The King's stewards

Contents

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I. The King's Stewards 3

II. The Spiritual Stock Exchange 16

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" Stewards over all the substance and possession of the king." — i Chronicles 28: 1.

This is from the swan-song of David. His great career was drawing near to its close. He had fought his last battle. He had sung his last psalm. His fingers were no longer light enough in their touch to awaken the music of the harp. Yet the soul of the man was stronger than ever.

Before he left the world David determined to make sure that the one great purpose of his life in which he had been thwarted should be fulfilled after his death. And so he called the people together. It was a magnificent array. The great soldiers of the kingdom were there, the royal family, the princes of the different tribes, and after them the men of wealth and public spirit, the stewards of the king's possessions. The strength, and riches, and honor of the nation gathered about the old king on that last great, splendid occasion. Then for the last time David stood on his feet before them to speak. And

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when did a man make a nobler speech? Poor, indeed, must be your imagination if you cannot behold him. There he stands, the grey-haired shepherd king. What memories gather about him as the people look on his face. They think of him when, as a youth, he won his spurs slaying the lion and the bear that sought to rob his flock yonder on the hills of Bethlehem. Some of the old men of that company remember how he came down to the army of Saul with a shepherd's sling in his hand on that bright morning, so long ago, when Goliath for the fortieth time strode forth from the army of the Philistines with his wicked taunt against God and his people, making a challenge that sent terror to the bravest hearts in Saul's camp. And the old men, who were only boys then, recall with tearful memories how the young David went forth with his shepherd's staff and his sling, and came back again with Goliath's sword in one hand and the head of the giant in the other. They recall the long days of exile, and some remember the hiding away in the mountains and in the caves, when David was hunted to the earth like a fox. Then they remember the crowning, and the triumph, and the growth of the kingdom.

To others there David has been more a poet than a .king. Their, souls have fed on his music as bees feed on the honey of flowers, and David the Psalmist has been to them as the voice of God, speaking to them in all the deep experiences of pain and joy,

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of health and weakness, of failure and triumph, of life and death.

Many men there are about him that recall this day incidents of that sad march when David fled into the wilderness to escape from Absalom. All that campaign comes back to them now as they look on the noble face of the old poet-king, that has on it already something of the glow of the other world so soon to dawn upon him. Oh, there is no one like David to them ! From the time he defended his lambs yonder in Bethlehem until now, where was there ever one so picturesque, so daring, so chivalrous, so brave, so undaunted, yet so gentle and so tender? a man whose very failures, whose very weaknesses, seemed to bring him closer to them, because they showed the true longing and purpose of the heart of a man who sought to keep near to God. Take all this into your thought and feel if you can the thrill of it as that group of men stand about David, the greyheaded, as he speaks to them :

" Hear me, my brethren and my people : as for me, I had in my heart to build a house of rest for the ark of the covenant of the Lord, and for the footstool of our God, and had made ready for the building : but God said unto me, Thou shalt not build a house for my name, because thou hast been a man of war, and hast shed blood. Howbeit the Lord God of Israel chose me before all the house of my father to be king over Israel forever." And then David goes on to tell that it was the purpose of God that his son Solomon should be king, and should build the temple. Then he reveals to the people the kind of a temple it is to be, and ends his address with these wonderful sentences : " Now I have prepared with all. my might for the house of my God the gold for things to be made of gold, and the silver for things of silver, and the brass for things of brass, the iron for things of iron, and wood for things of wood; onyx stones, and stones to be set, glistering stones, and of divers colors, and all manner of precious stones, and marble stones in abundance. Moreover, because I have set my affection to the house of my God, I have of mine own proper good, of gold and silver, which I have given to the house of my God, over and above all I have prepared for the holy house." Then David makes his new subscription of three thousand talents of gold and seven thousand talents of silver to> complete the temple. He has been saving this up for that purpose. Following, the old king takes up the subscription among his people. I see the glow on his face and the tears in his eyes, as he exclaims : "Who then is willing to consecrate his service this day unto the Lord?"

