“‘Among the needless articles of unnecessary eatables placed before your guests, you put before them intoxicating drink, that criminal poison which for centuries has drenched the earth with crime, lust, disorder, shame, disease, and death. You offered no apology in putting this liquor before human beings who were made in the image of God to fulfill His righteous purposes.

“‘During the progress of the meal, a young man, a servant, who had been serving faithfully as best he knew how, made a very slight mistake which made no vital difference to any human creature. For this, which you magnified as if it were a crime, you discharged him from your service, first calling him a name which contained every charge of ignorance and even wrong. You ordered him out of your service for this trivial accident in order to show your authority, and because you felt socially more disturbed over an incident like that at your table than you have ever felt over great and tremendous acts in your so-called business life which have involved mighty actions of profoundest right and wrong.

“‘The questions I put to you, therefore, are these:

“‘Why do you, dependent as you are on your Heavenly Father, never by so much as a word or an act acknowledge Him or thank Him for His daily and hourly bounty? Why have you, made to be your brother’s keeper and lover, set up such artificial barriers between yourself and these men you call “menials” that you live in two worlds apart, with no feeling of sympathy or affection, simply paying wages as if machines were doing your work? Do you realize that if all men and women who work with their hands should suddenly cease, all civilization would rush down into ruin?

“‘Why do you, who have health and strength and mental soundness, never exercise God-given faculties in honest labor? Your life is spent making money out of others’ weaknesses, in speculating on others’ credulity. You have never used an honest stroke of muscular or mental power to bless this city or help make the world better. Your highest ambition is and has been all your life to make money, not by honest toil, but by gambling, by deceiving others as to your purposes.

“‘Why, with a great city full of needy humanity, have you never added anything to its uplift, never given to its betterment, never left your chase after money to help save others? Why have you, who boast of your admiration for “power,” never really used any of it to love God, but instead spent useless years in eating, drinking, and getting pleasures and money?

“‘Answer these questions, and I will tell you the secret of my power. And yet, it is so far beyond your spiritual apprehension that, if I were to tell it to you, you could no more comprehend it than the clod can comprehend the sunbeam that falls upon it.’