ONE CANNOT SERVE GOD AND MAMMON.

Salvation of the rich. — Guarding against avarice.

— Jesus at the house of Zacchaeus.

— Parable of the wicked rich man.

— Parable of the talents.

— Providential usefulness of wealth. Trials of wealth and of poverty.

— Inequality of wealth.

— INSTRUCTIONS OF THE SPIRITS: True property.

— Use of fortune.

— Detachment from earthly goods.

— Transmission of fortune.

Salvation of the rich.

No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will cleave to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve at the same time God and Mammon. (Saint Luke, chapter XVI, v. 13.)

Then a young man approached him and said: Good master, what good must I do to acquire eternal life? — Jesus answered: Why do you call me good? Good, only God is. If you wish to enter into life, keep the commandments. — Which commandments? the young man replied. Jesus said: You shall not kill; you shall not commit adultery; you shall not steal; you shall not bear false witness. — Honor your father and your mother, and love your neighbor as yourself.

The young man replied to him: I have kept all these commandments since I reached my youth; what is it that I still lack? — Jesus said: If you wish to be perfect, go, sell all that you have, give it to the poor, and you shall have a treasure in Heaven. Then come and follow me.

Hearing these words, the young man went away all saddened, for he possessed great holdings. — Jesus then said to his disciples: I tell you in truth that it is quite difficult for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of Heaven. — Once again I tell you: It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of Heaven. n (Saint Matthew, chapter XIX, vv. 16 to 24; Saint Luke, chapter XVIII, vv. 18 to 25; Saint Mark, chapter X, vv. 17 to 25.)

Guarding against avarice.

Then, in the midst of the crowd, a man said to him: Master, tell my brother to divide with me the inheritance that fell to us. — Jesus said to him: O man! who appointed me to judge you, or to make your divisions? — And he added: Take care to guard yourselves against all avarice, for, whatever the abundance in which a man may find himself, his life does not depend on the goods he may possess.

He then told them this parable: There was a rich man whose lands had produced extraordinarily; — and who occupied himself thinking to himself, thus: What shall I do, since I no longer have a place where I can store all that I am going to harvest? — Here is, he said, what I shall do: I shall demolish my barns and build others larger, where I shall put all my harvest and all my goods; — and I shall say to my soul: My soul, you have in reserve many goods for long years; rest, eat, drink, enjoy. — But God, at the same time, said to the man: How senseless you are! This very night they will take your soul; what use will there be in what you have accumulated?

This is what happens to him who accumulates treasures for himself and who is not rich before God. (Saint Luke, chapter XII, vv. 13 to 21.)

Jesus at the house of Zacchaeus.

Jesus, having entered Jericho, was passing through the city; — and there was there a man named Zacchaeus, chief of the publicans and very rich, — who, desirous of seeing Jesus, in order to know him, could not because of the multitude, since he was of very short stature; — therefore he ran ahead of the crowd and climbed a sycamore, to see him, for he had to pass that way. — Reaching that place, Jesus directed his gaze upward and, seeing him, said to him: Zacchaeus, make haste to come down, for I need you to lodge me today in your house. — Zacchaeus came down immediately and received him joyfully. — Seeing this, all murmured, saying: He has gone to lodge at the house of a man of bad life. (See: Introduction; article, Publicans.)

Meanwhile, Zacchaeus, placing himself before the Lord, said to him:

Lord, I give half of my goods to the poor and, if I have caused harm to anyone, in whatever it may be, I indemnify him fourfold. — To which Jesus said to him:

This house has received salvation today, because this man too is a son of Abraham;

— since the Son of man came to seek and to save that which was lost. (Saint Luke, chapter XIX, vv. 1 to 10.)

Parable of the wicked rich man.

There was a rich man who wore purple and linen and feasted magnificently every day. — There was also a poor man, named Lazarus, lying at his door, all covered with ulcers, — who would have been very glad to be able to relieve his hunger with the crumbs that fell from the rich man's table: but no one gave them to him, and the dogs came to lick his sores. — Now, it happened that this poor man died and was carried by the angels into the bosom of Abraham. The rich man also died and had hell for his sepulcher. — When he found himself in torments, he raised his eyes and saw from afar Abraham and Lazarus in his bosom; — and crying out, he spoke these words: Father Abraham, have pity on me and send me Lazarus, so that he may dip the tip of his finger in water to cool my tongue, for I suffer horrible torment in these flames. But Abraham answered him: My son, remember that you received your goods in life and that Lazarus had only ills; therefore, he is now in consolation and you in torments.

