e use of it, and still more about its perils and the
need there is for a revised estimate of its worth. Following the example
of Christ, it is the last point of which I wish more especially to
speak. But before coming to that, it may be well briefly to recall some
of the things which Christ has said touching the use of wealth. Wealth,
He declares, is a trust, for our use of which we must give account unto
God. In our relation to others we may be proprietors; before God there
are no proprietors, but all are stewards. And in the Gospels there are
indicated some of the ways in which our stewardship may be fulfilled. I
will mention two of them.

(1) "When thou doest alms"--Christ, you will observe, took for granted
that His disciples would give alms, as He took for granted that they
would pray. He prescribes no form which our charity must take; we have
to exercise our judgment in this, as in other matters. Obedience is left
the largest liberty, but not the liberty of disobedience; and they who
open their ears greedily to take in all that the political economist and
others tell us of the evils of indiscriminate charity, only that they
may the more tightly button up their pockets against the claims of the
needy, are plainly disregarding the will of Christ. If what we are told
is true, the more binding is the obligation to discover some other way
in which our alms-giving may become more effective. The duty itself no
man can escape who calls Christ Jesus Lord and Master.

(2) But wealth, Christ tells us, may minister not merely to the physical
necessities, but to the beauty and happiness of life. When Christ was
invited to the marriage-feast at Cana of Galilee, when Matthew the
publican made for Him a feast in His own house, He did not churlishly
refuse, saying that such expenditure was wasteful and wicked excess.
When in the house of Simon the leper Mary "took a pound of ointment of
spikenard, very precious, and anointed the feet of Jesus," and they that
sat by murmured, saying, "To what purpose is this waste? for this
ointment might have been sold for above three hundred pence and given to
the poor," Jesus threw His shield about this woman and her deed of love:
"Let her alone; why trouble ye her? She hath wrought a good work on Me."
These words, it has been well said, are "the charter of all undertakings
which propose, in the name of Christ, to feed the mind, to stir the
imagination, to quicken the emotions, to make life less