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Oppressing the Hireling
147
You had light upon health reform, but you did not receive and
live up to it. You gratified the appetite and taught your boy a sad
lesson by indulging him in eating when and what he chose. In your
love for the world you continued to work upon the high-pressure
plan. The hand of God was removed, and you were left to your
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own weakness. Then you both tottered over the brink of the grave,
yet you failed to learn the lesson in many things which God would
have you learn. You retained your love for the world. Your selfish
love for gain, your small, close dealing, was not put away. You did
not appreciate the sympathy, kind care, and watchful tenderness of
the one who had the care of you in your sickness. If you had, it
would have led you to manifest a spirit of noble benevolence above
any cheap dealing with her who had been true to you. You have
ground the face of the poor; you have dealt unjustly. “There is that
scattereth, and yet increaseth; and there is that withholdeth more
than is meet, but it tendeth to poverty.”
It seemed to me, as these things were presented before me, that
Satan had possessed such power to blind minds through a love of the
world, that even professed Christians forgot, or lost all sense of the
fact that God lives and that His angels are making a record of all the
doings of the children of men; that every mean act, every small deal,
is placed upon the life record. Every day bears its burden of record
of unfulfilled duties, of neglect, of selfishness, of deception, of fraud,
of overreaching. What an amount of evil works is accumulating for
the final judgment! When Christ shall come, “His reward is with
Him, and His work before Him,” to render to every man according
as his works have been. What a revelation will then be made! What
confusion of face to some as the acts of their lives are revealed upon
the pages of history!
“Hearken, my beloved brethren, Hath not God chosen the poor
of this world rich in faith, and heirs of the kingdom which He hath
promised to them that love Him? But ye have despised the poor.”
“What doth it profit, my brethren, though a man say he hath faith,
and have not works? can faith save him? If a brother or sister be
naked, and destitute of daily food, and one of you say unto them,
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Depart in peace, be ye warmed and filled; notwithstanding ye give
them not those things which are needful to the body; what doth it
profit? Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone.” You