Isaiah 5:8 by Dudley Marvin Canright

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Dec 5, 1871

By Dudley Marvin Canright

“WOE unto them that join house to house, that lay field to field, till there be no place, that they may be placed alone in the midst of the earth.”

The sin here rebuked is that of adding house to house and field to field, which a covetous, grasping, and worldly disposition leads many to do. It seems to me that this sin is particularly prominent here in the West. Worst of all, those who are talking about the end of all things being at hand, are guilty of this very thing.

There is a brother who is not contented to buy a sufficient amount of land for a fair farm, all he can reasonably work; but he looks away on years ahead and thinks how land will rise; so he purchases twice as much land as he needs, or can pay for, gets in debt, and then undertakes to work it out. He urges himself through six days in the week as hard as he can drive; denies himself and family many of the comforts of life, and gives but little or nothing, and that grudgingly, to the cause of God or to the poor. Ask him for anything, and he has a ready excuse always at hand, “My debts, my debts, they must be paid. I must pay my honest debts before I can give much to charitable purposes. When I get out of debt then I will give liberally.”

Poor deceived soul! No doubt he thinks he is excusable and that his motives are all good. But when will he get out of debt? It will be years at the shortest. Rather, why is he in debt? There lies from forty to two hundred acres of land uncultivated and unused only to pay taxes on. But let this man get out of debt, and is he as liberal as he had promised? No; there lies an adjoining forty. How much he wants that. By strict economy he can make a fair payment on it, and so buys it and runs into debt for the rest. Thus he goes on adding field to field and house to house, always pleading his debts and lack of ready means, till his head is gray and life is nearly all spent. God’s cause has suffered, souls have been lost, the poor have not been fed, and now he dies and leaves his money to curse his children who will scatter it in one quarter the time he gathered it.

But what is worst of all, these men are the very last ones to see and feel this. Describe their condition exactly in a sermon or an article, and they will indorse it all as the plain truth, and remark how it fits such a brother, and think he must see it. Pious souls! they have not the slightest idea that it means them.

D. M. CANRIGHT.

Woodburn, Iowa, Nov. 24.

Isaiah 5:8.