Moreover, there exists forever a great abyss between us and you, so that those who would pass from here to there cannot, just as no one can pass from the place where you are to here.

The rich man said: I beg you then, father Abraham, to send him to my father's house, — where I have five brothers, to give them witness of these things, so that they too may not come to this place of torment. — Abraham replied to him: They have Moses and the prophets; let them listen to them. — No, my father Abraham, said the rich man: if one of the dead goes to them, they will do penance. — Abraham answered him: If they do not hear Moses, nor the prophets, neither will they believe, even though one of the dead should rise again. (Saint Luke, chapter XVI, vv. 19 to 31.)

Parable of the talents.

The Lord acts like a man who, having to make a long journey outside his country, called his servants and handed over his goods to them. — After giving five talents to one, two to another, and one to another, to each according to his capacity, he set out immediately. — Then the one who had received five talents went off, traded with that money, and gained five others.

— The one who had received two gained, in the same way, as many others. But the one who had received only one dug a hole in the ground and there hid the money of his master. — After a long time had passed, the master of those servants returned and called them to account. — The one who had received five talents came and presented to him five others, saying: Lord, you handed over to me five talents; here they are, and besides these, five more that I gained. — The master answered him: Servant good and faithful, since you were faithful in a little thing, I shall entrust to you many others; share in the joy of your lord. — The one who had received two talents presented himself in his turn, and said to him: Lord, you handed over to me two talents; here they are, and besides these, two others that I gained. — The master answered him: Good and faithful servant, since you were faithful in a little thing, I shall entrust to you many others; share in the joy of your lord.

— Then came the one who had received only one talent and said: Lord, I know that you are a severe man, who reap where you did not sow and gather where you put nothing; — therefore, since I feared you, I hid your talent in the ground;

here you have it: I restore what belongs to you. — The man, however, answered him:

Wicked and slothful servant; if you knew that I reap where I did not sow and that I gather where I put nothing, — you ought to have put my money into the hands of the bankers, so that, returning, I might withdraw with interest what belongs to me.

— Take from him, then, the talent that is with him and give it to the one who has ten talents; — for it shall be given to all who already have, and these shall be heaped with goods; as for him who has nothing, there shall be taken from him even what he seems to have; and let that servant be cast into the outer darkness, where there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. (Saint Matthew, chapter XXV, vv. 14 to 30.)

Providential usefulness of wealth. — Trials of wealth and of poverty.

If wealth were to constitute an absolute obstacle to the salvation of those who possess it, as could be inferred from certain words of Jesus, interpreted according to the letter and not according to the spirit, God, who grants it, would have placed in the hands of some an instrument of perdition, with no appeal whatever, an idea repugnant to reason.

Without doubt, by the impulses it gives rise to, by the temptations it engenders, and by the fascination it exercises, wealth constitutes a very hazardous trial, more dangerous than poverty; 3 it is the supreme stimulant of pride, of egoism, and of the sensual life; 4 it is the strongest bond that binds man to the Earth and turns his thoughts away from Heaven; 5 it produces such giddiness that, very often, he who passes from poverty to wealth promptly forgets his former condition, those who shared it with him, those who helped him, and becomes insensible, egoistic, and vain.

But from the fact that wealth makes the journey difficult, it does not follow that it makes it impossible and that it cannot come to be a means of salvation for him who knows how to make use of it, just as certain poisons can restore health, if employed for the purpose and with discernment.

When Jesus said to the young man who questioned him about the means of gaining eternal life: “Rid yourself of all your goods and follow me,” he certainly did not intend to establish as an absolute principle that everyone must strip himself of what he possesses and that salvation is obtained only at that price; but only to show that attachment to earthly goods is an obstacle to salvation.

That young man, in fact, believed himself to be in good standing because he had observed certain commandments, and yet he refused the idea of abandoning the goods of which he was owner. His desire to obtain eternal life did not go so far as to acquire it through sacrifice.

What Jesus proposed to him was a decisive trial, intended to lay bare the depth of his thought. He could, no doubt, be a perfectly honest man in the opinion of the world, cause harm to no one, not speak ill of his neighbor, not be vain or proud, honor his father and his mother; but he did not have true charity; his virtue did not reach to abnegation. This is what Jesus wished to demonstrate. He was making an application of the principle: Outside of charity there is no salvation.

