be opened unto you” (Luke 11:9); “And shall not God avenge his own elect, which cry day and night unto him, though he bear long with them?” Luke 18:7.  In the parable of the unfaithful steward, our Lord introduces a fraudulent transaction—­a transaction so manifestly fraudulent that there is no danger of our thinking that it could have his approbation—­that he may thus illustrate the importance of prudent provision for the future.  By allowing each of his lord’s debtors to diminish the amount due from him, he gains their favor, that in time of need he may be received into their houses.  For the right apprehension of the parable, the words of the eighth verse are of primary importance:  “And the lord [the master of the steward] commended the unjust steward, because he had done wisely” [prudently, as the Greek word means].  Unjust as the steward’s conduct was, he could not but commend it as a prudent transaction for the end which he had in view.  Our Saviour adds:  “For the children of this world are in their generation [more exactly, towards or in respect to their own generation; that is, in dealing with men of their own sort] wiser than the children of light.”  The steward and his lord’s debtors were all “children of this world,” and the transaction between them was conducted upon worldly principles.  Our Saviour would have “the children of light”—­God’s holy children, who live and act in the sphere of heavenly light—­provident of their everlasting welfare in the use which they make of this world’s goods, as this steward was of his earthly welfare when he should be put out of his stewardship.  He accordingly adds, as the scope of the parable (ver. 9):  “Make to yourselves friends of [by the right use of] the mammon of unrighteousness [so called as being with unrighteous men the great object of pursuit, and too commonly sought, moreover, by unrighteous means]; that when ye fail [are discharged from your stewardship by death], they may receive you [that is, the friends whom ye have made by bestowing your earthly riches in deeds of love and mercy] into everlasting habitations.”  Our Lord uses the words, “they may receive you,” in allusion to the steward’s language:  “they may receive me into their houses.”  They do not receive us by any right or authority of their own, for this belongs to Christ alone; but they receive us in the sense that they bear witness before the throne of Christ to our deeds of love and mercy, by which is manifested the reality of our faith, and thus our title, through grace, to everlasting habitations.  Compare the remarkable passage in Matt. 25:34-46, which furnishes a true key to the present parable.