Money
Money is one of our best friends and worst enemies. The love of it is the root of all evil; the use of it the root of all good. The mere possession of money is no index to character. Some men are rich, like Abraham and Job, because they are industrious and honest. Their credit makes it easy for them to acquire wealth. Others are poor, like Moses and Elijah, Peter and Paul, Moody and Spurgeon, because their mission in the world is other than making money. Their poverty is an index to their faithfulness. For them to have turned aside to money-making would have been to disobey God.
Other men are rich because they are dishonest. They have wrecked corporations, or cornered the food market, that they might fill their coffers. Other men are poor, again, because they refuse to adopt the tricks of trade, or to enter into conspiracies to defraud. They chose to lose money
63 that they may save themselves. They have come to their poverty honestly. The poverty of others, however, is an index to shiftlessness, or dishonesty. They are poor, because they refuse to work, or have lost their credit by dishonest dealing.
If, therefore, you can learn how a man has gained his wealth or his poverty, and then how he uses it, you have gained the index to his character. If one owns money, he commands a mighty force for Christ and the church, but if money owns him, he is the slave of a heartless master. If, on the other hand, he has the manly qualities which have been developed by honest struggles in poverty, he is rich and powerful without money.
It is to be expected, therefore, that God, in speaking to men through an inspired Book, Stewards of should have something to say Capacity about money. And the message
of the Bible is very definite. It says to every man of wealth: “You owe to God the capacity to make money.” We read in I Samuel 2:7: “The Lord maketh poor and maketh rich.” And His method of enriching is given in Deut. 8:18: “Thou shalt remember the Lord thy
God, for it is He that giveth power to get wealth.” It is plain from this scripture that the talent for making money is the gift of God, to be used, like other gifts, for His glory: and making money for God’s glory is as holy as praying. We need to hear, not less about the “sacred desk” but more about the sacred ledger, the sacred shop, the sacred store. Let us not pull the sacred down to the level of the secular, but lift the secular up to the plane of the sacred. Efface the distinction between sacred and secular by making everything sacred. Make money as religiously as you pray.
The Bible says again to the man who makes money: “Keep this capacity for making money within the limits of honesty and Honestylove.” Competition means war, ^“” l-ove
and the ethics of war is so low that deception is a virtue. Military men call it strategy; politicians call it diplomacy, but the English of it is lying. An officer who succeeds in deceiving an enemy and luring him into a trap, which causes his capture or death, is praised and promoted. A Russian general said “I can die for my Czar, and, of course, I can lie for him.” International diplomacy has become such a science of deception that Bismark advised young diplomats to tell the truth on all occasions, because no one would believe them.
The ethics of the battlefield and the political arena has been transferred to trade, so that A Life many men of business do not hesia Living tate to deceive in order to make
larger profits. A man in an inquiry meeting declared that he could not be a Christian and do what he intended to do next wek. His profits depended upon labeling second-class goods as first-class. Such a man may make a living, but he cannot make a life. He builds up a fortune, while he tears down his character. The blood of his own soul is upon every dollar of his profits. He floats his business while he drowns his soul, for “They that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and hurtful lusts that drown men in destruction and perdition.” His standard of ethics is profit and loss. Whatever pays is right; whatever loses is wrong. He is a moral suicide. God’s standard is the Ten Commandments and the Golden Rule. The business man who adopts this standard is rich without money, while he who rejects it is a pauper with his millions, for “a man’s life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth.”
The Bible also says to the money-maker. “Use your money in doing good.”” Charge them that
are rich in this world that they
do good; that they be rich in
good works.” The method of doing good is defined by the word “ready to distribute, willing to communicate.” “Remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how He said. It is more blessed to give than to receive.” (Acts 20: 35). To get and hold is to become an octopus, with tentacles that take in, but never give off. It is to become a Dead Sea, with no fish in its waters, an ugly blot on the landscape, the octopus of geography. To give as we have received is to become a Sea of Galilee, with pure water full of life, a gem of beauty. Giving is a cleansing process. “Give alms of such things as ye have, and behold all things are clean unto you.” (Luke 11:41). Wealth, however acquired, becomes foul with selfishness, if no portion of it is used in doing good. More impure than the sewers of the city is the hoarded wealth of the misers who simply pile up riches and stand guard over the pile. It putrifies and fills the atmosphere with the miasma of meanness. To such men the message of the Bible is: “Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you. Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are moth eaten. Your gold and your silver is cankered; and the rust of them shall be a witness against you, and shall eat your flesh as it were with fire.” (James 5:13).
