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Commentary from THE ANNOTATED
BOOK OF COMMON
PRAYEREdited 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.
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