Fighting a Good Fight

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Apr 9, 1885

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 11, No. 15.

Fighting a Good Fight.

SOME twenty-five years ago Rev. Russell G. Toles related the following incident to Mr. Adams, of the Christian at Work, who vouches for its truth as here given: Mr. T. was preaching a sermon on charity, and one of his congregation who was nearly deaf, was accustomed to sit facing the congregation, right under the pulpit, with his ear-trumpet directed up toward the preacher. The sermon moved him considerably. At one time he said to himself, "I'll give ten dollars;" again he said, "I'll give fifteen dollars." At the close of the appeal he was very much moved, and he thought he would give fifty dollars. Now the boxes were being passed. As they moved along his charity began to ooze out. He came down from fifty to twenty, to ten, to five, to zero. He concluded that he would not give any. "Yet," said he, "this will not do—I am in a bad fix. This covetousness will be my ruin."

The boxes were getting nearer and nearer. The crisis was upon him. What should he do? The box was now under his chin—all the congregation were looking. He had been holding his pocketbook in his hand during the above soliloquy, which was half-audible, though in his deafness he did not know that he was heard. In the agony of the final moment he took his pocketbook and laid it in the box, saying to himself as he did it, "Now squirm, old natur'!"

Here is the key to the problem of covetousness. Old nature must go under. It will take great giving to put stinginess down. A few experiments of putting in the whole pocketbook may, by and by, get the heart into the charity-box, and then the cure is reached. All honor to the deaf old gentleman. He did a magnificent thing for himself, and gave an example worth imitating, besides pointing a paragraph for the students of human nature.—Sel.