'
We hold that because we are not under the law, but under grace, there
is no condemnation for sin--at least for the special sort of sin
which happens to be in fashion, which is now-a-days the sin of making
money at all risks. We hold that there is one law of morality for
the kingdom of heaven, and another for the kingdom of mammon.
Therefore we hold, more and more, that when money is in question
anything and everything is fair. There are--we have reason to know
it just now but too well--thousands who will sell their honour, their
honesty, yea, their own souls, for a few paltry pounds, and think no
shame. And if any one says, with Jeremiah the prophet, 'These are
poor, they know not the way of the Lord, nor the judgment of their
God. I will get me to the great men, for they have known the way of
the Lord, and the judgment of their God:'--then will he find, as
Jeremiah did, that too many of these great and wealthy worshippers of
mammon have utterly broken the yoke, and burst the bonds, of all
moral law of right and wrong: heaping up vast fortunes amid the ruin
of those who have trusted them, and the tears of the widow and the
orphan, by means now glossed over by fine new words, but called in
plain honest old English by a very ugly name.
How many there are in England now, my friends, who would laugh in
their hearts at those worthy Rechabites, and hold them to be
ignorant, old-fashioned, bigoted people, for keeping up their poor,
simple, temperate life, wandering to and fro with their tents and
cattle, instead of dwelling in great cities, and making money, and
becoming what is now-a-days called civilized, in luxury and
covetousness.
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