The Chautauquan, Vol. 03, December 1882: A Monthly Magazine Devoted to the Promotion of True Culture.; Organ of the Chautauqua Literary and Scientific CircleChautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle
Religion
The Chautauquan, Vol. 03, December 1882: A Monthly Magazine Devoted to the Promotion of True Culture.; Organ of the Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle
Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle
Chautauqua Institution -- Periodicals; Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle -- Periodicals
The second thing we require is honesty in dealing and words. Let me
tell you, friends, the thing the world does not forget, is the sin
of not paying your debts. I do not care, though your profession may
be like a great four-story brownstone front house, and you may have a
cupola on the top, if you do not pay one hundred cents on a dollar,
your profession is not worth the paper on which it is written. You may
be a fornicator, or an adulterer, if you pay one hundred cents on a
dollar, the world will give you a free pass. One of the crying sins
that the world does not forget, is that some Christians do not pay
their debts. A preacher may preach like an angel, and if anybody says,
“He owes me so and so, and I can’t get my money,” his sermons do not
amount to a great deal. Perfect honesty, this is one of the things that
the Christian Church needs to look at. I remember a farmer in Dutchess
County, when I was pastor there, who had a fashion of throwing an extra
bag of oats on every load of oats sold, especially when sinners came.
A wild young sinner said to him one day, “What do you do that for?”
“Well,” said he, “I may have made a mistake in measuring up those oats,
and as I am going to a country that I shall never return from, and I
shall meet you at the Judgment Day, where I am afraid you will be on
the left side, I want things to be perfectly square with you and your
kind.”
We demand this of our fellow-men, and God demands it of us toward our
fellow-men. Look at this man Abram. The Lord had given him the land,
but he took pains particularly to buy a burying place, and have the
money carefully weighed. When he had a battle with the confederated
kings and brought Lot and his family back again, and the king of
Sodom wanted to give him all the spoil, he stood up in all his manly
integrity and refused to take it. Walking alone with God, he could do
without it. I tell you the man who walks in this ideal, walking before
God in his perfect truth and honesty, need not fear the forces of the
world; he need not fear to be burned at the stake; he can afford to
have his name pitched out of the world as an enthusiast; he can afford
to be despised.
The third thing is perfect magnanimity, which is nothing more or
less than true gentlemanliness. I love to read the Bible because it
introduces me to so many gentlemen. As a celebrated infidel writer says
about Christ, “he was the first gentleman of the age.” What is it? It
is a gentlemanliness, a true magnanimity to our fellow-men, making
arrangements for the good of other people rather than ourselves, living
not for ourselves but for those about us, being polite and careful in
all the arrangements of our lives, loving our neighbors as ourselves.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account