Note and Comment

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Apr 21, 1910

Sinful Extravagance

THIS is an age of selfish and sinful extravagance in the expenditure of money. Thousands of dollars are spent for the gratification of selfish purposes, and this goes on while multitudes throughout the world are lacking the actual necessities of life. We read of wealthy men of Chicago who are now under the fire of condemnation for robbing the public, spending millions in the creation of playgrounds for their children; of a wealthy man in the East who gave a banquet in honor of his dog, bestowing on him at the time a birthday gift set with seven hundred diamonds, and valued at fifteen thousand dollars.

These are only examples of the spendthrift expenditure on the part of the rich which we see on every side. This is not because these men of means at heart are worse than their fellows. Many who criticize them would do the same if they themselves possessed the money. It is the tendency of the times, the impulse of the selfish human heart, the spirit which accompanies the concentration of wealth in the hands of the few. Of these conditions the apostle James speaks in the fifth chapter of his epistle:—

“Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you. Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are moth-eaten. Your gold and silver is cankered; and the rust of them shall be a witness against you, and shall eat your flesh as it were fire. Ye have heaped treasure together for the last days. Behold, the hire of the laborers who have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth: and the cries of them which have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth. Ye have lived in pleasure on the earth, and been wanton; ye have nourished your hearts, as in a day of slaughter. Ye have condemned and killed the just; and he doth not resist you.” James 5:1-6.

We need to see in these conditions which exist around us the signs predicted by the Scriptures of truth of the speedy close of human history. These general conditions can not be changed by human endeavor or legal enactment. Only Christ at his coming can change the present order of society and restore conditions to their normal balance.