Chapter IX: Part 9

Matthew is the dearest of all the Twelve. He was a tax-gatherer, a sort of under-publican, and probably had more education than his companions. He followed Jesus as readily as the fishermen. “And after these things he went forth, and saw a publican named Levi, sitting at the receipt of custom: and he said unto him, follow me. And he left all, rose up, and followed him. And Levi made him a great feast in his own house.” It was not a heap of torn nets which Matthew left, but a position, a stipend, secure and increasing earnings. Giving up riches is easy for a man who has almost nothing. Among the Twelve Matthew was certainly the richest before his conversion. Of no other is it told that he could offer a great feast, and this means that he made a greater and more meritorious sacrifice by his rising at the first call from the seat where he was accumulating money.

Matthew and Judas were perhaps the only ones of the Disciples who knew how to write, and to Matthew we owe the first collection of Logia or memorable sayings of Jesus, if the testimony of Papia is true. In the Gospel which is called by his name, we find the most complete text of the Sermon on the Mount. Our debt to the poor excise-man is heavy: without him many words of Jesus, and the most beautiful, might have been lost. This handler of drachma, shekels and talents, whom his despised trade must have predisposed to avarice, has laid up for us a treasure worth more than all the money coined on the earth before and after his time.

Philip of Bethsaida also knew how to reckon. When the famished multitude pressed about Him, Jesus turned to him to ask what it would cost to buy bread for all those people. Philip answered Him: “Two hundred pennyworth of bread is not sufficient for them.” He was later to become a proclaimer of his Master’s fame. He it was who announced to Nathaniel the coming of Jesus, and it was to him that the Greeks of Jerusalem turned when they wished to speak to the new Prophet.

Nathaniel answered Philip’s announcement with sarcasm: “Can there any good thing come out of Nazareth?” But Philip succeeded in bringing him to Jesus, who as soon as He saw him, exclaimed, “Behold an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile! Nathaniel saith unto him, Whence knowest thou me? Jesus answered and said unto him, Before that Philip called thee, when thou wast under the fig tree, I saw thee. Nathaniel answered and saith unto him, Rabbi, thou art the Son of God; thou art the King of Israel. Jesus answered and said unto him, Because I said unto thee, I saw thee under the fig tree, believest thou? thou shalt see greater things than these.”

Less enthusiastic and inflammable was Nicodemus, who, as a matter of fact, never wished to be known as a disciple of Jesus. Nicodemus was old, had been to school to the Rabbis, was a friend of the Jerusalem Sanhedrin, but the stories of the miracles had shaken him, and he went by night to Jesus to tell Him that he believed that He was sent by God. Jesus answered him, “Verily, verily, I say unto thee, except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” Nicodemus did not understand these words, or perhaps they startled him. He had come to see a miracle worker and had found a Sybil, and with the homely good sense of the man who wishes to avoid being taken in by a fraud he said, “How can a man be born when he is old? can he enter the second time into his mother’s womb and be born?” Jesus answers with words of profound meaning, “Except a man be born of water and of the spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.”

But Nicodemus still did not understand. “How can these things be?” Jesus answered, “Art thou a master of Israel and knowest not these things?”

Nicodemus always respected the young Galilean, but his sympathy was as circumspect as his visit. Once when the leaders of the priests and the Pharisees were meditating how to capture Jesus, Nicodemus ventured a defense: “Doth our law judge any man, before it hear him, and know what he doeth?” He took his stand on a point of law. He spoke in the name of “our” law, not at all in the name of the new man. Nicodemus is always the old man, law-respecting, the prudent friend of the letter of the law. A few words of reproof were enough to silence him. “They answered and said unto him, Art thou also of Galilee? Search and look: for out of Galilee ariseth no prophet!” He belonged by right to the Sanhedrin, but there is no record that he raised his voice in favor of the accused when He was conducted to Caiaphas. The trial was at night and probably to avoid the contempt of his colleagues and his own remorse for the legal assassination, Nicodemus remained in his bed. When he awoke Jesus was dead, and then, forgetting his avarice, he bought a hundred pounds of myrrh and aloes to embalm the body. He who brought others to life was dead, but Nicodemus, although not literally dead, would never know that second birth in which he could not believe.

Nicodemus is the eternal type of the luke-warm who will be spewed out of the mouth of God on the day of wrath. He is the half-way soul who would like to say “Yes” with his spirit, but his flesh suggests to him the “No” of cowardice. He is the man of books, the nocturnal disciple who would like to be a follower of the Master, but not to appear as one; who would not mind being born again, but who does not know how to break the withered bark of his ageing trunk; the man of inhibitions and precautions. When the man of his admiration was martyred and killed and His enemies were satisfied, and there was no more danger of being compromised, then he comes with balsams to pour into those wounds which were inflicted partly by his cowardice.

