John told the people that a new era was coming and they would have to get a new mind and manner of life as an outfit for it. The people asked for specifications. John’s suggestions ran along two lines. He encouraged the plain working people to be neighborly and friendly, and share with a man who was hard up. With powerful individuals, like hired soldiers and Roman tax-farmers, he insisted that they must quit using their physical force and legal power as a cinch to extort money. In other words, they must quit grafting. In the Kingdom of God the “big, black book of graft” will be closed, and men will no longer eat their protesting fellow-men. The more we realize that some form of graft is at the bottom of most easy incomes, the more good sense will we see in this kind of evangelism. Have we ever been a victim of extortion? How did it feel? Did it sour the milk of human kindness in us? Fourth Day: God versus Mammon Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon the earth, where moth and rust consume, and where thieves break through and steal: but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth consume, and where thieves do not break through nor steal: for where thy treasure is there will thy heart be also. The lamp of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light. But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is the darkness! No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.—Matt. 6:19-24. Acquisition may operate on different planes. A man may accumulate material stuff, or he may acquire spiritual faculties, memories, and relations. In a balanced life the two work side by side in peace, and each may aid the other. But the experience of all spiritual teachers shows that practically the acquisition of property often becomes a passion which absorbs the man and leaves little energy for the higher pursuits. Most men who have used up their life to acquire wealth look back with homesickness to some idealistic aspiration of their youth as to a lost Edenland. Jesus felt the antagonism of private wealth and the Kingdom of God so keenly that he set God and Mammon over against each other, and warned us that we must choose between them. Placed in this connection, the saying about the darkening of the inner light seems to refer to the influence of money-getting on the higher vision of the soul. This entire passage is fundamental and will explain other sayings which follow. Do God and money come into flat collision in college life? Fifth Day: The Divisive Influence of Riches