“For the children of this world are wiser in their generation than the children of light.  Wherefore make unto yourselves friends out of the mammon of iniquity so that when you die they may receive you into everlasting dwellings.”

Father Purdon developed the text with resonant assurance.  It was one of the most difficult texts in all the Scriptures, he said, to interpret properly.  It was a text which might seem to the casual observer at variance with the lofty morality elsewhere preached by Jesus Christ.  But, he told his hearers, the text had seemed to him specially adapted for the guidance of those whose lot it was to lead the life of the world and who yet wished to lead that life not in the manner of worldlings.  It was a text for business men and professional men.  Jesus Christ with His divine understanding of every cranny of our human nature, understood that all men were not called to the religious life, that by far the vast majority were forced to live in the world, and, to a certain extent, for the world:  and in this sentence He designed to give them a word of counsel, setting before them as exemplars in the religious life those very worshippers of Mammon who were of all men the least solicitous in matters religious.

He told his hearers that he was there that evening for no terrifying, no extravagant purpose; but as a man of the world speaking to his fellow-men.  He came to speak to business men and he would speak to them in a businesslike way.  If he might use the metaphor, he said, he was their spiritual accountant; and he wished each and every one of his hearers to open his books, the books of his spiritual life, and see if they tallied accurately with conscience.

Jesus Christ was not a hard taskmaster.  He understood our little failings, understood the weakness of our poor fallen nature, understood the temptations of this life.  We might have had, we all had from time to time, our temptations:  we might have, we all had, our failings.  But one thing only, he said, he would ask of his hearers.  And that was:  to be straight and manly with God.  If their accounts tallied in every point to say: 

“Well, I have verified my accounts.  I find all well.”

But if, as might happen, there were some discrepancies, to admit the truth, to be frank and say like a man: 

“Well, I have looked into my accounts.  I find this wrong and this wrong.  But, with God’s grace, I will rectify this and this.  I will set right my accounts.”

THE DEAD

Lily, the caretaker’s daughter, was literally run off her feet.  Hardly had she brought one gentleman into the little pantry behind the office on the ground floor and helped him off with his overcoat than the wheezy hall-door bell clanged again and she had to scamper along the bare hallway to let in another guest.  It was well for her she had not to attend to the ladies also.  But Miss Kate and Miss Julia had thought of that and had converted the bathroom upstairs into a ladies’ dressing-room.  Miss Kate and Miss Julia were there, gossiping and laughing and fussing, walking after each other to the head of the stairs, peering down over the banisters and calling down to Lily to ask her who had come.