• I. The Sense of Stewardship
• II. The Scope of Stewardship
• III. The Secret of Stewardship
• IV. The Material Content of the Spiritual
• V. The Total Stewardship of Money

      "Where there is no vision the people perish." (Proverbs 29:18.) So the writer of Proverbs warned all succeeding generations against spiritual blindness. While literally vision it a matter of eyesight, spiritually there are those who "have eyes but see not." They lack spiritual apprehension, insight and foresight. Failing to see beyond the immediate they miss the ultimate. Not looking out to wider horizons and bigger worlds they are cribbed, cabined and confined. Seeing no world beyond this one, they do not catch life's deeper meaning. Vision is the secret of expanding life. Important among all the visions that make for a life of vision is the vision of stewardship. A true Christian outlook gives to us

      Of old a peculiar method of freeing slaves prevailed. A slave who coveted freedom would hoard his poor wages until he had saved the price of his redemption. This he would deposit in the temple-treasury, and then his master must accompany him thither and accept it from the priest's hand in the presence of witnesses, thus selling his slave to the god. The slave thereby passed into the god's possession. He was the god's property and his liberty was thenceforward guaranteed. He was the god's slave, "bought for freedom," and it would have been sacrilege had he ever afterward been enslaved to another master. Strangely the slave was now free although not his own. The Apostle Paul said, "Ye are not your own. For ye are bought with a price." (1 Cor. 6:19-20.) We are not our own for we are bought with a price. Our lives and all that

we have are not ours to do as we like with them. We are bought out of the bondage of self-ownership, selfish interest and self-service to enter into the service of Him the bondage of whose loveliness is perfect liberty.

      In European feudal days, a fief was the holding of land on condition of military service. The land was held on trust. Sometimes an abbot to secure protection would hand over his land to a nearby lord and receive it back as a fief. King John of England, under embarrassment, handed over his kingdom to the pope and received it back as a fief. There was a surrender and then a handing back as a trust. So we surrender ourselves and our all to our Lord and then all is handed back to us as a trust. We are stewards.

      This is a bondage which gives us true freedom. The sense of stewardship turns life into a mission. Life is enriched, lifted and inspired by the sense of responsibility. May be we have all sung, "I would be true for there are those who trust me." Being trusted helps to make us trustworthy. As Christians we all know there is One Who trusts us and depends on us. God's purposes are achieved by God and those who co-operate with Him. The sense of stewardship endows life with purpose and fills us with the joy of privilege. It is indeed a privilege to be a steward of Him Whom kings serve.

      With this sense of stewardship our vision ranges out to

      Stewardship is not confined to a special class of servants or to a particular trust.

      All Christians are stewards and all that we touch in life's varied activities and relationships is a trust.

      Life itself is a gift of God. It is for our use and not abuse. The organ of life as we know it is the body. When this body is worn out or destroyed, this life ends. As life is a trust, the body as the organ of life is a trust. Paul reminds us that the body is the temple of the Holy Spirit. A temple is a sacred trust. In his plea for consecration the

      Apostle says: "I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service." (Rom. 12:1.)

      If in our work or play, pleasures, eating and drinking we abuse the body, we are failing in our stewardship.

      Even if we do not possess anything else, we all possess time. When the bell rang at the end of the period for an examination, a student complained that he had not had enough time. The examiner and supervisor very promptly retorted, "You had all the time there was." That is true of all of us. We have all the time there is. What do we do with it? How do we use it? Do we waste it?

      I one day remarked to a neighbour that there were things I did in my own time to which the smart observation came: "Do you regard any time as your own? Surely all time is a stewardship." That is really true. Even what we call our own or leisure time is a stewardship. Leisure beyond the requirements of health and efficiency is a poor stewardship of time. Time frittered away or used to no purpose is a neglected trust. The stewardship of time calls for a wise division between vocation, extra ventures of service, and leisure.

      The service of Christ calls for a wide variety of gifts and ministries such as organising ability, capacity for youth leadership, teaching ability, the gift of friendship and pastoral work, musical talents, etc. All these are given to us on trust. A need and the ability to meet a need constitute a call to the task.