But the church to reward his posthumous piety has chosen him to become one of her saints. And there is an old tradition that he was baptized by Peter and put to death for having believed, too late, in Him whom he did not save from death.

LAMBS, SERPENTS, AND DOVES

Those whom Jesus sent out to the conquest of souls were rustic countrymen, but they could be mild as sheep, wary as serpents, simple as doves—sheep without cowardice, serpents without poison, doves without lustfulness.

To be stripped of everything was the first duty of such soldiers. Seeking the poor, they should be poorer than the poor. And yet not beggars, for the laborer is worthy of his hire; the bread of life which they were to distribute to those hungering for justice deserved wheat bread in return. The laborers should set out on their wonderful work destitute of possessions, taking nothing for their journey save a staff only, no scrip, no bread, no money in their purse. They should be shod with sandals, clad in a single garment. The metals are a burden which weighs down the soul. The sheen of gold makes men forget the sun’s splendor; the sheen of silver makes them forget the splendor of the stars; the sheen of copper makes them forget the splendor of fire. He who deals with metals weds himself to the earth and is bound fast to the earth. He does not know Heaven, and Heaven does not recognize him.

It is not enough to preach love of poverty to the poor, or to talk to them about the sumptuous beauty of poverty. The poor do not believe the words of the rich until the rich willingly become poor. The Disciples destined to preach the beauty of poverty to both poor and rich were to set an example of happy poverty to every man in every house on every day. They were to carry nothing with them except the clothes on their backs and the sandals on their feet. They were to accept nothing; only the small piece of daily bread which they would find on the tables of their hosts. The wandering priests of the goddess Siria and of other Oriental divinities carried with them, along with the sacred images, the wallet for offerings, the bag for alms, because common people do not value things which cost them nothing. The apostles of Jesus, on the contrary, were to refuse any gift or payment, “Freely ye have received, freely give.” And as one of the disguises of wealth is merchandise, the messengers of the Kingdom were to renounce even a change of garments, sandals and staff; were to dispense with everything except the barest essentials.

They were to enter into the houses, open to all in a country where the locks and bolts of fear were not yet known, and which preserved some remembrance of nomad hospitality—they were to speak to the men and the women who lived there. Their duty was to announce that the Kingdom of Heaven was at hand, to explain in what way the kingdom of earth could become the Kingdom of Heaven, and to explain the one condition for this happy fulfilling of all the prophecies,—repentance, conversion, transformation of the soul. As a proof that they were sent by One who had the authority to demand this change, they had power to heal the sick, to drive away with their words unclean spirits,—that is, the demons, and the vices which make men like demons.

They commanded men to renew their souls and at once with all the power which had been given them they aided them to commence this renovation. They did not leave them alone with this command, so difficult to execute. After the prophetic word, “The Kingdom is at hand,” they began their labors; they worked to restore, to cleanse, to make over these souls which had been abandoned by their rightful shepherds. They explained what it was necessary to do to be worthy of the new Heaven on earth and they lent a hand at once to the work. In short, to complete the paradox they assassinated and brought to life. They killed the old Adam in every convert, but their words were the baptism of the second birth. Pilgrims without purses or bundles, they carried with them truth and life,—peace.

“And when ye come into an house salute it,” and this was the salutation, “Peace be with you.” Those who received them gained peace, those who rejected them continued their bitter warfare. Coming away from the house or from the city which had not received them, they were to shake the dust from their feet, not because the dust of the houses and of the cities of those who were not willing to hear them was contaminated, but because shaking it from their feet is a symbolic answer to their deafness and niggardliness of soul. You have refused all, and we will not accept anything from you, not even the dust which clings to our sandals. Because you, made of dust and fated to return to dust as you are, will not give a moment of your time, nor a piece of your bread, we leave behind us the dust of your streets, down to the least grain.

SPEAK YE IN LIGHT

In their faithfulness to the sublime paradox of Him who sends them, the apostles bring peace and at the same time war! All men are not capable of conversion. In the same family, in the same house, there are some who will believe and others who will not. And there will spring up between them division and warfare, the hard price with which absolute and stable peace can be secured. If all men should listen at the same moment to the voice, if all could be transformed on the same day, the Kingdom of Heaven would be founded in a twinkling of an eye, with no bloody preface of battles.

