the stake which is to bound the days of your pilgrimage! Who has numbered your days and told you their sum? If you know not, why do you boast yourself of to-morrow, and say it shall be as this day. Why does vain man walk so proudly, so carelessly, and so madly forward, not knowing whether the next foot he puts down will be on earth, in heaven, or in hell! "Seeing his days are determined, the number of his months are with thee, thou hast appointed his bounds that he cannot pass.' How shocking must thy summons be, O death! There must be some painful things in the death of a wicked man. Many untold horrors must gather around him in that fearful crisis. Of this the countenance of the corpse the moment after death bears awful witness. Who has not observed the difference in the countenance of the recently dead? The infant gathers a smile upon its face in the moment of death which it retains for days. Perhaps that smile is a response to the friendly greetings of angels who are waiting with friendly wing to bear the disembodied spirit to its God. Or it is caused by the sweet presence of the Saviour, who stands by, as if kindly to reprove the weeping parents with those blessed words, "suffer little children to come unto me." Not only in children, but in aged Christians who died ripe for glory, is the same phenomenon often witnessed. The smile of the spirit when it breaks through into glory is left behind impressed upon the lineaments of the face. But who has not witnessed the haggard and gloomy horror that death leaves behind it on the countenance of the man of sin who dies in despair? It seems, as if by some deep convulsion, the soul were expelled in shattered fragments from the body! The half-opened mouth, and the eyes fixed in wild astonishment denote that the soul at the moment of its exit has been fearfully surprised. And why should it not, when perhaps at the moment it realizes the thrilling truth, thou art weighed in the balance and art found wanting!" Oman of sin, in your life's last twilight hour, you will find around images ill boding and fearful, and dark floating phantoms relieved in lurid fire, will be the landscape sketched out before your dying eyes! 66 you NATIONAL PREACHER. No. 12. VOL. XX.] DECEMBER, 1846. [WHOLE NO. 240. SERMON CCCCXXXV. BY THE REV. REUBEN TINCKER. THE RICH FOOL. And he spake a parable unto them saying, The ground of a certain rich man brought forth plentifully: And he thought within himself, saying, What shall I do, because I have no room where to bestow my fruits? And he said, This will I do: I will pull down my barns, and build greater; and there will I bestow all my fruits and my goods. And I will say to my soul, Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years; take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry. But God said unto him, Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee then whose shall those things be which thou hast provided? So is he that layeth up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God.-LUKE XII. 15-21. JESUS CHRIST had been preaching to a large assembly, and on themes of the deepest importance. He warned his hearers against indulging in hypocrisy; and he encouraged an honest, open conduct, from the fact that everything is naked and opened to the eye of God; and that all efforts at concealment are vain; that deeds of darkness will stand forth in the light, and words spoken in secret be proclaimed on the house-tops. He dissuaded from the fear of man, and he inculcated the fear of God from the consideration that men could kill only the body, but that God could destroy also the soul. And not only should they stand in awe of the Being who is infinite in power, they should confide also in the providential care of Him who attends on the falling of a sparrow, and who numbers the hairs of our heads. He insisted, also, on the importance of confessing him before men, attaching to it the blessedness of being acknowledged by Him as his in the great day before God and angels; while, on the other hand, those who denied him here, he would for ever disown and reject hereafter. He labored to restrain them from speaking one word against the Holy Ghost, by the alarming assurance that such blasphemy would never be forgiven; while, if they spoke advisedly, the Holy Spirit would in return speak for them so readily and wisely, that they need not, when falsely accused, meditate their defence, or concern themselves as to what they should answer. Such were the high and solemn themes of discourse treated of by Ilim, who felt their power, and who, in persuasiveness and solemnity, spake as never man spake. And one should, indeed, think it had been enough to have filled their hearts; and, at least for the time, to have divorced them from the trifles of this world; and that those who heard him, if they gave utterance to any sentiment, would have inquired earnestly, "Sir, what must I do to be saved ?" Instead of this we hear, "Master, speak to my brother, that he divide the inheritance with me." Oh! the human heart! how fallen, how grovelling; how, on the brink of eternity, it makes excursions after its covetousness! how, in sight of heaven, it layeth up treasures on the earth! Ambassadors for Christ are sometimes discouraged to find, that while treating with those to whom they are sent on "the grand concerns of judgment and of mercy," while they set before their hearers life and death-while they would awaken them by the terrors of the Lord, and win them to penitence and love by the cross of Jesus, they are discouraged to find that some who they address, sleep; that some are looking around to attract to their persons or their attire, the admiration of their fellow-creatures; and that others are lost in plans of vain amusement or of future gain. But let Christ's ministers remember, "the servant is not greater than his Lord, nor the disciple than his master." And let them not be discouraged, that under circumstances of deepest solemnity, the mouth still speaketh from the abundance of the heart; that dividing inheritances occupies the hearer in this assembly, for it occupied the hearer of the great Teacher, the Lord from heaven. But instead of exclaiming in despair, "I labor in vain, and spend my strength for nought," let the want of success in what has been said increase the preacher's diligence in saying something more. Let him turn the worldly current, which flows out of a worldly heart, round among his audience, that they may see in it the plague of their own hearts; let the exhibitions of depravity thus afforded become a text from which to preach to them all a sermon adapted to their wants. Thus did Jesus. When covetousness protruded itself into the assembly,--when the inheritance was brought in to be divided, he did not say, "Away with it; name it not." But he assured