his entreaties. Parts of the Bible may be difficult to understand: but these are not difficult, éxcept to practise. In truth, were they as easy to perform as they are to understand, we should no longer have need of praying for the coming of the kingdom of God. The kingdom of God would be come already; and earth would be transfigured into heaven. Moreover while you seek for the seeds of wisdom in the Bible, you must not allow them to lie there: you must pick them up, and try to sow them in your own hearts, weeding your hearts at the same time, by examining them carefully in the light of the Bible, and plucking up everything growing therein, that the Bible condemns. But neither will the seeds we sow grow up, nor shall we be able to root up the weeds, unless God blesses our labours: and his blessing can only be obtained by diligent and fervent prayer. Therefore we must follow the command of St James, who tells us that, if we lack wisdom, we must ask it of God, who giveth liberally. All who lack wisdom must ask it of God; that is, all men who have ever lived: for all lack it. No one had ever enough of it: no one has enough of it to learn its value, but wishes earnestly for more. What remains then, my brethren, seeing that we all lack wisdom, but that we all unite in praying for it to Him who alone can give it, to God, the eternal Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost? O Lord, who hast taught us by thy holy apostle, St James, to pray to thee for wise and understanding hearts, we kneel before thee in humble. trust that, what thou hast commanded us to ask for, thou wilt grant us out of the treasury of thy mercies. Therefore, O Everlasting Wisdom, the Maker, Redeemer, and Governor of all things, let some comfortable beams from the great body of thy heavenly light descend upon us, to enlighten our dark minds, to quicken our dead hearts, to kindle them with the love of thee, and to guide our steps along the path of thy laws through the gloomy shades of this world, to that region of eternal light and bliss, where thou, most blessed Jesus, the Wisdom of God, and the Power of God, reignest with the Father and with the Holy Spirit, in glory and majesty, world without end. 396 SERMON XXIII. THE UNJUST STEWARD. LUKE XVI. 8, 9. 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. And I say unto you, make to yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness, that, when ye fail, they may receive you into everlasting habitations. THESE words are from the parable of the unjust steward; and there are two points in them by which, owing to a want of clearness in the translation, many persons have been a good deal puzzled. How comes our Lord Jesus, they ask, to commend the dishonest steward? How again comes he to bid us make friends of the mammon of unrighteousness? or, as most readers nowadays are likely to understand the words, to make the mammon of unrighteousness our friend? If these two diffi culties are removed, the parable is clear enough; and removed they may be in a very few words. In the first place it is not our Lord Jesus Christ, who commends the unjust steward, but the steward's own lord or master; for this is the word which we should use nowadays: it is the steward's master, who, being struck by the cleverness he had shewn, commends it; just as people now might perhaps speak with admiration of the cleverness and skill displayed by a forger, in copying a very difficult bank note, without in the least intending by so doing to justify or excuse his crime. We should all agree in condemning that. All would agree in saying it was a sad pity the man had turned his cleverness to such a bad purpose. Still a person may do a bad thing in a sharp, handy manner; and we might praise the manner of doing it, while we utterly reprobated the thing itself. Just so is it with the steward's master in the parable. He can never have meant to praise his servant for defrauding him of his rents: but he was struck with the cleverness of the rogue's contrivance; and that he commended. As to the other difficulty, it arises altogether from a change in the meaning of the little word of ; which our forefathers often used, where we should now say by. Thus in the Bible we often find such expressions as "taught of God," "warned of God." Here however, though in these days we should say "taught by God," "warned by God," still, as the words cannot mean anything else, there is no uncertainty. But there are many passages in which it is otherwise, and we may easily fall into mistakes. For instance, when we read in the first chapter of St Matthew, "Now all this was done that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet,"at first thought we should all take these words to mean, "what was spoken concerning the Lord by the prophet;" whereas their real meaning is, that "all this was done to the end that what was spoken by the Lord through the mouth of his prophet might be fulfilled." I have said thus much about this little word, because I believe very few persons read the New Testament, who do not stumble at my text: and numbers, even among those who have had what is called a good education, turn away from it in sad perplexity, unable to conceive how Jesus Christ could command them to make the mammon of unrighteousness their friend. And assuredly he does not so command them. What he bids us do, is to make friends by, or by the help of, the mammon of unrighteousness; that is, to employ the mammon of |