PROSPERITY.
For I was envious at the foolish, when I saw the prosperity of the wicked.
Until I went into the sanctuary of God; then understood I their end.
Surely Thou didst set them in slippery places: Thou castedst them down into destruction.—Psalm lxxiii. 3, 17, 18.
O Lord, I beseech thee, send now prosperity.—Psalm cxviii. 25.
Pray for the peace of Jerusalem: they shall prosper that love thee.
Peace be within thy walls, and prosperity within thy palaces.—Psalm cxxii. 6, 7.
Daily and hourly proof
Tells us prosperity’s at the highest degree
The fount and handle of calamity.
Chapman.
O, how portentous is prosperity!
How, comet-like, it threatens while it shines!
Few years but yield us proof of Death’s ambition
To cull his victims from the fairest fold,
And sheathe his shafts in all the pride of life.
When flooded with abundance, purpled o’er
With recent honour, bloomed with every bliss,
Set up in ostentation, made the gaze,
The gaudy centre of the public eye;
When fortune thus has tossed her child in air,
Snatched from the covert of an humble state,
How often have I seen him dropt at once,
Our morning’s envy, and our evening’s sigh!
As if her bounties were the signal given,
The flowery wreath to mark the sacrifice,
And call Death’s arrows on the destined prey.
Young.
The man, perhaps,
Thou pitiest, draws his comfort from distress.
That mind so poised, and centred in the good
Supreme, so kindle with devotion’s flame,
Might, with prosperity’s enchanting cup
Inebriate, have forgot the All-giving hand;
Might on earth’s vain and transitory joys
Have built its sole felicity, nor e’er
Winged a desire beyond.
George Bally.