Author’s Stewardship
109
for the improvement of which the possessor is accountable to God;
and he is to invest the returns under His direction. Let it be borne
in mind that it is not our own property which is entrusted to us for
investment. If it were, we might claim discretionary power; we might
shift our responsibility upon others, and leave our stewardship with
them. But this cannot be, because the Lord has made us individually
His stewards. We are responsible to invest this means ourselves. Our
own hearts are to be sanctified; our hands are to have something to
impart, as occasion demands, of the income that God entrusts to us.
It would be just as reasonable for the conference or the publish-
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ing house to assume control of the income which a brother receives
from his houses or lands as to appropriate that which comes from the
working of his brain.
The Writer’s Spare Time Productions—Nor is there justice in
the claim that, because a worker in the publishing house receives wages
for his labor, his powers of body, mind, and soul belong wholly to the
institution, and it has a right to all the productions of his pen. Outside
the period of labor in the institution, the worker’s time is under his
own control, to use as he sees fit, so long as this use does not conflict
with his duty to the institution. For that which he may produce in these
hours, he is responsible to his own conscience and to God.
No greater dishonor can be shown to God than for one man to
bring another man’s talents under his absolute control. The evil is
not obviated by the fact that the profits of the transaction are to be
devoted to the cause of God. In such arrangements the man who allows
his mind to be ruled by the mind of another is thus separated from
God and exposed to temptation. In shifting the responsibility of his
stewardship upon other men, and depending on their wisdom, he is
placing man where God should be. Those who are seeking to bring
about this shifting of responsibility are blinded as to the result of their
action; but God has plainly set it before us. He says, “Cursed be the
man that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm.”
Jeremiah 17:5
.
A Just Share of the Profits—Let not authors be urged either to
give away or to sell their right to the books they have written. Let
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them receive a just share of the profits of their work; then let them
regard their means as a trust from God, to be administered according
to the wisdom that He shall impart.—
Testimonies for the Church
7:176-178
(1902).