The Financial Question by W. W. G.

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Oct 18, 1877

The Financial Question.

By W. W. G.

THIS is one of the most important questions of our time, one that interests everybody. The subject of finance is now engaging the minds of the great statesmen of the world more than any other topic. The greatest financiers are puzzled over it; in fact it is at the bottom of the great perplexity of nations. Verily, money, or the love of it, is the “root of all evil.” The truth of this saying is evidenced in the unsettled condition of the world to-day.

What makes men thieves and robbers? The love of money. What prompts embezzlement, forgery, breach of trust, and kindred offenses? The love of money. What actuates men to engage in rum-selling, gambling, and all attendant vices? The love of gain. Whence come official corruption, the oppressions by great corporations, international complications, with their long trains of consequent evils and perplexity? From the universal desire for the accumulation of wealth.

But the particular feature of the financial question that has led directly to much of the perplexity of nations, is debt. There is a growing disposition on the part of nations to run into debt on almost any pretext. And the infection is raging down through States, counties, municipalities, corporations, firms, and even to individuals. The universal idea seems to be to buy all that is purchasable on credit, and borrow all that can be obtained on promise to pay. There is not specie enough in existence to pay the national debt of the United States, and the liabilities of European countries are far greater in proportion to territory or population. It has been the boast of one of the great powers east of the Atlantic, that her great strength lay in her debt, yet she never expects to be able to pay the principal of that debt. What would be thought of a business man or firm whose financial strength was measured by debts so great that there was no probability that the creditors would ever get more than the interest on their investment?

So deeply rooted and grounded in the present generation is this disposition to purchase everything that can be obtained on credit, that it has come to be considered perfectly legitimate to go on and on in this way until a grand crash closes the scene. Luxurious capitals, expensive armies and navies, and hordes of non-producing aristocrats and public-crib leeches are gnawing at the financial vitals of many prominent governments in a most destructive manner; and the dread of old creditors and uncertainty of obtaining new ones are perplexing several crowned heads in the world to-day. As with individuals, so with nations, it is the exchequer that commands respect—at home and abroad.

But individuals, as well as nations, are suffering great financial perplexity; some are largely the creditors of tottering thrones; some have been led away into the labyrinth of financial distress by the temptation to swell their credit, while others have been weak enough to risk their substance in the beguiling meshes of chance—all coming out victims of misplaced confidence. This result brings us to consider the matter of investment.

How shall we invest? What shall we invest in? By “we,” I mean Seventh-day Adventists. Shall we place the means God has given us in the hands of unscrupulous stock manipulators, there to run a short season of probable prosperity, and then be swallowed up at one gulp? Shall we join with the professors of Christianity who are vainly attempting to make gambling profitable and respectable? Or, shall we put our available means out of the reach of usefulness by planting it in alkali lands, of doubtful title and uncertain fertility, there to lie dormant till the judgment flames shall consume it? Or, shall we of small means invest our all as a partial payment in some large worldly speculation, thereby tying back our hands from good works, and virtually giving a life lease of our time and energies to the purpose of keeping up future payments?

We all claim to be disciples of Jesus. What good will it do us to be disciples unless we follow the instructions of the Teacher. His all-wise counsel on the financial question was: “Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal; but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” This last sentence is the gist of the whole matter. You who so often testify your desire to draw near to God and have your hearts more and more consecrated to his work, think of this. Give him your treasure, and your hearts will follow; for “where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”

Now, brethren, when we talk of money to carry on the cause of the Lord on this coast, are you going to meet us with the old cry, “Oh, you are going too fast; you are all the time talking money?” Take one look backward, and ask yourselves, Where would this cause have been to-day had it not have been for the judicious use of money? When zealous, spiritual-minded, far-seeing brethren urged you to give to the publishing fund, to the tent fund, to the missionary fund, to the church, to systematic benevolence, are you prepared to say to-day that they urged too ardently? Do you regret the little amounts paid in systematic benevolence, to enable a few preachers to sow the seeds of truth upon this coast? Was it too much? Do you wish to take it back? Then there’s the tent fund. Do you regret your little donations to this cause? This fund has furnished a few cheap portable houses, in which our poorly paid ministers have been enabled to preach free truth and free salvation to a perishing people. Has it been done too soon? Are you ready to say, These tents will be needed some time, but it is too soon yet?

Again, a narrow belt about from the 34th to the 46th parallels of latitude, extending from the Atlantic to the Pacific oceans, embraces the bulk of the territory that has been evangelized by the ministers of the third angel’s message, and that only skimmed over, although the work has been going on about thirty years. Consider that “the field is the world;” that the last act in the drama of redemption—the cleansing of the sanctuary—is fast drawing to a close; that there are but two publishing houses owned by the believers in present truth, and one of these encumbered with debt till its capacity is but half available. Now, do you think the publishing work is going too fast? Do you regret the amounts you have given to this cause? Are you still ready to say, We will need a paper some time, but it is too soon yet; we will need a publishing house upon this coast sometime, but it is premature yet; we are not able to sustain it?

Who will look at the results of the labors of our preachers, at the good work done in the tents, at what has been accomplished by the tract and missionary societies, or read of the scores who have embraced the truth through reading the SIGNS OF THE TIMES and our pointed tracts, and then say that any of these enterprises have been prematurely inaugurated? O Lord, grant that more of our brethren and sisters may realize the extent of the work to be done, and not faint at the contemplation of the means necessary to carry it on. It is only the murmurers, the faint-hearted and unbelieving, that complain of the energy with which the last message of mercy is being carried to the world. Let all such put their treasures into the cause, then their hearts will be there also, and we will hear no more complaint of the message going too fast, or its ministers pushing the cause too zealously.

W. W. G.