      It may be easy to think of time and talents as trusts because they are obviously gifts, but our treasure is something we earn by our own efforts. It is due to our diligence

and the accumulation of it is due to our thrift. Therefore, it is our own to do as we will with it.

      The acquisitive instinct fills us with an urge to gather and hold. The instinct of self-preservation finds great satisfaction in wealth as a means of security. The instinct of self-display is gratified by the opportunities of demonstration that money affords. The instinct of self-assertion finds expression in the power that wealth gives. Nature is all for getting and holding. Love of wealth readily blinds us to the stewardship of treasure. In this connection the old adage comes true: "Love is blind."

      All natural resources are the gift of God. "The earth is the Lord's and the fulness thereof." God has committed it to the care of man and each generation holds it on trust from God for each succeeding generation, and holders of natural resources hold them in trust for all others. In the ultimate there is no such thing as private property in natural resources.

      Where there is no sense of stewardship the result is the dust-bowl, deforestation without afforestation, and all forms of exploitation of natural resources, getting and no giving.

      A farmer on one occasion said to me that he felt he wanted to leave his farm more productive than when he took it over. It was both his privilege and responsibility to discharge a trust.

      Long ago the writer of Ecclesiastes made a plea for diligence in all things: "Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might." The great inspiration to diligence in our daily work is to regard it as a stewardship.

      Brother Lawrence said that our sanctification does not depend on changing our works, but in doing that for God's sake which we commonly do for our own. "I put my conversion as a lad into-the polish on my father's shoes," said Samuel Chadwick.

      Dr. Leslie Weatherhead has pointed out that God called Peter from a fishing business, and Matthew from an office, and Livingstone from a loom, and Chalmers from a plough, and Moffat from a garden, and Mary Slessor from a mill, and they became immortal; but, if the world is to be filled with the glory of God, He must have His ministers in all these places, not only called from them. If we are to he ministers in our daily tasks it is necessary that we regard our vocation, whatever it is, as a trust and ourselves as stewards.

      William Carey said: "My business is the kingdom of God. I mend shoes to pay expenses." We appreciate the suggestion that the kingdom of God is the primary business of every Christian, but we must not make the mistake of thinking the kingdom is not promoted and expressed in the mending of shoes. Under God our vocation is a stewardship.

      "And the Lord said unto Cain, 'Where is Abel thy brother?' And he said, 'I know not: Am I my brother's keeper?'"

      In the prophecy of Ezekiel we read: "So thou, O son of man, I have set thee a watchman unto the house of Israel, therefore thou shalt hear the word at my mouth, and warn them from me. When I say unto the wicked, O wicked man thou shalt surely die j if thou cost not speak to warn the wicked from his way, that man shall die in his iniquity but his blood will I require at shine hand." (Ezek. 33:7-8.)

      No one text need be quoted from the New Testament to carry through this suggestion of responsibility for our fellowmen. It is perfectly clear that within the Christian framework not only can no man live to himself but he ought not to try. Every man is his brother's keeper. Our fellowmen are our trust. At last our Master will ask each of us, "What have you done with those whom I committed to your care?"

      Success in anything requires enthusiasm and diligence. These are the essential ingredients of an efficient stewardship.

In one of the most practical chapters in the New Testament Paul includes the admonition to he "Not slothful in business; fervent in spirit; serving the Lord." (Rom.12:11.) This translation of the first phrase, "Not slothful in business," suggests an application to our commercial life. This is quite appropriate as an admonition, but later translations show the wider application. The word translated "business" means "zeal," so the phrase may well read, "Not lacking in zeal." Moffat renders it, "Never let your zeal flag." It is a call for diligence in all things.

      Paul goes on to call for fervency of spirit. The word translated "fervent" literally means "seething" or "boiling." Here is an urge to enthusiasm. Professor Seeley described Christianity as an enthusiasm. The Greek origin of the word suggests being filled with the gods. It is a kind of intoxication. Someone has well said that the world is waiting for God-intoxicated men. Paul exposes the secret of enthusiasm and diligence in the last part of his admonition: "Serving the Lord." The vision of the Lord and the motive of service to Him in all things provide the secret of stewardship. In line with this, when writing to the Colossians, Paul wrote: "Whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men." (Col. 3:23.)

