spend your worldly goods for him, who shed his blood for you? Go, I
beseech you, to your closet, and there plead, till from the heart you
can say: "Lord, here I am and all I have. Take the worthless sacrifice,
now and forever."

Will the rich, they who have enough and abound, reject this rational
scheme of principles, feelings, actions? What treatment is this of the
compassionate Giver of your abundance? Do you not owe to him alike your
being and possessions? Perhaps you refuse to give even _yourselves_ to
him; and employ to private ends those bodily and mental powers with
which you are endowed for his service. Is not this robbing God? And
how is it with the favors of his hand? Have not the crucibles of your
selfish hearts melted and moulded them into household gods? As the
streams of Providence have poured in upon you to overflowing, instead of
dispersing abroad as God intended, have you not carefully enlarged your
own reservoirs so as to retain the whole? Thus grasping all that lies
within your reach of that wealth which God has created for the
advancement of his kingdom, have you not withheld it from its
appropriate channel, and thus become doubly guilty of robbing God?

What a spectacle do you present to holy intelligences! They behold you
rational and accountable beings like themselves; upheld in existence by
Jehovah's mercy, partaking freely of his bounties, and treasuring up
future supplies; but resolutely refusing to share your abundance with
the perishing, even when the generosity required would but enhance your
personal enjoyment. And yet, perchance, you are the professed followers
of the compassionate Jesus. Dare you compare your spirit and conduct
with his?

Truly, you, who have redundant stores, sustain tremendous