No man with such habits stops there. This big man _strengthened himself in his wickedness_ and in all manner of guile and cruelty. It is a natural development. The heart which finds life in material wealth is usually certain to go farther and seek for more in the satisfaction of base and sullen appetites. We hear, it is true, a great deal about the softening influence of wealth, and moralists speak of luxury as if its bad effects were negative and it only enervated. But if riches and the habit of trusting to them, if the material comforts of life and complacency in them, only made men sleek and tame--if luxury did nothing but soften and emasculate--the world would have been far more stupid and far less cruel than it is to-day. They are not negative tempers, but very positive and aggressive ones, which the Bible associates with a love of wealth, and we have but to remember history to know that the Bible is right. Luxury may have dulled the combative instincts in man, but it has often nursed the meanly cruel ones. The Romans with the rapid growth of their wealth loved the battlefield less; but the sight of the arena, with its struggling gladiators, and beasts tearing women and children, became more of a necessity to their appetites. Take two instances. Titus was a rough, hardened soldier; but he wept at the horrors which his siege obliged him to inflict on Jerusalem. Nero was an artist, and fiddled while Rome was burning. Coddle your boys; you may keep them from wishing to fight their equals, but you will not cure them of torturing animals. Idleness means not only sluggishness, but a morbid and criminal desire for sensation, which honest industry would have sweated out of the flesh. Money often renders those who have it unconsciously impatient with the slowness of poorer men, and unconsciously insolent about their defects. Everywhere, on the high places of history, and within our own humble experience, we perceive the same truth, that materialism, and the temper which trusts in wealth or in success, does not turn men into fat oxen, but into tigers. Hence the frequency with which the Old Testament, and especially the Psalms, connect an abundance of wealth with a strength of wickedness, and bracket for the same degree of doom the rich man and the violent one. Our Psalm is natural in adding to the clause, _trusting in the abundance of riches,_ that other about _strengthening himself in wickedness_. This is the very temper of a prosperous and pampered life: which seeks lust or cruelty not to forget itself, as a stunted and tortured nature may be forgiven for doing, but in order to work off its superfluous blood.