There was, as we would expect, a splendid response to the liberality and the appeal of the king. And after the generous subscription had been given, the historian says, " The people rejoiced, for that they offered willingly, because with perfect heart

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they offered willingly to the Lord; and David the king also rejoiced with great joy."

There is nothing finer of its kind in the Bible, or in all literature, than the old king's prayer of thanksgiving after the money had been raised to build the temple. The writer of the Book of Chronicles says that David blessed the Lord before all the congregation, and said :

" Blessed be thou, Lord God of Israel our father, forever and ever. Thine, O Lord, is the greatness, and the power, and the glory, and the victory, and the majesty : for all that is in the heaven and in the earth is thine; thine is the kingdom, O Lord, and thou art exalted as head above all. Both riches and honor come of thee, and thou reignest over all; and in thy hand is power and might ; and in thy hand it is to make great, and to give strength unto all. Now therefore, our God, we thank thee, and praise thy glorious name. But who am I, and what is my people, that we should be able to offer so willingly after this sort? for all things come of thee, and of thine own have we given thee. For we are strangers before thee, and sojourners, as were all our fathers; our days on the earth are as a shadow, and there is none abiding. O Lord our God, all this store that we have prepared to build thee a house for thy holy name cometh of thy hand, and is all thine own. I know also, my God, that thou triest the heart, and hast pleasure in uprightness. As for me, in the upright-

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ness of my heart I have willingly offered all these things; and now have I seen with joy thy people, which are present here, to offer willingly unto thee."

I have lingered so long with this picture because there does not seem to me to be anything like it in the Bible, or indeed anywhere else, to give us so clear a suggestion of our relation to God as his stewards. And that is the great theme which I want to press home upon our hearts. David had before him the men who were the stewards of all the king's possessions. But he did not tax them, forcing them to give for the building of the temple, for he knew that would not please God. He took the nobler way : he opened his own heart to them ; he told them of the longing he had had to build a palace, not for himself, but for God. He told how he had prepared for it, how willingly he poured out the great gifts which he named, and then he laid it upon their own hearts and consciences to decide, as God's stewards, what they ought to do in the case.

The point I wish to emphasize is suggested by the words of our text, " Stewards over all the substance and possession of the king." We are God's stewards. He has put great interests into our hands. They do not belong to us. We are only stewards. For the time being we control them, yet the time will come when we must give an account of our stewardship. Paul declares in writing to the Corinthians, that the one great thing about a stew-

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ii ard is that he shall be found faithful ; that he shall not come to think that he owns the goods himself, but that he shall conduct his stewardship with his thought constantly on what will please his Master, so that after a while, when his Lord shall come and call him to give an account, he shall be found faithful. In that same letter, and speaking of this very matter, Paul says that it does not much matter how men shall judge us, because they are easily mistaken, but the judgment of God, who gave us our stewardship, is what counts.

Let us think of some of the things over which we are the King's stewards. Time is one of them. God has given us these lives which we are living. Time does not belong to us. We could not hold on to an hour of it to save our souls. It is only loaned to us, or rather it is committed to us, moment by moment. We have all power over it while it lasts. We are free to do what we will in it while we have it, but we shall have to give an account of the way we use it. If we waste it, if we squander it, if we disgrace it, if we do evil with it, then we have been squandering the goods God gave us. For over these days that are passing by so swiftly we are God's stewards. Sometimes we hear foolish people talk about " killing time/' I fear that that phrase " killing time " will be a very unpopular one on the Judgment Day. Oh, if we only knew how precious time is! If we could only appreciate the

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glorious use we can make of it as God's stewards, we would not talk about murdering it in order to get rid of it.

We are God's stewards over our personal vitality; over the peculiar personal life that is in us. You may call it ability, or talent, or influence, or what you will, but it is the power of personality which is constantly either blessing or cursing the people who come in touch w T ith us. Wherever Jesus went, virtue went out of him. Wherever man or woman touched him, with the awful appeal of human need and hunger, healing power went forth. Now God has committed to every one of us as stewards the power to bless others. If we live with open heart and loving faith toward him, we shall have sympathy, and inspiration, and divine comfort to give to those who come in contact with us. It will be true of us, as it was of the man about whom the poet wrote,

" His life grew fragrant with the inner soul, And weary folk who passed him on the street Saw Christ's love beam from out the wistful eyes, And had new confidence in God and man."