      Dr. Alexander McLaren, the great expositor, sums up the matter in an inimitable way. "Think when your hands begin to droop, and when your spirits begin to be cold and indifferent, and langour to steal over you, and the paralysing influences of the commonplace and the familiar, and the small begin to assert themselves--think that you are serving the Lord. Will that not freshen you up? Will that not set you boiling again? Will it not be easy to be diligent when we feel that we are 'ever in the great Taskmaster's eye?'

      'On the bells of the horses shall be written, Holiness to the Lord,' said the prophet, and 'every bowl in Jerusalem' may be as sacred as the vessels on the altar. All life may flash into beauty, and tower into greatness, and be smoothed out into easiness, and the crooked things may be made straight, and the rough places plain, and the familiar and the trite

be invested with freshness and wonder as of a dream, if only we write over them, 'For the sake of the Master.' Then whatever we do or bear, be it common, insignificant or unpleasant, will change its aspect, and all will be sweet. Here is the secret of diligence and of fervency, I set the Lord always before me'."

      In his book, "Along the Indian Road", Dr. Stanley Jones observes that when a group of ministers in a certain city wrote to him and suggested that he should not talk to them about such things as the forgiveness of national enemies, but instead speak to them about spirituality, he concluded that the Christ of dogma was there, but not the Crucified.

      It is possible to understand and emphasise spirituality in such a way as to draw the teeth of Christianity. We may construe it in such a way as to divest our religion of practicality and challenge. We can spiritualise it away.

      Christianity is essentially a spiritual religion, but its spirituality is down to earth. This is part of the significance of the Incarnation. "The Word became flesh and dwelt among us." The idea, the word, the ideal must always become flesh. The spiritual must be earthed.

      Daniel Douglas Hone, a noted spiritualist of the 19th century, rubbed shoulders with tile potentates of the earth. He lied for weeks at a time in the palace of the Czar of Russia, and during one of these sojourns he dematerialised some of the royal jewels. They were discovered later in his hip pocket.

      The attempt to dematerialise the spiritual is as vain as the attempt to dematerialise jewels. True spirituality will ultimately be found in pockets and purses and all other repositories of safekeeping.

      While moral values are of a different order from material values, the former presuppose the latter and in some sense

the spiritual is based on the material. For instance, if I pick up a feather which is of no material value and put it in my pocket, even though it be taken from private property, I shall not be accused of stealing; but if I pocket an apple off an orchardist's tree I am guilty of thieving, because, among other things, the apple is of material value. We see that honesty as a moral or spiritual value is related to material value.

      The giving of something which has no value is no gift, and the giving of that which costs us nothing is not true stewardship.

      It is said money speaks all languages and there may be some cynicism in the assertion that money talks. However else money talks it does communicate to the world what we are. What we do for money and what we do with our money tells the world what we are. It is an outward and visible sign of an inner state.

      "Maintain the spiritual glow" is Moffat's rendering of Paul's call for spirituality. We have already noted that "fervent in spirit" means "boiling in spirit." The steam that rises from boiling water may he used to drive a great engine or simply to make a shrill whistle or loud noise. Similarly the steam of a boiling spirit may issue in great tasks or it may simply result in pious feelings or phrases punctuated with loud hallelujahs and amens. True spirituality is more than mere feelings. It is action. A crowd had gathered around a carter whose horse and cart had been damaged beyond repair in an accident. Like others around him, one spectator was loud in expressing his feelings of sympathy when John Bright's father, who was in the crowd, turned to him and said: "I feel five pounds, how much dost thou feel? "

      In a vision, the angel of God said to Cornelius: "Thy prayers and shine alms are come up for a memorial before God." (Acts 10:4.) Here we see the kinship of prayers and alms. Prayer and money stand side by side in true Christianity.

