To Wealthy Parents
113
And it should be distinctly understood that because parents have
made their will, this will not prevent them from giving means to the
cause of God while they live. This they should do. They should have
the satisfaction here, and the reward hereafter, of disposing of their
surplus means while they live. They should do their part to advance
the cause of God. They should use the means lent them by the Master
to carry on the work which needs to be done in His vineyard.
The love of money lies at the root of nearly all the crimes com-
mitted in the world. Fathers who selfishly retain their means to enrich
their children, and who do not see the wants of the cause of God and
relieve them, make a terrible mistake. The children whom they think
to bless with their means are cursed with it.
Money left to children frequently becomes a root of bitterness.
They often quarrel over the property left them and in case of a will, are
seldom all satisfied with the disposition made by the father. And in-
stead of the means left exciting gratitude and reverence for his memory,
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it creates dissatisfaction, murmuring, envy, and disrespect. Brothers
and sisters who were at peace with one another are sometimes made
at variance, and family dissensions are often the result of inherited
means. Riches are desirable only as a means of supplying present
wants and of doing good to others. But inherited riches oftener be-
come a snare to the possessor than a blessing. Parents should not seek
to have their children encounter the temptations to which they expose
them in leaving them means which they themselves have made no
effort to earn.
I was shown that some children professing to believe the truth
would, in an indirect manner, influence the father to keep his means
for his children instead of appropriating it to the cause of God while he
lives. Those who have influenced their father to shift his stewardship
upon them little know what they are doing. They are gathering upon
themselves double responsibility, that of balancing the father’s mind
so that he did not fulfill the purpose of God in the disposition of the
means lent him of God to be used to His glory, and the additional
responsibility of becoming stewards of means that should have been
put out to the exchangers by the father, that the Master could have
received His own with usury.
Many parents make a great mistake in placing their property out of
their hands into the hands of their children while they are themselves