Furthermore those who do not wish to change themselves, because they do not understand the news, or believe themselves already perfect, will attack the converters and accuse them before tribunals. Representatives of wealth and of the old law will be cruel to the poor who are teaching the new law to the poor. The rich are not willing to concede that their wealth is dangerous poverty; the scribes are not willing to admit that their learning is only deadly ignorance.... “They will scourge you in their synagogues.... But when they deliver you up, take no thought of how or what ye shall speak.” Jesus is sure that the poor fishermen, though they have never studied in the schools of eloquence, will find for themselves great words in their hour of accusation. One thought, when it is a great thought and profoundly fixed in the heart, engenders of itself all the derivatory and accessory thoughts, and with them perfect form in which to express them. The arid-hearted man who has nothing in himself, who has faith in nothing, who does not feel, burn, and suffer, though he may have studied long with the sophists of Athens and the rhetoricians of Rome, is incapable of improvising one of those powerful and illuminating answers which trouble the conscience of the hardest judges.

They are to speak therefore without fear and without hiding anything of what has been taught them. “What I tell you in darkness that seek ye in light, and what ye hear in the ear, preach ye upon the housetops.” With these words Jesus does not ask his Disciples to be more daring than he has been. He has spoken in the darkness, that is obscurity; He has spoken to them, to His first faithful followers, but what He has said to them along deserted roads and in solitary rooms they are to repeat as He Himself has given them the example, on open squares of cities before crowds of people. He has whispered the truth into their ears, because the truth at first might alarm those not prepared for it, and because there were so few of the Disciples that there was no need to cry aloud. But this truth must be cried out now from the heights, in order that all may hear it, in order that there may be no one to say on that Day that he has not heard it.

Men can kill the body of the man who spreads the truth abroad, but they cannot kill his soul; from the death of a single body thousands of new souls will be born into life. But not even your body will die, because there is One who protects it. “Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father. But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear ye not therefore, ye are of more value than many sparrows.” The birds of the air who do not sow, do not die of hunger; you who do not carry even a staff shall not die at the hands of your enemies.

They have with them a secret so precious that the flesh which contains it will not be allowed to perish. Jesus is always with them, even though from afar. What is done to them is done to Him. A mystic identity is created for all eternity between Him who sends them out and those disciples who are sent. “And whosoever shall give to drink unto one of these little ones, a cup of cold water only in the name of a disciple, verily I say unto you he shall in no wise lose his reward.”

Jesus is the fountain of living water destined to quench the thirst of all the weary, and yet He will take account also of the cup of water which shall have quenched the thirst of the least among His friends. Those who carry with them the water of truth, which purifies and saves, may need some day a cup of the stagnant water buried at the bottom of village wells. Any person who will give them a little of this ordinary, material water will have in exchange a well-spring which intoxicates the soul more than the strongest wine.

The apostles who go about with one garment, with a single pair of sandals, without belts or wallets, poor as poverty, bare as truth, simple as joy, are, in spite of their apparent poverty, diverse forms of a king who has come to found a kingdom greater and happier than all kingdoms, to bring to poor people wealth which is worth more than all measurable riches, to offer to the unhappy a joy more profound than any fleshly pleasures. It suits this new King, as it did the kings of the Orient, to show Himself under many forms, to appear to men in diverse garments. But the disguises which He prefers even to-day are these three: Poet, Poor Man, and Apostle.

MAMMON

Jesus is the poor man, infinitely and rigorously poor. Poor with an absolute poverty! The prince of poverty! The Lord of perfect destitution! The poor man who lives with the poor, who has come for the poor, who speaks to the poor, who gives to the poor, who works for the poor! Poor among the poor, destitute among the destitute, beggar among the beggars! The poor man of a great and eternal poverty! The happy and rich poor man, who accepts poverty, who desires poverty, who weds himself to poverty, who chants of poverty! The beggar who gives alms! The naked man who covers the naked! The hungry man who feeds others, the miraculous and supernatural, who changes the men owning false riches into poor men, and poor men into those with real wealth.

There are poor men who are poor because they were never capable of acquiring wealth. There are other poor men who are poor because they give away every evening what they earned that day; and the more they give the more they have. Their wealth, the wealth of this second class of poor men, grows greater in proportion as it is given away. It is a pile which becomes greater as more is taken away from it.

Jesus was one of these poor men. Compared to one of them, men materially rich, rich as the world esteems wealth, rich with their chests of talents, mina, rupees, florins, shekels, crowns, francs, marks, and dollars, are only lamentable beggars. The money-changers of the forum, the great feasters of Jerusalem, the bankers of Florence and Frankfort, the lords of London, the multi-millionaires of New York, compared to these poor men are only unfortunate beggars, despoiled and needy; unpaid servants of a fierce master; condemned every day to assassinate their own souls. The wretchedness of such indigence is so terrible that they are reduced to pick up the stones that are found in the mud of the earth, and grope about in filth. Theirs is a poverty so repugnant that not even the poor succeed in bestowing on them the charity of a smile.

