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Now, why should "haste" be condemned? for this is the voice of the Old Testament, not once or twice, but many times, either in direct terms or their equivalents. Why should haste to be rich be inveighed against, if riches are a great blessing? In the first place, riches may either be produced or collected. For the most part, the riches that bless men are the riches that are either produced, or are so improved by methods of ingenuity and industry that their service is much greater than it would be in the form of raw material. The foundation of all prosperity is production. The stone is good for nothing until it has been shaped. Now, the man that produces wealth is the foundation man. But that is a slow work. It is impossible to hasten nature very much. A man that could sow his wheat every night, and reap in the morning, would consider himself very fortunate and very happy. A man that, owning an iron mine, could draw metal as he did water from a fountain, and ship it abroad, would consider himself very fortunate. But a man can do neither. Man is the servant of the seasons. He sows in the autumn or spring. With long patience he waits, as James says, like the husbandman for the harvest; and little by little, and year by year, the man attains larger and larger means, greater competency, and, by and by, to riches; and any man that undertakes to run ahead of processes of this kind in producing runs against natural law. Natural, do we say? It is moral law, just as much as any other law. It is the law of the production of wealth, that a man should render an equivalent for every stage of value. Sudden wealth is not hasty wealth, necessarily; I am speaking of the production and development of riches. The production of wealth connects itself with benevolence, with sympathy. A man that manufactures agricultural implements receives a certain reward for that; but he is a benefactor; he abbreviates labour everywhere. What is left at the end of every year, that which was not necessary to maintain the conditions of life, is what we may call the permanent wealth of a man. It is a slow accumulation, taking the world at large. Collectors of wealth that other men have produced may get rich speedily and safely; but producers of wealth, by the very Divine law, must go patiently, and continue through long times. So he that makes haste to get rich is liable to fall into the violation of this fundamental law of equivalents — that is, into fraudulent ways. But every man that is developing or producing riches is, at the same time, educating himself in morals, or should be; for the fundamental conditions of increase lie in the man himself. So, the development of wealth requires time, not only from the nature of production, but also because God designed it to be an education in all the minor moral qualities — as, for example, in moderation, in industry, in temperance, in loyalty, in fidelity, in respect for other's rights that co-operate with men; for in the immense complication of riches men are in partnership with men they never saw. Haste to be rich is also a great danger to men, because it tempts them to employ illegitimate means — sleights, crafts, disingenuous ways, greed, violations of honesty. "Men have been fools to go through such long processes; they have taken these circuitous routes, and have had a superstitious observance of moralities; if they had the courage to go cross-lots they could come to the same results in less than half the time"; and so they jump the boundary line, and run across the great roads that have been unfolded and developed by experience — and come to destruction. They think they are weaving cordage; but they are only running spider's webs up and down their ship; and the first storm will break and destroy the whole of them. A man, therefore, that is making haste to be rich is tempted to ostentation; for riches quickly earned are like new wine, which is strong. But ostentation is expensive, and there is many a man that is tempted to ostentation by the sudden increment of his riches, whether it be in houses, in lands, in equipage, in luxurious furnishings, in a sumptuous table, in yachts, in horses and hounds, in coaches, or what not. Men having sudden wealth are apt to become cruel through indifference to ether men's rights. There is such a thing as a society-robber. Then, too, anxiety, haste, is apt to change into idolatry; and the very ends which men have in life are neglected, and the man's wealth becomes as an idol which he worships.

(H. W. Beecher.)

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KJV: But they that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition.

WEB: But those who are determined to be rich fall into a temptation and a snare and many foolish and harmful lusts, such as drown men in ruin and destruction.