1901 



GLKANIXGS IN BKK CULTURK. 



549 



OUR 



homes; 



BY A.I. ROOT. 



Thou Shalt not covet thy neighbor's house, thou 

 shall not covet thy neighbor's wife, nor his niau- 

 servant. nor his maid-servant, nor his ox, nor his 

 ass, nor any thing that is thy nei^'hbor's. — Ex. 20:17. 



Our pastor, Rev. Jesse Hill, has been giving 

 us a series of sermons on the ten command- 

 ■nients. I heard the first of them before I went 

 to Florida, and I was fortunate enough to 

 catch the last after my return home. In the 

 outset he surprised and somewhat startled me 

 by remarking that God gave us nine com- 

 mandments in regard to our actions — thou 

 shalt not do so and so. The tenth and the 

 last is the only one that presumes to dictate 

 to humanity what its thoughts shall be. This 

 much, or this suggestion, is from my pastor. 

 The rest of my talk may include something 

 of his sermon, but will be mostly on a line of 

 my own. 



Most people would say one has a right to 

 .think about what he pleases, or, in other 

 words, it is nobody's business what you think 

 about or what your thoughts are. But this 

 commandment teaches us that God, the great 

 Father above, has really undertaken to tell us 

 what we are permitted to think and what not. 

 Of course, we may say we are going to think 

 what we please, no matter what the Bible says 

 or what the ten commandments say. We may 

 do this ; but if we do, then we must decide we 

 are not in obedience to the great Father, and 

 that we are not one of his people — certainly 

 not his obedient child. 



I confess it has troubled me almost all my 

 life to understand the expression so often 

 brought up from Holy Writ, that we are all 

 sinners ; but when I come to think we may 

 sin in thought, without doing any thing else 

 at all, then I begin to comprehend that hu- 

 manity as we find it is really born in sin and 

 born to sin. In fact, Job tells us that " man is 

 born to trouble as the sparks to fly upward." 

 If the word "trouble" may be understood to 

 mean evil, I think I shall agree with Job.* If 

 evil thoughts never went any further than just 

 .thotights alone, no one would be particularly 

 harmed, except, perhaps, the one who does the 

 thinking ; but we all learn the sad fact, sooner 

 or later, that evil thoughts are only the com- 

 mencement or start of evil actions. The thief, 

 the robber, the murderer, must go through a 

 series, and sometimes a long series, of evil 

 thoughts before these thoughts ever ripen and 

 blossom into crime. The sin of covetousness 

 is an index of character. It soon begins to 

 pervade the whole person. It is a low-lived, 

 low-mannered, ungenerous, disgraceful sin. 

 Oh how many times I have seen it lead even 

 young people astray ! I have seen jealousy 

 get a lodging-place in the hearts of even chil- 



* Paul throws some light on this matter in an ex- 

 pression I never understood until just now, which we 

 find in Romans 7:7 : " Nay, I had not known sin but 

 ■by the law: for I had not known lust except the law 

 Ihad said. Thou shalt not covet." 



dren. I have seen it get so dominant it seem- 

 ed an almost utter impossibility to make the 

 sufferer see the source of all his troubles. The 

 young people in our employ sometimes come 

 to me and complain that others are getting 

 more pay than they, when they (the speakers) 

 do nearly twice the amount of work. After 

 having heard their version of the case I » ften 

 say, " Why, my young friend, you are letting 

 this thing that has got into your heart not 

 only make you unhappy, but spoil your val- 

 ue." Then I explain to them as well as pos- 

 sible the mistakes they are making in looking 

 with a jealous eye on some bright, happy, 

 wideawake, go-ahead fellow-woikman. 



Jealousy and covetousness blind people. A 

 man once said to me, "Mr Root, your own 

 observation must have convinced you that I 

 am doing more work for the pay I get than 

 any other man in your establishment." Kow, 

 this poor foolish man had been looking with 

 jealous eyes at A, B, and C, and comparing 

 them with himself ; and Satan had whispered 

 to him that he was smarter and more useiul to 

 the business than any one else there, and that 

 he was getting less pay than any one of them. 

 The only way I could convince him of his 

 error was to advise him to get a job some- 

 where else with somebody who had no preju- 

 dice against him in the way he insisted I was 

 prejudiced ; for, to tell the truth, he was, per- 

 haps, the most unprofitable man I had at the 

 time. 



But this covetous spirit does not end here. 

 Again and again it has urged people on to 

 crime — yes, women as well as men ; and many 

 a time the guilty one has excused himself by 

 saying, when he found out Ihere was no 

 chance of getting what he had justly earned, 

 he took the liberty of appropriating what he 

 thought would make it "about right." 



But when Satan succeeds in getting into a 

 man's heart along the line of this tenth com- 

 mandment he does not stop with the pretense 

 of making things yinV. Yesterday's paper told 

 us that in the neighboring town of Chardon 

 five men broke into a bank in the niij;ht. 

 They bound and gagged the night watchman, 

 and then did the same thing to a phjsician 

 who was out late at night. They threatened 

 these two with instant death if they tried to 

 get away or made the slightest nr ise. I do not 

 suppose they pretended to justify themselves 

 in what they were going to do. In blowing 

 open the building and the safe they used a 

 dozen or more charges of nitro glycerine. Of 

 course, the citizens were awakened, and at- 

 tempted resistance ; but these five men, armed 

 to the death, held them at bay. They retreat- 

 ed under a fusillade of bullets, got away on a 

 hand-car, and escaped. They took their lives 

 in their hands, and at a terrible risk ; or, we 

 might say, with terrible odds against them — 

 in fact, with a probability that one or more of 

 them would be killed, they wrecked the best 

 buildings in the town, and actually blew open 

 one of the best safes that is made in the world. 

 They did not care how many lives they took ; 

 they did not care how many fine and expen- 

 sive buildings they wrecked. They did not 

 even care if the money they coveted was the 



