Our Unitarian GospelSavage, Minot J. (Minot Judson)
Religion
Our Unitarian Gospel
Savage, Minot J. (Minot Judson)
Sermons; Unitarianism
Let us take the case of a man who, not being highly elevated in
character, becomes rich. Let us see if we can get at the principles
involved here. Perhaps you can call to mind one or another case that
you may be thinking of while I speak. Of course I shall mention no
names. Here is a man who possesses remarkable natural business ability,
power to read the commerce, the business of his times. He deals with
these in a practical way. He complies with the conditions of
accumulating wealth. No matter for the present whether he does wrong in
doing it or not, that is, whether he is unjust or hard or cruel; but he
complies with the conditions for the obtaining of money in this
particular department of life. Now do you not see that, no matter what
his moral character may be in other directions, whether he is kind to
his wife, whether he is loving towards his children, whether he is
generous in a charitable way, whether he is politically stanch or
corrupt, do you not see that these questions are entirely irrelevant,
have nothing whatever to do with the question of success in the money
field? He sows according to the laws of the product which he wishes to
raise, and the product appears.
Or take the case of a farmer: Here is a certain tract of land adapted
to a particular crop. He sows wisely in this field. He cultivates it:
the rain and the sun do their part; and in the fall he has a
magnificent result. Now has that anything whatever to do with the
question whether the man was a good man or not, as to whether he went
to prayer-meeting or not, as to whether he read his Bible or not, as
to whether he was profane or not, as to whether he was a good neighbor
or not? Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he reap, and reap it where
he sows it. Is it not perfectly plain? So in any department of human
life, I care not what, trace it out, and you will find that precisely
the same principle is involved, and that you get results, not arbitrary
bestowal's of reward or punishment.
Now I must come having, I hope, made this sufficiently clear, though
after this fragmentary fashion to deal a little more with some of the
ethical sides of this question. I have had no end of persons tell me,
first and last, that it seemed to them that the universe could not be a
moral universe, that it was not governed fairly, that reward and
punishment were not meted out evenly to people; and they based their
criticism on statements of fact similar to those with which I have been
dealing.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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