The claim of the Bible for the divine ownership is still more comprehensive. All property is his; all men are his. There is, too, a bent of human power which God confers. We are in the habit of speaking of "gifted" men. The meaning of the word in its usual connection must be that God gives certain powers to men--to one the power of poetry, to another the power of moving speech, and to another the power of scientific and inventive insight. Now there is a suggestive verse in Deuteronomy which declares that it is the Lord God that "giveth thee power to get this wealth." The "thee" is collective and refers to the people; but the rule applies as well to the individual. There is no reason for supposing that poetic genius or oratorical genius or inventive genius is a gift, while financial genius is an achievement. Yet there are probably no men who are more inclined to call themselves "self-made" than are the men who pass from poverty into vast wealth. Their complacency would be diminished, and their humility would be increased, if they perceived that all property belongs to God, that they themselves belong to God, and that their "power to get this wealth" comes from God. We find, then, that the first sweeping principle which the Scriptures give concerning wealth is that God is its inclusive and ceaseless owner. The second principle follows as a matter of course. God being the absolute owner, man is a trustee, a lessee, a borrower. When the man in the New Testament asked, "Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own?" he may not have reached a worthy definition either of "lawful" or of "mine own." He may have deemed a loan a final gift, a lease a purchase, a possession a creation, a stewardship an ownership. It is just this error that more than any other leads to the abuse of wealth. We treat it as "personal property," and the "personal" looks selfward rather than Godward. This was the blunder of the foolish rich man. His ground brought forth plentifully. His crops could not be crowded into his granaries. He resolved to tear down his barns and to build greater. He told his soul to eat, drink, and be merry, for that it had much goods laid up for many years. Then came the sentence of eviction. In a moment the man discovered that he was a tenant and not an owner. "Whose shall those things be which thou hast provided?" This is the question that every man of means must ask. Wills are never shrewd enough to secure the property for the dead. Jesus said that the man who acted on the idea that wealth was his own was a "fool." He missed the primary point of the divine ownership, and he missed the secondary point of the human trusteeship. All his work was based on impossibilities; and surely this is the supreme foolishness.