and you will see that these precious metals are such only by the judgment of the world. Will you, who are a Christian, become a slave to that which even pagan philosophers despised? "He who guards his riches like a slave is their victim," says St. Jerome; "but he who throws off their yoke possesses them as their lord and master."
Consider also these words of our Saviour: "No man can serve two masters, God and mammon."[1] Man cannot freely rise to God and the contemplation of His beauty while he is breathless in the pursuit of riches. A heart filled with material and earthly pleasures can never know spiritual and divine joys. No; it is impossible to unite what is false with what is true; what is spiritual with what is carnal; what is temporal with what is eternal; they can never dwell together in one heart.
There is another truth of which you must not lose sight the more worldly prosperity you enjoy the more destitute you are likely to be of spiritual riches, for an abundance of this world's goods leads you to trust in them rather than in God. Oh! that you knew the misery which such prosperity prepares for you! The desire of more which springs from the love of riches is a torment which far exceeds the pleasure we derive from their possession. It will entangle you in a thousand temptations, fill you with cares, and under the delusive image of pleasure plunge you into renewed sin and prove an inexhaustible source of trouble and
- ↑ St. Matt. vi. 24.
