“THEY HAD ALL THINGS COMMON.”
By Alexander McLaren
(Alexander McLaren, D.D., in Sunday School, Times.) A STRANGE oneness fused all together. In that blessed early hour were no discords. And, as all were melted into one mass, “they had all things common.” When they were so closely knit, “mine” and “yours” ceased to mean anything, and “ours” came to be the only natural word. That was no appointed community of goods, for we see that Ananias had liberty either to sell or keep his property, and that Mark’s mother had a house and at least one slave girl. Enjoined community of goods is worthless. Let a common love to a common redeeming Lord draw men together, and they will need no regulations about property. Nobody told these believers to share their goods. Their own hearts told them. Communists and Socialists begin at the wrong end when they wish to regulate property, and leave the proprietors’ natural selfishness undealt with. No less do Christian people err when they button up their pockets, as a consequence of having shut up their hearts, against their needy brethren. The spring of love to men, which is love to Jesus Christ, must have run nearly dry, when the stream trickles from it so scantily as is too often the case. The owners were still owners, and there was care in distribution “according as every man had need.” That is not communism, as modern ideas go, but it is stewardship and wise administration. The individual still “possessed,” but did not call it or use it for his own. Would that rich and less rich among our present-day Christians did the same! There would be fewer miseries and less unrest, and less dangerous questioning whether property has any right at all, even the right to be.