A lesson prominent in the parable and which is brought out in the application is, that as he had made friends by his leniency in administering the substance of the master so they, Christian pastors and masters, should make to themselves friends out of something which is called the “mammon of unrighteousness” (about which we shall presently enquire). These friends would, out of gratitude, receive them into “the eternal tabernacles.” For these friends are to be in Heaven themselves, and they must have got there—if we are to keep to the story—not only through their pastor’s teaching and ministrations, but they must have partly owed their salvation to the loving and merciful treatment they had met with. An offender may be sometimes won over and completely changed for the better by feeling that he has been treated more kindly and leniently than he deserves. The parable implies that these might not have reached heaven if their guides had been more hard with them, if they had exacted every religious duty, and had been severe upon every failing. These men having reached the eternal tabernacles welcomed into them those who by lessening their burdens had been the means of their getting there themselves. We now come to the hard question, What is meant by the words “the mammon of unrighteousness” or “unrighteous mammon”—which are identical? I think they must mean the temporal authority in regulating things outward which the earliest rulers of the Church necessarily possessed. The word translated “unrighteous” does not here imply inherent badness, but that the seeming wealth has only a value according to worldly judgment and worldly measure, without intrinsic worth in itself. This may corrupt its possessor as much as worldly riches. I give, in a note, Archbishop Trench’s discussion of the Greek word.(299) Riches, _as riches_, are never called unrighteous by our Lord. I do not think, however, that wealth in its common sense can be intended by the word “mammon” here, for of “silver and gold” the Apostles would have none. But though the Apostles had not money, yet they had advantages for the use of which they must answer; they had, in authority and position, what answered to wealth; they could regulate the lives of the converts; they could lay hands on those chosen for the Ministry; they could enforce or remit certain of the Laws of Moses. This power dealt with things outward,—contributions, observances, rules of discipline and the like,—and so, if, as the authorities quoted seem to shew, the word here translated _unrighteous_ may mean false, in the sense of unreal, as paste to diamond, then this possession of theirs which gave room for the exercise of clemency—this apparel of dignity—might be so termed in contrast with inward spiritual riches, which form part of the condition of the individual man.