Page:The Parochial System (Wilberforce, 1838).djvu/79

measures by the cost and sacrifice to ourselves the value and greatness of our offerings. And He tells us in mercy why He does so,—because riches are so great a snare that it is only by a miracle of grace that any man who has them can be saved. Saved, indeed, he may be, because God can do all things, but otherwise it were impossible. Solemn thought, to all who have any measure of good things in this present world. Surely we do not lay it to heart as we should. We know that He said: "it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven;" but this does not alarm us, because He said again: "how hard it is for those that trust in riches to enter into the kingdom of heaven." As if by the second declaration He intended to retract the first; as if His words were yea and nay, who is Truth itself, "and who came into the world to bear witness to the truth." Rather He purposed to teach us wherein consists the hardness of a rich man's salvation; that if he trust in his riches he cannot be saved, and that nothing in the world is so hard as to have them without trusting in them. We may take comfort assuredly from His explanation of His own words if we do not trust in riches, but that very explanation should teach us most jealously to watch and suspect ourselves lest we should do so. For "he that trusteth to his own heart is a fool;" and who can trust it more implicitly, than the man