d not seem much prospect, and He gives him this powerful dose,
"Sell all that thou hast and give to the poor!"

It does not follow that we must all do the same, any more than because
belladonna or arsenic is administered in one case of illness we should
therefore all go to taking belladonna or arsenic. Because one man in the
hospital must have his arm amputated all the patients need not expect
amputation. The silliest thing that business-men could do would be to give
all their property away and turn their families into the street. The most
Christian thing for you to do is to invest your money in the best way
possible, and out of your business, industriously carried on, to contribute
the largest possible percentage to the kingdom of God.

Still, we must admire the manner in which the Great Physician took the
diagnosis of this man's case and grappled it. We all need heroic spiritual
treatment. We do not get well of sin because we do not realize what a dire
disease it is, and that we cannot cure it with a spiritual panacea, a
gentle antidote, a few grains of spiritual morphine, a mild moral
corrective or a few drops of peppermint on white sugar.

We want our pride killed, and we read an essay on that sweet grace of
humility, and we go on as proud as ever. The pleasant lozenge does not do
the work. Rather let us set ourselves to do that for Christ which is most
oppugnant to our natural feelings. You do not take part in prayer-meeting
because you cannot pray like Edward Payson, or exhort like John
Summerfield. If you want to crush your pride, get up anyhow, though your
knees knock together, and your tongue catches fast, and you see some
godless hearer in prayer-meeting laughing as though she would burst.

Deal with your avarice in the same heroic style. Having heard the
charitable cause presented, at the first right impulse thrust your hand in
your pocket where the money is, and pull it out though it half kills you.
Pull till it comes. Put it on the plate with an emphasis, and turn your
face away before you are tempted to take it back again. All your sweet
contemplation about benevolence will not touch your case. Heroic treatment
or nothing!

In the same way destroy the vindictiveness of your nature. Treatises on
Christian brotherhood are not what you need. Select the man most
disagreeable to you, and the one who has said the hardest things about
you. Go up and shake hands with him, and ask him how his family is, and how