Richness is a curse like work, but a harder and more shameful curse. He who is marked with the sign of wealth has committed, perhaps unconsciously, an infamous crime, one of those mysterious and unimaginable crimes which are nameless in human language. The rich man is either under the burden of the vengeance of God, or God wishes to put him to the test to see if he can succeed in climbing up to divine poverty. For the rich man has committed the greatest sin, the most abominable and unpardonable. The rich man is the man who has fallen because of an exchange: he could have had Heaven and he chose Earth. He could have lived in Paradise and he has chosen Hell. He could have kept his soul and he has exchanged it for material things. He could have loved and he has preferred to be hated. He could have had happiness and he has desired power. No one can save him. Wealth in his hands is a metal which buries him alive under its icy mass; it is the tumor which consumes him still alive in his corruption; it is the fire which burns him and reduces him to a terrible, black mummy, a blind paralytic, black mummy, a ghostly carrion which everlastingly holds out its empty hand in the cemeteries of the centuries, begging in vain for the alms of charitable remembrance.

For him there is only one salvation: to become a poor man, a true and humble poor man; to throw away the horrible destitution of wealth in order to enter again into poverty. But this resolution is the hardest that the rich man can take. The rich man by the very fact that he is sickened by wealth cannot even imagine that the entire renunciation of wealth would be the beginning of redemption, and because he cannot imagine such an abdication, he cannot even deliberate on it, cannot weigh the alternatives. He is a prisoner in the impregnable prison of himself. To liberate himself he must first be free.

The rich man does not belong to himself, but belongs to inanimate things. He has not the time to think, to choose. Wealth is a pitiless master who allows no other masters near him. The rich man cannot think of his soul, bowed as he is under the care of his riches, under his thirst to increase his riches, under the fear of losing his riches, under the material joys which are offered to him by those pieces of matter which are called wealth. He cannot even imagine that his sick, suffocating, mutilated, worm-eaten soul needs to be cured. He has taken up his abode in that part of the world which, according to contracts and laws, he has the right to call _his_, and often he has not even the time, the wish, or the power to enjoy it. He must serve it and take care of it,—he cannot serve or take care of his own soul. All his power of love is absorbed by these material things, which order him about, which have taken the place of his soul, which have robbed him of all his liberty. The horrible fate of the rich man lies in this double absurdity: in order to have the power to command men he has become the slave of dead things; in order to acquire a part (and such a very small part!) he has lost the whole.

Nothing is ours as long as it is ours alone. Outside of himself man can possess, actually own, nothing. The absolute secret of owning other things is to renounce them. Everything is given to him who has refused everything. But he who wishes to grasp for himself, for himself alone, a part of the goods of this world, loses both what he has acquired and everything else. And at the same moment he is incapable of knowing himself, or possessing himself, making himself greater. He has nothing more, not even the things which in appearance belong to him, but to which in reality he belongs; and he has never had his own soul, the one piece of property which is worth possessing. He is the most destitute and despoiled beggar of all the universe. He has nothing. How then can he love others, give to others himself and that which belongs to himself, exercise that loving charity which would conduct him so soon to the Kingdom? He is nothing and he has nothing. He who does not exist cannot change. He who does not possess cannot give. How then can the rich man, who is no longer his own, who has no longer a soul, transform a soul, the only possession of mankind, into something nobler and more precious?

“For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” This question of Christ’s, simple like all revelations, expresses the exact meaning of the prophetic threat. The rich man not only loses eternity, but, pulled down by his wealth, loses his life here below, his present soul, the happiness of his present earthly life.

“Ye cannot serve God and mammon.” The Spirit and Gold are two masters who will not tolerate any division or sharing. They are jealous; they insist on having the whole man. And even if he wishes, the man cannot divide himself in two. He must be all here, or all beyond worldly things. For the faithful servant of the spirit, gold is nothing; for him who serves gold, “spirit” is a word without meaning. He who chooses the spirit throws away gold and all the things bought by gold; he who desires gold puts an end to the spirit and renounces all the benefits of the spirit: peace, holiness, love, perfect joy. The first is a poor man who can never use up his infinite wealth; the other is a rich man who can never escape out of his infinite poverty. By the mysterious law of renunciation the poor man possesses even that which is not his—the entire universe; through the hard law of perpetual desire, the rich man does not even possess that little which he believes to be his. God gives immensely more than the immensity which He has promised. Mammon takes away even that very little which he promises. He who renounces everything has everything given him; he who wishes a part for himself alone, finds himself at the end with nothing.

When the horrible mystery of wealth is deeply probed, it is easy to see why the masters of men have considered wealth the kingdom of the Demon himself. A thing which costs less than everything else is bought by everything else. A thing which is nothing, the actual value of which is nothing, is bought by giving up everything, is secured by exchanging for it the whole of the soul, the whole of life. The most precious thing is exchanged for the most worthless.

