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Commentary from 
THE ANNOTATED
BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER
Edited by JOHN HENRY BLUNT
Rivingtons, London, 1884
NINTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY
 
The keynote of the Office for this day is struck by our Lord's words in the end of the Gospel, "Make to yourselves friends of the Mammon of unrighteousness, that when you fail, they may receive you into everlasting habitations."  For by the unjust steward in the parable, of which these words give the application, is represented the Christian in his way through this life; and their way through the wilderness.  By the temptations to which the latter were subjected are set forth as in a living parable the lot of the "children of light," who also must pass through such temptations as are "common to man."  The worldly wisdom of the steward our Lord uses as an example of the manner in which the children of light are to use the temptations of life as a means by which they may make friends in heaven among the angels and saints.  Out of the Mammon of unrighteousness - the idols of this life which men are tempted to fall down and worship - this profit may arise to him who is tempted, that his trial by their means is like our Lord's temptation by Satan, a trial which will result in greater perfection and fitness for the further work set before him to do, if due use is made of that way of escape by which he may be able to bear it.  Such temptations were offered to the first Israel, and the people gave way before them; they are also offered to God's new Israel, and the words of our Lord are an exhortation to them, that as "children of light" they should be as wise for spiritual objects as "the children of this world" (recklessly irreligious, yet provident and politic, men) are for the objects which they set themselves to attain as the desire of their life.