Covetousness -- an Insidious Sin

C. H. Spurgeon

Hebrews 13:5

Let your conversation be without covetousness; and be content with such things as you have: for he has said, I will never leave you…

I asked a question, some years ago, of a person whom I believed to be one of the most covetous individuals in my acquaintance, and I received from him a singular reply. I said, "How was it that St. Francis de Sales, who was an eminent confessor, found that persons confessed to him, in private, all sorts of horrible sins, such as adultery, drunkenness, and murder; but never had one person confessed the sin of covetousness?" I asked this friend whether he could tell me why it was, and he made me this answer, which certainly did take me rather aback. He said, "I suppose it is because the sin is so extremely rare." Blind scull I told him that, on the other hand, I feared the sin was so very common that people did not know when they were covetous, and that the man who was most covetous of all was the last person to suspect himself of it. I feel persuaded that it is so. Covetousness breeds an insensibility in the heart, a mortification in the conscience, a blindness in the mind. It is as hard to convict a man of it as to make a deaf ear hear of its own deficiencies. You cannot make a horseleech see the impropriety of desiring to suck; to all your expostulations it renders the one answer, "Give, give." Covetousness goes about in disguise. In the "Holy War" we read that, when Diabolus sent traitors to lurk about the town of Mansoul, he sent among the rest a young fellow named Covetousness; but when he entered into the town of Mausoul, he took the name of Mr. Prudent Thrifty, and he was engaged at once as a servant, I think it was in the house of Mr. Conscience, the Recorder. He seemed such a likely young man, this youth of the name of Prudent Thrifty. Now, mind you, when you are taking a servant, that you do not engage one of the name of Prudent Thrifty; for I have information that he comes of the family of the Greedies, and that his true name is "Covetousness," though it may be long before you find it out. His near relations are the Screws, the Skinflints, and the Graballs; but he will not own them, but always mentions his great-uncle, Squire Prudence, and his mother's brother, Professor Economy, of the University of Accumulation. You will have need to carry your eyes in your head if you mean to practise the precept, "Let your conversation be without covetousness, and be content with such things as ye have."

(C. H. Spurgeon,)