Treasure in a Field

“The kingdom of heaven is like unto a treasure hidden in the field; which a man found, and hid; and in his joy he goeth and selleth all that he hath, and buyeth that field.”

— Matthew 13:44, ASV

Coming of Age

Under the terms of his father’s will, Charlie Studd was to receive his share of the family fortune when he reached the age of twenty-five. He turned twenty-five on 2 December 1885, in China. The money took time to reach him, as legacies do, and it was not until the turn of 1886 and 1887 that he was in a position to dispose of it.

He had already decided what to do. He had been reading the Gospels, and he could not get past the plain words of Jesus to the rich young ruler: “go, sell whatsoever thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come, follow me” (Mark 10:21, ASV). He knew that most Christians did not take that command as addressed to them. He thought that it was addressed to him. He was in a mission that told its workers to trust God for their daily bread. He did not see how he could do that honestly while holding a fortune in reserve.

The Cheques

The day most often given for the decisive step is 13 January 1887. On that day, according to the accounts, he wrote a series of cheques before he even knew the exact size of his inheritance. Later, when he learned the full amount, he gave away most of what was left.

The total is variously given. Some accounts say twenty-five thousand pounds; others, including the modern reference works, say about twenty-nine thousand. Either sum was an immense fortune in the 1880s, equal by most reckonings to several million pounds today. It was not the whole of his family’s wealth, which was shared among many children, but it was the whole of his own.

The best-known gifts are these. Five thousand pounds went to D. L. Moody, the evangelist who had converted his father and restored his own faith. It is said that Studd hoped Moody would use it to start gospel work in Tirhut, the district of India where his father had made his money, and that when Moody could not do that, he used it towards the training school for Christian workers that he was founding in Chicago, which became the Moody Bible Institute. Five thousand pounds went to George Müller of Bristol, famous for running orphanages for thousands of children without ever asking anyone but God for money; the accounts say that Studd asked for four thousand of it to be used for missionary work and one thousand for the orphans. Five thousand went to George Holland, who ran a mission among the poor of Whitechapel in London’s East End. Five thousand went to Frederick Booth-Tucker, the Salvation Army officer who was leading the Army’s work in India, and who had himself given up a career in the Indian civil service to live among the poor in Indian dress. Further sums, recorded less precisely, went to other Christian causes.

There is a pattern in these gifts that is worth noticing. They went to men who themselves lived by faith and among the poor: an evangelist who had once sold shoes, an orphan-father who asked no one for money, a mission in a slum, and an Englishman who had taken off his uniform to wear the clothes of India. They also went, in two cases, to India, the land from which the fortune had come. Whether Studd thought of it as restitution is not recorded. It looks like it.

The Men He Gave To

The men who received Studd’s money were not chosen at random, and a word about each of them helps to explain his choice.

George Müller, a German-born pastor in Bristol, had begun caring for orphans in 1836. By the 1880s his orphan houses on Ashley Down cared for some two thousand children at a time, and over his lifetime more than ten thousand passed through them. Müller made it a rule never to ask anyone but God for money, and published the record of the gifts that came in answer to prayer. He was, for evangelicals of Studd’s generation, the living proof that a work could be carried on by faith alone. He also supported many missionaries abroad, which is why Studd asked that most of his gift should go to missionary work.

George Holland ran a mission in George Yard, Whitechapel, in one of the poorest and most dangerous districts of London, with schools, meetings and practical help for families who had nothing. The gift to Holland was a sign that he did not think the poor of London any less in need than the people of China.

Frederick Tucker had been a member of the Indian Civil Service before he joined the Salvation Army, married the daughter of its founder, William Booth, and took the name Booth-Tucker. In 1882 he had led the Army’s first party to India, where its officers, to the scandal of many Europeans, wore Indian clothes, went barefoot, begged their food and lived among the poor. Studd, who had just put on a Chinese gown, cannot have missed the parallel.

Moody, finally, was the man to whom the Studds owed most, and the gift to him was in part a gift of gratitude. If, as is usually said, it went to the training school in Chicago, it went to the new kind of work Moody was beginning in his later years: the training of ordinary men and women, without university degrees, to be evangelists and Christian workers. Studd would spend much of his later life recruiting exactly such people.

What He Kept

He did not give away quite everything. When the gifts were made, he kept back a sum, usually given as about three thousand four hundred pounds. The accounts say that he meant it for a future wife, and by the time he married, a year later, he had found one. The story of what happened to it belongs to the next chapter.

It is also worth being clear about what he did not give up. He remained a member of a wealthy and well-connected family, who would help him and his children when he was ill and at home, and whose connections opened doors for him all his life. He had given up his own fortune, which was a great thing. He had not given up the security of being an English gentleman, and he could not have done so if he had tried. That does not lessen his gift. It does help to explain why, later in life, he sometimes failed to understand that people without his background could not live as he did.

Was It Wise?

People argued about it at the time, and they still do. Some thought it a magnificent act of faith. Others thought it rash and even irresponsible. A fortune wisely invested could have supported missionary work for generations; given away at once, it was spent within a few years. Studd had no answer for those who argued in that way, except that he believed he had been told to do it.

The New Testament does not command every Christian to give away everything. Paul told Timothy to “charge them that are rich in this present world, that they be not highminded, nor have their hope set on the uncertainty of riches, but on God, who giveth us richly all things to enjoy; that they do good, that they be rich in good works, that they be ready to distribute, willing to communicate” (1 Timothy 6:17-18, ASV). That is a command to generosity, not to poverty. But the Gospels also record that Jesus sometimes asked particular people for everything, and that some of them obeyed. Studd believed that he was one of those people. It is not easy to prove him wrong.

Paul, saying goodbye to the elders of Ephesus, reminded them of “the words of the Lord Jesus, that he himself said, It is more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35, ASV). The saying is not recorded in any of the Gospels; Paul knew it from those who had heard Jesus. Studd believed it, and in 1887 he found it to be true. Many people who have given generously can say the same. The gift does something to the giver. It loosens the grip of money on the heart, and it makes room for trust. Studd would need that trust for the rest of his life, and he never seems to have lost it, even when everything else was hard.

Joy

The parable at the head of this chapter is one of the shortest Jesus told. A man finds treasure buried in a field. He covers it up again, goes away, sells everything he owns, and buys the field. The key words are three: “in his joy.” He is not making a sacrifice. He is making the best bargain of his life.

All the accounts agree that this is how Studd felt. He did not regard his gift as a loss. He regarded it as a release. He never afterwards spoke of it with regret, and he never seems to have been tempted to wish he had the money back, even in the years of real poverty that lay ahead. The joy of the man in the parable is the key to understanding him at his best. It is also, later, the thing that would be most obviously missing at his worst. Giving away a fortune with joy is one thing. Asking others to give away what they have, with anger at their slowness, is another.

In 1887 the joy was all there. He had found the treasure, and he had bought the field. Now he was about to find a woman who would see the matter exactly as he did.