Chapter 44—Dishonesty in the Church
“The love of money is the root of all evil.” Some who profess the
truth do not withstand temptation on this point. Among worldlings
in this generation the greatest crimes are perpetrated through the love
of money. If wealth cannot be secured by honest industry, men will
resort to fraud, deception, and crime in order to obtain it. The cup of
iniquity is nearly filled, and the retributive justice of God is about to
descend upon the guilty. Widows are robbed of their scanty pittance
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by lawyers and professedly interested friends, and poor men are made
to suffer for the necessaries of life because of the dishonesty which is
practiced in order to gratify extravagance. The terrible record of crime
in our world is enough to chill the blood and fill the soul with horror;
but the fact that even among those who profess to believe the truth the
same evils are creeping in, the same sins indulged to a greater or less
degree, calls for deep humiliation of soul.
A man who sincerely fears God would rather toil day and night,
suffer privation, and eat the bread of poverty than to indulge a passion
for gain which would oppress the widow and the fatherless or turn the
stranger from his right. The crimes that are committed through love of
display and love of money constitute this world a den of thieves and
robbers, and cause angels to weep. But Christians are professedly not
dwellers upon the earth; they are in a strange country, stopping, as it
were, only for a night. Our home is in the mansions which Jesus has
gone to prepare for us. This life is but a vapor, which passes away.
The acquisition of property becomes a mania with some. Every
time the golden rule is violated, Christ is abused in the person of His
saints. Every advantage that is taken of fellow mortals, be they saints
or sinners, will stand as fraud in the Ledger of Heaven. God designed
that our lives should represent the life of our great Pattern in doing
good to others and in acting a holy part in the elevation of man. About
this work there hovers a true dignity and a glory which may never be
seen and realized in this life, but which will be fully appreciated in the
future life. The record of kindly deeds and generous actions will reach
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