So far from forgiveness being the weakness of the thoughtless, it is the helpfulness of the strong and the wise. To forgive a man will not mean to escape from the trouble of securing his punishment; it will not mean the weak complaisance of indolent tolerance. It will mean thought for his weakness, taking up his burden, doing the brother's part for him, the endeavour to do for him what we would like to have the Father of us all do for us all.
_Riches and Righteousness_ _Religion and Business_ _The Moral End of Money-Making_
_Better a sweet failure than a sour success._
_An itching palm causes a crook in the fingers._
_Many a moral squint comes from a money monocle._
_The fortunate people are those who believe they are._
_We are always building bridges for things with wings._
_The best way to wipe out a friendship is to sponge on it._
_Many a man thinks he is pious when he is only petrified._
_A little plain honesty is worth untold professional holiness._
_The religion that runs to fever usually evens up with chills._
_Nothing is easier than being benevolent with other people's money._
Let no man take it, that the statement on the inaccessibility of heaven to the rich involves the opposite, how easily shall they that have nothing enter in. The people who have lived pulseless lives are apt to point to their poverty as the proof of their piety. But righteousness is neither a matter of riches nor of rags. The great Teacher glorifies neither. The qualifications for citizenship in His kingdom strike deeper than that.
His words have nothing to do with the bitter envy of the demagogue who denounces those who have earned that for which he would not labour. He measures men not by that they have but by that they are. He looks through both the fine linen and the tattered rags to the man. Money interests Him only as it affects character. The question of riches and poverty is not a matter of housing and eating, but what a man does for himself and his world with that which he has.
Riches of themselves do not bar a man from heaven; but they full often eat into his heart, become of absorbing interest, and so effectually and forever blind the inner vision to the best things. It is not that heaven has shut its gates, but that the love of money, the selfishness, born of cupidity, has paralyzed those spiritual senses by which he might have found his way therein.