The apostle James cries to the men of wealth:  “Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl, for your miseries that shall come upon you.”  John said:  “Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world.  If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.”

Whatever these passages, and many others of like import, may signify, it is not at all strange that Christians, living in times when wealth was abused, and when critical Biblical scholarship was unknown, should have understood Christ to command a life of poverty as an indispensable condition of true holiness.

There are three ways of interpreting Christ’s doctrine of wealth.  First, it may be held that Jesus intended His teachings to be literally obeyed, not only by His first disciples but by all His followers in subsequent years, and that such literal obedience is practicable, reasonable and conducive to the highest well-being of society.  Secondly, it has been said that Jesus was a gentle and honest visionary, who erroneously believed that the possession of riches rendered religious progress impossible, but that strict compliance with His commands would be destructive of civilization.  Laveleye declares that “if Christianity were taught and understood conformably to the spirit of its Founder, the existing social organism could not last a day.”  Thirdly, neither of these views seems to do justice to the spirit of Christ, for they fail to give proper recognition to many other injunctions of the Master and to many significant incidents in his public ministry.  Exhaustive treatment of this subject is, of course, impossible here.  Briefly it may be remarked, that Jesus looked upon wealth as tending oftentimes to foster an unsocial spirit.  Rich men are liable to become enemies of the brotherhood Jesus sought to establish, by reason of their covetousness and contracted sympathies.  The rich man is in danger of erecting false standards of manhood, of ignoring the highest interests of the soul by an undue emphasis on the material.  Wealth, in itself, is not an evil, but it is only a good when it is used to advance the real welfare of humanity.  Jesus was not intent upon teaching economics.  His purpose was to develop the man.  It was the moral value and spiritual influence of material things that concerned him.  Professor Shailer Mathews admirably states the true attitude of Jesus towards rich men:  “Jesus was a friend neither of the working man nor the rich man as such.  He calls the poor man to sacrifice as well as the rich man.  He was the Son of Man, not the son of a class of men.  But His denunciation is unsparing of those men who make wealth at the expense of souls; who find in capital no incentive to further fraternity; who endeavor so to use wealth as to make themselves independent of social obligations, and to grow fat with that which should be shared with society;—­for those men who are gaining the world but are letting their neighbors fall among thieves and Lazarus rot among their dogs.”