A
SERMON,
&c.
Proverbs xiii. 7.
"There is that maketh himself rich, yet hath nothing: there is that maketh himself poor, yet hath great riches."
This saying, my brethren, can only be explained by calling to mind that we live in a false world. On supplying "apparently" before the words rich and poor, the paradox vanishes. Who does not see this? And yet it is just the making this insertion, which is half life's battle. We all know that the world is led by appearances: and we all know that those appearances are false. The schoolboy declaims it in his thesis, the divine insists on it in his pulpit, the sick man confesses it on his bed: but every one of these goes forth, and acts as if it were not so. Men live, and work, and weary body and spirit, and die, before for themselves, and in their inner hearts, they find out the difference between appearance and reality. It is a process in