And yet even this infernal absurdity has its reason for being, in the economy of the spirit. Man is so universally and naturally drawn by that nothingness called wealth that he could only be dissuaded from his insensate search for it by putting a price so great, so high, so out of all proportion that the very fact of paying it would be a valid proof of insanity and crime. But not even the conditions of the bargain, the eternal exchanged for the ephemeral, power for servitude, sanctity for damnation, are enough to keep men away from the absurd bargain with the powers of evil. Poor people do not rejoice that they are poor. Their only regret is that they cannot be rich; their souls are contaminated and in peril like those of the wealthy. Almost all of them are involuntarily poor men, who have not known how to make money and yet have lost the spirit; they are only poverty-stricken rich people who have not as yet any cash.

For poverty, voluntarily accepted, joyfully desired, is the only poverty which gives true wealth, spiritual wealth. Absolute poverty frees men for the conquest of the absolute. The Kingdom of Heaven does not promise poor people that they shall become rich, it promises rich people that they shall enter into it when they become freely poor.

SELL EVERYTHING

The tragic paradox implied in wealth justifies the advice given by Jesus to those who wish to follow Him.

They all should give whatever they have beyond their needs to those in want. But the rich man should give everything. To the young man who comes up to ask Him what he ought to do to be among His followers, Jesus answers: “If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven.” Giving away wealth is not a loss or a sacrifice. Instead of this, Jesus knows and all those know who understand mankind and wealth that it is a magnificently profitable transaction, an incommensurable gain. “Sell whatsoever thou hast and give to the poor and thou shalt have treasure in heaven where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt and where thieves do not break through nor steal; for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow from thee, turn not thou away, for it is more blessed to give than to receive.”

Men must give and give without sparing, light-heartedly and without calculation. He who gives in order to get something back is not perfect. He who gives in order to exchange with others, or for other material things, acquires nothing. The recompense is elsewhere, it is in us. Things are not to be given away that they may be paid for by other things, but by purity and contentment alone. “When thou makest a dinner or a supper call not thy friends nor thy brethren, neither thy kinsmen nor thy rich neighbors, lest they also bid thee again, and a recompense be made thee. But when thou makest a feast call the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind; and thou shalt be blest, for they cannot recompense thee, for thou shalt be recompensed at the resurrection of the just.”

Even before Jesus’ time men had been advised to renounce wealth. Jesus was not the first to find in poverty one of the steps to perfection. The great Vaddhamana, the Jain, or triumpher, added to the commandments of Parswa, founder of the Freed, the doctrine of the renunciation of all possessions. Buddha, his contemporary, exhorted his disciples to a similar renunciation. The Cynics stripped themselves of all material goods to be independent of work and of men, and to be able to consecrate their freed souls to truth. Crates, the Theban nobleman, disciple of Diogenes, distributed his wealth to his fellow-citizens and turned beggar. Plato wished the warriors in his Republic to have no possessions. Dressed in purple and seated at tables inlaid with rare stones, the Stoics pronounced eloquent eulogies on poverty. Aristophanes puts blind Pluto on the stage distributing wealth to rascals alone, almost as though wealth were a punishment.

But in Jesus the love of poverty is not an ascetic rule, nor a proud disguise for ostentation. Timon of Athens, who was reduced to poverty after having fed a crowd of parasites with indiscriminate generosity, was not a poor man as Christ would have men poor. Timon was poor through the fault of his vainglory, to feed his own desire to be called magnanimous and liberal. He gave to everybody, even to those who were not needy. Crates, who stripped himself of all his property to imitate Diogenes, was the slave of pride: he wished to do something different from others, to acquire the name of philosopher and sage. The professional beggary of the Cynics is a picturesque form of pride. The poverty of Plato’s warriors is a measure of political prudence. The first republics conquered and flourished as long as the citizens contented themselves, as in old Sparta and old Rome, with strict poverty, and they fell as soon as they valued gold more than sober and modest living. But men of antiquity did not despise wealth in itself. They held it dangerous when it accumulated in the hands of the few, they considered it unjust when it was not spent with judicious liberality. But Plato, who desires for his citizens a condition half-way between need and abundance, puts riches among the good things of human life. He puts it last of all, but he does not forget it. And Aristophanes would kneel before Pluto if the blind God should acquire his sight again and give riches to worthy people.

In the Gospel, poverty is not a philosophical ornament nor a mystic mode. To be poor is not enough to entitle one to citizenship in the Kingdom. Poverty of the body is a preliminary requisite, like humility of the spirit. He who is not convinced that his estate is low never thinks of climbing high; no one can feel a zest for true treasures if he is not freed from all material property,—from that winding-sheet which blinds the eyes and binds down the wings.