The giving of money is not less a spiritual act than praying. Both are acts of worship. He who gives casually worships casually, and he who refuses to give fails to worship.

      One virtue after another is set forth in the 12th chapter of Paul's letter to the Romans. He opens with a call for consecration. The vision of God is the stimulus of virtue, and surrender to Him is the secret of goodness. In a comment on this chapter' Dr. Alexander McLaren writes with his usual mastery: "The great principle which covers all conduct, and may be broken up into all the minuteness of practical directions is self-surrender. Give yourselves up to God; that is the Alpha and Omega of all goodness and wherever that foundation is really laid, on it will rise the fair building of a life which is a temple, adorned with whatsoever things are lovely and of good report. So after Paul has laid deep and broad the foundations of all Christian virtue in his exhortation to present themselves as living sacrifices, he goes on to point out the several virtues in which self-surrender will manifest itself."

      In encouraging the Corinthian Christians to give, Paul draws attention to the generosity of those of Macedonia and makes this significant observation that "first they gave themselves to the Lord." (2 Cor. 8. 5.) This is always first in the ladder of virtue.

      As surrender is the secret of goodness, practical virtue is the seal of surrender. The only proof of surrender is practical committal. "Not everyone that saith unto me, Lord, Lord . . . but he that doeth the will of my Father." (Matt. 7. 21.) The secret of stewardship is surrender to the Lord and the seal of surrender is faithful stewardship. We are more than dubious of the surrender and spirituality of anyone who is unscrupulous in his way of making money, prodigal in spending it, and mean in giving it.

      When we speak of the Christian stewardship of money, I believe most people immediately think of giving. However,

giving is only one aspect of the stewardship of money. It has been aptly suggested that there are three questions which will be asked of each of us at the judgement concerning money: How did you make it? How much did you make? How did you use it?

      There are three pertinent questions which should serve as tests of our money making. Is this the way Christ would make money? What does making money this way do to others? What does making money this way do to me? How searching are these questions if applied to slave trading, slave holding, child labour, sweating, the manufacture and sale of intoxicants the ownership of slum tenements, gambling, the cornering of markets, brewery shares, armament shares, etc. as means of making money. It is obvious that the making of money in any way that exploits the weaknesses and disadvantages of our fellowmen, or making money without any contribution to need or well-being, or making money without effort, or making money out of anything that injures our fellowmen stands condemned under the three test questions.

      It is necessary that we recognise that good giving never atones for bad making. A modern Robin Hood regularly distributed toys at a children's hospital, but the virtue of his generosity was undermined when it was learned that he stole from his employer to secure the money with which to buy the gifts. This may be regarded as a strange perversion, but the combination of bad making and good giving can be subtler.

      I recall commenting on the large gifts of a well-known man who headed up a very large and successful business, whereupon my friend observed that whenever he read of the large gifts of the gentleman in question he could never escape the thought of what the business methods of this benefactor's large business had meant to him in a small business. This does not involve a criticism of large scale business as such. The latter may be the result and means of efficiency and better service to the public. But if a business becomes large and successful as a result of

questionable methods and if its largeness is used to take unfair advantage, the bad making is not atoned for by good giving. The end does not justify the means. The lottery, the sweep, the raffle--making of money by any form of gambling--is not justified by provision for social benefits.

      Freedom is a value according to our capacity to use it. The same is true of suffering, power and money. Our Lord warned us to beware of the deceitfulness of riches. How necessary is that warning. The great danger is that the possession of money may destroy our capacity to use it. It is true that the making of money may make character, but the possession of it can easily undermine character. There is a legend that Moses used to play on a shepherd's pipe as he minded the sheep of his father-in-law. The time came when it was thought that it was unworthy to say that the lips of the great Moses had touched a common shepherd's pipe, so the preserved instrument was gilded with gold, but then it refused to play. It failed to fulfil the purpose of a musical instrument when it was covered with gold. So the possession of money can all too easily prevent a man from fulfilling the purpose for which he was made. The value of money becomes a disvalue because the possession of money has destroyed the capacity to possess it.

