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REWARDS OF RELIGION

HERE is a theory of religion that is so mechanical and immoral-though not held with any consciousness of immorality on the part of those who adhere to it-that one can only wonder how it could ever have found entrance into any human mind. The theory is that men are always and of necessity materially rewarded for being good, materially rewarded for accepting and believing the gospel. This view is not only, as has been said, mechanically immoral, but it is entirely unscriptural. For the problem of the ages-the problem that puzzled the great men of the Old Testament has been to explain why it is that the righteous suffer and the wicked prosper. Indeed, one of the strongest arguments in favor of immortality is that another life will be needed to redress the wrongs and injustices which are so obvious here. One of the most mysterious of the parables of Christ deals with

this theme. Lazarus was a good man, and yet he was tortured in this world. The rich man was a bad man, and yet Abraham is represented as saying to him: "Son, remember that thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things." This case is quite conclusive. Lazarus, the good man, received evil things in this life, and the rich man received good things. It is often so-oftener so than not. The weak and helpless and meek-those on whom special spiritual blessings are pronounced—are, almost as a rule, trodden under the feet of the proud and the prosperous. Goodness in itself means, or ought to mean, prosperity. The only goodness that is approved by God is goodness for its own sake, and without the remotest thought of reward. Divine truth is not something in which a man can invest with any hope whatever of drawing dividends that will pay for earth's luxuries. That truth is something through which we grow in character, and not at all in wealth.

No doctrine can be more dangerous than the one under consideration. For those who hold that prosperity is the reward of goodness are almost certain to cease to be good when the

supposed reward is withdrawn. If there is such a bargain it seems only fair that God shall keep His part of it. And when He does not the man is likely to consider himself absolved from its obligations. At least there is almost certain to be a challenge of the divine justice, and a complaining at what the man thinks undeserved punishment. If what Christ said of riches and of rich men is true, God could hardly do a more cruel thing than to give wealth to a good man, to make material prosperity the reward of virtue. For this would be to expose goodness and virtue to a very corrupting and deadly influence-that is, if Christ was right when He said that it is harder for a rich man to enter the kingdom of Heaven than for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle. The real rewards—and the only ones worth striving for are peace, a sense of being right with God, an undaunted soul, and the very virtue itself which is so great a thing as to be above all earthly reward. A man who has these can not be overthrown nor shaken by the storms of fate.

But the theory is not only mechanical and dangerous, it is grossly immoral as well, and in

In

many ways. Only one point can be made in this connection. Men who believe that they are prosperous because they are good, are almost certain to end by believing that they are good because they are prosperous. They look on their worldly state as proof of their high virtue. "God," they feel, if they do not say, "gave me this wealth because I am good, and therefore my possession of the wealth is obviously a proof of my goodness." That is a most immoral view, and for two reasons. the first place, when a man begins to feel sure that he is good-forgetting that he is fundamentally a sinner, with almost boundless evil possibilities and propensities in him—he has taken the first step on the road to badness. In the second place, the man is certain to pass from thinking wealth a proof of virtue to thinking it a virtue in itself. He compares himself with others, always to his own advantage, and, as he thinks he is virtuous because he is rich, he concludes that those who are poor are wicked. And so we have at last what is really a horrible reversal of the divine law, and a wicked upsetting of the divine standards. The only really good men are those

who are good even though God slays them, only those who would be good even if they were convinced that there was no God at all, who would tread the hard path of duty even if all light and hope should be withdrawn from them. Perfection proves itself, and virtue is its own evidence. They are to be striven for for their own sake, and to be admired and desired as positive goods in themselves.

It is, of course, true that happiness is attached to virtue. But the trouble is that we do not understand clearly in what happiness consists. We measure it by purely worldly standards, and confuse it with those things which are designed to gratify merely earthly desires. Thinking thus, it is quite impossible for us to see that God may often most truly reward men by taking from them their fortunes. Yet this is clear. Happiness then is a delight in truth and goodness, a joy which comes from endeavoring to make the will of God prevail. It was in such things as these that the Psalmist took pleasure. "My delight is in the law of the Lord." The counsels of the Lord were "dearer to him than thousands of gold and silver." He loved these, not be