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THIS COVETOUS AGE

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Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Mar 17, 1898

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 24, No. 11.

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THIS COVETOUS AGE.

In James 5:3 it is stated in the clearest and most direct manner that “ye have heaped treasure together for the last days.” The Revised Version translates it, “in the last days.” This scripture does not leave any believer of the Bible in doubt as to what constitutes one of the signs that will show us when we are in the “last days.”
That “treasure” is being “heaped” together to-day as never before must be apparent to any one who is giving even the most careless attention to passing events and surrounding conditions. And this “heaping together of treasure” will keep on getting worse and worse till the culminating crisis in the end of time and the second coming of Christ. We may know this not only from this prophecy in James, but it is also stated by Paul that “in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous.” 2 Tim. 3:1, 2.
There is a long list of sins that are mentioned in this chapter of Second Timothy and which the apostle informs us are to make the last days perilous. And it should be observed that this list is headed by the statement that “men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous.”
This Scripture language is all so perfectly clear that no one need mistake its meaning. In the “last days,” says Paul, “men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous.” And says James, “Ye have heaped treasure together for the last days.” The men who are “lovers of their own selves, covetous,” of course can see no good in treasure except to get it for their own hoard. If they see a chance to spend any of it for “their own selves,” to gratify their own pleasure, or to satisfy their real or imagined wants, their money is called out. But otherwise men who are “covetous”will do nothing with their money except to let it go on piling up. Their supreme self-love blinds their eyes, closes their ears, and freezes their hearts against the pitiful, touching cries of suffering humanity. All their God-given energies are prostituted to the one work of “heaping” together treasure. What sordid motives, what unworthy ambitions, to occupy the minds of men created for so much better purposes!
These scriptures bring to our minds the great facts that self-love, covetousness, and the heaping together of treasure are to characterize the last days. We have only to open our eyes and look around us to see the literal fulfilment of the predictions.
In the first place, this is the age of trusts. And “a trust,” as the Hon. Mr. Butler expresses it, “is a scheme or a device to establish a complete monopoly of any line of business.” The “trusts” enable a few men to control the railroads; a few other men control the coal; others have the petroleum output under their care; another trust controls the wool, and so on through the list. Says Mr. Henry D. Lloyd in his “Wealth against Commonwealth,” “The Hon. John De Witt Warner, member of Congress from New York, has published a list of one hundred trusts, which have been able to influence the tariff legislation of the country in their favor.”
From the time we enter the world the trust follows close by our side, asking its small tribute from each one of us for the use of any of the commodities and appurtenances of daily life. And when life’s journey is ended, and sympathizing friends are preparing to lay our bodies away to rest, we find that even the portals of the tomb are guarded by the agent of the undertakers’ association, who asks a toll in favor of his trust, which has assumed (for the sake of the profits, of course) the work of furnishing all the burial cases for the dead.
The well-known Luxow Anti-trust Committee, appointed by the New York Legislature, made a very careful and thorough investigation of the subject. This committee denounced the trusts as one of the most menacing evils of the age, but reported that their Legislature was powerless to deal with them, that redress must be found in Congress. One of the last official utterances of President Cleveland was to offer a warning against the menace of the rapidly-strengthening trust. And in the very first official address of President McKinley the trust was pointed out as one of the dangers of our time. And so we might go back through a score of years, and find repeated warnings, admonitions, and denunciations against the trusts. And these warnings have been given by the highest officials in the land, and repeated and emphasized by men in all the walks of life, but still the trust survives and flourishes.
There are very few men, indeed, who will affirm that a trust is a good thing. By practically every one are they denounced. The great mass of the people deplore them as most to be feared of any of the evils of the age. They have been fought in courts, in Legislatures, and in Congress; but all to no purpose. The trusts still live and thrive. Every little while some well-meaning person, who seems to have the good of all at heart, arises and declares vengeance on the trusts. He pursues them in court, Legislature, and Congress. Sometimes he feels buoyant over the thought that success is about to crown his efforts; but in the moment when victory seems in sight, his hopes are blasted. Yet he courageously follows the monster of evil through continued windings and labyrinths of crookedness, until legal technicalities, and bills of exceptions, and writs of error, etc., are so piled up around him that he just sickens of the job and quits.
Each time the trusts emerge from one of these conflicts they are stronger and more confident. They plan openly to be still more bold in carrying on their work of “heaping” together treasure in these last days.
But why is it that the great evil can not be arrested? The scripture quoted from Second Timothy very plainly tells why. As a towering beacon light it points out the fact that the last days are made “perilous” by the men who “shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous.” And this self-love, this covetousness, is one of the crying evils of this evil age.
There is no legislation that can reach it. Earthly courts of justice can not find it. The evil is in the hearts of men. And so many men have become infected by it that its great proportions have marked it as one of the evidences that we are in the last days.
Reader, if you are in this scramble that is “heaping” treasure together “in” these “last days,” pray stop at once, and turn your attention to a preparation for the coming of your Lord. For the brightness of His glorious presence will soon be revealed, to put an eternal period to the oppressions of this age, so under the control of covetousness and self-love.