Learning from the World

“The children of this world are wiser in their generation than the children of light.” — luke xvi. 8.

How are these words born in the Master’s teaching? They receive their life and colour from the parable of the unfaithful steward. You remember the tenor of the parable. There is a certain man whom our Scotch friends would call a factor, and his business is to administer the affairs of an estate which is not his own. He superintends it for another man, guarding and nourishing the produce, and disposing of it to his master’s advantage. He is the telephonic centre of all the instructions which pass through the estate. He is the medium of all its industrial transactions. Much money passes through his hands. And this man begins to hold the money to his own use and profit. He busily seeks to feather his own nest at the expense of the laird.

He covers up his embezzlements by the cooking of his accounts. He makes a nice thing of it. And all seems to go merrily, and the trustful laird knows nothing about it. Until one day a very simple incident, almost an accident, just a trifle, acts like a spring on a closed door, and the door flies open, and all the hidden secrets are disclosed. The trusted factor stands convicted of unfaithfulness. He is condemned to render a detailed account of his stewardship, to make good the losses, to fill every gap out of his own resources, and to get out of the office.

Now what shall the factor do? He is reduced to comparative poverty. There is nothing to which he can turn his hands. He has not served apprenticeship to any particular trade. He cannot take to the land, for he has not the physical strength for a farm labourer. He cannot demean his proud presence to the act of begging from door to door. What shall he do so as not to be cast upon the streets? After much thinking and planning he hits upon a bold and ingenious device. He will go round and make friends of all the folks who are in debt to the laird. He will halve all their accounts. “How much do you owe the laird?” “Fifty pounds.” “We will make it twenty-five.” And to the merry satisfaction of the debtor the bill is made out and the account is settled; and so on, and so on, until all over the countryside there are men who are friendly disposed towards him, and who will at any time offer him the most genial hospitality. “When I am turned out of house and home,” he says to himself, “there will be open doors among these kindly folk, and I shall have food and bedding until I can turn about and see my way.” And that is what he does. He seeks to secure to-morrow by adding the most ingenious fraud to those already recorded in the shameful pages of to-day.

Well, this factor is not an admirable character. He is fraudulent to the very heart of him. He is as undependable as a rotten branch. And yet in all his falsities how nimbly and energetically he uses his faculties and powers! He brings out all his mental tools, and he concentrates all the forces of his will in the effort to save himself from disaster. He is a rare villain, and he is consummate in his villainy; he moves in the way of his evil purposes with a full and undivided personality, every one of his powers being commandeered to serve his evil ends.

Such is the factor. And in this parable the Lord looks at him. He looks at this son of darkness — so clever, so keen-witted, so alert, so purposeful, so enterprising. And then He turns His gaze away, and fixes it upon the children of light. He turns from the worldly man to the religious man. He turns from the man whose primary quest is money to the man whose primary quest is God, and He is evidently not impressed. “How do you fare?” He seems to say to the children of light. “How do you fare in comparison with the children of the world? Where is your foresight? Where are your happy devices? How many tools are you using in sacred enterprise? How many faculties, and how much strenuousness are you investing in the service of your Lord?” ... And when our Master had looked upon the one, and then upon the other, He quietly uttered this most tremendous judgment — “The children of this world look further ahead in their generation than the children of light.”

Now, what is the significance of this teaching of our Lord? Our Lord is greatly surprised that those who make religious professions do not put as much into their sacred business as other men put into the fraudulent business of the world. And the suggestion of the teaching is this — that He expects us to be as keen, as clever, as ingenious, as creative, and as pushful in the course of the Kingdom of God as other men are in the evil service of Mammon. He wants us to be as expert and as sharp-witted in winning souls as others are in winning worldly gains and favours. He wants us to be as open-eyed and ready in extending the frontiers of His Kingdom as vigilant empire-builders are in broadening the boundaries of a State.

Or, to put it all in a phrase, He expects us to use all the tools in our bag, every one of them, and every one is to be like a polished and keenedged blade. He would have us make a real business of His business, to be really in it, to be altogether in it, and to be always in it, so that by the fertility and vigour of our enterprise we put the children of the world to shame.

Now let us see how this would work out. I am to bring into my religious life all the faculty and power which the steward used in his clever life of disloyalty and sin. I am face to face with the arduous problems of the higher life. How can I get into ampler communion with God?

How can I get into a fuller and more prosperous commerce in divine things? How can I get into a conscious fellowship with God, which shall be broad, and deep, and constant, and by what means may the great ocean highways in my being become crowded with mystic transports — freighted in one direction with homage and aspiration, and in the other direction carrying precious cargoes of wisdom and strength? Well, let me diligently study the unjust steward, and let me note what faculties he employed in his successful but ill devices, and let me employ the same faculties in seeking to enlarge and strengthen my fellowship with God. What, then, were the distinctions of this man? I think they were these. I think he used his reason. I think he used his imagination. I think he used his ingenuity. And I think he used them all with courage and decision. And it is the will of our Lord that we should, in all these ways, strengthen our religious life, and make it victorious and impressive in all our intercourse with our fellow men.

