thing. We are not quite sure that you ought to live. It is not perfectly obvious, that there is any necessity for it. Perhaps the world would be better off if you were dead. If you can live so as to be a blessing to your fellow-creatures, and to the glory of God, we are ready to admit that it is of some importance to have your life continued. But if your example is to be an injury to mankind, if your rum-selling, your Sabbath-breaking, your cheating in trade, or what not, is to be kept up from day to day, if you can find no way of carrying on your business but by breaking God's law, if you cannot accumulate property without setting at naught the institutions of heaven, the sooner you die the better. And if you look at the thing in the light of God's word, you will be of the same mind.
There was a good man of old who said, "To me to live is Christ, and to die is gain." Phil. i, 21. As though he had said, 'I have no other object in living but to serve and honor Christ. When I can do nothing more towards this object, I shall wish to die; for to die is gain.' Paul felt that his life was not his own, and that he had no right to dispose of it in any other way but that which would be most conducive to the end for which he was created and redeemed. As Paul felt, so ought everybody to feel. He that makes it the great end of life to grow rich, and enjoy himself, is any thing but a Christian.
Suppose it were even so, that by rigidly keeping the Sabbath, at all times, and under all circumstances, or by rigidly refusing to engage in any employment which dishonors God or works injury to man, you were reduced to the point of starving; would that justify you in breaking the Sabbath, or in undertaking such God-dishonoring business? If God, in His providence requires you to starve, is it not your duty to starve? If His providence is so ordered that you cannot possibly obtain enough, in an honest way, to keep off hunger, is it not your duty to endure hunger? Do not say, that to starve to death, under such circumstances, would be so much like committing suicide, that you would lie under the guilt of self-murder. If God require you to do what would issue in death, it is no more suicide than the slaying of Isaac would have been murder, had Abraham carried it into effect. If it is as you say, therefore, that you cannot adhere rigidly to righteousness as enjoined in God's law without starving, then starve; and, in so doing, you will glorify God, and save your own soul.
Of course, if under the circumstances supposed, starvation itself is to be braved, much more is it one's duty to endure evils of less magnitude. The man who pleads that he cannot do strictly right in all things, because it would cut off his facilities for business, or would keep him in a very uncomfortable condition through life, has not learned the first rudiments of Christianity.
But is it true, that to do strictly right would imperil one's interests, to the extent imagined? We do not believe that any one was ever left to starve for his righteousness. David had never seen such an instance in his day, [Ps. xxxvii, 25,] and the promises of Gospel afford ample guaranty that the thing will never occur. Try the experiment, see whether God will forsake you. Why, how distrustful you are! How much you act like an infidel! You dare not wait till the Sabbath is past, to transact your business, lest the Providence of God take away your opportunity. What kind of a God do you suppose Him to be? You seem to think that he will not stand by you, unless you break His laws.