Except we believe in Jesus we cannot; if we do, we must.  For remember, Jesus was no shallow optimist; He did not go through life seeing only its pleasant things; He was at Cana of Galilee, but He was also at Nain; over all His life there lay a shadow, the shadow of the Cross; He died in the dark, betrayed of man, forsaken of God; surely He hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows.  And yet through all, His faith in God never wavered.  He prayed, and He taught others to pray.  When He lifted His eyes towards heaven, it was with the word “Father” upon His lips; and in like manner He bade His disciples, “When ye pray, say ‘Father.’” He took the trembling hands of men within His own, and looking into their eyes, filled as they were with a thousand nameless fears, “Fear not,” He said, “our heavenly Father knoweth; let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.”

“Learn of Me ... and ye shall find rest unto your souls;” herein is the secret of peace.  But it is not enough that we give ear to the words of Christ; we must make our own the whole meaning of the fact of Christ.  “God’s in His heaven,” sings Browning; “all’s right with the world.”  But if God is only in His heaven, all is not right with the world.  In Christ we learn that God has come from out His heaven to earth; and in the Cross of Christ we find the eternal love which meets and answers all our fears.  Fear not,

                   “Or if you fear,
    Cast all your cares on God; that anchor holds.”

“Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.”

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CONCERNING MONEY

“Now I saw in my dream, that at the further side of that plain was a little hill called Lucre, and in that hill a silver-mine, which some of them that had formerly gone that way, because of the rarity of it, had turned aside to see; but going too near the brink of the pit, the ground being deceitful under them, broke, and they were slain;-some also had been maimed there, and could not to their dying day be their own men again.”—­JOHN BUNYAN.

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XIII

CONCERNING MONEY

"How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of God!  For it is easier for a camel to enter in through a needle’s eye, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.”—­LUKE xviii. 24, 25.

I

The most significant thing in the teaching of Jesus concerning money is the large place which it fills in the records of our Lord’s public ministry.  How large that place is few of us, perhaps, realize.  Even religious writers who take in hand to set forth Christ’s teaching in detail, for the most part, pass over this subject in silence.  In Hastings’ great Dictionary of the Bible we find, under “Money,” a most elaborate article, extending to nearly twenty pages, and discussing with great fullness and learning the coinage of various Biblical periods; but when we seek to know what the New Testament has to say concerning the use and perils of wealth, the whole subject is dismissed in some nine lines.