If money has been accumulated by defrauding the hireling, one needs to read further: Nobility of ‘’ Behold the hire of the laborers
Motive ^]^Q have reaped down your fields,
which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth, and the cries of them which have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth “(James 5:4). Such is the experience of those who make and hoard money simply for the sake of hoarding. Let every money-maker ask the question: “What is my motive in making money?” Has it become a great game? Is it simply war or play? Do I wish to make money just as a football team wishes to win by making a higher score .^^ Is my motive simply to excel, and that people may say that I own more money than others.’* If so, my picture is drawn for me by John Ruskin in the following words:
“The first of all English games is making money. That is an all-absorbing game, and we knock each other oftener in playing that than in football, or in rougher sport. And it is absolutely without purpose. No one who engages in that game ever knows why. Ask a great money-maker what he intends to do with his money. He never knows; he does not make it to do anything with it; he gets it only that he may get it.” What will you make of what you have got “you ask.” Well, I will get more,” he says, just as at cricket, you get more runs. There is no use in the runs, but to get more than other people is the game; and there is no use in the money, but to have more of it than other people is the game.”
Such money-making without motive, or with low motive, cannot make manhood. It simply develops meanness. I have read of a Scotch laird who compelled his servant to pay him a shilling a week for working in his own garden, that he might enjoy with the recreation the pleasure of accumulating. A man who had heaped up a large fortune, it is said, while on his death bed gave a thousand pounds to a benevolent object.
While the committee were drawing the papers, the dying miser said, “Gentlemen, will you not allow me ten per cent for cash payment?” They agreed, and the miser died, pleased with the thought that he had made a hundred pounds by a sharp bargain.
These may be extreme cases of meanness, but making money for the sake of making money is apt to result, sooner or later, in just such a character.
The final and most emphatic message of Jesus is Make your money immortal. “Lay up for Making yourselves treasures in heaven.”
Immortal” Make to yourselves friends by
means of the mammon of unrighteousness, that when it shall fail, they may receive you into eternal tabernacles.” Rich men are exhorted to lay up for themselves a good foundation against the time to come, that they may lay hold upon the life which is life indeed. While God gives us all things richly to enjoy in this world, He would have us cultivate “other worldliness.” Seek to transmute your money which is seen and temporal into character which is unseen and eternal.
How can this be done most effectively.? How shall I give my money so that I shall be most richly blessed, and be the greatest How to
blessing to others? The answer
is simple. Give Scripturally. Learn what the Bible teaches on this subject and do that. In Luke 11: 42, Jesus said, “Ye tithe mint and rue and all manner of herbs, and pass over judgment and the love of God: these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone.” “These ought ye to have done” is Christ’s endorsement of the principle of tithing, and the Christian can have no higher authority. The Mosaic law demanded that one seventh of the time and one tenth of the income should be devoted to the Lord; and the gospel never falls short of the law in its requirements, but rather goes beyond it. The Sermon on the Mount reveals that the gospel demands of the Christian more than the law. The law says “Thou shalt not kill,” but the gospel says, “Thou shalt not hate,” etc., etc.
One tenth is the minimum, while we should give in freewill offerings as much more as gratitude may prompt. Let every young convert begin his Christian life by adopting this biblical method of laying aside one tenth of his income to be used in other ways than in support of himself and family. Do this every week as far as possible. “On the first day of the week, let every one of you lay by him in store as God hath prospered him” (I Cor. 16:2). Remember that Jesus stood over against the treasury and watched how they gave, and He still watches how rather than how much we give. The widow gave with the spirit of loving sacrifice, and this manner of giving counted for more with Christ than the abundance of the wealthy. Her two mites were really more than their larger gifts, because they meant more self-sacrifice. Indeed, Christ seems to take no account of the amount, but records only the loving sacrifice we make in giving. Such giving is an act of worship in which we express to God our gratitude and praise.
John Wesley’s motto was, “Make all you can; save all you can; give all you can.” If you make and save with a view to giving, your labor is as religious as your prayers. “What are you doing this morning.’’” asked a neighbor as he entered a blacksmith shop, while the smithy was striking the hot iron on the anvil. “Preaching the gospel to the regions beyond,” was the reply, as he struck the iron a little harder, and made the sparks fly further. And the labor of this humble man was transfigured by the glory of a high and holy motive.