them that that was not a work to which he was appointed; he was not a judge and a divider of their temporal possessions. And he proceeded to say, in a voice of solemn warning, "Take heed and beware of covetousness; for a man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth." And not only did he announce this truth in the abstract, but he proceeded to illustrate and enforce it, by giving his auditory the history of a man who was rich; a man anxious and selfish, atheistical and shortlived, foolish and ruined. I have already discoursed to you from the application made to Christ, and his refusal to arbitrate in regard to it. Also from the injunction, "Take heed and leware of covetousness;" setting be fore you the nature and the evils of that feeling, and showing you that your best interests consist not in abundance of worldly posses sions. And we now proceed to make some improvement of the parable itself by which Christ enforced his previous teaching. We have before us, then, a rich man with the following traits of character:-He is a covetous man; an anxious man; a selfish man; an atheistical man; a sensual man; a dying man; a foolish and ruined man. And he is exhibited to show us, that life does not consist in abundance, and that we should avoid covetousness. A rich man. Look at him. He is what almost all would like to be, and are striving to be. Or, if not striving to be, it is because they despair of success, and not because they would not be rich if they might. A rich man! who would not be glad to stand in his lot? Take heed and beware. Who would not be rejoiced to have a deed of his land? Take heed and beware. Who would not be pleased to count over his money and call it their own? Take heed and beware. Do you wished to be ruined? "No. I wish to be blessed. I wish an abundance that I may do good therewith, that I may augment my own happiness and that of others. If I had a rich man's possessions, I would hope to have also a good man's heart." You would hope so. But let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall. Let him who would be rich ponder the instance before us. It is no caricature; no extreme case; no stretching of the truth to gain a favorite point. It was not the result of disappointed ambition, or of envy, or jealousy that Jesus said, "Take heed, and beware." It was not that he himself could not be rich, that he spake the parable of the rich man. He brings no accusation against the individual of whom he speaks as one guilty of oppression, violence, fraud or falsehood. He simply affirms that he had an abundance, and he describes the effect which abundance had on him. He was a rich man. He was increasing in wealth. His grounds brought forth plentifully. Now mark the effect. 1. It increased his covetousness. He decided to lay it up; to keep it. And such is the common influence of acquisitions. The desire to possess increases as one's possessions increase. The further poverty and want are removed, the more are they dreaded, and the greater is the effort to keep them off. A man does not increase in liberality in proportion as his wealth increases. A man who has "two mites" may, perhaps (a woman once did), cast them BOTH into the treasury. If he have two dollars he may give one of them to a brother in want. But when he has two hundred, he will not give half-not more than a fifth, say forty dollars. And when possessed of two thousand, he will not scatter more than a tenth, say two hundred dollars; and when worth twenty thousand, not more than a twentieth, or one thousand dollars; and when his income is two hundred thousand a year, he will not bestow in charity more than a hundreth part, or two thousand dollars a year. So that a poor man is less cov etous in feeling and in action than the same man will be when rich. Now it is very plain that men are more able to give the same proportion of their wealth to objects of charity or public utility when rich, than when poor. A man of two hundred thousand dollars can certainly part with one hundred thousand better than another worth two dollars can part with one dollar; for so rich a man will still have an abundance left. But you will not persuade him to do it. His covetous disposition will increase with the increase of his wealth. The heavier the purse hangs down the tighter the strings are drawn. The more the hand is employed in grasping, the more difficult it becomes to open it. Sailors, as a class of men, are proverbial for their generosity, but they are generally poor. The islanders of the Pacific Ocean are admired for their generous disposition, but they, too, are poor. There is, I think, a reprehensible improvidence in both these classes. It is desirable that they should be more careful, more saving; but, on the other hand, had they great possessions they would, if true to human nature, as exhibited in the experience of the past, be more covetous as a result. Let there be a million of dollars entrusted to one man, and let another million be possessed by a thousand men (and that would be one thousand dollars each), and from which would you obtain the greater sum for the spread of the Gospel among the heathen; for public institutions among ourselves, or for any good and philanthropic enterprise? There can be no doubt but that by the thousand families more would be bestowed than by the one family in which the million was concentrated. And yet there would be less ability in the many by all the difference between the expense of supporting a thousand families instead of one. So that, whether you look at the happiness to result from liberality either to the giver or the receiver, or both, pray that no one, not even yourself, may be abundantly rich, for, with the increase of wealth, covetousness increases, of which Jesus says, Take heed and beware. But let us rejoice rather in that order of things which prevails among us, where great estates are uncommon, and a comfortable subsistence is the ordinary lot. 2. Look again at the rich man. HE WAS ANXIOUS. "What," said he, "shall I do? because I have nowhere to bestow my fruits." And so of almost any man. If he could have his own way; if he could acquire money as fast and as much as he would like, his life would become a burden to him immediately. Suppose you should draw in a lottery, or have bequeathed to you unexpectedly, ten thousand dollars, or fifty thousand dollars, tomorrow. It would destroy your peace. You would be neither able to sleep, nor eat, nor work. You would not know what to do with it. You would fear to keep it with you lest you should be robbed, your life perhaps taken for its sake. You would hesitate to deposit it in the banks, lest they might fail. Investing it in merchandise, you would fear the fluctuations of trade; and in manufactures there would be the danger of flood and fire, and the cupid |