Ah my friends, that is a
sore temptation--the sorest, perhaps, which can meet a man in the
long struggle of life, the temptation which success brings. In
middle age, when he has learnt his business, and succeeded in it;
when he has fought his battle with the world, and conquered more or
less; when he has made his way up, and seems to himself safe, and
comfortable, and thriving; when he feels that he is a shrewd,
thrifty, experienced man, who knows the world and how to prosper in
it--Then how easy it is for him to say in his heart--as Moses feared
that those old Jews would say--'My might and the power of my wit has
gotten me this wealth,' and to forget the Lord his God, who guided
him and trained him through all the struggles and storms of early
life; and so to become vainly confident, worldly and hard-hearted:
undevout and ungodly, even though he may keep himself respectable
enough, and fall into no open sin.
Therefore it is, I think, that while we see so many lives which have
been sad lives of poverty, and labour, and struggle, end peacefully
and cheerfully, in a sunshiny old age, like a still bright evening
after a day of storm and rain; so on the other hand we see lives
which have been prosperous and happy ones for many years, end sadly
in bereavement, poverty, or disappointment, as did the life of David,
the man after God's own heart.
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