In the Gospel are found these words of Jesus: Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon the earth; ye can not serve God and Mammon; whosoever he be of you that renounces not all that he hath, he can not be my disciple. If I were an adherent of the atheistic Socialism of our day, I would constantly hold up these sayings of their Lord and Master before the sincere followers of Christianity, who are by far the most dangerous opponents of Socialism; for if they should obey these sayings, without any further effort the solution of the social question would follow. But there are many passages of the Bible which are almost divested of their value because of a kind of disqualifying law of customary usage; or they are at least not spoken of in religious circles, because they have little that is “edifying” for many of those present. If we must admit that such passages designate the goal or ideal toward which we should strive, rather than that to which every one can at once attain, we should, nevertheless, keep our eyes continually upon it and have the earnest will to make our way thither; else all the other messages of the Gospel profit us nothing and are for us as if they were not there. To speak practically, then, one must never fix his heart upon possessions, nor regard them as the most important thing to be lived and striven for, nor make them the measure of his valuation of men and circumstances, nor be unready or disinclined to diminish them at any time for the sake of God or the common good, and if necessary even to give them up altogether. They who can do this when it is required of them are the only men who are free and worthy of God’s kingdom. At different times in life they will often be put to this test, and if this has never yet happened, it is no good sign for their inner life or for their standing in God’s grace. Often it goes no farther than the testing of their will, and when the will has surrendered, God does not require of them the actual deed, or he lets the trial so shape itself that in the end it is the more easily endurable. Sometimes, however, as with Job, it comes to a real loss of all one’s goods; and not always is there finally a double compensation therefor, but there always is a complete consolation for what one has done, provided one will seek for it and not merely helplessly and weakly bewail. In order always to have the mastery of oneself and to put this to the proof, it may often be a good thing, even before one resolves upon Christianity, to make the test of Polycrates, who cast a much-treasured ring into the sea. Try it once, this surrender of your dearest possession; though, to be sure, the test will in most cases come to you unbidden, if it is your lot to become a free man by God’s grace instead of a slave to Mammon. But no matter how it comes to you, if you have shown yourself able to make this surrender, you will be set free from the strongest fetter with which the spirit of the world keeps man bound; the rest of