Let me appeal to you as an honest man. What is your duty in this matter? Your duty to your wife, to your children, to yourself, and to your God? If we were to look upon this subject simply in the light of temporal good, all the arguments would be in favor of living a Christian life.
Even if you were to consider this subject on its very lowest plane, you should desire for your wife and your family those larger material blessings which are secured by a religious life. Christians have not only the promise of the life that is to come, but they have the promise also of the life that now is. Paul says: "Godliness is profitable unto all things, having the promise of the life that now is, and of that which is to come." We grant you that not every Christian is encumbered with large wealth; neither is every irreligious man plunged into poverty. While there are here and there instances where ungodly men are possessors of large wealth, these instances are exceptional, and the Scriptural reason not difficult to find. Their riches may be due to the fulfillment of the promise that God will visit blessings upon the children of the righteous from generation to generation. These people may have had praying and God-fearing parents, and on that account the children, in harmony with Scriptural promise, are now being crowned with the consequent blessings. Or, it may be, as the Scripture declares, that the wealth of the wicked is being laid up for the just, and the present wicked possessor may simply be holding this wealth in trust for the righteous descendants who are to come after him. Or, it may be, that God is seeking the salvation of this ungodly individual, for He tells us that "the goodness of the Lord is designed to lead us to repentance."
The actual conditions are not to be determined by taking an exceptional example among the irreligious, but by dividing society as a whole into two classes, and then the result is seen at a glance. In the one class you have the profane, the vicious, the intemperate, the dishonest, the law-breakers, and the defiers of God and man. To this class belongs every man who staggers, reels and falls into the gutter, every tramp who walks the road, and nine-tenths of all the persons who fill our almshouses. It includes, with scarcely an exception, every man and woman who fill our prisons and reformatory institutions; those who crowd the great tenements and live in filth and squalor in the slums of our cities; those whose bodies reek with physical and moral rottenness—these, and many others, constitute the class of the ungodly, and no attentive person can fail to observe that this is the character of that portion which the ungodly have in this world.
Now, turn to the other class. Walk up and down the streets where you find the most comfortable homes, the largest dwellings, the abodes of the most affluent and respectable in any city, and then answer the question, whether or no the wealth of the nation is not to-day largely in the hands of Christian men and Christian women? These are the people who have the best credit, who can draw checks for the largest amounts. Among this class you will find the most influential in business, the owners of our largest mercantile establishments. Men who direct and control the commerce of the world. Men who are at the head of our largest banking institutions, railroad and other corporations. But not only so. These are the people who dwell in the best homes, who eat the best food, who have the largest amount of material comforts. They are the people who enjoy the best health, who have the brightest minds, who produce the best books, the most helpful literature. They have the brightest eyes and the strongest bodies, and when cholera and plague come and sweep away men and women by thousands, it scarcely ever crosses the line which separates these from the intemperate and the vicious, who go down before these scourges like grass before the sickle. Truly, my dear friend, if you are to look at it only from this lowest plane of present good and material comfort, godly living will bring to you the promise of the life that now is, and in addition you will also have the promise of the life which is to come, a part in the first resurrection, a place at Christ's right hand, and the promise of sitting upon a throne judging the nations—you shall be among those who in triumph enter the eternal city, and receive crowns and robes and palms of victory and eternal rest at God's right hand.
You cannot afford to neglect the spiritual, which is the highest and best of your threefold nature. You should call your entire being into fullest exercise. A Christian is the highest type of manhood, and you owe it to your wife and to your children, as well as to yourself and to your Master, to be satisfied with nothing short of this. If troubled with doubt you will find the difficulty in your own heart. If infidels have filled your mind with misgiving, or suggested unbelief, read "Christianity's Challenge,"[A] "A Square Talk to Young Men,"[B] and various other volumes of the Anti-Infidel Library.[C]
[A] "Christianity's Challenge," by Rev. Dr. Herrick Johnson, American Tract Society, 269 pages, price $1.00.
[B] "A Square Talk to Young Men," 94 pages, price 50 cents, by H. L. Hastings, Scriptural Tract Repository, Boston, Mass., 49 Cornhill street.
[C] The Anti-Infidel Library in tract form, 5 cents each, by H. L. Hastings, Scriptural Tract Repository, 49 Cornhill street, Boston, Mass.