Page:The Clergyman's Wife.djvu/357

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PERILS OF PROSPERITY.


Perils of prosperity! "Oh, all very fine! but I should like to experience those perils a little," cries an incredulous young friend, quoting from that precocious juvenile who made the same answer to his mother, when she told him that he must abstain from certain amusements which she accounted full of sin and peril.

We all want to experience alluring perils for ourselves, especially those of prosperity. Seemingly, they must be very pleasant to encounter. Who denies that they are? But even the sense of long-protracted pleasure palls and wearies. Uninterrupted prosperity tries the spirit more severely than continuous adversity. You shake your curly head, youthful doubter. You cannot believe that those fair-seeming apples which you hunger to taste, may, like those gathered on the Dead Sea shore, leave only ashes upon your eager lips. Yet we give you high authority for our assertion. Listen to what Jeremy Taylor said: "No man is more miserable than he that hath no adversity;

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