by David Lipscomb

The Gospel Advocate; July 6, 1882

A man who insists on having his rights, will frequently find more wrongs than rights in this world. This world is not the world where right rules; on the contrary, it is an evil world,—a world where Abel dies while Cain lives; a world where God’s servants are killed all the day long, and are accounted as sheep for the slaughter; a world where the wisest of men see that in the place of judgment wickedness is there, and in the place of righteousness iniquity is there,—and find their only consolation in the fact that at last God shall judge the righteous and the wicked, and so right the wrongs that nothing else will ever remedy. We may as well accept these facts at first as to learn them by bitter experience at last; and we may as well content ourselves to bear the iniquities, the falsehoods, the slanders, robberies and wrong-doings that occur in this world, for so surely as we undertake to right the wrongs that are perpetrated, we shall receive fresh injuries and be made the victims of still greater wrongs. Charity “beareth all things,” and though there may be times when iniquity de­mands rebuke, and wrong-doing requires exposure, still he who does this with the hope of securing his own advantage, may expect to be disappointed. For one’s own personal profit it is better to endure almost any wrong than to undertake to obtain redress. We are in an enemy’s land, and a man may find perils where he least expects them. Hence we are to arm ourselves with the same mind that Jesus had, and suffer patiently, over­coming evil with good. The Talmud has this saying, which illustrates the life of one who beareth all things in the spirit of Christian charity:—“He who says, Mine is mine and thine is thine is a just man; he who says, Mine is mine, and thine is mine, is a wicked man ; he who says, Thine is thine, and mine is thine, is a pious man. ‘Love seeketh not her own.’” This principle of yielding, bearing, and endur­ing is not merely the dictate of Christian forbearance and charity, but it is also, in an evil world, the dictate of worldly prudence and com­mon sense. Unless a man can make up his mind to a life of warfare and strife, which may in the end involve him in injustice and personal wrong­doing to others, through a determination to have his own way, he may well make up his mind to suffer injury trusting in God who, in the day of final account, shall make all things right and shall give reward to his servants the prophets, and to his saints, and to them that fear his name, both small and great.