Worldly ease and prosperity!

(Mary Winslow, "Words of Loving Counsel and Sympathy")

"Give me neither poverty nor riches. Feed me with the food that I need; or I shall be full, and deny you, and say: Who is the LORD?" Proverbs 30:8-9

How plainly I see that worldly ease and prosperity do not help the children of God. Covet them not, I beseech you! How the creature steals the heart's best affections from God! But oh of this one thing I am assured - that when that is the case, our good and wise Father knows how to deal with His beloved children. He breaks their cisterns and destroys their gourds.

What a snare, too, to the believer, is the society of the ungodly. Our nature is so much more inclined to evil than to good, that we insensibly imbibe the poison, and it contaminates our whole spiritual being. Who could be enclosed in a sepulcher with a putrid corpse - and not feel his health and strength and life decline? May the Lord in mercy preserve us!

None but God Himself is a satisfying Portion. Earth, with all its promised comforts, cannot do it. Therefore the Apostle exhorts, "Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said: Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you."