70 Dissatisfaction with this principle. CHAP. 



that which he thinketh that he hath," may likewise 

 be paraphrased, "The time shall come when all 

 disguises and all self-deception shall be stripped 

 away, and he who has nothing shall see himself as 

 he is." 1 



"The aphorism that to him that hath, more is 

 given, was, as applied to material wealth, in some 

 form or other probably familiar to the shrewd men of 

 the time. But what was startling was, that this 

 principle should be adopted by Christ, and laid down 

 as one of those upon which God's government is 

 carried on. For this inequality in human conditions, 

 and the tendency to rise faster the higher one gets, 

 and to sink faster the lower one falls, was a thing 

 that was commonly regarded as a defect in the 

 world's arrangement, due to some inherent perversity 

 in matter or in man. People's minds in those days 

 were possessed with the notion that God must have 

 intended to make things fair and equal for all, but 

 that inequalities had slipped into the world in the 

 making ; soon, however, the Messiah would come 

 and set this right among other things. Hence it 

 startled Our Lord's hearers to find this defect, as 

 they deemed it, in the order of the world brought 

 forward by Him, and not only not explained away as 

 they would have expected, but set forth among the 

 laws according to which the spiritual order of the 

 world was carried on." 



"Our Lord, as a fact, asserts not only that 

 1 Compare Rev. iii. 17. 