The consequence of these words, in their rigorous sense, would be the abolition of wealth as harmful to future happiness and as the cause of an immensity of ills on the Earth; it would be, moreover, the condemnation of the labor that can procure it; an absurd consequence, which would lead man back to savage life and which, for that very reason, would be in contradiction with the law of progress, which is the law of God.

If wealth is the cause of many ills, if it so exacerbates the evil passions, if it even provokes so many crimes, it is not it that we must blame, but man, who abuses it, as he does all the gifts of God; 12 through abuse, he makes pernicious what could be of the greatest usefulness to him; it is the consequence of the state of inferiority of the terrestrial world.

If wealth were to produce only ills, God would not have placed it on the Earth. It is up to man to make it produce good. If it is not a direct element of moral progress, it is, without contestation, a powerful element of intellectual progress.

Indeed, man has as his mission to work for the material improvement of the planet. It falls to him to clear it, to make it healthy, to arrange it to receive one day all the population that its extent admits; 15 to feed that population which grows incessantly, it becomes necessary to increase production. If the production of a country is insufficient, it will be necessary to seek it abroad.

For this very reason, relations between peoples constitute a necessity. In order to facilitate them further, the material obstacles that separate them must be destroyed and communications made more rapid.

For works that are the labor of centuries, man has had to extract the materials even from the bowels of the earth; he sought in Science the means to execute them with greater safety and rapidity. But to carry them out, he needs resources: necessity made him create wealth, just as it made him discover Science.

The activity that these very works impose broadens and develops his intelligence, and this intelligence, which he concentrates, first, on the satisfaction of material needs, will help him later to understand the great moral truths.

Wealth being the primary means of execution, without it there would be no more great works, nor activity, nor stimulant, nor research. With reason, then, is wealth considered an element of progress. Inequality of wealth.

The inequality of wealth is one of the problems that one will seek in vain to resolve, so long as one considers only the present life.

The first question that presents itself is this: Why are not all men equally rich? They are not for a very simple reason: because they are not equally intelligent, active, and industrious to acquire, nor sober and provident to conserve.

It is, moreover, a point mathematically demonstrated that wealth, divided with equality, would give to each one a minimal and insufficient portion; 4 that, supposing this division to be effected, the equilibrium would in a short time be undone, by the diversity of characters and aptitudes; 5 that, supposing it possible and durable, each one having only enough to live on, the result would be the annihilation of all the great works that contribute to the progress and to the well-being of Humanity; 6 that, admitting that it gave to each one what is necessary, there would no longer be the goad that drives men to great discoveries and to useful undertakings.

If God concentrates it at certain points, it is so that from there it may expand in sufficient quantity, according to the needs.

This admitted, one asks why God grants it to persons incapable of making it fructify for the good of all. Here too is a proof of the wisdom and the goodness of God. Giving him free will, he willed that man should come, through his own experience, to distinguish good from evil, and that the practice of the former should result from his efforts and from his will.

Man must not be led fatally to good, nor to evil, otherwise he would be no more than a passive and irresponsible instrument like the animals.

Wealth is a means of testing him morally. But since, at the same time, it is a powerful means of action for progress, God does not want it to remain unproductive for a long time, which is why he incessantly displaces it.

Each one has to possess it, in order to exercise himself in using it and to demonstrate what use he knows how to make of it. Since, however, it is materially impossible for all to possess it at the same time, and since, moreover, it happens that, if all possessed it, no one would work, by which the improvement of the planet would be compromised, each one possesses it in his turn. Thus, one who does not have it today has already had it or will have it in another existence; another, who now has it, perhaps will not have it tomorrow.

There are rich and poor, because God being just, as he is, he prescribes to each one to work in his turn.

Poverty is, for those who suffer it, the trial of patience and of resignation; wealth is, for the others, the trial of charity and of abnegation.

One deplores, with reason, the very bad use that some make of their wealth, the ignoble passions that covetousness provokes, and one asks: Is God just, giving them to such creatures? It is exact that, if man had only a single existence, nothing would justify such a distribution of the goods of the Earth; if, however, we do not have in view only the present life and, on the contrary, consider the whole of the existences, we shall see that everything is balanced with justice.

