193 SERMON XIX. THE UNJUST STEWARD. LUKE XVI. 8. "And the lord 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." THE singular and paradoxical form of this passage of Scripture was undoubtedly designed to excite our attention to the important doctrine it contains. No understanding can be so dull, no ignorance of the character of our divine Lord and the principles of His holy religion so gross, as to conceive that He meant to praise the treachery and fraud of the unjust steward, or to encourage us to practise dishonesty and deceit, and to provide for our temporal wants by violating the principles of justice, encroaching on the rights and property of our neighbour, subverting the foundations of social union, and outraging the laws of God. But our divine Lord confined His applause to the wisdom of the unjust steward, manifested in the clearness of his foresight, the adaptation of his means to secure his ends, the perseverance of his exertions, the consistency of his conduct. These are the characters which true wisdom displays in effecting any assigned purpose, and in these it is our Lord pronounces, that "the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light." The votaries of pleasure, of fame, of ambition, of avarice; all these display more wisdom, more energy, more steadiness, in their exertions to secure the objects they pursue, than those who believe themselves children of the light, who profess to pursue the favour of God and the glories of eternity. To you, my beloved friends, who profess, and I am persuaded with sincerity profess yourselves Christians; who profess to make the precepts of the pure and Holy Jesus your rule, His VOL. IV. example your guide, His favour your supreme hope; and who look forward to His sentence for the decision of your eternal destiny; to you I would say with the most awful solemnity, consider and imitate the wisdom of the unjust steward. As he employed the powers confided to him by his master to gain the favour of his lord's debtors, so that when put out of his stewardship they should receive him into their habitations; in like manner be it yours, so to employ your earthly stewardship entrusted to you by your heavenly Master, that when you are called on to give account of your stewardship and to resign the talents he has confided to your charge, you may by His sentence of approbation be received into eternal habitations. And on this topic we, the ministers of religion, may call on even men of the world, to judge of the fairness of our conclusions and the reasonableness of our demands. You who are ever anxious to increase your fortune, extend your interest, and advance your power; who make it your business and your pride to render every action of your lives, and every occurrence which fortune presents subservient to your plans; and who suffer no difficulty to deter, no indulgence to allure you from the steady pursuit of the permanent and important though future and distant advantages of yourselves and your families; you will join with us, in reprobating and despising in the professors of religion, the want of similar wisdom as to events the most important and dangers the most imminent, which that religion brings within our view. And in the first place, mark the foresight of the unjust steward. The moment he was reproached with his breach of trust, and warned that he must resign a power he had so shamefully abused, he instantly discerns the full extent of the danger to which he is exposed; he weighs with impartiality those circumstances in his own character, which would render the reverse of fortune with which he was menaced most distressing and intolerable, and traces all the consequences that must result from his condemnation with sagacity and clearness. "He said within himself, what shall I do, for my lord taketh away from me the stewardship? I cannot dig; to beg I am ashamed." And the same foresight is perpetually observable in the children of this world. In all the varieties and vicissitudes of life, they foresee every danger, they calculate every hazard, they weigh and balance every advantage. Are they candidates for public fame, or political power? They watch the progress and calculate the strength of their rivals, they observe and take advantage of the tendency of public opinion, and guard against the dangers of public obloquy. Are they engaged in pursuit of wealth? Every speculation is formed with the most cautious deliberation, and with the most careful view of all the probabilities of loss and gain which attend it. The dangers of disease and death are estimated and guarded against. The probable length of human life at every age and in every situation, is calculated and provided for, with a clearness and deliberation which attest, that a conviction of other men's mortality is deeply engraven on the worldling's heart. Nor, in their view of the subject, can we charge them with being forgetful even of their own. Their wills, their settlements, would refute the calumny. By these they bind down generation after generation, and distribute their possessions with such extended precautions, as prove that they are determined to prolong the exercise of their own dominion over that treasure which they loved, for many years after their own bodies shall have mouldered into dust. All these things display a wisdom, a foresight, which, however widely its object differs