We are stewards also of our money ; and not only of that, but of our power to get money. Our property does not belong to us, for all the power to acquire it, and all the health, and strength, and ability, and time that were necessary for us to come into its possession were intrusted to us by the Lord. We

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are only stewards, and must give an account again unto God as to how we have used what he has put in our hands. A friend once stepped into the office of a business man who was an earnest Christian, and found him standing at his desk with his hands full of bank-bills which he was carefully counting, as he laid one after another in a pile. After a moment, the man who had come in from the outside said to his friend, " Just count out fifty dollars from that pile of notes and make yourself, or some other person, a life member of this society " — and he went on to press his claim. His friend finished his count, and then replied, " I am handling trust funds now ! " His answer suddenly illuminated the mind of the other man, who was soliciting funds for a good cause, and he replied with the question, " Do you ever handle anything but trust funds ? " The message ought to come home to our hearts. All our funds are entrusted to us, and we must deal with them, not in a way simply to meet our own pleasure, or the pleasure of our friends, but the pleasure of God, to whom they belong. The question which Jesus put in the mouth of one of his characters in the parable of the unjust steward, is one which we should frequently put to ourselves, " How much owest thou unto my Lord ? " I am sure that if we put that question honestly we shall find that we are greatly indebted to God.

A story is told of a merchant who was a God-

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fearing man and had been very successful in business, but whose spiritual life — as is, alas, too often the case — did not grow rich in proportion to his bank account. His offerings to the Lord were but little, if any, larger than when he had been a poor man. One evening he had a wonderful dream. A visitor entered the apartment, and quietly looking around at the many luxuries by which he was surrounded, without any comment presented him with the receipts for his subscriptions to various societies, and urged their claims upon his enlarged sympathy. The merchant replied with various excuses, and at last grew impatient at the continued appeal. The stranger rose, and fixing his eyes on his companion, said, in a voice that thrilled to his soul, " One year ago to-night you thought that your daughter lay dying; you could not rest for agony. Upon whom did you call that night? " The merchant started and looked up. A change seemed to have passed over the whole form of his visitor, whose eyes were fixed upon him with a calm, penetrating look, as he continued, " Five years ago, when you lay at the brink of the grave, and thought that if you died then you would leave your family unprovided for — you remember how you prayed then. Who saved you then? " Pausing a moment, he went on in a lower and still more impressive tone : " Do you remember, fifteen years since, that time when you felt yourself so lost, so helpless, so hopeless ; when you spent day

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and night in prayer; when you thought that you would give the world for one hour's assurance that your sins were forgiven — who listened to you then?" " It was my God and Saviour ! " said the merchant, with a sudden burst of remorseful feeling ; " oh, yes, it was he ! " " And has he ever complained of being called on too often?" inquired the stranger, in a voice of reproachful sweetness. " Say, are you willing to begin this night and ask no more of him, if he from this time will ask no more of you? " " Oh, never ! never ! " said the merchant, throwing himself at his visitor's feet. The figure vanished, and he awoke, his whole soul stirred within him. " O God, my Saviour! what have I been doing! Take all, take everything ! What is all that I have, compared with what thou hast done for me? "

I would that God would give us some vision like that to arouse us to a proper sense of our dependence upon the loving kindness of our Heavenly Father. God save us from becoming purse-proud, or avaricious, or stingy, or greedy of money, for we are the King's stewards, and we are dealing only with what is his own. Surely when we remember his goodness to us, when we remember his mercy and love in Jesus Christ, we must meet him with open hand when he asks of us for the furtherance of his cause and kingdom.

II. The Spiritual Stock Exchange

" Instead of the thorn shall come up the fir tree, and instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle tree." — Isaiah 55 : 13.

" The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me ; because ... he hath sent me to . . . give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness." — Isaiah 61 : 1, 3.

" For brass I will bring gold, and for iron I will bring silver, and for wood brass, and for stones iron." — Isaiah 60: 17.