The poor man, then, lacks the motive both to accuse Providence and to envy the rich, and the latter to glorify themselves in what they possess. If they abuse it, it will not be with decrees or sumptuary laws that the ill will be remedied. Laws can, for the moment, change the exterior, but they do not succeed in changing the heart; hence it comes that they are of ephemeral duration and almost always followed by a more unbridled reaction.

The origin of the ill resides in egoism and in pride: abuses of every kind will cease when men govern themselves by the law of charity. INSTRUCTIONS OF THE SPIRITS.

True property.

Man possesses in full property only that which he is granted to carry away from this world.

Of what he finds upon arriving and leaves upon departing, he enjoys while he remains here. Forced, however, as he is to abandon all this, he does not have the real possession of his wealth, but, simply, the usufruct.

What is it then that he possesses? Nothing that is of use to the body; everything that is of use to the soul: intelligence, knowledge, moral qualities; 4 this is what he brings and carries away with him, what no one can snatch from him, what will be of much more usefulness to him in the other world than in this one; 5 it depends on him to be richer upon departing than upon arriving, since, from what he has acquired in good, his future position will result.

When someone goes to a distant country, he constitutes his baggage of objects usable in that country, he does not concern himself with those that would be useless to him there. Proceed in the same way with regard to the future life; provide yourselves with everything that you may make use of there.

To the traveler who arrives at an inn, good lodging is given, if he can pay for it. To another, of scant resources, a less agreeable one falls. As for the one who has nothing of his own, he goes to sleep on a pallet. The same happens to man, upon his arrival in the world of the Spirits: the place where he goes depends on his holdings; 8 it will not be, however, with his gold that he will pay for it. No one will ask him: How much did you have on the Earth? What position did you occupy? Were you a prince or a workman? They will ask him: What do you bring with you? His goods will not be appraised, nor his titles, but the sum of the virtues he may possess; 9 now, in this respect, the workman may be richer than the prince.

In vain will he allege that before departing from the Earth he paid in weight of gold for his entry into the other world. They will answer him: Places here are not bought: they are conquered through the practice of good. With earthly coin, you have been able to buy fields, houses, palaces; here, everything is paid for with the qualities of the soul. Are you rich in these qualities? Be welcome and go to one of the places of the first category, where all blisses await you. Are you poor in them? Go to one of those of the last, where you will be treated according to your holdings. — (PASCAL. Geneva, 1860.)

The goods of the Earth belong to God, who distributes them at his pleasure, man being only the usufructuary, the more or less upright and intelligent administrator of these goods.

So much do they not constitute the individual property of man that God frequently annuls all forecasts and wealth flees from him who believes himself to have the best titles to possess it.

You will say, perhaps, that this is understandable with regard to hereditary goods, but not with regard to those that are acquired through labor. Without any doubt, if there are legitimate riches, it is these latter, when honestly obtained, 4 for a property is only legitimately acquired when, from its acquisition, no harm results for anyone.

An accounting will be demanded even of a single farthing ill-gained, that is, to the prejudice of another.

But from the fact that a man owes to himself the wealth he possesses, will it follow that, upon dying, some advantage comes to him from this fact?

Are not the precautions he takes to transmit it to his descendants often useless? Certainly, for, if God does not want it to come into their hands, nothing will prevail against his will.

May man use and abuse his holdings during life, without having to render account? No; 9 in permitting him to acquire it, it is possible that God had in view to reward him, in the course of the present existence, for his efforts, his courage, his perseverance; 10 if, however, he used them only in the satisfaction of his senses or of his pride; if such holdings became for him a cause of bankruptcy, it would have been better for him not to have possessed them, since he loses on one side what he gained on the other, annulling the merit of his labor, and when he leaves the Earth, God will tell him that he has already received his reward. — (M. PROTECTING SPIRIT. Brussels, 1861.) Use of fortune.

You cannot serve God and Mammon; 2 keep this well in remembrance, you whom the love of gold dominates; you who would sell your soul to possess treasures, because they allow you to raise yourselves above other men and procure for you the enjoyments of the passions that enslave you; no, you cannot serve God and Mammon!

If, then, you feel your soul dominated by the covetousness of the flesh, make haste to cast off the yoke that oppresses you, for God, just and severe, will say to you: What have you done, unfaithful steward, with the goods that I entrusted to you? This powerful instrument of good works you have employed exclusively in your personal satisfaction.