When he does not suffer from his poverty, when he glories in his poverty instead of tormenting himself to convert it into wealth, the poor man is certainly much nearer to moral perfection than the rich man. But the rich man who has despoiled himself in favor of the poor and has chosen to live side by side with his new brothers is still nearer perfection than the man who was born and reared in poverty. That he has been touched by a grace so rare and prodigious gives him the right to hope for the greatest blessedness. To renounce what you have never had may be meritorious, because imagination magnifies absent things; but it is the sign of supreme perfectibility to renounce everything that you actually did possess, possessions that were envied by every one.

The poor man who is sober, chaste, simple and contented because he lacks means and occasions for anything else, is inclined to look for a recompense in pleasures which do not cost money, and as it were for a revenge in a spiritual superiority where prosperous people cannot compete with him. But often his virtues come from his impotence or from his ignorance; he does not turn from the right course—he cannot afford to do so—he does not pile up treasure because he possesses only the strictly necessary; he is not drunken and licentious because wine-sellers and women of the streets give no credit. His life, often hard, servile, dark, redeems his faults. And his suffering forces him to lift his eyes towards Heaven in search of consolation. We do so little for the poor that we have no right to judge them. As they are, abandoned by their brothers, kept far from those who could speak to their hearts, avoided by those who shrink from the proximity of their sweaty bodies, excluded from those worlds of intelligence and the arts which might make their poverty more endurable, the poor are, in the universal wretchedness of mankind, the least impure. If they were more loved, they would be better men. How can those who have left them alone in their poverty have the heart to condemn them?

Jesus loved the poor; He loved them for the compassion which He felt for them; He loved them because He felt them nearer to His soul, more prepared to understand Him than other men. He loved them because they constantly gave Him the happiness of service, of giving bread to the hungry, strength to the weak, hope to the unhappy. Jesus loved the poor because He saw that if they were justly treated they would be the most legitimate inhabitants of the Kingdom. He loved the poor because they rendered the renunciation of the rich easier by the stimulus of charity; but most of all He loved the poor men who had been rich and who for the love of the Kingdom had become poor. Their renunciation was the greatest act of faith in His promise. They had given that which considered absolutely is nothing, but in the eyes of the world is everything, for the certainty of sharing in a more perfect life. They had been obliged to conquer in themselves one of the most profoundly rooted instincts of man. Jesus, born a poor man among the poor, for the poor, never left his brothers. He gave to them the fructifying abundance of His divine property. But in His heart He sought the poor man who had not always been poor, the rich man ready to strip himself for His love. He sought him, perhaps He never found him. But He felt this longed-for, unknown brother man tenderly nearer to his heart than all the docile seekers who crowded about Him.

THE DEVIL’S DUNG

Note well, you men who are yet to be born! Jesus was never willing to touch a coin with His hand. Those hands of His which molded the clay of the earth as a cure for blind eyes, those hands which touched the contaminated flesh of lepers and of the dead, those hands which clasped the body of Judas, so much more contaminated than clay, than leprosy, than putrefaction, those white pure healing hands which nothing could sully, never suffered themselves to be touched by one of those metal disks which carry in relief the profiles of the proprietors of the world. Jesus could mention money in His parables; He could see it in the hands of others, but touch it—no! To Him who scorned nothing, money was disgusting. It was repugnant to Him with a repugnance that was like horror. All His nature was in revolt at the thought of a contact with those filthy symbols of wealth.

But one day even Jesus was constrained to look at a piece of money. They asked Him if it was permitted to the true Israelite to pay the tribute, and He answered at once, “Show me the tribute money.” They showed it to Him, but He would not take it. It was a Roman coin stamped with the hypocritical face of Augustus. But He wished to seem not to know whose face it was. He asked, “Whose is this image and superscription?” They answered, “Cæsar’s.” Then He threw into the faces of the wily interrogators the answer which silenced them, “Render therefore unto Cæsar the things which are Cæsar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s.”

Give back that which is not yours, money does not belong to us. It is manufactured by the powerful for the needs of power. It is the property of kings and of the kingdom, of that other kingdom which is not ours. The king represents force and is the protector of wealth; but we have nothing to do with violence and reject riches. Our Kingdom has no potentates and has no rich men; the King of our Heaven does not coin money. Money is a means for the exchange of earthly goods, but we do not seek for earthly goods. What little is necessary for us, a little sunshine, a little air, a little water, a piece of bread, a cloak, will be given freely to us by God and by God’s friends. Tire yourselves out, you other people, all your lives to gather together a great pile of those round minted tokens. We have no use for them. For us they are definitely superfluous. Therefore we give them back; we give them back to him who has had them coined, to him who has had his portrait put on them, so that all should know that they are his.