      A steward possesses his money and is not possessed by it. For him the important question is not what he has to live on, but what he has to live for.

      Thomas à Becket's mother, we are told, weighed her boy each year on his birthday against money, clothes, and provisions which she gave to the poor. We would do well to weigh each year what we spend on ourselves beyond real necessities over against what we give to the Lord's work.

      Our capacity to give depends not only on what we receive but also on the way we spend and the way we spend determines the way we give.

      From the early days of Christianity the ascetic ideal found favour in some quarters. Monasticism was one notable

expression of it. During the Middle Ages protests against ecclesiastical wealth were based on a plea for Apostolic poverty. These ideals were adopted by some, not being regarded as for all. We generally regard these ideals as exaggerations of the principle of self-discipline, but we do well to let the extremes of asceticism and the plea for Apostolic poverty remind us of the Christian obligation of simple living. Such an ideal should condition our spending.

      While we speak of giving money for the Kingdom we may raise the question as to whether it is giving or paying. For the many goods and services we receive in the commercial world we pay. We even regard our rates and taxes as payments for services and not gifts. Is it not true that Christianity renders us a variety of services so that what we give is a payment for service rather than a gift? Furthermore we are debtors and all that we give is but the paying off a debt which we can never repay. (2 Cor. 8:9.) To withhold what we owe is to rob God. This is the charge that the prophet, Malachi, brought against the people of his day because they withheld a part of their tithes and offerings. (Malachi 3:8-12.)

      Ethicists speak of the need of love to be ethically rooted. All they mean is that love should be rooted in the will and not merely in the feelings. Feelings are fond and fugitive. They rise up and down. Love which is a mere matter of feeling is unstable. Relationships determined by love as a mere feeling are very insecure. Love as a moral value and a source of virtue must be rooted in the will. Indeed it should involve the whole man--mind, heart and will.

      The same can be said of our giving. If it is dependent on feeling only it is likely to be fitful and unbalanced. The cause with the most moving story of the moment will reap the richest harvest. If there is no moving story, a good cause may lack support. Mind, feelings and will should govern our giving. It will then be balanced and regular. Paul has given us good precedent for regular giving. "Upon the first

day of the week let every one of you lay by him in store." (1 Cor. 16:2.)

      The Jews were required to give one tenth of their income for religious purposes. The tithe gives us a starting point and a norm. We as Christians are not under law, but under grace. This does not provide an escape for us. Grace is not an occasion for relaxed effort, but an inspiration to nobler endeavour. The generosity of love should not fall behind the requirement of law. Many Christians make the tithe a minimum. Giving at this level can be maintained; it is maintained and ought to be maintained.

      The principle of equality of sacrifice requires that there ought to be variation in the proportion of giving. Other things being equal, one tenth of an income of £750 involves a greater sacrifice than one tenth of an income of £1,500.

      If equality of sacrifice is to be maintained, our giving must be related to our personal responsibilities as well as to income. Surely the proportion of income given should be larger where the personal responsibilities are smaller.

      The New Testament is clear in its call for our giving to be related to our ability. "Let every one of you lay by him in store, as God hath prospered him." (1 Cor. 16:2.) "For if there be first a willing mind, it is accepted according to that a man hash, and not according to that he hath not." (2 Cor. 8:12.) "Then the disciples, every man according to his ability, determined to sent relief unto the brethren which dwelt in Judea." (Acts 11:29.)

      Attention has already been drawn to the fact that our spending may determine our giving. Should not our giving condition our surplus spending? Giving should surely be related to our spending. A comparison of what we spend on Saturday with what we give on Sunday may be a salutary check. With the reference to tithing fresh in our minds, it should be observed that it is possible to fulfil the law of giving one tenth while we spend a portion of the remaining nine tenths in a most prodigal way upon ourselves and in a manner quite unrelated to our giving. Love may be the

fulfilling of the law, but the fulfilling of the law is not necessarily the fulfilling of love.

