RICHES DO NOT BRING HAPPINESS.
The pursuit of wealth is all-absorbing. If happiness for time and eternity depends upon the possession of riches, men could not seek them with greater avidity. What multitudes there are, who do not scruple to employ any means that promise to bring about the desired result! Yet if there is any one thing in which rich men are agreed, it is in bearing testimony to the fact that wealth does not secure even earthly happiness. Years ago, we were acquainted with a farmer in Erie County. Beginning with nothing but his strong hands and industrious habits, he had bought farm after farm, until he owned some six or eight hundred acres of valuable land, besides some sixty thousand dollars in the bank, or put out on bond and mortgage. To one who talked with him about his prospects for the future, he frankly said: “When I was poor, I used to work hard all day, and walk, barefoot, three miles to prayer-meeting. Then I was happy. I enjoyed religion. But now I have no desire for religious things. I am all taken up with the world. My only aim is to make money. I am wretched; I know it—I feel it; but I cannot give up the world.” Thus he lived, and thus he died. After his death, contentions arose in the family about the division of the property. Lawsuits followed, which continued for many years. The worst passions were aroused. One has said, “The parents lose their souls in acquiring property, and the children lose their souls in spending it.” A neighbor to the person above referred to, himself an old man who had been successful in worldly pursuits,—seeing the bitter feelings engendered by the division of property among children, and the bad use they made of it; and seeing jealousies already springing up among his own children, said he “wished all his property was in such a shape that he could touch a match to it and burn it up.” Yet he was a kind-hearted man, and an affectionate father. How much better it is, both for ourselves and our children, that we lay up treasures in Heaven.—Earnest Christian.