We find among the express commands of Jesus this advice: "Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth." The most liberal translation of this counsel can not make it anything but poor advice. Every material blessing of mankind has come from the savings of human labor, and the value of laying up treasures upon earth is more evident than that of laying up treasures in Heaven, whatever this saying may mean. When every Christian tries as hard to be poor as he tries now to get rich, we shall think that he has some regard for the moral teachings of Jesus.
It must be apparent to all that what may be claimed as Christian morality is not only decaying, but that it ought to decay. There is no sense in it. Imagine a man telling people in the Twentieth Century to "take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat or what ye shall drink, nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on," and endeavoring to prove that because the fowls of the air do not have to broil a beefsteak for their breakfast or make biscuit for tea, human beings will be fed whether they provide anything for their appetites or not.
Jesus tells us that our Heavenly Father will feed us because we are better than the fowls of the air, and that he will clothe us because he clothes the grass of the field. Our earthly fathers seem to have done more in the way of providing food and clothing for us before we were able to take care of ourselves than any Heavenly Father. Others may put their trust in God for something to eat and drink and wear, if they wish to, but I prefer to give the matter a little thought myself.
Jesus concludes these admonitions by saying, "Take no thought for the morrow." This is bad counsel, and it shows the good sense of mankind that it has never been followed. The whole world lives in what one of our poets called, "The bright tomorrow of the mind."
We will refer to only one more of the peculiar moral injunctions of Jesus. In the fifth chapter of Matthew, in the forty-fourth verse, we read, "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you."
If we were to do as herein commanded, we should have an inverted morality which would place the crown of virtue upon the forehead of vice.