What, then, is the best use that can be given to wealth? Seek in these words: “Love one another,” the solution of the problem. They hold the secret of the good use of riches. He who is animated by the love of his neighbor has there all his line of conduct traced out; 5 in charity is, for riches, the use that most pleases God; 6 we do not refer, of course, to that cold and egoistic charity which consists in the creature scattering around itself the superfluity of a gilded existence, but that charity full of love, which seeks out misfortune and raises it up, without humiliating it.

Rich man!… give of what you have to spare; do more: give a little of what is necessary to you, for that of which you have need is still superfluous. But give with wisdom.

Do not repel him who complains, for fear that he may deceive you; go to the sources of the ill; 9 relieve, first; then, inform yourself, 10 and see whether work, counsel, even affection will not be more effective than your alms.

Spread around you, with material aid, the love of God, the love of work, the love of neighbor.

Place your riches on a base that will never fail them and that will bring you great profits: that of good works.

The wealth of intelligence you must use as that of gold. Pour out around you the treasures of instruction; pour out upon your brothers the treasures of your love, and they will fructify. — (CHEVERUS. Bordeaux, 1861.)

When I consider the brevity of life, I am painfully impressed by the incessant preoccupation that material well-being is for you, while you give so little importance to your moral perfectioning, to which you devote little or no time and which, nevertheless, is what matters for eternity.

One would say, given the activity that you develop, that it was a question of the highest interest for Humanity, when it is, in the majority of cases, only a matter of putting yourselves in a condition to satisfy exaggerated needs, vanity, or of giving yourselves over to excesses.

How many pains, vexations, torments each one imposes upon himself; how many sleepless nights, to increase holdings often more than sufficient! As a height of blindness, one frequently finds persons, enslaved to painful labors by the immoderate love of wealth and of the enjoyments it procures, boasting of living a so-called existence of sacrifice and of merit, as if they were working for others and not for themselves! Senseless ones!

Do you then really believe that there will be credited to you the cares and the efforts you expend moved by egoism, by cupidity, or by pride, while you neglect your future, as well as the duties that fraternal solidarity imposes on all who enjoy the advantages of social life?

Only of your body have you thought; its well-being, its pleasures were the exclusive object of your egoistic solicitude. For it, which dies, you scorned your Spirit, which will live forever. For this very reason, that master so enlivened and caressed became your tyrant; it commands over your Spirit, which constituted itself its slave.

Would this be the purpose of the existence that God granted you? — (A PROTECTING SPIRIT. Krakow, 1861.)

Man being the depositary, the administrator of the goods that God placed in his hands, severe accounts will be demanded of him for the use he has made of them, by virtue of his free will.

The bad use consists in applying them exclusively to his personal satisfaction; 3 good is the use, on the contrary, every time that from them some good results for another; the merit is proportional to the sacrifice one imposes upon oneself.

Beneficence is only one way of employing wealth; it gives relief to present misery; it appeases hunger, preserves from cold, and provides shelter to him who has none; 5 but a duty equally imperious and meritorious is that of preventing misery; such, above all, is the mission of great fortunes, a mission to be fulfilled by means of the works of every kind that can be executed with them; 6 nor, by the fact that those who thus employ them draw from these works legitimate profit, would the good resulting from them cease to exist, for work develops intelligence and exalts the dignity of man, allowing him to say, proudly, that he earns the bread he eats, while alms humiliate and degrade.

Wealth concentrated in one hand should be like a fountain of living water that spreads fecundity and well-being around it.

O you, rich men, who employ it according to the views of the Lord! Your heart will be the first to quench its thirst at that beneficent fountain; already in this existence you will enjoy the ineffable joys of the soul, instead of the material enjoyments of the egoist, which produce emptiness in the heart. Your names will be blessed on the Earth, and, when you leave it, the sovereign Lord will say to you, as in the parable of the talents: “Good and faithful servant, enter into the joy of your Lord.”

In that parable, the servant who buried the money entrusted to him is the representation of the avaricious, in whose hands wealth is kept unproductive.

If, however, Jesus speaks principally of alms, it is because in that time and in the country where he lived the works that the arts and industry created afterward, and in which riches can be usefully applied for the general good, were not known.

To all who can give, little or much, I will say, then: give alms when it is necessary; but, as far as possible, convert it into wages, so that he who receives it may not be ashamed of it. — (FÉNELON. Algiers, 1860.) Detachment from earthly goods.

