LITTLE THINGS BY Charles Robert Morrison

3. Lessons about Money.
Said the Wise Man: "I have seen a grievous evil under the sun: wealth
hoarded to the harm of its owner!" Ecclesiastes 5:13
It is a pathetic lesson taught every day and everywhere, but whose
truths are so seldom heeded--this blinding, perverting, degrading, selfish love
of money. Men and women are to be commended for the industrious,
economical, and judicious habit of wealth accumulation; but are surely
to be pitied when those hard-earned dollars are dissipated by children
who know little of their cost, and care less.
When wealth increases, without a corresponding increase of the
benevolent spirit, it is at the expense of those nobler qualities that bind
together in sympathetic compact all the children of men, and
strengthen the tie that unites us all to God. No man can afford to pay so
high a price for all the wealth the world contains; for our hold upon
property is not permanent. Riches make themselves wings--and can only
be made secure when they enter into affection, sympathy, well doing,
and well-being. No longer will wealth be ours, when death has laid his
heavy hand upon us, and separated all material things from the
spiritual being. "Lay up for yourselves treasures in Heaven, where
neither moth nor rust does corrupt, and where thieves do not break
through nor steal."
The bestowment of gifts in large amounts at one time, is neither
commended by results or by the Word of God, as compared to
the regular and constant and watchful giving practiced all through life, as
God has prospered. Those who have watched the wasteful processes of
courts in adjustment of estates, have often wished that a few years of
personal supervision of his gifts might have been the privilege and
96 of 102