mean that alms are to he given out of unjust riches, but of riches that are not riches, properly so speaking, but only the shadows of them. This is evidently the meaning from another passage in the same Gospel of St. Luke: " If then you have not been faithful in the unjust mammon, who will trust you with that which is the true?" The meaning of these words is: "If in the unjust mammon" that is, false riches "you have not been faithful" in giving liberally to the poor, "who will trust you" with true riches the riches of virtues, which make men truly rich? This is the explanation given by St. Cyprian, and also by St. Augustine in the second book of his Evangelical Questions, where he says that mammon signifies "riches;" which the foolish and wicked alone consider to be riches, whilst wise and good men despise them, and assert that spiritual gifts are alone to be considered true riches.
There is another passage in the same Gospel of St. Luke, which may be considered as a kind of commentary on the unjust steward: "There was a certain rich man, who was clothed in purple and fine linen, and feasted sumptuously every day. And there was a certain beggar named Lazarus, who lay at his gate, full of sores. Desiring to be filled with the crumbs that fell from the rich man's table, and no one did give him; moreover, the dogs came and licked his sores. And it came to pass