I come, my brothers, my friends, to bring you my mite, in order to help you advance, undauntedly, along the path of perfectioning that you have entered.

We owe ourselves to one another; only through the sincere and fraternal union between the Spirits and the incarnate will regeneration be possible.

The love of earthly goods constitutes one of the strongest obstacles to your moral and spiritual advancement. Through attachment to the possession of such goods, you destroy your faculties of loving, by applying them all to material things.

Be sincere: does wealth procure a happiness without alloy? When you have your coffers full, is there not always an emptiness in your heart? At the bottom of that basket of flowers, is there not always a reptile hidden?

I understand the satisfaction, quite just, moreover, that the man experiences who, through honorable and assiduous labor, has earned a fortune; but from that satisfaction, very natural and which God approves, to an attachment that absorbs all the other sentiments and paralyzes the impulses of the heart, there is a great distance, as great as that which separates sordid avarice from exaggerated prodigality, two vices between which God placed charity, a holy and salutary virtue that teaches the rich man to give without ostentation, so that the poor man may receive without baseness.

Whether the fortune has come to you from your family, or you have earned it with your labor, there is one thing that you must never forget: it is that everything emanates from God, everything returns to God.

Nothing belongs to you on the Earth, not even your poor body: death strips you of it, as of all material goods; you are depositaries and not proprietors, do not deceive yourselves; God lent them to you, you have to restore them to him; and he lends on the condition that the superfluity, at least, may fall to those who lack the necessary.

One of your friends lends you a certain sum. However little honest you may be, you make a point of restoring it to him scrupulously and you remain grateful to him. Well then: that is the position of every rich man. God is the celestial friend, who lent him the wealth, wanting for himself nothing more than the love and the gratitude of the rich man. He requires of him, however, that in his turn he give to the poor, who are, as much as he, his children.

Ardent and frenzied covetousness do the goods that God entrusted to you awaken in your hearts. Have you thought, when you let yourselves become immoderately attached to a wealth perishable and transitory like yourselves, that one day you will have to render account to the Lord of that which came to you from him?

Do you forget that, through wealth, you have clothed yourselves with the sacred character of ministers of charity on the Earth, to be intelligent dispensers of the said wealth? Therefore, when you use only for your own profit what was entrusted to you, what are you, if not unfaithful depositaries? What results from this voluntary forgetting of your duties?

Death, inflexible, inexorable, tears the veil under which you concealed yourselves and forces you to render account to the Friend who had favored you and who at that moment dons before you the robe of judge.

In vain do you seek on the Earth to deceive yourselves, coloring with the name of virtue what most often is nothing but egoism. In vain do you call economy and foresight what is only cupidity and avarice, or generosity what is nothing but prodigality for your own profit.

A father of a family, for example, abstains from practicing charity, he will economize, he will heap up gold, in order, he says, to leave to his children the greatest possible sum of goods and to prevent them from falling into misery. It is very just and paternal, I grant, and no one can censure it. But will this always be the only motive he obeys? Will it not often be a compromise with his conscience, to justify, to his own eyes and to the eyes of the world, his personal attachment to earthly goods?

Let us admit, nevertheless, that paternal love is the only motive that guides him. Will this be a reason for him to forget his brothers before God? When he already has the superfluity, will he leave his children in misery, in order that a little less of that superfluity may remain to them? Will it not be, rather, to give them a lesson in egoism and to harden their hearts? Will it not be to wither in them the love of neighbor?

Fathers and mothers, you labor in great error, if you believe that in this way you win greater affection from your children. Teaching them to be egoistic toward others, you teach them to be so toward you yourselves.

Of a man who has worked much, and who with the sweat of his brow has accumulated goods, it is common to hear you say that, when money is earned, its value is better known. Nothing more exact. Well then! Let that man who declares he knows all the value of money practice charity, within his possibilities, and his merit will be greater than that of him who, born into abundance, is ignorant of the rude fatigues of labor.

But, likewise, if that man, who remembers his hardships, his efforts, is egoistic, pitiless toward the poor, he will become far more culpable than the other, for, the better each one knows by himself the hidden sorrows of misery, the more inclined he should feel to relieve them in others.

Unfortunately, there is always in the man who possesses goods of fortune a sentiment as strong as the attachment to those same goods: it is pride.