Well, then, first of all I am to use my reason. In seeking to enrich my religious life I am to deliberately think about things. I am to sit down quietly and think things out. There is a very famous sentence of Matthew Arnold’s in which he counsels us “to think clear, feel deep, and bear fruit well.” Let us take the first part of the counsel, which Matthew Arnold evidently regards as the spring and secret of all the rest, and let us think as clearly as we may about God, and the character of God, and the will of God, and the things of God. Let us sit down to the business, and let us give time and quietness to it. Let us think ourselves on to God’s side of things; let us think ourselves to His revealed points of view, and to His angles of vision. In the book of the prophet Isaiah, God speaks in this wise — “My thoughts are not your thoughts.” Well, by the aid and counsel of the Holy Spirit, let us reverently seek to think ourselves into His way of thinking, and fill our minds with the divine aspect of things. By assiduous thinking we can alter our thinking, and by changing our thinking we can transform our lives. “Be ye transformed,” says the word of God, “by the renewal of your mind.”

I was in a cloth factory the other day, where they were weaving the broad West of England cloth. The factory was turning out different qualities of cloth, and I was deeply interested in the dissimilarities in the raw material, and in the varying qualities of the threads as they entered the looms. Even an amateur could feel the difference as he handled the raw material, and he could detect grades of refinement in the values of the threads. Change the raw material and you transform the fabric. And the mind is the loom in our life, and our thought is the raw material, and our thoughts are the threads which we weave into ideal and conception, and into finished mental habits and fashions. And O, what poor stuff we weave! What shoddy of raw material we gather together, and what rotten threads go into the loom! Even in our thinking about God our mental stuff is often very cheap and poor,- and the poverty is expressed in the fabric and character of our life. Well, let us put in better stuff. Let us change our raw material. Let us raise the quality of our thinking about God and the things of God. That is the very purpose of the New Testament. The New Testament is full of raw material of thought for the transformation of life. But the trouble is, we don’t put it through the loom; we don’t think it out and think it through. We play with it, we toy with it, as I toyed with the raw material in the West of England factory the other day. We don’t think it through. We don’t think in a great way of God, and therefore our lives do not become great.... This false steward set about thinking, and thinking hard, and in this matter of thinking the children of the world are often in their generation wiser than the children of light.

But this man not only used his powers of reasoning about things, he also used his power of imagination. He pictured himself in the homes of his devoted friends after he had been cast out of the estate. His faculty of realization was enlisted in the service of his plans, and imagination added fuel to his enthusiasm. And we, too, are to use our imagination in seeking the highest interest and welfare of our souls, and the religious welfare of mankind. There are two ways of employing the imagination. We can use it in apprehending the reality of things as they are, or we can use it in apprehending the reality of things as they might be. For instance, it is imagination that helps us to realize the content of a word which in itself only presents a superficies. For example, take this little phrase from the autobiography

97 of the Apostle Paul. He says he was “in cold oft.” We can skim the word in ordinary thinking, and we shall no more realize its content than a swallow, dipping its wings in a lake, realizes the depths beneath. We have to set our imaginations to work. We have to climb up the long road from the Cicilian plain, and toil over the Taurus mountains in the depths of winter, with a blizzard blowing, and all the time being poorly clad! “In cold oft.” We are to feel the biting bitterness of the phrase. That is one use of the imagination. But there is a second use in which the imagination is used to realize things as they should be. Here is a sentence which reveals to us a man who is using his imagination in this way: “I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of Heaven from God.” It was a vision of things as they might be. By the power of the imagination this man is visiting the Utopia of the Kingdom of God. Or, take another sentence:

And O that a man would arise in me,
That the man I am may cease to be.

That man is using his imagination in seeing himself transformed and lifted into a heightened life. Now, I think the majority of Christian people do not use this faculty half enough; in many lives it seems altogether dormant. And we are great losers by the negligence. We are purposed by our Lord to live with our ideal self, to rise from our beds with it, to walk and talk with it, to go into battles with it, and to hold on to it in triumph or defeat. See yourself as Christ would have you be, and live with the vision. Get your ideal before you, in vivid light and colouring, a strong, attractive, winning personality,” A B, as Christ would have

him be.” and let the shining presence accompany you in all your changing ways. It is because we do not see our future eminence and glory that we do not draw it near. We do not use our imagination, and in this matter the children of the world are wiser in their generation than the children of light.

Well, then, thus far have we got in the analysis of this man’s character; he did some hard thinking, and he vigorously exercised his imagination. But now, may we not truly say that he put ulenty of wits into his device? I am perfectly sure if we had known him we should have said he was an ingenious beggar, arranging, and planning, and plotting, a perfect expert in short-cuts, a past-master in practical dexterities. Everybody knew this man to be thoroughly wide awake, and they knew, further, they had to be up early if they wished to take him in. And it was this wide-awakeness that Jesus laid hold of, this inventiveness, this subtle cleverness in devising novel ways for accomplishing his ends, and He said to His disciples,” If a man of the world is so keen, so acute, so sharp-witted in planning contrivances in the smaller warfare of the world, how dexterous and ingenious the children of light ought to be in seeking the unsearchable riches, and in establishing the Kingdom of their God! Surely, our Master suggests, of all people the children of light ought to be the most mentally fertile, the most prolific in devices, using all their wits to serve and glorify their Lord.