Jesus never needed to give back any money because He never possessed any. He gave the order to His disciples not to carry bags for offerings on their journeys. He made one single exception, and that a fearful one. The Gospel tells us that one apostle kept the common purse. This disciple was Judas, and even Judas felt himself forced to give back the payment for his betrayal before disappearing in death. Judas is the mysterious victim sacrificed to the curse of money. Money carries with it, together with the filth of the hands which have clutched and handled it, the inexorable contagion of crime. Among the unclean things which men have manufactured to defile the earth and defile themselves, money is perhaps the most unclean. These counters of coined metal which pass and repass every day among hands still soiled with sweat or blood, worn by the rapacious fingers of thieves, of merchants, of misers; this round and viscid sputum of the Mint, desired by all, sought for, stolen, envied, loved more than love and often more than life; these ugly pieces of stamped matter, which the assassin gives to the cut-throat, the usurer to the hungry, the enemy to the traitor, the swindler to his partner, the simonist to the barterer in religious offices, the lustful to the woman bought and sold, these foul vehicles of evil which persuade the son to kill his father, the wife to betray her husband, the brother to defraud his brother, the wicked poor man to stab the wicked rich man, the servant to cheat his master, the highwayman to despoil the traveler; this money, these material emblems of matter, are the most terrifying objects manufactured by man. Money which has been the death of so many bodies is every day the death of thousands of souls. More contagious than the rags of a man with the pest, than the pus of an ulcer, than the filth of a sewer, it enters into every house, shines on the counters of the money-changers, settles down in money-chests, profanes the pillow of sleep, hides itself in the fetid darkness of squalid back-rooms, sullies the innocent hands of children, tempts virgins, pays the hangman for his work, goes about on the face of the earth to stir up hatred, to set cupidity on fire, to hasten corruption and death.

Bread, already holy on the family board, becomes on the table of the Church the everlasting body of Christ. Money too is the visible sign of a transubstantiation. It is the infamous Host of the Demon. He who loves money and receives it with joy is in visible communion with the Demon. He who touches money with pleasure touches without knowing it the filth of the Demon. The pure cannot touch it, the holy man cannot endure it. They know with unshakable certainty its ugly essence, and they have for money the same horror that the rich man has for poverty.

THE KINGS OF THE NATIONS

“Whose is this image?” asks Jesus when they put the Roman money before his eyes. He knows that face, He knows, as they all do, that Octavius by a sequence of extraordinary good luck became the monarch of the world with the adulatory surname of Augustus. He knows that falsely youthful profile, that head of clustering curls, the great nose that juts forward as if to hide the cruelty of the small mouth, the lips rigorously closed. It is a head, like those of all kings, cut off from the body, cut off below the neck; sinister image of a voluntary and eternal decapitation. Cæsar is the king of the past, the head of the armies, the coiner of silver and gold, fallible administrator of insufficient justice. Jesus is the King of the future, the liberator of servants, the abdicator of wealth, the master of love. There is nothing in common between them. Jesus has come to overthrow the domination of Cæsar, to undo the Roman Empire and every earthly empire, but not to put Himself in Cæsar’s place. If men will listen to Him there will never be any Cæsar again. Jesus is not the heir who conspires against the sovereign to take his place. He has come peaceably to remove all rulers. Cæsar is the strongest and most famous of His rivals, but also the most remote, because his force lies in the slothfulness of men, in the weakness of peoples. But One has come who will awaken the sleeping, open the eyes of the blind, give back strength to the weak. When everything is fulfilled and the Kingdom is founded—a Kingdom which needs no soldiers nor judges nor slaves nor money, but only renewed and living souls—Cæsar’s empire will vanish like a pile of ashes under the victorious breath of the wind.

As long as Cæsar is there, we can give back to him what is his. For the new man, money is nothing. We give back to Cæsar, vowed to eternal nothingness, that silver nothingness which is none of ours. Jesus is always looking forward with passionate longing to the arrival of the second earthly Paradise and He takes no heed of governors because the new land which He announces will not need governors. A people of holy men who love each other would have no use for Kings, law-courts and armies. On one occasion only does He speak of kings, and then only to overturn the common established idea. “The Kings of the Gentiles,” He says to His disciples, “exercise lordship over them, and they that exercise authority upon them are called benefactors. But ye shall not be so, but he that is greatest among you, let him be as the younger, and he that is chief, as he that doth serve.” It is the theory of perfect equality in human relationship. The great is small, the master is servant, the King is slave. Since, according to Christ’s teachings, he who governs must become like him who serves, the opposite is true, and he who serves has the same rights and honors as he who governs. Among the righteous, there may be some more ardent than others; there may be saints who were sinners up to the last day; there may be other innocent ones who were citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven from their birth. Different planes of spiritual greatness may exist as variations of the perfection common to all; but to the end of time every category of superior and inferior, of master and subordinate, shall be abolished. Authority presupposes, even if it is badly wielded, a flock to lead, a minority to punish, bestiality to shackle; but when all men are holy, there will be no more need for commands and obedience, for laws and punishments. The Kingdom of Heaven can dispense with the commands of Force.

