January 31

And he said unto them, Take heed and beware of covetousness: for a man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth.— Luke 12:15.

THERE is a disproportion between the soul of man and the creatures, arising from the vanity thereof, which consists in their deadness, unprofitableness, inefficacy by any inward virtue of their own to convey or preserve life in the soul. Happiness in the Scripture phrase is called "life," consisting in a communion with God in his holiness and glory. Nothing then can truly be a prop to hold up the soul, which cannot either preserve that life which it hath, or convey unto it that which it hath not. "Charge those," saith the apostle, "that are rich in this world, that they be not high-minded, neither trust in uncertain riches, but in the living God." He opposeth the life of God to the vanity and un- certainty—the word is, to the inevidence—of riches; whereby a man can never demonstrate to himself or others the certainty or happiness of his life. The like opposition we shall find excel- lently expressed in the prophet Jeremiah: "My people have committed two evils; they have forsaken me the fountain of living water, and have hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns that can hold no water:" that is, my people are willing to at- tribute the blessings they enjoy, and to sue for more, rather unto any cause than unto me the Lord. "She did not know," saith the Lord in Hosea, "that I gave her corn and wine, and multi- plied her silver and her gold.—But said of them, These are my rewards which my lovers have given me." But, saith the Lord, so long as they trusted me, they rested upon a sure fountain that would never fail them. "With thee," saith the Psalmist, "is the fountain of life:"—and so saith the apostle too, "Let your conversation be without covetousness;" that is, Do not make an idol of the creature; do not heap vessels full of money together, and then think that you are all sure; the creature hath no life in it, nay, it hath no truth in it neither; there is deceit and cozenage in riches; but saith he, Let your conversation be with contentment; consider that what you have, is the portion which God hath allotted to you, that food which he findeth most convenient for you: he knows that more would but cloy you with a surfeit of pride or worldliness, that you have not wisdom, humility, faith, heavenly-mindedness enough to concoct a more plentiful estate; and therefore receive your portion from him; trust his wisdom and care over you, "For he hath said, I will not fail thee nor forsake thee." Well then saith the Lord, so long as they rested on me, they rested upon a sure supply—all his mercies are "sure mercies,"—upon a fountain which would never fail them: but when once they forsake me, and will not trust their lives in my keeping, but with the prodigal, will have their portion in their own hands, their water in their own cisterns, their pits prove but to them like Job's torrent; deep and plentiful though they seem for a time, yet at length they make those ashamed that relied upon them. And so find I the prophets assuring us, that Israel, which put so much confidence in the carnal policies of Jeroboam, for preserving the kingdom of the ten tribes from any reunion with the house of David, was at last constrained to blush at their own wisdom, and to be ashamed at Bethel their confidence. Briefly then for that place, there are two excellent things intimated in those two words of cisterns, and broken cisterns: first, the wealth and honor which men get not from the Lord, but by carnal dependencies, are but cisterns at the best, and in that respect they have an evil quality in them; they are like dead water, apt to putrefy and corrupt; being cut off from the influence of God, the fountain of life, they have no savor nor sweetness in them. Besides, they are broken cisterns too; as they have much mud and rottenness in them, so they are full of chinks, at which whatever is clear and sweet runs away, and nothing but dregs remains behind. The worldly pleasure which men enjoy, their youthful vigors that carried them with delight and fury to the pursuit of fleshly lusts, the content which they were wont to take in the formalities and compliments of courtship and good-fellowship, with a storm of sickness, or at farthest a winter of age, blows all away; and then when the fruit is gone, there remains nothing but the diseases of it behind, which their surfeit had begotten, a conscience-worm to torment the soul.

Thus the life which we fetch from the cistern, is a vanishing life; there is still, after the use of it, less left behind than there was before: but the life which we fetch from the fountain is a fixed, an "abiding life," as St. John speaks; or, as our Saviour calls it, "a life that abounds;" like the pumping of water out of a fountain,—the more it is drawn, the faster it comes.

We grant indeed, that the Lord, being the fountain of life, doth allow the creature, in regard of life temporal, some ordinate operation and concurrency in the work of preserving life in us. But we must also remember, that the creatures are but God's instruments in that respect; and that, not as servants are to their masters, living instruments, able to work without concurrence of the superior cause; but dead instruments, and therefore must never be separated from the principal. Let God subduct from them that concourse of his own which actuates and applies them to their several services, and all the creatures in the world are no more able to preserve the body, or to comfort the mind, than an axe and a hammer, and those other dead instruments are able by themselves alone to erect some stately edifice. It is not the corn or the flour, but the staff of bread which supports the life; and that is not any thing that comes out of the earth, but something which comes down from heaven, even the blessing which sanctifies the creature: "For man liveth not by bread alone, but by the word which proceedeth out of the mouth of God." The creature cannot hold up itself, much less contribute to the subsistence of other things, unless God continue the influence of his blessing upon it. Let the promise be removed, and however a wicked man lives as well as a righteous man, yet his life is indeed but a breathing death, only the cramming of him to a day of slaughter. When the blessing of God is once taken away, "though men labor in the fire," turn their vital heat with extremity of pains into a very flame, yet the close of all their labor will prove nothing but vanity. We should therefore pray unto God, that we may live, not only by the creature, but by the word which sanctifieth the creature; that we may not lean upon our substance, but upon God's promises; that we may not live upon that which we have only, but by that which we hope for, and may still find God accompanying his own blessing unto our soul.