There is a spiritual stock exchange as well as an earthly one. The stock exchanges of London and Berlin and Paris and New York make so much noise, and occupy so large a space in the daily papers, that we are in danger of thinking they are the most important; but we could not make a greater mistake. The spiritual stock exchange is of infinitely more importance.

A strong and virile English author, writing recently of the power of the stock exchange in modern life, says that the roar of speculation so fills the air that it drowns all voices but its own ; and he assures us that it is this all-absorbing devotion to earthly wealth and success against which Christ utters his great protest. Christ will have his men rich, but according to a true scale of values. According to Jesus, the fool is he who is reckoning in the wrong coin, and is not " rich toward God." And our writer proceeds to show that Christ is not alone in this teaching. All the great world-systems that have really counted pronounce the same verdict. They all recognize that the true riches are in character. Plato puts material wealth a long way down in his scale of life's good. The Egyptians had a proverb which repeats almost literally Christ's saying about the treasure in heaven. Solon defined a happy man as " He who, moderately supplied with this world's goods, had done the most honorable deeds and lived temperately." Cyrus, dreading luxury, spoke of " Fertile soils as yielding infertile spirits." Socrates reminded the Athenian citizens how his one business had been to enjoin upon young and old that their chief care was not their persons nor properties, but the improvement of the soul. Rome echoes to Athens the same doctrine in the saying of Cicero, " Not to be covetous is the true riches." Ruskin's political economy is the translation into modern English of Christ's doctrine of wealth, and is summed up in one sentence : " The only real wealth consists in noble and happy human beings."

The statement is undoubtedly true that whenever any men or women put the possession of riches in the first place in their thought and struggle, just so surely do they lose the art of successful living. They lose, of necessity, the true poise of mind, the proper mental attitude toward life. Give us an age when everybody is given up to making money, and to thought about that more than anything else, and all real excellence will cease. In such an age there can be no great music, no noble painting, no profound scholarship, no glorious poetry. Heroes will be smothered to death, and martyrs for conscience' sake will live only in legends and dreams of the past.

The passages which I have selected as the foundation for our theme are rich in their illustration of God's purpose toward us. It is not to take from, but to add to, our lives that God is speaking to us in the Gospel. He comes to offer us iron for our stone, brass for our wood, silver for our iron, and gold for our brass. He sent Christ to give men beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness. Instead of the thorn of selfishness, he would have us grow up to be the fir-tree with its balsam; instead of the brier with its pricking ugliness, he would have us transformed into the myrtle with its beauty and usefulness. This is the kind of spiritual stock exchange to which God calls us.

The precious thing about God's stock exchange is that he lays it down as a foundation stone that he is

THE SPIRITUAL STOCK EXCHANGE. xg able and willing through Jesus Christ to transform every sinner who will repent of his sins and take Christ ' as his Saviour, and will give him a pure heart, and a clean life, and a beautiful personality. And God lives up to that. But, remember, the condition is the utter giving up of our sins. An Irishman once went to confess to the parish priest, and obtain absolution. He was told to kneel at a chair. While on his knees the penitent allowed his eyes to wander about the room, finally resting on the priest's gold watch, which lay on a near-by table. It was but a moment before the watch was ticking away quietly inside Pat's blouse. The priest, returning, commanded him to acknowledge the sins for which he desired absolution. " Father," said the rogue, "I have stolen, and what shall I do?" " Restore," said the priest, " the thing you have stolen to its rightful owner." "Do you take it?" " No, I shall not; you must give it to the owner." " But he has refused to take it." " If this be the case, you may keep it." And so Pat was given full absolution, and reverently crossed himself and went away with an easy conscience. Now, is it not true that there are many men and women who live much like that? They are always in a chronic state of repentance, and yet they never really repent. They are always asking God to forgive them their sins, and yet, deep down in their hearts, they are con-

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scious that they expect to commit the same sin again. There can be no exchange of spiritual gold for the brass of sin under such conditions.