In the Kingdom of Heaven men will not hate each other and will no longer desire riches; every reason and need for government will disappear immediately after these two great changes. The name of the path which conducts to perfect liberty is not Destruction but Holiness. And it is not found in the sophistries of Godwin, or of Stirner, or Proudhon, or of Kropotkin, but only in the gospel of Jesus Christ.

SWORD AND FIRE

Every time that the sycophants of the powerful have desired to sanctify the ambition of the ambitious, the violence of the violent, the fierceness of the fierce, the pugnacity of the pugnacious, the conquests of the conquerors, every time that the paid sophists or frenzied orators have tried to reconcile pagan ferocity with Christian gentleness, to use the Cross as the hilt of the sword, to justify blood spilt through hatred by the blood which flowed on Calvary to teach love; every time, in short, that people wish to use the doctrine of peace to legitimatize war, and make Christ surety for Genghis Khan or for Bonaparte or even through refinement of infamy, the outrider of Mahomet, you will see them quote, with the inexorable punctuality of all commonplaces, the celebrated gospel text, which everybody knows by heart and very few have ever understood.

“Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.” Some more learned add, “I am come to send fire on the earth.” Others rush forward to present the decisive verse, “The kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force.”

What angel of eloquence, what supernatural enlightener, can ever reveal to these hardened quoters the true meaning of the words which they repeat with such light frivolity? They do not look at the words which come before and after; they pay no attention to the occasion on which they were spoken. They do not imagine for a moment that they can have another meaning from the common one.

When Jesus says that He has come to bring a sword,—or as it is written in the parallel passage of Luke, “Discord,” He is speaking to His Disciples who are on the point of departing to announce the coming of the Kingdom. And immediately after having spoken of the sword, He explains with familiar examples what He meant to say: “For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And a man’s foes shall be they of his own household. For from henceforth there shall be five in one house divided, three against two, and two against three.” The sword therefore does not mean war; it is a figure of speech which dignifies division. The sword is what divides, cuts in two, disunites; and the preaching of the gospel shall divide men of the same family. Because among men there are those deaf and those who hear, those who are slow and those who are quick, those who deny and those who believe. Until all are converted and “brothers in the Word,” discord will reign on earth. But discord is not war, is not massacre. Those who have heard and believe—the Christians—will not assault those who do not hear and do not believe. They will, it is true, take up arms against their refractory and stubborn brothers, but these arms will be preaching, example, pardon, love. Those who are not converted perhaps will begin real warfare, the warfare of violence and blood, but they will begin it exactly because they are not converted, precisely because they are not yet Christians. The triumph of the Gospel is the end of all wars, of wars between man and man, between family and family, between caste and caste, between people and people. If the Gospel at first is the cause of separations and discord the fault is not in the truths taught in the Gospel but in the fact that these truths are not yet practiced by all.

When Jesus proclaims that he comes to bring fire, only a literal-minded barbarian can think of murderous and destructive fire, worthy auxiliary of human warfare. “What will I if it be already kindled!” The fire desired by the Son of Man is the fire of purification, of enthusiasm, the ardor of sacrifice, the refulgent flame of love. Until all souls are burning and consumed in that fire, the word of the Gospel will be but useless sound, and the Kingdom still far away. To renew the contaminated and hateful family of men, a wonderful outburst of grief and of passion is needed. The complacent must suffer, the cold must burn, the insensible must cry out, the tepid must flame like torches in the night. All the filth accumulated in the secret life of men, all the sediments of sin which make of every soul an offensive sewer, all the corruption which shuts the ears and suffocates the hearts, must be burned up in this miraculous spiritual fire, which Jesus came to kindle in our hearts.

But to pass beyond this wall of flame there is need for strength of soul and a boldness not possessed by all, possessed only by the valorous; and thus Jesus can say, “The Kingdom of Heaven suffereth violence and the violent take it by force.” The word violent has as a matter of fact in the text the evident meaning of “strong,” of men who know how to take doors by assault without hesitating or trembling. “Sword,” “fire,” “violence,” are words which are not to be taken in the literal sense, so pleasing to the advocates of massacres. They are figurative words which we are forced to use to reach the torpid imagination of the crowds. The sword is the symbol of the divisions between those first persuaded and those who are last in believing; fire is purifying love; violence is the strength necessary to make oneself over and to arrive on the threshold of the Kingdom. Any one who understands this passage in any other way either does not know how to read, or is determined to misread.