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Covetousness!
from Spurgeon's sermon, "Grey Hairs" No. 830.
"If any man loves the world, the
love of the Father is not in him."
Of all the vices, none is more contrary
to true religion than Covetousness.
Grace may exist where there are many
occasional sins, but never where there
is abiding Covetousness.
Covetousness, which few men
will confess, is yet a very common sin
of professing Christians.
Beware of growing Covetous, for this
is of all sins one of the most insidious.
Many a man, when he begins to accumulate
wealth, begins also to ruin his soul.
Instead of doing more for God he does less.
The more he saves the more he wants, and
the more he wants of this world, the less he
craves for the world to come.
This disease creeps upon men as slowly as
certain infectious diseases, which slumber
in the blood for months, until they find
occasion to manifest themselves.
Watch against a grasping spirit, dear friend.
If you find the money stick to your hands,
mind what you are at. It is all well enough
for you to seek to make all you can rightly;
you are bound to do so, and to use it properly.
But when the gold begins to cleave to you,
it will eat as a canker, and will soon prove
your ruin unless God prevent it.
Take a bright knife from your table and bury
it into the earth in your garden, and leave
it there, and see how it will rust. This is
what will become of your soul: put it into
the earth, and keep it there, it must corrode.
Let us not be content to tarry down below
in the marshland of the poor poverty stricken
religion of this present day. But let us climb
the high mountains where the sun of God's
grace is shining brightest, and stand there
enjoying communion with him, leaving the
world beneath.
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