Psalms 62:10

If riches increase, set not your heart upon them.

The increase of wealth

I. Here is a circumstance which most desire. Who does not desire the increase of his secular possessions? This desire is virtuous, or otherwise, according to the grand reason that originates and governs it.

1. There is a wrong reason. When wealth is desired either for its own sake, or for purposes of display, ease, voluptuousness, and self-indulgence, the desire for acquisition is vitiated and corrupt. These are the ends of mere worldly men in the aspiration.

2. There is a right reason. He who desires wealth in order properly to discipline his spiritual nature, alleviate the woes of humanity, and help forward the cause of truth, right and benevolence, is righteous in this acquisitive propensity.

II. Here is a possibility which some may possess. The possibility is the increase of riches. This increase in the ease of many, perhaps, is all but impossible; still, in the case of others, it is not so. Poor men often get rich in one of two ways; either with, or without, their own efforts.

1. With their own efforts. By inventive skill, well-directed industry, mercantile forecast, and systematic economy, very often we find poor men rising from great poverty to immense wealth. When such a result is reached apart from fallacious representations, fraudulent transactions and unrighteous speculations, it is at once gratifying and commend: able.

2. Without their own efforts, Not a few indolent and worthless men become rich. By birth they come into an inheritance, or by a kind of “luck” they are endowed with handsome legacies. Seldom in such cases is wealth of any real worth to its possessors: and it often proves their moral ruin.

III. Here is a duty which all should obey. What is that? “Set not your heart upon them.” However in manner, or amount, they may increase, they should not occupy the heart. But why?

1. Because to love them is unworthy of your nature. The soul was made to set its affections upon moral, not material, worth, upon the Divine attributes of imperishable mind, not upon the qualities of corruptible matter, The money-lover prostitutes his affections and degrades his nature.

2. Because to love them is to injure your nature. The man who loves wealth offers violence to the dictates of his conscience, fills his heart with harassing cares and anxieties, and materializes the Divine affections of his nature. We become like the objects we love; the man who loves his gold becomes like a miserable grub or a lump of clay.

3. Because to love them is to exclude God from your nature. The soul is so constituted that it cannot love two opposite things supremely at the same time.

4. Because to love them is to bring ruin on your nature. The greatest agony of the soul is bereavement--the separation from the object we love. Such a separation is inevitable where wealth is loved; here the lover and the loved must eternally part. (Homilist.)

The heart in the wrong place

In one of the art galleries of Italy there is a curious picture, by an early painter, which represents a sick man stretched on his bed, and his physicians come to visit him. They have examined their patient, and ascertained his malady to be that his heart is gone--it has altogether disappeared. From a pulpit near by, St. Anthony of Padua is preaching on the text, “For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” He announces where the sick man’s heart will be found; and the clue he furnishes is followed up in another compartment by a group of the sick man’s friends, who open his strong box, and stand amazed at discovering the missing member reposing among the abundant gold pieces. It is as true as though it was a literal fact, that the heart may be enticed from its rightful place to lie among earthly treasures.