from that to which religion directs our views, yet deserves our imitation. Let me entreat you, my beloved friends, to consider it well. You are yourselves stewards of the King of kings, the Lord of nature, the Giver of every blessing you enjoy. He has animated you with the breath of life, preserved you in health and vigour. He has offered to your acceptance his beloved Son as your Redeemer, your Guide, and your King. He has laboured to allure you by his mercies, to rouse you by his judgments. He has placed within your reach all the means of grace, and displayed before you the bright hopes of glory. And let me ask you solemnly and seriously, how have you employed and improved these various gifts? Is there nothing in the word of God, nothing in the example of your Redeemer, nothing in the whispers of your own conscience, that warns you that you have wasted and misapplied these various gifts and graces? If there be any sincerity in your professions, you look forward to that great and final crisis, when the secrets of all hearts shall be revealed at the judgment-seat of Christ; when every thought, and word, and deed, must pass in review before the God of purity; when you shall be called to account for every talent entrusted to you by that divine Lord, who will assuredly condemn the unprofitable servant. Now let me entreat you to reflect; do you on these subjects show even the least degree of that wisdom, which the children of this world display on every subject of temporal importance? Are you seriously solicitous to provide for this great crisis of your fate? Does it enter into your reflections in solitude? Does it regulate your conversation in company? Does it influence your schemes of conduct? Does it determine you to pursue this object, and to avoid that? To select one pleasure, and to shun another? To court one description of company, and avoid the opposite? To study this book, and reject that? In a word, does the prospect of a judgment to come seriously influence the regular tenour of your lives? This inquiry, my fellow-Christians, will furnish an infallible test of your religious wisdom. If you profess yourselves Christians, and do not seriously believe a future judgment, where is your sincerity? If you seriously believe, but do not seriously prepare for it, where is your wisdom? Let us descend to particulars. The principal talents entrusted to man are his property, his time, his understanding, his means of religious improvement. Examine as to each of these, my fellow-Christians, whether you employ them as faithful "stewards of the manifold grace of God."* The talent to the application of which our divine Lord directly applies the instruction resulting from the conduct of the unjust steward, is that of property-distributed in very various degrees it is true amongst the sons of men, but in every degree attended with proportionable responsibility. This is strongly enforced on us in the context by the Son of God and Judge of man, when, after remarking that the children of this world are wiser in their generation than the children of light, he adds this solemn admonition, "And I say unto you, make to yourselves * 1 Pet. iv. 10. friends of the mammon of unrighteousness; that when ye fail, they may receive you into everlasting habitations." The necessity of attending to this admonition, thus established by a statement so unspeakably important, I cannot too deeply imprint on your minds. "He that is faithful in that which is least, is faithful also in much; and he that is unjust in the least, is unjust also in much. If therefore ye have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will commit to your trust the true riches? And if ye have not been faithful in that which is another man's, who shall give you that which is your own?" -that eternal possession appropriated to reward for ever the faithful servants of your heavenly King. Thus it appears, my friends, that the perishable possessions of this life are entrusted to us to try our fidelity, to ascertain our fitness for being endowed with the permanent possessions, the high trusts, the exalted dignities of an eternal world. And the decision on our discharge of the trust here reposed in us will depend, not on the quantity entrusted to us, but on the use to which we have applied it, on the spirit which has animated, on the intention which has guided us. The petty tradesman, who can scrape together but a few pounds, may for this be as sordid, as unjust, as the plunderer of provinces, the pilferer of millions. The poor widow, who with a truly charitable heart cast her "two mites"* into the treasury of mercy, gave what was more valued in the sight of God than the accumulated treasures of the rich, the gifts perhaps of thoughtless profusion, or vain-glorious ostentation. On the acquisition therefore, or the employment of property, this single question sums up all; have you acted as the servants of God, or of mammon? Have you been impelled by worldly-mindedness alone, or directed by religion? Have you hoarded or squandered, as a selfish avarice or an equally selfish voluptuousness instigated; or, in your acquisitions and your expenditure alike, have you been controlled and directed by a constant reference to the happiness of your fellow-creatures and the glory of your God? On this topic it is as unnecessary as it is impossible to go into • Mark xii. 42. |