Prosperity a Trial.
I. The growing occupation of time, although apt to be overlooked, is one of the most serious clangers of prosperity; for usually money is not made, social circumstances are not made, influence of any kind is not gotten among our fellow men, without great efforts. He who seeks these things, as a rule, you may depend upon it, rises early, sits up late, and eats the bread of carefulness. One of the chief dangers of a state of general prosperity, especially when that prosperity is in a growing state, is the constant tendency to the entire occupation of time with merely secular duties, which may be done in a religious spirit, but which will be done in a religious spirit with more and still more difficulty if there are not select and express times for the purpose of refreshing.
II. Is it not very evident that if the time, which rightfully should be devoted to the care and cultivation of religion expressly, be unwarrantably abridged, and other subjects and interests, social or what not, engross the attention and fill the heart, is it not very evident that when the time comes, the inclination and spiritual taste for religious improvement may be very much abated? Spiritual things prove dim and hazy; the busy labours of the day are succeeded by the slumbers of the night; and bargains, and speculations, and gains and losses, will form the subject even of the man's dreams and visions in the night. "The cares of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches, and the lust of other things, entering in, choke the word, and it becometh unfruitful,"
III. The third danger to be apprehended from a growing prosperity is the increase of pride.
IV. Closely associated with this danger comes another; that of self-indulgence, an easy, soft, luxurious temper.
V. Worldly success has a tendency to lead to what we usually understand and I think fairly describe, without uncharitableness, as a worldly life, that is, a life occupied with transitory things, a life from which spiritual religion is, to a considerable extent, excluded altogether, a life without religious hope, a life without God in the world.
A. Raleigh, Penny Pulpit(New series), No. 96.
References: Mark 4:7; Mark 4:18; Mark 4:19. Preacher's Monthly,vol. vi., p. 65.Mark 4:11. Ibid.,vol. iii., p. 111.Mark 4:13-25. H. M. Luckock, Footprints of the Son of Man,p. 80. Mark 4:14-20. H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xxv., p. 234.Mark 4:16; Mark 4:17. Plain Sermons by Contributors to "Tracts for the Times,"vol. ii., p. 49. Mark 4:20-29. W. Hubbard, Christian World Pulpit,p. 45.Mark 4:21. Homiletic Quarterly,vol. i., p. 353.Mark 4:21; Mark 4:22. S. Cox, Expositor,2nd series, vol. i., p. 130. Mark 4:21-24. Ibid.,3rd series, vol. iv., p. 149. Mark 4:21-25. Ibid.,2nd series, vol. i., p. 372.