do that. Some other part others must and will do for him. His success depends, then, on an effectual co-operation. It is ever so with us with you and me and

all.

We can make many friends by befriending our fellows. They will befriend us in turn. In the great end of salvation, not one of us but that needs all the aid and comfort that God will render us, through whatever channels He may choose. In renouncing our long false allegiance to Mammon, we feel especially grateful to the friends we know are of like mind with us. We are anxious to conciliate them. So the steward felt.

But the mode and means strike us sometimes as wrong. The parable sounds as though Jesus really were placing a shrewd and even swindling character before us, that we should imitate him. Not at all so!

What stroke of business policy was his? He compromised with his former sole master's debtors, charging one with but fifty barrels of oil, instead of for one hundred, and another for eighty measures of wheat, when the true bill was one hundred.

Now, although the steward's charity in one direction seems to be vitiated by an act of apparent fraud in the other, I hold there was no fraud committed, no injustice done, nothing wrong perpetrated.

And this is the way we prove it. The world and all that is therein is of God originally; was made by Him and for Him. Satan, by deceit and fraud, diverted the whole economy into his own service and holds over it as a usurper. His title is one of violence. and wrong. The Christian mind sees and would change as far as in him lies, this system of iniquity. He rescues out of the Mammon-king's hands whatsoever he may and can, and reappropriates it to the service and glory of God, the original and true owner. And how can he more fitly make such reprisals than by reconverting all, after the good and wholesome law of mercy and charity? This was the very gist of the steward's conduct; and wherein lay the wrong? If I know a famous robber's den, in which my neighbor's goods and gold are concealed, and I capture every item out of the bad man's power to restore them to the proprietor, am I therefore a robber too? It has always seemed to us small talk to say, "Jesus merely commends the steward's cunning and address, not his morality." Surely our Lord is not so poor in the art of invention, in the faculty of conceiving, or in the use of words, as to be obliged to paint for us a half sinner and half saint as a model.

"And the Lord," MAMMON, "commended the unjust steward, because he had done wisely; for the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light.' But how's that now? Did MAMMON indeed then applaud an underling of his, who had deserted his standard and outwitted him? Even so. The prince of this world rallies men as long as he is able. He would have his servants true to himself, and in order to hold them as such, nothing is too false and wicked and mean to use. But, depend upon it, Mammon sees and confesses to the fact, that whosoever uses and appropriates the usurped goods of this world in and for the glory and honor of the Almighty God, is truly wise. "Unjust steward," Mammon may indeed call him, so long as he hopes thereby to prevent him from impoverishing himself; but, after acts of charity and love are consummated facts, he, yea he, cannot refrain from regarding him as a prudent steward rather. He and his shrewd servants in their hearts oftentimes commend the acts of liberal, alms-giving Christians, more than even those do, who are really of the kingdom and family, at least, " children of light."

Let but a large donation, legacy or gift be laid for some charitable end and the enhancement of God's kingdom, the secular spirit of this world, the press and tongue of Mammon, are the foremost in words of praise. Ah, Mammon is false and treacherous to the core; but he is not stupid and dull. "Bad devil," that is a normal saying; but the phrase "dumb devil" is abnormal and absurd.

Why has this parable the sobriquet, "Unjust Steward?" Why unjust, or in what particular? Let it be known rather as the parable of the prudent steward. Perhaps there will be more rich men ready to imitate him and devote their wealth more largely to the glory of another and higher Lord than MAMMON, great as he must be acknowledged to be just now. Then, perhaps, some of us may quickly take to heart the meaning full, but almost forgotten, saying: "I say unto you, Make to yourselves friends of the Mammon of unrighteousness: that when ye fail, they may receive you into everlasting habitations."

A query: Why is ALL wealth styled "the Mammon of Unrighteousness? Are there no honest and honorable men in the world, who are rich and well-to-do? And whether you have little or much, it is still the unrighteous mammon! God made it; we must have it; no matter for all that, it is the mammon of unrighteousness, nevertheless. Again, why?

The answer: All possessions, in the atom or in the bulk, whether owned by the poor man or rich man, and whether gotten by fair means or foul, are mammon of unrighteousness, because of the lapsed and usurped condition of the world, in consequence of

the Fall; and will continue to remain such, in so far and so long, as they are not used in the interest, and service and glory of the true Lord-Almighty God. The penny no less than the pound, must be diverted out of the mammon-channel, and turned into the course, on the banks of which stands the mill of God.

"He that is faithful in that which is least"—in the controlling of his pocket-book, so as to return to God, the interest due Him, "is faithful also in much," in the using of his Prayer-Book. And so too, when reversed.

Nor are such hearts, as know not how to properly use and invest what is not their own truly and forever-gold, silver and lands— such hearts are not capable either, rightly to take and use what is verily designed as their own-Salvation and eternal riches.

God or Mammon; never, God and Mammon! Only as we see, that this world, lapsed and presided over as it is by mammon, no less than the world beyond, both are essentially God's; only as we virtually devote body and purse to God, no less than soul and spirit; only as we by faith, realize an actual Redemption from Mammon's power, of whatever fell under his hand, in consequence of the Fall; only then can we see the prudence of the steward so graphically drawn by the Lord.

OUR BOOK TABLE.

EMILY ASHTON; or, Light Burdens Lifted. 312 pp. Price $1.00. The motto of the book is: "Bear ye one another's burdens and so fulfil the law of Christ." Gal. 6: 2. This, it claims to be the burden of its story.

FOLLOWING ON TO KNOW; or, Old Days at Hethering; pp. 230. Price, 75 cents. The book claims to be taken from real life. The reader is assured, "that the work of the imagination has been permitted only in the drapery of the story." Still likewise it is a story, and for that reason we do not like it so well as

THE DUCHESS RENEE and her Court; pp. 200. Price, 50 cents. This is a biography, full of living facts and instructive events, plainly and pleasantly narrated. It claims to be little more than a compilation, but its reading is none the less interesting.

These three volumes have been published by The American Tract Society, 150 Nassau Street, New York.