II. And in the second place, as there never was a period of greater wealth, so never was there an age of greater poverty. Never before were Dives and Lazarus brought into closer contact. The reasons for such a condition of things we may leave to the economist; the political remedies to the statesman. But here again the fact is noteworthy. Misery and squalid poverty abound and overflow hard by the highway of palaces; starving thousands teem in all the great centres of human industry. These are the contrasts which meet us daily, and never more prominently than at the present moment. However the statesman may look at these things, for the Christian heart such a phenomenon must have its lesson.

III. And once again, a worse result yet remains behind: I mean the portentous increase of luxurious living among those to whom money has been committed—an evil which has spread far below those whom we commonly term the wealthy classes. Self-indulgence in its more refined and therefore in its more seductive forms, personal sloth and indolence, a shrinking from the hardness which goes to make up the manly Christian character, sometimes even a theoretic speculative defence of such luxury, as though it really were the end of human life-this is a phase of society which in this place, at least, no one will deny to be on the increase; which no thinking Christian man can fail to deplore. Account for it how you will, the fact remains. The great gift of God (for it is His gift still), the great gift of God, His blessing on the material wealth of England, has resulted through the unfaithfulness of its recipients in two most deplorable issues-the greatly increased luxury of those to whom the wealth has been committed; the greatly increased misery of those from whom in His providence it has been withheld.

I trust that, speaking at such a season as this, when self-knowledge ought to be bearing fruit in self-denial, such thoughts as these will not be met and stifled by any one with the impotent commonplace defence which we mostly encounter in the world. I trust, further, that speaking to Christian hearers, I may assume two certain unquestionable positions on these matters: first, that the gift of money is a gift of God; and secondly, that as such a gift, it is to be occupied for the Master's There are higher truths than those of the economist, and deeper principles involved in the constitution of society, than the accumulation and distribution of wealth.

use.

This evening's subject has to do more with the use than the acquisition of money. I am speaking most likely to some at least who have had little to do with its acquisition, but have something to do with its distribution; to some, probably, who are learning their experience as to money's value and money's use. It is a lesson, like most other lessons of life, to be gathered by experience; and, like most experimental lessons, it involves some loss and some suffering in the process. Still, Christian principle may rule in the expenditure of small incomes in young hands. We may not expect one on the very threshold of life to be an accomplished economist, but we may reasonably look for care and for self-denial as from those who count themselves the stewards of the Lord Jesus Christ.

For we may be met, and continually are met, with this answer, "We have but little to spend, and little "opportunity for waste; warnings about the danger of "riches belong to others, we are not exposed to their fascinations." If some such thought comes across your mind, put it away as a mere blind and deceit. So do we find in a country village; every member of the con

gregation will refuse to apply the parable of Dives, and all count themselves to be in the blessed condition of Lazarus, because they are mostly poor men, and one or two only of the whole number fare sumptuously. And so one class after another shifts upwards the burden, and no one fits it to his own shoulders, no one being in his own estimation a rich man; each one, according to the old definition, counting "enough" to mean something more than you have got.

My brethren, this is one of the devices of the tempter, by which he seeks to blunt the sharp cutting edge of the Word of God. Experience in ministerial life will tell you, as it has told some of us already, how easy the plainest and most direct teaching of Holy Scripture may be thus rubbed off. We should tell our flock that Dives was not condemned by reason of his riches, nor Lazarus saved by reason of his sores; but that faithfulness or unfaithfulness to the gifts committed to us, be those gifts great or small, is the only test of our stewardship. So specially of the gift of money. We may run upon the excuse that we are none of us rich men, that we have just enough for our needs, and not always that; and so we may lose altogether the sense of our responsibility, forgetting that the owner of the one talent was arraigned before his lord's tribunal; and the one talent, hidden and profitless, was the cause of his condemnation, when they that had five and two entered. into the joy of their Lord.

off

As practical teaching upon the uses and abuses of money, let us take two passages of God's Word, one from our Lord's own mouth, one from that of His Apostle's. St. James in very solemn words, which our age of all ages has need to take to heart, condemns the heartless unproductive expenditure of his own day: "Your silver and your gold is cankered, and the rust

"of them shall be a witness against you: and shall eat "your flesh as it were fire. Ye have heaped treasure "together for the last days." On the other hand, our blessed Lord's encouragement comes to aid us in the use: "I say unto you, Make to yourselves friends of “the mammon of unrighteousness; that, when ye fail, "they may receive you into everlasting habitations "." Both verses are full of help, the warning and the consolation. For it is a consolation to know and to believe that as money is the gift of God, so the possessors of money may, if they try, find a way of making the miserable dross, which turns to the condemnation of so many, abound to the increased happiness of the possessor through eternity.

I. And first, of St. James's condemnation. How may we be heaping up treasure, evil treasure, utter condemnation, for the last day? In two ways surely in reckless expenditure on ourselves, in ignoring and putting aside the wants of our fellow-men. Both are the crying sins of our generation; both may be the sins of those who, it may be, have not overmuch to spend; both are habits fostered in early days. "To live in pleasure “on the earth and be wanton,” “to nourish the heart as "in a day of slaughter," is of course the special temptation of those who have just begun to learn what the satisfaction of spending is, and have not yet learned its responsibilities. The day comes in after life most surely, if we be thinking men at all, when the remembrance of old spendthrift habits and reckless self-indulgences does "eat the flesh as it were fire." As of other sins, so also of this, which at the time you little count for a sin, the bitter ashes remain in the mouth when all the sweetness of the apple of Sodom is departed. The days of hardness, it may be penury, family cares, and the sweat a St. James v. I. b St. Luke xvi. 9.

of the brow bring home vividly enough the truth, that, even in this life, we inherit the sins of our youth, God in His mercy giving us the grace of penitence, even though it came too late to undo the wrong.

And side by side with personal self-indulgence ever goes the heartless neglect of other men's needs. An age of excessive wealth is, I said, an age also of exceeding poverty. Here again however the economist may reason and explain, to the Christian heart it is a terrible and ghastly contrast. It is a contrast, too, all the more telling to those before whose eyes it is presented, just because they, who ought to be most keenly alive to it, are for the most part wholly unconscious of its existence. Multitudes walk the streets of our crowded cities all their life, in the pursuit of business or pleasure, with all the appliances and enjoyments of wealth, all unconscious of the seething mass of ignorance, vice, and misery only a few yards from their own homes. Lazarus does not lie with his sores exposed on our threshold; he is put out of sight as an uncomely object, and we overlook him. Now and then some uncomfortable political outbreak, now and then some horrible newspaper revelation, some exposure of the condition of a casual workhouse ward, some disclosure of a mingled tangle of sin and crime, wakes us up out of our fool's Paradise only that we may sink back into our sleep again. My brethren, they whose daily calling sends them into the dwellings and to the bedsides of the lowest of the poor, can tell you something of the unequal distribution of the boasted riches of this land.

Nay, you have but to penetrate for yourselves into one of the courts or alleys of this city of yours, to find such pictures ready painted to the life. The contrast between the young Oxford spendthrift and the miserable