In addition to these positive statements sprinkled throughout the Book, there is a negative testimony that may well be given a hearing. If we were to search the pages for warnings against poverty we would find that the search was difficult and that it met with slight returns. The prayer of Agur in the book of Proverbs is, perhaps, the only assured instance. He pleads: "Give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with the food that is needful for me: Lest I be full, and deny thee, and say, Who is Jehovah? or lest I be poor, and steal, and use profanely the name of my God." There is here a recognition of the peril of discontent in poverty, as well as of the peril of dishonesty, and the peril of a blasphemous indictment against God. We may take the warning at its full value. Some people of every age will need its plain speaking. But what shall we say of the biblical idea of the peril of wealth, when its chapters yield many scores of warnings as contrasted with this lonely warning about poverty? It would seem permissible to paraphrase a Bible comparison of persons and to say that poverty has slain its thousands but wealth its tens of thousands! Even this comparison falls short, if we measure it by the biblical proportion of teaching. The silence of the Bible gives us here a significant lesson. We now approach the supreme authority in the teaching and example of Jesus. The elective method here will give a man the result he most wishes. The boisterous agitator can make choice of passages that will serve his harsh purpose, while the defender of his own unconsecrated surplus may quote us passages that give him great comfort. The one will tell us of Jesus's words to the young ruler; of his command against laying up treasures on earth; and of a hard-and-fast interpretation of the parable of Dives and Lazarus. The other will tell us of the praise bestowed on successful traders; of the inclusion of the wealthy among Christ's friends and disciples; and of the law of the larger returns for the larger powers and larger industry so plainly enunciated in the parables of the talents and the pounds. The fragmentary method leads here to confusion and to the wildest partisanship. The teaching of Jesus must be taken in its completeness.