It is an excellent example for all who are feeling themselves burdened
by the possessions and the opportunities with which God has enriched
them. Let them remember that they hold them only in trust, and in
helping to bear others' burdens, they will actually, strange to say,
lighten their own.

"'Tis worth a wise man's best of life,
'Tis worth a thousand years of strife,
If thou canst lessen but by one,
The countless ills beneath the sun."

While, on the other hand, can there be a sadder thought for the man
whose earthly course is nearly run, than the thought that there will be
none to rise up after him and call him blessed, but that he will die,
as he has lived, unhonoured, unwept?

If that, then, is not to be our fate, we cannot use too diligently
every opportunity of well-doing which God has placed within our reach;
we cannot live too earnestly, not for ourselves only, but for others:
that from the seeds which we sow now, there may spring up hereafter a
rich and abundant harvest.


III.

_Barzillai was contented_.


Not many men in his position would have refused the king's offer. It
seems rather to be one of the penalties of wealth and greatness, that