Page:Poverty and Riches, a sermon.djvu/18

14 exemplified, "There is that maketh himself rich, yet hath nothing: there is that maketh himself poor, yet hath great riches."

How many, in the universal struggle for wealth, does this former sentence characterize! How many men have toiled on with head and hand for years; have gathered round them this world's wealth, have secured that safe and certain place in the world's respect, which ever belongs to the wealthy and successful; yet of whom it must be said with regard to any enduring and permanent possessions, that they have nothing. There is at the same time a pathos, and a solemn irony, in these words. What, nothing after all? Those hands so long busy: that head so long wearied with scheming: so much running to and fro: so much careful investing and safe bestowal: and shall all turn out nothing, and thou a pauper? Alas, it is even so. Thou art living and toiling as one in a dream, who grasps with convulsive energy the treasure he seems to have found, for fear he should awake and it escape him: and yet the morning finds his hands empty, and his dream past by and forgotten. And so it shall be with thee. Thou too shalt awake, and shalt find nothing. One day, God himself shall break up this dream, and waken thee with some unwelcome touch of His truth: and thou too shalt find thine hands as empty. Thou shalt hear, like those guilty ones of old. His voice amidst thy gilded chambers, calling "Where art thou?" And the