The meaning is obscure in his other comment upon an employer who told his tired servant to serve his master first, ending with the enigma, "We are unprofitable servants: we have done that which was our duty to do."[3] _Usury_ In the parable of the talents the servant who did not put his money out at usury to make profits was condemned: "And cast ye the unprofitable servant into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth."[4] Punishment was to be severe in Jesus' program; the disobedient servant "shall be beaten with many stripes." Jesus did not advise leniency in such instances except that "he that knew not, and did commit things worthy of stripes, shall be beaten with few stripes."[5] In his estimation the servant was a slave to be punished corporeally by his master, even if ignorant of his wrong-doing. A Dr. Taylor, former Yale College theologian, is reported to have said: "I have no doubt that if Jesus Christ were now on earth he would, under certain circumstances, become a slaveholder." A Southern divine in 1860 could well maintain that slavery was approved in both Old and New Testaments, but no Christian would now impute slaveholding to Jesus. The standard of human relationships has improved since slaveholding days in America. The modern attitude toward servants, though by no means perfect, is superior to the relationships between master and servants accepted by Jesus. Slavery was the custom of the times and Jesus did not rise above it. In the parable of the unmerciful servant[6] Jesus taught the duty of forgiveness. He rightly rebuked the servant who oppressed his subordinates after being well treated by his lord. But the punishment suggested by Jesus for the abominable conduct was extremely harsh: "And his lord was wroth and delivered him to the tormentors, till he should pay all that was due unto him." Torture for criminals was thus taught by Jesus. Jesus, apprenticed to his father in his youth, never did any practical work so far as we know. He lived on the charity of others, setting an example that would bring trouble to anyone who followed in his train. If anything, he was an agitator, a peripatetic propagandist, teaching what he believed right but not working to support himself and therefore not being a good example for the workaday world today. _Economics_ Nothing in the teachings of Jesus was more definite than his denunciation of riches. "Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth ... A rich man shall hardly enter into the kingdom of heaven ... It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God ... The rich man also died, and was buried; and in hell he lifted up his eyes, being in torments ... Woe unto you that are rich." These strictures upon the rich appear somewhat severe, and Jesus went much farther, condemning even ordinary thrift and precaution.[7]