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Testimonies for the Church Volume 2
Sell that ye have, and give alms, and lay up treasure in heaven. The
remedy He proposes for the wealthy is a transfer of their affections
from earthly riches to the eternal inheritance. By investing their
means in the cause of God to aid in the salvation of souls, and by
blessing the needy with their means, they become rich in good works
and are “laying up in store for themselves a good foundation against
the time to come, that they may lay hold on eternal life.” This will
prove a safe investment. But many show by their works that they
dare not trust in the bank of heaven. They choose to trust their means
in the earth rather than send it before them to heaven, that their hearts
may be upon their heavenly treasure.
My brother, you have a work before you, to strive to over-
come covetousness and love of worldly riches, and especially self-
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confidence because you have had apparent success in securing the
things of this world. Poor rich men, professing to serve God, are
objects of pity. While they profess to know God, in works they deny
Him. How great is the darkness of such! They profess faith in the
truth, but their works do not correspond with their profession. The
love of riches makes men selfish, exacting, and overbearing. Wealth
is power; and frequently the love of it depraves and paralyzes all
that is noble and godlike in man.
Riches bring with them great responsibilities. To obtain wealth
by unjust dealing, by overreaching in trade, by oppressing the widow
and the fatherless, or by hoarding up riches and neglecting the wants
of the needy, will eventually bring the just retribution described by
the inspired apostle: “Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for
your miseries that shall come upon you. Your riches are corrupted,
and your garments are moth-eaten. Your gold and silver is cankered;
and the rust of them shall be a witness against you, and shall eat
your flesh as it were fire. Ye have heaped treasure together for the
last days. Behold, the hire of the laborers who have reaped down
your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth: and the cries
of them which have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of
Sabaoth.”
The humblest and poorest of the true disciples of Christ, who
are rich in good works, are more blessed and more precious in the
sight of God than the men who boast of their great riches. They are