No Treasures on Earth?

QUESTION: Explain Matt. 6:19, "Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth."

ANSWER: Infidels are fond of saying that this prohibition and others in our Lord's Sermon on the Mount are utterly impracticable and some superficial readers, though Protestants, admit that they are monkish: and the Roman Catholics imply this error when they teach that only those who obey the "counsels of perfection," the vow of poverty, chastity, and obedience, can be perfect saints. 

The truth is that the term "treasures" does not mean simply money, but that which we deem our main good, the aim of our life, the object of our supreme desire and love. This should not be "on the earth," where all things are perishable and transient, but in heaven. 

Wesley suggests that this prohibition is designed "to guard us against making anything on earth our treasure." It cannot forbid provision for the support of our dependent kindred, the neglect of whom Paul says is worse than being an infidel (I Tim. 5:8). When Dr. Chalmers was trying to give a Christian uplift to the slums of Glasgow he secured the establishment of a savings bank as an auxiliary to the Gospel of Christ.

— Steele's Answers pp. 150, 151.