St. Augustine on Rich and Poor: Exposition Of Psalm 38: 7.

Extract

He lays up treasure, and knows not for whom he gathers it. Folly and vanity ! Blessed is the man whose hope is the Lord, who has not cast his eyes on vanities and on lying follies (Ps. xxxix, 5). ‘Wild talk, ‘you think (I speak to one who has a hankering for treasure himself); ‘such words are nothing but old wives’ tales.’ You are a careful, sensible man; every day you devise new means of money-making—from business, from farming, perhaps from pleading and legal practice, perhaps from soldiering; and there is usury besides. You are shrewd; you use every art you know to add coin to coin and to enclose your gainings in jealous secrecy. Robbing others, you are anxious not to be robbed yourself; you fear to suffer the wrong you do, though your suffering does not amend your doing. But of course, with you there is no suffering; you are a cautious man, and as good at keeping as at getting; you know where to place your wealth, with whom to trust it, how none of your gathering need be lost. Well, I ask you in your shrewdness and carefulness : Granted your gathering and storing are proof against any loss, tell me for whom you store your treasure. There are other evils that go with this vanity of your covetousness; these I leave; I neither stress them nor tax you with them. The one point I make, the one question I put, is that brought up by the reading of the psalm. Granted, you gather and lay up treasure.