He that gathereth not with me scattereth abroad

Tues­day. [Rom. 14:9-18; Matt. 12:14-16, 22-30] He that is not with me is a­gainst me; and he that gath­er­eth not with me scat­ter­eth abroad. Who is with the Lord? He who lives and acts in His spir­it; he who al­lows him­self nei­ther thoughts, nor feel­ings, nor de­sires, nor in­ten­tions, nor words, nor deeds, which would be un­pleas­ing to the Lord and in op­po­si­tion to His re­veal­ed com­mand­ments and de­ter­mi­na­tions. He who lives and acts oth­er­wise, is not with the Lord and con­se­quent­ly does not gath­er, but scat­ters. What does he scat­ter? Not on­ly en­er­gy and time, but al­so what he gath­ers. For ex­am­ple, one who gath­ers rich­es not with the Lord, amass­es on­ly rich­es, not sharing with oth­ers, while de­priv­ing him­self even of nec­es­sary things; or an­oth­er gath­ers them, spends a part on his own lux­u­ri­ous life­style, part on do­na­tions made out of vain­glo­ry, and saves part for his heirs. In the oth­er world he will ap­pear with noth­ing — and there he will be the poorest of the poor. On the con­tra­ry, one who gath­ers rich­es with the Lord pass­es on what is gath­er­ed through the hands of the poor and need­y, un­to eter­nal treasuries. When such a per­son dies, he will find in that world all his rich­es in­tact, not scat­ter­ed, al­though he spent them through­out his life. The same ap­plies to the gathering of knowl­edge. Here scat­ter­ing is even more ob­vi­ous, be­cause it can be seen how one who is in­tel­lec­tu­al not in the Lord gath­ers a seem­ing moun­tain of knowl­edge, but it is no more than rub­bish — a phan­tom of the truth, and not the truth. They not on­ly lack knowl­edge, but even loose hu­man sense. They be­come de­lir­i­ous, like one who is asleep. Read the sys­tems of the ma­ter­i­al­ists and you will see that this is so.