There was a man who was an officer in the church, and who got drunk, and could not get any relief for his conscience. A faithful fellow church-member went to see him. The man who had been intoxicated said to him, " I cannot recover my peace of mind." They knelt down and prayed. Said the kind friend, " Tell the Lord all about it." In a stilted sort of way he began, " O Lord, thou knowest that in a moment of unwatchfulness thy servant was overtaken in a grievous sin." " Nonsense," said the wise friend; "tell the Lord that you got drunk." He rose from his knees and said he could not. His friend went away, but his awful conviction of sin grew worse and worse. Finally he sent for his friend to come back. When the latter came he told the offender, as before, to pray and tell the Lord all about it. It was quite a while before he could do it. But at last he blurted out, " O God, I don't know what to say. I am ashamed of myself. I went and got drunk ! " With that his heart broke and the flood came, and with the flood and the storm there came the rainbow, and then the new heaven and the new earth, and his soul was stilled with peace. You can get peace in the same way. You will never get the forgiveness of your sins so long as you wrap up your sin in fine language and try to take the sting out by making it seem better than it is. Repent of your sin. Look at it in all its ugliness, in all its slime, in all its loathsomeness, and turn away from it, and tell God about it. Ask him, for Christ's sake to forgive it, and he who came to give you beauty for ashes will hear your prayer.

Perhaps you are seeking to live the Christian life, but find yourself constantly shut out from the best life of a Christian by a temptation to which you have yielded, to think more of yourself than of the good of others. The great sin of good people is selfishness. The thorn branches and brier patches of human life about us would rapidly be changed into the sweet-smelling balsam and the fruitful myrtle, if only we Christians would live unselfishly the Christian life. That can overcome everything. The late Dr. Maltbie D. Babcock was passing one day a large hardware store and, remembering a number of articles of which he had need, entered. The clerks were probably busy, and doubtless inattentive. He waited a few minutes and no one took notice of him. Instead of going out in vexation, or rebuking them, he stepped to a shifting-ladder on one side, and, mounting it, took from a box several articles he desired, and placed them on the counter; then rolling the ladder along a little, he ascended again and got other articles, depositing them as before. This he repeated. Then, getting them together, he sought, and at length secured, the attention of one of the

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clerks, who came forward, no doubt a little ashamed of the treatment the stranger had received, and evidently in no very agreeable mood.

" I want these articles. How much will they be?"

" Two dollars and a half," the clerk said, very crossly.

" Well, you may send them to the Rev. M. D. Babcock, 14 East Thirty-seventh street. And now, what is your name ? "

The clerk, sulky and apprehensive, replied, "Bradley."

" And what is your first name? "

Unwillingly and slowly, " Charles."

" May I ask one other question — do you go to church ? "

" No, I'm no church-goer."

Dr. Babcock then put his hand pleasantly on the clerk's shoulder, and said with enthusiasm, " Now, Charlie, I want you to come down to my church, Fifth avenue and Thirty-seventh street, next Sunday. I shall preach, and I shall be real glad to see you. I shall have an eye out for you."

The next Sunday " Charlie " came, with one or two of his friends, and the Sunday after that every clerk in the establishment came, and they continued to attend from that time.

But for the " love " which " is not easily proyoked," and which " seeketh not her own," such a result could not have been possible.

A large and beautiful life can never be lived selfishly. Neither the highest purity nor the highest happiness can ever be had except in the sunshiny atmosphere of unselfishness and service.

Edward Rowland Sill sings this message in his own clear way :

" My tower was grimly builded, With many a bolt and bar, ' And here,' I thought, ' I will keep my life From the bitter world afar.'

" Dark and chill was the floor, Where never a sunbeam lay, And the mold crept up on the dreary wall, With its ghost touch, day by day.

" One morn, in my sullen musings, A flutter and cry I heard ; And close to the dim and rusty casement There clung a frightened bird.

" Then back I flung the shutter That was never before undone, And safely kept till its wings were rested The little weary one.

" But in through the open window, Which I had forgot to close, There had burst a gush of cheery sunshine And a summer scent of rose.

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" For all the while I had burrowed There in my dingy tower, Lo ! the birds had sung and the leaves had danced From hour to sunny hour.

" And such balm and warmth and beauty Came drifting in since then, That the window still stands open wide, And shall never be shut again."