Sermons on Selected Lessons of the New Testament

⁴ I forbear to urge, that it may be even during your life you are but laying up for thieves. In one night may they come and find all ready the gathering of so many days and nights. It may be you are laying up for a robber, or a highwayman. I will say no more on this, lest I call to mind and re-open the wound of past sufferings. How many things which an empty vanity has heaped together, has the cruelty of an enemy found ready to its hand. It is not my place to wish for this: but it is the concern of all to fear it.

May God avert it! May His own scourges be sufficient. May He to whom we pray, spare us! But if He ask you for whom are we laying by, what shall we answer? How then, O man, whosoever you are, that are heaping up treasure in vain, how will you answer me, as I handle this matter with you, and with you seek counsel in a common cause? For you spoke and make answer, “I am laying up for myself, for my children, for my posterity.” I have said already how many grounds of fear there are, even as to those children themselves.

But I pass over the consideration, that your children may so live as to be a curse to you, and as your enemy would wish them; grant that they live as the father himself would have them. Yet how many have fallen into those mischances, I have declared, and reminded you of already. You shuddered at them, though you did not amend yourself. For what have you to answer but this, “Perhaps it may not be so”? Well, I said so too; perhaps I say you are but laying up for the thief, or robber, or highwayman.

I did not say certainly, but perhaps. Where there is a perhaps, there is a perhaps-not; so then you know not what will be, and therefore you “are disquieted in vain.” You see now how truly spoke the Truth, how vainly vanity is disquieted. You have heard and at length learned wisdom, because when you say, “Perhaps it is for my children,” but dost not dare to say, “I am sure that it is for my children,” you do not in fact know for whom you are gathering riches. So then, as I see, and have said already, you are yourself without resource; you find nothing wherewith to answer me, nor can I to answer you.