And the Scales Will Be Balanced

On this question again of people who seem to receive more or less from life than they deserve: We sometimes see honest and able men who seem unsuccessful, and we see unscrupulous and unethical men who are seemingly successful. We sometimes see undeserving people prosper and deserving people as frustrated failures ⎯ or so to us it seems. And again we ask ourselves: “Why are such things permitted to be so?” Perhaps part of the answer is found in an unfailing faith in the law of compensation. For example: the man who appears to prosper by dishonest practices has something happen to him inside. What happens to him, we don’t always see, but it is there just the same. A dishonest or dishonorable person misses many of the elements of happiness. He loses the quiet comfort of being at ease in the presence of honorable people. And with an accusing conscience he also loses the power to live at ease within himself. But suppose he has silenced his conscience; suppose he has lost the power to feel real remorse. If he has, he has lost the power to feel other things also. He has lost sensitivity to some of the finer things of life, for he who persists in going against the grain of virtue and of conscience has his nature and character coarsened, and he cannot help missing some of the refinements of sincere happiness and enjoyment. Because these things are not always readily seen on the surface, we may sometimes assume that they are not so. But the surface isn’t all there is to be seen, and a person always surely pays a price for everything he does contrary to conscience or contrary to correct principles. If we had to give all the answers here and now, we should surely fall short of satisfying ourselves. But however inconsistent and irreconcilable some situations may here and now seem, we may well rely on the judgment and justice of God and again be assured that we shall sometime, somewhere along the immortal journey find the answers that we now fail to find. And we may rest with a sure and certain assurance that the eternal scales are balanced under all circumstances.