      We are sometimes diffident about our multiple appeals for Christian causes, but I was once greatly encouraged after making an appeal for Inter-Church Aid by the remark of an elderly man who said it was a privilege to be asked to give. Then he added that he would far sooner he in the position of those asked to give than that of those for whom the appeal had been made. Our giving should be related to the need of those whom we are asked to help and the need of the cause we support. When Paul was making his appeal to the Corinthian Christians he said: "I mean not that other men be eased, and ye burdened: but by an equality, that now at this time your abundance may be a supply for your want: that there may be equality." (2 Cor. 8:13-14.)

      Our giving should also be related to the sacrifice of others with whom we are fellow labourers in the kingdom. We lay stress upon the priesthood of all believers. It is easy for us to use this doctrine to emphasise the rights of all against any idea and development of a privileged, priestly class. But we should take to heart also its call for equality of responsibility. We are equally responsible for bearing the burden of the kingdom. The giving of the business man, the farmer, the tradesman, should be related to the sacrifice of those who commit themselves to live by the gospel and are thereby constrained to accept a standard of living lower than many of their brother priests. But wily should this be so? As a minister of the gospel engaged in the training of young men and women as ministers and missionaries I am not pleading for higher salaries for these, though this may be necessary in some cases. No, I am not pleading for a stepping up of salaries, but for a stepping up of giving and a scaling down of the standard of living that there may be an equality of sacrifice in the service of the kingdom, a true expression of brotherhood and the priesthood of all believers, that the number of ministers, missionaries, ministries, and enterprises may be multiplied. J. Arthur Rank's father reacted to the high price of imported flour and as a counter established flour mills in England. These proved to be a life-line to England in days of war. His prosperity was

as outstanding as his economic service, but he limited him self to a personal income of £500 a year and donated the surplus of his profits to special Christian ventures. Should this not be the rule rather than an exception?

      It is probable that many Christians live simply as a means to giving or saving or both, and as they live simply, in order to save, their wealth becomes notable in possessions rather than in income. The nature of business often requires that surplus income shall be ploughed back into it. This means that the surplus often lies in fixed wealth rather than in fluid income, and this becomes apparent in a deceased's estate. Here several questions arise. Does our stewardship cover only our income and not our fixed wealth? Does our stewardship cover our possessions and income during life and cease at death or does it cover the estate which we leave behind as a result of our activity and saving in life? Is the estate we leave behind as much a trust as the wealth we handled in the days before death? Is the making of a will a stewardship or does it seal the end of our partnership with God?

      We recognise the Christian obligation to provide for dependents, but when that obligation has been discharged, and children, for instance, are well established and anything we leave to them will only add to their surplus, what then? The question becomes more pertinent if the children are not committed to Christ and the Church. Is it good stewardship to divide an estate among those who do not really need it or those who will spend it on anything but the kingdom of God? It may be argued that a Christian family will perpetuate our wealth in the service of the kingdom, and that is a possibility, but there are many qualifications which have to be taken into account.

      The common rule is that, regardless of circumstances, personal beneficiaries sit up to the table of an estate while a few crumbs are distributed to church and charitable causes. Is this a tradition of sound stewardship or is it required that in many instances, at least, the order should be reversed, so that the kingdom of God will sit up to the laden table

and personal beneficiaries who are either not in need or not Christian stewards will receive the crumbs which fall from the table? The asking of the question is nine tenths of the answer. There is no doubt about the need for serious overhaul in this matter, and, may be, a painful revolution. Christianity began as a dangerous revolution. We dare not try to tame the arrowy eagle of the heights into the little bird that hops for a crumb.

      To an immediate Jewish audience Jesus said: "Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust cloth consume, and where thieves break through and steal: but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven." (Matt. 6:19-20.) To the people of Tyre it is possible that He spoke the words found in an inscription in India: "The world is a bridge, ye are to pass over it and not build your houses upon it." To fail to recognise our wealth as a trust and to repudiate our stewardship of wealth is to build upon the bridge.

      It has been said that Jesus rowed around the life of a man as a boatman rows around an island looking for a place to land. Rowing around a man's life our Lord looked for some problem as a landing place, and when He found it He landed. If He rowed around our lives, would He land on the money problem?