The Temporal Gifts of the World

Naked you did come into it, and it will take care you shalt take nothing out of it, for naked shall you go out of it again. Oh, man, you hast accumulated knowledge until you have become a walking cyclopedia, but what shall you take with you? What difference shall there be between your hollow skull and that of the meanest peasant, when some wanton sexton, in some future year, shall take it up, or split it with his spade? What shall you be the better for all those big thoughts that have stretched skull, and all those marvelous conceptions that have made it ache so much, that you could scarcely carry it upon your shoulders? You will go back again to your fellow earth, and the worm shall eat you, and the philosopher shall taste no sweeter to his tooth than did the peasant; And, then, whether you be prince or king, or whether you be a poor, ignorant man, the worms shall make no distinction. You shall still rot — still be consumed; noisome gases and a handful of dust shall be your whole residuum. What then can the world give? If it tried it could not give you anything that would last; it cannot give you anything better than air. It can give you nothing that can pass into eternity with you. What though it follow you with the trumpet of fame? That trumpet cannot be heard half-way across the Jordan. If all the men in the world clapped their hands in your praise, not one angel, even on the very borders of the celestial world would observe the tumult of applause. The world can give you nothing that you can carry with you. You are at the best a pack-horse, that shall carry its burden till it ends its journey, and then it must lie down and die. You do but carry a burden on your back, and verily, death shall unload you ere you are suffered to enter another world. How different is Christ in his gifts! What He gives He gives for ever. When He bestows mercies they are lasting things; no shadows does He give, but real substance — no fancies, but eternal realities does He bestow. Oh, men of this world, when your gold is melted — when your diamonds have dissolved in gas — when your estates have gone — when your hopes are lost, and when your goods are destroyed, then shall the people of God begin to know their riches; then shall they shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father .