Faith of Our Fathers

New Zealand Tablet, Volume L, Issue 37, 20 September 1923, Page 41

Faith of Our Fathers

[A Weekly Inbteuoxion fob Young and Old.] OF OUR HAPPINESS IN THIS LIFE. IF WE KEEP THE COMMANDMENTS. 1. True Happiness not to be found in Worldly. , Enjoyments. Moses was very sensible of this sad effect of worldly prosperity, and therefore foreseeing the great favors of this kind, which God was to bestow upon His people in the land of promise, he warmly exhorts them to guard themselves against this delusion: ‘.‘The Lord thy God,” says he, . . , “will bring thee into a good land, . . a land of wheat and barley, and vineyards ... a land of oil and honey, where without any want, thou shalt eat thy bread and enjoy abundance of all things . . . that when thou hast eaten and art full, thou mayest bless the Lord thy God, for the land which He hath given thee. Take heed and beware, lest at any time thou forget the Lord thy God, and neglect His commandments. . . Lest, after thou hast eaten and art filled, hast built goodly houses, and dwelt in them; and shalt have herds of oxen and flocks of sheep, and plenty of gold and silver and of all things, thy heart be lifted up, and thou remember not the Lord thy God . . . lest thou shouldst say in thy heart, my own might and the strength of my own hand hath achieved all these things for me. But remember the Lord thy God, that He hath given thee strength” (Dent, viii.) The same warning he gives them on several different occasions, and particularly in the sixth chapter of this book of Deuteronomy, which shows how solicitous he was about this matter, and how much he apprehended this fatal effect of worldly prosperity but foreseeing that they would not observe in future ages his wholesome advice, and that the hearts of his people would be corrupted by the delusions of prosperity, he thus describes the goodness of God to them, and foretells and complains of their ingratitude to their God: “He set His people on high that he might eat the fruits of the field, that he might suck honey out of the rock, and oil out of the hardest stone, butter of the herd, and milk of the sheep, with the fat of the lambs, and of the rams of the breed of Basan, and goats, with the marrow of wheat, and might drink the purest blood of the grape: The beloved grew and kicked : he grew fat and thick and gross, he forsook God 'Who made him, and departed from God his Saviour. They provoked Him by strange gods, and stirred Him up to anger with their abominations” (Deut. xxxii. 13.) God Himself often complains of this by His prophets, and particularly by Osee, where He says, “According to their pastures they were filled and made full; and they lifted up their heart and have forgotten Me.” (Os. xiii. 6.) In all which passages we see that pride and a forgetfulness of God are indeed the natural, and but too frequently the fatal consequences of worldly prosperity; and consequently how dangerous it is for our eternal happiness. Another pernicious consequence of worldly prosperity, and which always accompanies the pride and a forgetfulness of God, which it inspires, is, that it hardens our heart, and renders it insensible to all the ordinary means which the Divine providence uses for our conversion. “I spoke to thee,” says Almighty God, “in thy prosperity, and thou saidst, I will not hear; this hath been thy way from thy youth, because thou hast not heard My voice.” (Jer. xxii. 21.) Job beautifully describes this dismal effect of prosperity, and the miserable end to which it conducts poor souls, in these words, “Their houses are secure and peaceable, and the rod of God is not upon them; their cattle have conceived and failed not ; their cow hath calved and is not deprived of her fruit; their little ones go out like a flock, and their children , dance and play; they take the timbrel and the harp, and rejoice at the sound of the organ.” But where does all this end? he immediately adds, “They spend their days in wealth, and in a, moment go down to hell.” And the reason of this fatal end of worldly prosperity he subjoins, “who have said to God, depart from us, we desire not the knowledge of Thy ways. Who is the Almighty, that we should serve pirn? and what doth it profit us if we pray to Him?”

(Job xxi. 9.) See here into what a depth of obduracy and insensibility worldly prosperity is capable of plunging the soul; and in what a dismal manner it ends at last; and though Almighty God should, out of His superabundant mercy, sometimes touch their hearts with a sense of their danger, yet these good dispositions'which He-gives them are soon entirely smothered by their attachment to, and /solicitude about their . worldly enjoyments, as Christ Himself assures us in the parable of the sower, where He says, "That which fell among the thorns, are they who have heard, and going their way, are choked with the cares and riches and pleasures of this life, and yield no fruit" (Luke viii. 14.) Indeed this is so generally the case, that a rich man, who preserves his innocency in the midst of riches, and keeps his heart upright to God without becoming a slave to his riches, is looked upon in the Scripture as a most wonderful person, and a particular blessing is pronounced on him: "Blessed is the rich man that is found without blemish, and that hath not gone after gold, nor put his trust in money nor in treasures; who is he, and we will praise him? for he hath done wonderful things in his life; who hath been tried thereby, and been made perfect; he shall have glory everlasting, who could have transgressed, and hath not transgressed; and could do evil things, and hath not done them. Therefore are his goods established in the Lord" (Ecclus, xxxi. 8.) Besides these more general pernicious effects of worldly prosperity, there are several other sins to which it exposes souls, and with some or other of which it is seldom unaccompanied; such as idleness, which' opens a door to all sins; anger and impatience under the smallest trials and contradictions; intemperance and drunkenness, as in the rich glutton in the Gospel; and particularly lust and avarice; the first of which Almighty God thus declares by His prophet: "How can I be merciful to thee? thy children have forsaken Me, and swear by them that are not gods; I fed them to the full, and they committed adultery and rioted in the harlot's house. They are become like amorous horses and stallions: everyone neighed after his neighbor's wife. Shall I not visit for these things, saith the Lord (Jer. v. 7.) And indeed this fatal effect of riches and worldly prosperity is so natural, considering the corruption of the heart of man, that even Solomon with all his wisdom, was not proof against it; or thus the Scripture addresses him upon this head, "Thou didst gather gold as copper, and didst multiply silver as lead and thou didst bow thyself to woman, and by thy body thou wast brought under subjection, thou hast stained thy glory and defiled thy seed, so as to bring wrath upon thy children" (Ecclus. xlvii. 20.) But the most fatal effect that riches and worldly prosperity have upon the mind of man, is the unhappy attachment that it raises in the heart towards them, and the insatiable desire of always having more and more; and when once this love of money takes possession of the heart of those who have riches, or when the covetous desire of becoming rich gets the ascendant in the mind o those who have them not, i t is incredible to what excess of wickedness it is capable of pushing them on. It opens the door at once to hardheartedness towards the poor, to all kinds of injustice, to rapine and oppression, to lying to perjury, and even to apostasy and murder itself. Hence the scripture declares that, "The love of money is the root of all evil, which some desiring have erred from the faith, and have entangled themselves in many sorrows" (1 Tim. vi. 10); and "There is not a more wicked thing than to love money; for such a one setteth even his own soul for sale" (Ecclus. x. 10); and no wonder, for the Holy Ghost assures us by the mouth of St. Paul, that ''They that will become rich, fall into temntation, and into the snare of the devil, and into many unprofitable and hurtful desires, which drown men in destruction and perdition" (1 Tim. vi. 9).