Viewing this life as our infancy and the next as our spiritual maturity, where 'in the ages to come He may show the exceeding riches of His grace,' it is in His tenderness, as in His wisdom; to permit the toil and the pain which, in tasking the powers and developing the virtue of the soul, prepare it for 'the earnest of our inheritance.' Hence it is that every man has his burden.
Brethren, if you believe that God is good, yea, but as tender as a human father, you will know that your troubles in life are a proof that you are reared for an eternity.

But each man thinks his own burden the hardest to bear: the poor-man groans under his poverty, the rich man under the cares that multiply with wealth.

For so far from wealth freeing us from trouble, all the wise men who have written in all ages have repeated, with one voice, the words of the wisest, 'When goods increase, they are increased that eat them: and what good is there to the owners thereof, saving the beholding of them with their eyes ?' And this is literally true, my brethren: for, let a man be as rich as was the great King Solomon himself, unless he lock up all his gold in a chest, it must go abroad to be divided amongst others; yea, though, like Solomon, he make him great works,--though he build houses and plant vineyards, and make him gardens and orchards,--still the gold that he spends feeds but the mouths he employs; and Solomon himself could not eat with a better relish than the poorest mason who builded the house, or the humblest labourer who planted the vineyard.

Therefore 'when goods increase, they are increased that eat them.' And this, my brethren, may teach us toleration and compassion for the rich.

We share their riches, whether they will or not; we do not share their cares.