Christian fiction; Medical fiction; Scotland -- Fiction; Surgeons -- Fiction; Wingfold, Thomas (Fictitious character) -- Fiction
"Let us consider for a moment the God you do not serve, and then for a
moment the mammon you do serve. The God you do not serve is the Father
of Lights, the Source of love, the Maker of man and woman, the Head of
the great family, the Father of fatherhood and motherhood; the
Life-giver who would die to preserve His children, but would rather slay
them than they should live the servants of evil; the God who can neither
think nor do nor endure any thing mean or unfair; the God of poetry and
music and every marvel; the God of the mountain tops, and the rivers
that run from the snows of death, to make the earth joyous with life;
the God of the valley and the wheat-field, the God who has set love
betwixt youth and maiden; the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
the perfect; the God whom Christ knew, with whom Christ was satisfied,
of whom He declared that to know Him was eternal life. The mammon you do
serve is not a mere negation, but a positive Death. His temple is a
darkness, a black hollow, ever hungry, in the heart of man, who tumbles
into it every thing that should make life noble and lovely. To all who
serve him he makes it seem that his alone is the reasonable service.
His wages are death, but he calls them life, and they believe him. I
will tell you some of the marks of his service--a few of the badges of
his household--for he has no visible temple; no man bends the knee to
him; it is only his soul, his manhood, that the worshiper casts in the
dust before him. If a man talks of the main chance, meaning thereby that
of making money, or of number one, meaning thereby self, except indeed
he honestly jest, he is a servant of mammon. If, when thou makest a
bargain, thou thinkest _only_ of thyself and thy gain, though art a
servant of mammon. The eager looks of those that would get money, the
troubled looks of those who have lost it, worst of all the gloating
looks of them that have it, these are sure signs of the service of
mammon. If in the church thou sayest to the rich man, 'Sit here in a
good place,' and to the poor man, 'Stand there,' thou art a
mammon-server. If thou favorest the company of those whom men call
well-to-do, when they are only well-to-eat, well-to-drink, or
well-to-show, and declinest that of the simple and the meek, then in thy
deepest consciousness know that thou servest mammon, not God. If thy
hope of well-being in time to come, rests upon thy houses, or lands, or
business, or money in store, and not upon the living God, be thou
friendly and kind with the overflowings of thy possessions, or a churl
whom no man loves, thou art equally a server of mammon. If the loss of
thy goods would take from thee the joy of thy life; if it would tear thy
heart that the men thou hadst feasted should hold forth to thee the two
fingers instead of the whole hand; nay, if thy thought of to-morrow
makes thee quail before the duty of to-day, if thou broodest over the
evil that is not come, and turnest from the God who is with thee in the
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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