New Tabernacle SermonsTalmage, T. De Witt (Thomas De Witt)
Religion
New Tabernacle Sermons
Talmage, T. De Witt (Thomas De Witt)
Presbyterian Church -- Sermons; Sermons, American
Futile remedies. In the first place, there will come no pacification
to this trouble through an outcry against rich men merely because they
are rich. There is no member of a trades-union on earth that would not
be rich if he could be. Sometimes through a fortunate invention, or
through some accident of prosperity, a man who had nothing comes to
large estate, and we see him arrogant and supercilious, and taking
people by the throat just as other people took him by the throat.
There is something very mean about human nature when it comes to the
top. But it is no more a sin to be rich than it is a sin to be poor.
There are those who have gathered a great estate through fraud, and
then there are millionaires who have gathered their fortune through
foresight in regard to changes in the markets, and through brilliant
business faculty, and every dollar of their estate is as honest as the
dollar which the plumber gets for mending a pipe, or the mason gets
for building a wall. There are those who keep in poverty because of
their own fault. They might have been well-off, but they smoked or
chewed up their earnings, or they lived beyond their means, while
others on the same wages and on the same salaries went on to
competency. I know a man who is all the time complaining of his
poverty and crying out against rich men, while he himself keeps two
dogs, and chews and smokes, and is filled to the chin with whisky and
beer!
Micawber said to David Copperfield: "Copperfield, my boy, one pound
income, twenty shillings and sixpence expenses: result misery. But,
Copperfield, my boy, one pound income, expenses nineteen shillings and
sixpence; result, happiness." And there are vast multitudes of people
who are kept poor because they are the victims of their own
improvidence. It is no sin to be rich, and it is no sin to be poor. I
protest against this outcry which I hear against those who, through
economy and self-denial and assiduity, have come to large fortune.
This bombardment of commercial success will never stop this quarrel
between capital and labor.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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