Our Duty to the World
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save him as He did to save Israel. At their feasts of thanksgiving,
when they recounted the mercies of God, the stranger was to be made
welcome. At the time of harvest they were to leave in the field a
portion for the stranger and the poor. So the strangers were to share
also in God’s spiritual blessings. The Lord God of Israel commanded
that they should be received if they chose the society of those who
knew and acknowledged Him. In this way they would learn the law of
Jehovah and glorify Him by their obedience.
So today God desires His children, both in spiritual and in temporal
things, to impart blessings to the world. For every disciple of Christ in
every age were spoken those precious words of the Saviour: Out of
him “shall flow rivers of living water.”
But instead of imparting the gifts of God, many who profess to
be Christians are wrapped up in their own narrow interests, and they
selfishly withhold God’s blessings from their fellow men.
While God in His providence has laden the earth with His bounties
and filled its storehouses with the comforts of life, want and misery
are on every hand. A liberal Providence has placed in the hands
of His human agents an abundance to supply the necessities of all,
but the stewards of God are unfaithful. In the professed Christian
world there is enough expended in extravagant display to supply the
wants of all the hungry and to clothe the naked. Many who have
taken upon themselves the name of Christ are spending His money for
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selfish pleasure, for the gratification of appetite, for strong drink and
rich dainties, for extravagant houses and furniture and dress, while to
suffering human beings they give scarcely a look of pity or a word of
sympathy.
What misery exists in the very heart of our so-called Christian
countries! Think of the condition of the poor in our large cities. In
these cities there are multitudes of human beings who do not receive
as much care and consideration as are given to the brutes. There are
thousands of wretched children, ragged and half starved, with vice
and depravity written on their faces. Families are herded together in
miserable tenements, many of them dark cellars reeking with dampness
and filth. Children are born in these terrible places. Infancy and youth
behold nothing attractive, nothing of the beauty of natural things that
God has created to delight the senses. These children are left to
grow up molded and fashioned in character by the low precepts, the