rth He had not where to lay His head. Women ministered unto Him of
their substance. We never read that He had any money at all. When once
He wanted to use a coin as an illustration, He borrowed it; when, at
another time, He needed one with which to pay a tax, He wrought a
miracle in order to procure it. As He was dying, the soldiers, we are
told, parted His garments among them--that was all there was to divide.
When He was dead, men buried Him in another's tomb. More literally true
than perhaps we always realize was the apostle's saying, "He became
poor."

Who, then, will deny that a man's life consisteth not in the abundance
of the things which he possesseth? Yet how strangely materialized our
thoughts have become! Our very language has been dragged down and made a
partner with us in our fall. When, for example, our Authorized Version
was written in 1611, the translators could write, without fear of being
misunderstood, "Let no man seek his own, but every man another's
_wealth_" (i Cor. x. 24).[51] But though the nobler meaning of the word
still survives in "well" and "weal," "wealth" to-day is rarely used save
to indicate abundance of material good. When Thackeray makes "Becky
Sharp" say that she could be good if she had L4000 a year, and when. Mr.
Keir Hardie asks if it is possible for a man to be a Christian on a
pound a week, the thoughts of many hearts are revealed. There is nothing
to be done without money, we think; money is the golden key which
unlocks all doors; money is the lever which removes all difficulties.
This is what many of us are saying, and what most of us in our hearts
are thinking. But clean across these spoken and unspoken thoughts of
ours, there comes the life of Jesus, the man of Nazareth, to rebuke, and
shame, and silence us. Who in His presence dare speak any more of the
sovereign might of money?

This is the lesson of the life of the Best. Is it not also the lesson of
the lives of the good in all ages? The greatest name in the great world
of Greece is Socrates; and Socrates was a poor man. The greatest name in
the first century of the Christian era is Paul; and Paul was a
working-man and sometimes in want. It was Calvinism, Mark Pattison said,
that in the sixteenth century saved Europe, and Calvin's strength, a
Pope once declared, lay in this, that money had no charm for him. John
Wesley re-created modern England and left behind him "two silver
teaspoons and the Methodist Church." The "Poet