Sermons on Selected Lessons of the New Testament

² A hard condition is the life of man. What else is it to be born, but to enter on a life of toil? Of our toil that is to be, the infant's very cry is witness. From this cup of sorrow no one may be excused. The cup that Adam has pledged, must be drunk. We were made, it is true, by the hands of Truth, but because of sin we were cast forth upon days of vanity. “We were made after the image of God,” but we disfigured it by sinful transgression. Therefore does the Psalm remind us how we were made, and to what a state we have come.

For it says, “Though a man walk in the image of God.” See, what he was made. Whither has he come? Hearken to what follows, “Yet will he be disquieted in vain.” He walks in the image of truth, and will be disquieted in the counsel of vanity. Finally, see his disquiet, see it, and as it were in a glass, be displeased with yourself. “Though,” he says, “man walk in the image of God,” and therefore be something great, “yet will he be disquieted in vain;” and as though we might ask, How I pray you, how is man disquieted in vain?

“He heaps up treasure,” says he, “and knows not for whom he does gather it.” See then, this man, that is the whole human race represented as one man, who is without resource in his own case, and has lost counsel and wandered out of the way of a sound mind; “Heaps up treasure, and knows not for whom he does gather it.” What is more mad, what more unhappy? But surely he is doing it for himself? Not so. Why not for himself? Because he must die, because the life of man is short, because the treasure lasts, but he who gathers it, quickly passes away.

As pitying therefore the man who “walks in the image of God,” who confesses things that are true, yet follows after vain things, he says, “He will be disquieted in vain.” I grieve for him; “he heaps up treasure, and knows not for whom he does gather it.” Does he gather it for himself? No. Because the man dies while the treasure endures. For whom then? If you have any good counsel, give it to me. But counsel have you none to give me, and so you have none for yourself. Wherefore if we are both without it, let us both seek it, let us both receive it, and both consider the matter together.

He is disquieted, he heaps up treasure, he thinks, and toils, and is kept awake by anxiety. All day long are you harassed by labour, all night agitated by fear. That your coffer may be filled with money, your soul is in a fever of anxiety.