Page:Poverty and Riches, a sermon.djvu/19

Rh conscience, long unfaithful, long whispering, dallying, compromising at her surface, shall yield up an answer from her depths, "Ruined." Thy dream too will have passed away; but, unlike that with which we compared it, it will not, no never will it be forgotten. All those years of toil, all those increases of comfort and luxury, all those investments so carefully considered and watched over, will eat into thy memory like a canker through the ages of eternity. We all, I suppose, are acquainted with the bitter pang of reflecting on lost opportunities. Nothing is keener in life; nothing more indelibly remembered, and pertinaciously renewed. I know that often even now, on looking back, the thought of what might have been, and should have been, but was not, years ago, returns, and returns, and seems to have lost none of its original sharpness of regret, and intensity of vain self-accusation. Think then what will be that abiding torment, of remembering a spent for nought; wealth thrown away; means of doing good despised; charity suffered to languish; a thousand claims of God's own asserting, the least of which if acknowledged might by His grace have made thee rich for ever, put by and scorned; thine own evil example of selfishness and greed followed, and bettered, as the world goes on. Who can bear, and yet how many will have to bear, these accumulated burdens for ever and for ever, and for ever? Judging here with our imperfect powers, we may say that it would