And he
said unto him, Take thy bill, and sit down quickly, and write fifty.
Then said he to another, And how much owest thou? And he said, An
hundred measures of wheat. And he said unto him, Take thy bill and
write fourscore. 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.
This parable has always been considered a difficult one to
understand. Fathers and Divines, in all ages, have tried to explain
it in different ways; and have never, it seems to me, been satisfied
with their own explanations. They have always felt it strange, that
our Lord should seem to hold up, as an example to us, this steward
who, having been found out in one villainy, escapes, (so it seems,
from the common explanation) by committing a second. They have not
been able to see either, how we are really to copy the steward. Our
Lord says, that we are to copy him by making ourselves friends of
the Mammon of unrighteousness: but how? By giving away a few alms,
or a great many? Does any rational man seriously believe, that if
his Mammon was unrighteous, that is, if his wealth were ill-gotten,
he would save his soul, and be received into eternal life, for
giving away part of it, or even the whole of it?
No doubt, there always have been men who will try.
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