We have no more right to refuse to perform a duty than to refuse to pay a debt. Moral insolvency is certain to him who neglects and disregards his duty to his fellow-men. Nor can we hire another to perform our duty. The mere accident of having money does not release you from your duty to the world. Nay, it increases it, for it enables you to do a larger and nobler duty.
If your money is not clean, if there is a dirty dollar in your millions, you have not succeeded. If there is the blood of the poor and unfortunate, of orphans and widows, on your bank account, you have not succeeded. If your wealth has made others poorer, your life is a failure. If you have gained it in an occupation that kills, that shortens the lives of others, that poisons their blood, or engenders disease, if you have taken a day from a human life, if you have gained your money by that which has debauched other lives, you have failed.
Remember that a question will be asked you some time which you cannot evade, the right answer to which will fix your destiny forever: "How did you get that fortune?" Are other men's lives in it; are others' hope and happiness buried in it; are others' comforts sacrificed to it; are others' rights buried in it; are others' opportunities smothered in it; others' chances strangled by it; has their growth been stunted by it; their characters stained by it; have others a smaller loaf, a meaner home? If so, you have failed; all your millions cannot save you from the curse, "thou hast been weighed in the balance and found wanting."
When Walter Scott's publisher and printer failed and $600,000 of debt stared them in the face, friends came forward and offered to raise money enough to allow him to arrange with his creditors. "No," said he proudly, "this right hand shall work it all off; if we lose everything else, we will at least keep our honor unblemished." What a grand picture of manliness, of integrity in this noble man, working like a dray-horse to cancel that great debt, throwing off at white heat the "Life of Napoleon," "Woodstock," "The Tales of a Grandfather," articles for the "Quarterly," and so on, all written in the midst of great sorrow, pain, and ruin. "I could not have slept soundly," he writes, "as I now can under the comfortable impression of receiving the thanks of my creditors, and the conscious feeling of discharging my duty as a man of honesty. I see before me a long, tedious, and dark path, but it leads to stainless reputation. If I die in the harness, as is very likely, I shall die with honor."
One of the last things he uttered was, "I have been, perhaps, the most voluminous author of my day, and it is a comfort to me to think that I have tried to unsettle no man's faith, to corrupt no man's principles, and that I have written nothing which, on my deathbed, I would wish blotted out."
Although Agassiz refused to lecture even for a large sum of money, yet he left a greater legacy to the world, and left even more money to Harvard University ($300,000) than he would have left if he had taken the time to lecture for money.
Faraday had to choose between a fortune of nearly a million and a life of almost certain poverty if he pursued science. He chose poverty and science, and earned a name never to be erased from the book of fame.
Beecher says that we are all building a soul-house for eternity; yet with what differing architecture and what various care!
What if a man should see his neighbor getting workmen and building materials together, and should say to him, "What are you building?" and he should answer, "I don't exactly know. I am waiting to see what will come of it." And so walls are reared, and room is added to room, while the man looks idly on, and all the bystanders exclaim, "What a fool he is!" Yet this is the way many men are building their characters for eternity, adding room to room, without plan or aim, and thoughtlessly waiting to see what the effect will be. Such builders will never dwell in "the house of God, not made with hands, eternal in the heavens."
Some people build as cathedrals are built, the part nearest the ground finished; but that part which soars towards heaven, the turrets and the spires, forever incomplete.