gotten me this wealth,' and to forget the Lord his God, who guided
him and trained him through all the struggles and storms of early
life; and so to become vainly confident, worldly and hard-hearted:
undevout and ungodly, even though he may keep himself respectable
enough, and fall into no open sin.

Therefore it is, I think, that while we see so many lives which have
been sad lives of poverty, and labour, and struggle, end peacefully
and cheerfully, in a sunshiny old age, like a still bright evening
after a day of storm and rain; so on the other hand we see lives
which have been prosperous and happy ones for many years, end sadly
in bereavement, poverty, or disappointment, as did the life of David,
the man after God's own heart. God guided him through all the
dangers and temptations of youth, and through them all he trusted
God. God brought him safely to success, honour, a royal crown; and
he thanked God, and acknowledged his goodness. And yet after a while
his heart was puffed up, and he forgot God, and all he owed to God,
and became a tyrant, an adulterer, a murderer. He repented of his
sin: but he could not escape the punishment of it. His children
were a curse to him; the sword never departed from his house; and his
last years were sad enough, and too sad.

Perhaps that was God's mercy to him; God's way of remembering him
again, and bringing him back to him. Perhaps too that same is God's
way of bringing back many a man in our own days who has wandered from
him in success and prosperity.

God grant that we may never need that terrible chastisement. God
grant that we, if success and comfort come to us, may never wander so
far from God, but that we may be brought back to him by the mere