Not rarely, one sees the upstart deafen, with the narrative of his labors and of his skills, the unfortunate man who asks him for assistance, instead of coming to his aid, and end by saying: “Do as I did.” According to his way of seeing, the goodness of God does not enter at all into the obtaining of the wealth he managed to accumulate; the merit of possessing it belongs to him, exclusively. Pride places a blindfold over his eyes and stops up his ears. Despite all his intelligence and all his aptitude, he does not understand that, with a single word, God can cast him to the ground.

To squander wealth is not to demonstrate detachment from earthly goods: it is heedlessness and indifference; 21 a depositary of these goods, man does not have the right to dissipate them, just as he does not have the right to confiscate them for his own profit; 22 prodigality is not generosity: it is, frequently, a modality of egoism; he who spends in handfuls the gold he has at his disposal to satisfy a whim will perhaps not give a cent to render a service.

Detachment from earthly goods consists in appreciating them at their just value, 24 in knowing how to make use of them for the benefit of others and not only for one's own benefit, 25 in not sacrificing for them the interests of the future life, 26 in losing them without murmuring, should it please God to withdraw them.

If, by the effect of unforeseen reverses, you become like Job, say, as he did: “Lord, you had given them to me and you took them from me. Let your will be done.” Here is true detachment.

Be, above all, submissive; trust in him who, having given to you and taken from you, can again restore to you what he took from you. Resist courageously the dejection, the despair, that paralyze your strength; 29 when God strikes you a blow, never forget that, alongside the rudest trial, he always places a consolation.

Ponder, above all, that there are goods infinitely more precious than those of the Earth, and this idea will help you to detach yourselves from these latter.

The little esteem one attaches to a thing makes its loss less keenly felt.

The man who clings to earthly goods is like the child who sees only the moment that passes. He who detaches himself from them is like the adult who sees the more important things, because he understands these prophetic words of the Savior: My kingdom is not of this world.

To no one does the Lord command that he strip himself of what he possesses, condemning himself to a voluntary mendicity, for he who did such a thing would become a burden to society; 34 to proceed thus would be to understand badly the detachment from earthly goods. It would be egoism of another kind, because the individual would be exempting himself from the responsibility that wealth makes weigh upon him who possesses it.

God grants it to whomever he pleases, in order that he may administer it for the profit of all. The rich man has, then, a mission, which he can embellish and make profitable to himself; 36 to reject wealth, when God grants it, is to renounce the benefits of the good one can do, by managing it with discernment.

Knowing how to do without it when he does not have it, knowing how to employ it usefully when he possesses it, knowing how to sacrifice it when necessary, the creature proceeds in accordance with the designs of the Lord.

Let him say, then, into whose hands comes what in the world is called a good fortune: My God, you have destined a new charge for me; give me the strength to discharge it according to your holy will.

There you have, my friends, what I wished to teach you concerning the detachment from earthly goods. I will summarize what I have set forth, by saying: Know how to content yourselves with little.

If you are poor, do not envy the rich, for wealth is not necessary to happiness.

If you are rich, do not forget that the goods you have at your disposal are only entrusted to you and that you have to justify the use you make of them, as if you were rendering accounts of a trusteeship.

Do not be an unfaithful depositary, using them solely in the satisfaction of your pride and of your sensuality.

Do not consider yourselves entitled to dispose for your exclusive profit of that which you received, not as a donation, but simply as a loan.

If you do not know how to restore, you do not have the right to ask, 45 and remember that he who gives to the poor settles the debt he contracted with God. — (LACORDAIRE. Constantine, 1863.) [Transmission of fortune.]

Does the principle, according to which he is only the depositary of the fortune that God permits him to enjoy during life, take from man the right to transmit it to his descendants?

Man can perfectly well transmit, upon his death, that which he enjoyed during life, because the effect of this right is always subordinate to the will of God, who can, when he wishes, prevent those descendants from enjoying what was transmitted to them. It is for no other reason that fortunes which seem solidly constituted collapse. The will of man is, then, powerless to keep in the hands of his descendants the fortune he may possess. This, however, does not deprive him of the right to transmit the loan he received from God, since God can withdraw it, when he judges it opportune. — (SAINT LOUIS. Paris, 1860.)

[1] This bold figure may seem a little forced, since one does not perceive what relation can exist between a camel and a needle. It happens, however, that, in Hebrew, the same word serves to designate a camel and a cable. In the translation, they gave it the first of these meanings; but it is probable that Jesus employed it with the other meaning. It is, at least, more natural.