Very Poor Rent by John Norton Loughborough

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jan 3, 1871

Very Poor Rent.

By John Norton Loughborough

BEING in conversation a few days since with one who is passing from infidelity into faith in the present truth, he said: “Christians profess to believe that ‘the earth is the Lord’s, and the fulness thereof;’ but I think there are a mass of them that pay very poor rent.”

How true. Life, breath, food, health, strength, lands, houses, grains, cattle, all, all the Lord’s, we using and enjoying them. How much rent do we pay? Do not many rather feel, when the way opens to appropriate even a portion of the increase to forward the Lord’s cause, that it is all theirs, and that those who would present to them the claims of the cause are only beggars? If you say, “I earned what I have with my own strength; its mine,” remember what the Lord said to the Israelites: “Beware that thou forget not the Lord thy God . . . Lest when thou hast eaten and art full, and hast built goodly houses, and dwelt therein; and when thy herds and thy flocks multiply, and thy silver and thy gold is multiplied, and all that thou hast is multiplied . . . . and thou say in thine heart, My power and the might of mine hand hath gotten me this wealth. But thou shalt remember the Lord thy God; for it is he that giveth thee power to get wealth.” Deut. 8: 11–18.

May we rather feel to exclaim,

“My Maker and my King, To thee my all I owe; Thy sovereign bounty is the spring Whence all my blessings flow.”

May we all realize that we are but stewards, and act with faithfulness, as those who must soon give account of their stewardship.

J. N. LOUGHBOROUGH.