Page:Poverty and Riches, a sermon.djvu/14

10 promoting His glory by active spending of himself for good.

And this is the man who hath great riches, if we truly consider the matter: before whom lie all the opportunities of life, even those whose work is the most solemn, and whose prizes are the most glorious and enduring: to whom the strait gate presents comparatively little difficulty, the narrow way but few impediments. Discarding, not in idle phrase, but in thoroughness of inner conviction, every righteousness of his own, he aims at being enriched in fuller measure with that which is his by faith in and likeness to Christ his Saviour: being unencumbered by the hindrance of self-esteem, he is ever ready for any work, however lowly and unpromising, which God has in hand. Such persons have the most leisure of all men; for they have all that time which others spend in thinking of themselves: they are in conference, and in action, before others have done poising their dignity at home: and while others hesitate to soil their feet in the tillage, they stand laden with the golden sheaves of the harvest. It is by these men that all real wealth is sought out and amassed: that the mines of truth are dug, the rich veins of charity explored, the piles of treasure laid up which mankind shall one day inherit, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal.

If we now pass on from the region of thought to