But, my brethren, consider. Do you know what and whom you condemn? Are you quite sure that you do not yourselves attempt to serve mammon as well as GOD? Oh, yes! you are quite sure! Mammon, a false god—a name without a being like Jove and Mars, like fairies and genii—or a substance without life—like Bel of the Chaldeans, or Juggernaut of the Hindoos—you are not so senseless as to serve this! Or, again, if mammon be, as some commentators tell us, only a personification of riches, and his service therefore be the immoderate pursuit of wealth and worldly aggrandisement, still you are free. You may sometimes make great efforts to be rich, you may often desire and covet wealth; but you are not sordid misers; you are not engrossed in the pursuit of wealth; you do not treat it as a god, and give to it the thought and homage due to Jehovah. Dear brethren, it is not so certain that you could quite clear yourselves of the sin and folly of serving mammon, even if this were all that is meant. But it is not. Look to the text, “Ye cannot serve GOD and mammon.” What then? Why give up mammon! And what is mammon? The next verse tells you, “Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on.” So, then, taking thought for these things is serving mammon. Who is free from idolatry now? “But,” some are ready to exclaim, “taking thought for these things is a very law and necessity of my being. I came into this world needing food and clothing. Others had to take thought to feed and clothe me. They early impressed upon me as one of the clearest duties of my responsible life that I should take this thought for myself, and now I can only get these things for myself and my family by taking thought for them.” Ay, and the very Word of GOD enjoins the duty: “Go to the ant, thou sluggard, consider her ways and be wise”—learn, that is, from her forethought and provision; look about thee, be industrious, store up for future wants. Our LORD Himself set the example of such forethought, when He committed the care of a bag to one of His disciples, that food, and money to buy food, might be carried about with them; and the Apostle Paul plainly taught—“If any will not work, neither shall he eat.” “If any man provide not for his own, he has denied the faith and is worse than an infidel.”