not live by bread alone, or by money alone, or by comfort alone, but
by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. Truly, said
our Lord, 'how hardly shall they that have riches enter into the
kingdom of heaven.' Not those who earn riches by manful and honest
labour; not those who come to wealth after long training to make them
fit to use wealth: but those who have wealth; who are born amid
luxury and pomp; who have never known want, and the golden lessons
which want brings.--God help them, for they need his help even more
than the poor young man who is at his wit's end how to live. For him
God is helping. His very want, and struggles, and anxiety may be
God's help to him. They help him to control himself, and do with a
little; they help him to strengthen his character, and to bring out
all the powers of mind that God has given him. God is humbling him,
that he may know that man doth not live by bread alone, but by every
word which proceedeth out of the mouth of God. God, too, if he
trusts in God, will feed him with manna--spiritual manna, not bodily.
He fed the Jews in the wilderness with manna, to show them that his
power was indeed almighty--that if he did not see fit to help his
people in one way, he could help them just as easily in another. And
so with every man who trusts in God. In unforeseen ways, he is
helped. In unforeseen ways, he prospers; his life, as he goes on,
becomes very different from what he expected, from what he would have
liked; his fine dreams fade away, as he finds the world quite another
place from what he fancied it: but still he prospers. If he be
earnest and honest, patient and God-fearing, he prospers; God brings
him through. His raiment doth not wax old, neither doth his foot
swell, through all his forty years' wandering in the wilderness. He
is not tired out, he does not break down, though he may have to work
long and hard. As his day is, so his strength shall be. God holds
him up, strengthens and refreshes him, and brings him through years