Must Go Under | AdventAI

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Aug 26, 1875

Must Go Under.

The Presbyterian reports this anecdote:—

A stingy Christian was listening to a charity sermon. He was nearly deaf, and was accustomed to sit facing the congregation, right under the pulpit, with his ear trumpet directed upward, toward the preacher. The sermon moved him considerably. At one time he said to himself, "I'll give ten dollars;" again he said, "I'll give fifteen." At the close of the appeal, he was very much moved, and thought he would give fifty dollars. Now the boxes were passed. As they moved along, his charity began to ooze out. He came down from fifty to twenty, to ten, to five, to zero. He concluded he would not give anything. "Yet," said he, "this won't do—I am in a bad fix. This covetousness will be my ruin."

The boxes were getting nearer and nearer. The crisis was upon him. What should he do? The box was now under his chin. All the congregation were looking. He had been holding his pocket-book in his hand during this soliloquy, which was half audible, though in his deafness he did not know that he was heard. In the agony of the final moment he took his pocket-book and laid it in the box, saying to himself as he did it, "Now squirm, old natur'!"

Here is a key to the problem of covetousness. Old natur' must go under. It will take great giving to put stinginess down. A few experiments of putting in the whole pocket-book may, by and by, get the heart into the charity box, and then the cure is reached. All honor to the deaf old gentleman. He did a magnificent thing for himself, and gave an example worth imitating, besides pointing a paragraph for the students of human nature.