( 22 ) 
and thinks of nothing but how to get more. And what is still worse, that 
which it already possesses cannot give it as much ease and contentment as 
that, which it cannot obtain, gives it disturbance and trouble; and whilst 
you are filling your coffers with gold, you fill that heart with vain and 
annoying yearnings. 
St. Augustine had reason to be astonished at this insatiate greed, 
and, therefore, he said: “How is it possible that men should be so insa¬ 
tiable in their desires, w 7 hen even brute creatures observe a bound and a 
measure in theirs ? For they never seek their prey until they are hungry; 
and so you see there is nothing but the covetousness of rich men that knows 
no limits ; it is perpetually craving, and yet never satisfied.” “Oh, my 
God!” cries out F. W. Faber in one of his great sermons on Death, “how 
great fools are those men whose destiny it seems to be to lay up treasures 
on earth, where the rust and the moth consume, and thieves dig through.” 
“Do you not know,” he continues, “that, thanks to your greediness, you 
are rewarded as the hounds are treated by the hunters % They are coaxed 
to hunt up the deer, and when after long exertion, they take hold of it, the 
hunter drives them from their prey A 
Thus Satan spurs you on to search after the riches of this world, 
and when, with great labor, you have laid up a considerable sum, Death 
approaches you to take away all the fruit of your worrying exertions. 
You ought to ponder well, therefore, what Shakespeare says: 
“If thou art rich, thou art poor, 
For like an ass, whose back with ingots bows, 
Thou bear’st thy heavy riches but a journey, 
And death unloads thee.” 
