Love of Money | AdventAI

Publishing Committee · Battle Creek, Mich. · Mar 12, 1861

Love of Money.

“To purchase heaven has gold the power? Can gold remove the mortal hour? In life can love be bought with gold? Are friendship's pleasures to be sold? No: all that's worth a wish or thought, Fair virtue gives unbribed, unbought.

Covetousness is the mammoth sin of the age, the leprosy of the church, the gangrene of the soul. It eats out as doth a canker the life-blood of salvation! Farmers are covetous, merchants are covetous, mechanics are covetous, lawyers and doctors are covetous, editors and ministers are covetous, church-members are covetous.—Covetousness spreads far and wide, like an infectious disease, the deadly Bohon! It leads to every evil. It closes the door to hospitality, to deeds of mercy, truth, benevolence and love. It grinds the poor, traffics in the bodies and souls of men, takes robbery for burnt offering. It leads to quibbling, to screwing and jewing, to fraud and falsehood, to unjust usury. It takes advantage in trade, in buying and selling. It robs holy time, withholds from the missionary box, starves the minister, starves the soul!

Go to some of these rich, parsimonious, close-fisted church-members for a donation to some benevolent object, a contribution to diffuse light and life, to subscribe to some valuable book or periodical,—oh! what subterfuges are resorted to, what an effort to loose the purse-strings; it's like pulling teeth, or cutting the heart-strings! They part with their dimes as with their life's blood! They give like the miser, grudgingly, sparingly. “Soul, thou hast many goods laid up for many years, take thine ease.” The consequences of this undue love of gain are awful!

“Gold banished honor from the mind! And only left the name behind. Gold sowed the world with every ill, Gold taught the murderer's sword to kill!

“'Twas gold instructed coward hearts In treachery's more pernicious arts: Who can recount the mischiefs o'er? Virtue resides on earth no more!”

The Holy Spirit is grieved, takes his flight. The closet is neglected, secret prayer; faith is shipwrecked; family altars are broken down; religion becomes a form, a dead letter. Children catch this money-loving spirit, become little misers, grow up impenitent, conscience-seared, harder than the nether millstone! Thus the church, instead of being the salt of the earth, a lighthouse, a city set on a hill, soul-saving, it is an infidel manufactory, a false light, a stench, a hissing, “a people laden with iniquity, a seed of evil doers;” the salt has lost its savor; the light that is in her is darkness, and O how great the darkness! “Thus iniquity abounds and the love of many waxes cold.” “O man of God, flee these things; and follow after righteousness, godliness, faith, love, patience, meekness. Fight the good fight of faith, lay hold on eternal life.” “Let not covetousness be once named among you as becometh saints.”

“Why should we lay up treasures here below, Where moth and rust corrupt? Why fix our heart On that from which so quickly we must part? Why on an ocean where such tempests blow, Embark so rich a freight? Why midst the snow Of so unkind a winter, plant a flower So fragrant yet so frail? Why build hope's tower Where lightning's flash and whelming torrents flow? But, if our highest energies are bent In God and heaven a portion to insure, Midst every change our wealth will be secure; When the destroying angels forth are sent, When melts away the starry firmament, Our bliss unharmed, shall, e'en like God endure.”

[Golden Rule.]