The Professor, in Prosperity; a Golden Image in the House

From the writing of John Angell James (1785-1859) in The Christian Professor Addressed: in a Series of Counsels and Cautions to the Members of Christian Churches (New York, NY: D. Appleton and Co., 1838, excerpts from pages 218-239).

I know how to abound.—Phil. iv. 12
 
It is not the possession of wealth that we should dread; but the inordinate desire, the dishonest means, the undue love, and the covetous hoarding of it. I am quite aware, that it is difficult to have money and not love it; hard indeed to have a golden image in the house, and not worship it. It is also quite evident that covetousness is indeed the sin of the church. In this commercial age and country, where men often rise from the workman to the master, and from nothing to affluence; where the career is open to all; and where, once engaged in the complexity and onward impulses of a large business, it is so difficult to so or slacken the pace, there is imminent peril of professing Christians forgetting their high vocation, and living only to get riches. We see them toiling and panting in pursuit of the golden object of ambition, apparently as eager to obtain it, as any who do not profess as they do, to seek first the kingdom of God; enlarging their desires with every addition to their gains; and then extending their mean to the limit of their desires...
 
Professors, take as it were a bird’s eye view of the dangers [wealth] throws in the way of travellers to eternity. Does it not produce the pride of life so opposite to the humility and poverty of spirit, which is essential to the nature of true religion? Does it not generate a worldly-mindedness, which makes its possessor contented with things seen and temporal and disposes him to mind only earthly things?— Does it not lead to a prevalent feeling of independence, so unlike that habitual trust and reliance on God, which the Scriptures require? Does it not originate and keep up, both the care and perplexity of getting, and the anxiety of disposing; and thus exhaust the vigor as well as time, upon worldly objects, leaving the soul neglected, impoverished, and defrauded? Does it not draw the Christian from the means of grace? Does it not corrupt the simplicity of the mind, and the gentleness of the character?…

[Prosperity] is the green and flowery mount from which many have slid down into the bottomless pit; for it has proved to many the occasion of apostacy...
 
…the more you have of earth, the less you have of heaven; your gain here will be a loss to you there.