End of a Lawsuit

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jul 30, 1872

A MAN in Boston, Mr. R., claimed that the city had damaged his estate at the foot of Summer Street, by constructing a sewer there. He demanded payment;—the city refused it; he prosecuted the city, and the city defended themselves. The matter dragged through the courts about twenty-two years, and the lawyers got about a hundred thousand dollars out of it. Finally, in the summer of 1872, the matter was taken out of court and settled, “in consideration of one dollar by each party paid to the other.

So that is the end of a twenty-two years’ quarrel, and a hundred thousand dollars spent in legal strife. The Great Teacher said, “Agree with thine adversary quickly.” And the wise man said, “Leave off contention before it is meddled with.” But “business is business,” and people think that the Bible and the God of the Bible have nothing to do with the every-day affairs of this world. If a man loses a thousand dollars by some religious error, men talk about it for months:—he may waste a million in legal quarrels, and no one seems to make much ado over the matter.

The man who does business on Bible principles may be counted a fool or a fogy, but he will not be very likely to spend his money in lawsuits, nor quarrel twenty-two years and have only a dollar at the end to show for it. Christ keeps his servants in better business than that. They who learn of Jesus, find his yoke is easy and his burden is light.—The Christian.