One cannot square accounts with God on any other basis than complete surrender, whether of the will or of wealth. “What lack I yet?” asked the rich young man who prided himself extravagantly on his moral life. Go, said Jesus, sell your estate and give the proceeds to the needy. We have no evidence that this young Jew got his money in any but an honest method, and if his way to salvation lay along the path of complete surrender what shall those do who derive their riches by corrupting law makers and by defeating justice, and by cornering products and raising the price of food?
I have no pleasure in you, saith the Lord of hosts, neither will I accept an offering at your hands. Mal. 1:10.
COPYRIGHT, 1895, BY FRED’K L. CHAPMAN & CO.
“WHAT LACK I YET?”
THOU ART THE MAN!
Law and justice hold an accessory to a crime liable to punishment as strictly as they hold the principal. Indeed oftentimes it is the wily accessory who is the more guilty, because from his cowardly place of retreat he directs the plot which may result in physical peril to the one who carries it through. Is not likewise the man who rents his property to evil uses equally if not more guilty than the one who boldly assumes the responsibility of carrying on an indecent traffic therein. There would be a thinning of the ranks of respectability if public sentiment should face every Dives who is a silent partner in the tenements of sin and say, Thou art the man whom we hold guilty and responsible for this murder and this poverty and this vice.