Well, do you think we reveal such ingenuity? Do you think we abound in clever enterprise? Are we very inventive in noble plans and devices as fellow labourers of the Lord? Let us cast a look at two or three of these wide-awake folk, and let us judge ourselves by their standard. Here, then, is one, and this is what he has to say: “I am become all things to all men, that I might by all means save some.” Do we not feel the

ioo sleepless inventiveness that works behind these words? He plans this device to win this man, and this other device to win another man, and this third device to catch a third man — “that I might by all means save some.”

But for our second example, let us cross from the first century to our own time, and from Asia Minor to Harrow-on-the-Hill. John Smith was an assistant master at Harrow School for twenty-five years. Perhaps if I just read to you the Memorial Inscription in the School Chapel you will get to know something of the man —

To the Honoured Memory of

The Reverend JOHN SMITH, M.A.,

Assistant Master from 1854 to 1880.

Humble, Patient, Faithful, Loving,

To the Young a Father,

To Friends in Joy or Grief a Brother,

To the Poor, the Suffering and the Tempted

A Minister of Hope and Strength;

Tried by more than common Sorrow,

And upborne by more than common Faith.

His Holy Life interpreted to many

The Mind which was in Christ Jesus,

The Promise of the Comforter,

And the Vision granted to the Pure in Heart.

Well, then, was there anything very ingenious and inventive in the religious life of John Smith, and in his warfare for the Kingdom? Yes, he abounded in ingenuities. Here is a sentence which seems to tell us something: “I like to walk down Fleet Street,” he once said, “where everyone seems so bent on business that they may need my prayers to help them.” Do you not call that sanctified inventiveness? Think of that strong, gracious personality, moving along Fleet Street, and silently bringing divine influence to bear upon any hard-pressed man or woman he might pass on his way. Many a weary heart would feel a sudden lightening, as if a sweet air from the mountains had visited the faint. They would not know what had happened, but the secret was just here — John Smith had passed by.

Then how ingeniously and inventively he arranged his private intercessions. All was methodically planned — one morning given to the Civil Services, another to the Army, another to Schools and Colleges, another to the Clergy and the Church, and so on throughout the week. He says that in his petitions he used the Army List, “which tells me where my old Fourth Form fellows are now stationed,” and Whitaker’s Almanack. After all this I am not surprised to read this sentence in his biography: “Of God’s answers to his prayers he had no shadow of doubt. They were an habitual experience.”

I should say that this son of light was as keen and ingenious in his line as the unfaithful steward was in his. And it is in varied kinds of inventiveness that we are thus to serve the will of God. We are to be splendid strategists. We are to put into our campaign the salt of wit and wits, and infuse everything with a noble sort of sagacity, and a clean and shining sanity. “To draw souls out,” says Henry Drummond, himself one of the cleverest and most inventive of all the servants of Christ, “to draw souls out one by one, to buttonhole them, to take from them the secret of their lives, to talk them clear of themselves, to read them like a page of print, to pervade them with our spiritual essence, and make them transparent, this is the spiritual diagnosis which is so difficult to acquire, and so hard to practise.” But Drummond acquired it, and he practised it, as I truly well know, and by all manner of sacred and subtle devices he sought and found the hearts of men.

And, side by side with this bit of Drummond, let me put this bit of Charles Kingsley, “I try to catch men by their leading ideas, and so draw them off insensibly to my leading idea. And so I find — shall I tell you? — that God is really permitting me to do His work.” ...” I try to catch men by their leading ideas “; that man is a keen fisherman in life’s waters, and by all sorts of consecrated devices he is engaged in catching men. But many of us put no such ingenuity, no varied sagacity into our service, and the Lord declares His judgment that the children of the world are in this matter wiser than the children of light.

Our Lord calls us to be thoughtful, and imaginative, and inventive in proclaiming the good news of His Grace, and in seeking to bring our social and national life into vital conformity with the life and purpose of His Kingdom. Think of all the daring and multiform propaganda for bringing the life of our people into conformity with the devil. Has the organized Church of Christ — the whole Church — has she no adequate strength and ingenuity of resource? For instance, can she not get at the truth about things? Can she not unearth things, and explore and expose them? In the word of God she is called “the arm of the Lord “; can she not thrust the arm deep down into the wrongs and perversities of our social life, and rake out the secret crookedness, and then hold that same arm aloft with all the secret things gripped and exposed so as to be seen by everybody? And having exposed, then by the holy grace and blood of Jesus, and by the consecration of every form of inventive sagacity, let us straighten that which is crooked, and redeem and strengthen the lost.

This unfaithful steward, in the service of Mammon and fraud, exercised his reason, his imagination, his ingenuity, his courage, his decision. In the exalted cause of the Lord, and in His holy name, let us also consecrate our reason, and our imagination, and our ingenuity, and let us dedicate ourselves to the service with quenchless courage and decision.