Numerous large, expensive and ornamented houses, country-seats of splendid architecture and provided with towers, parks magnificent as a paradise, and other embellished pleasure-grounds, which are seen on every hand indicate this in no small degree. Dan. 4:29,30. The wearing of clothes from foreign countries, whether of foreign materials, uncommon colors or of strange fashions as obtain in the course of time according to the custom of the openly worldly-minded (which are as changeable as the moon), and which custom is followed by many humble and seemingly plain people, confirms greatly what we have before said. Gen. 35:2; Zeph. 1:8; Is. 3:16–24. The giving and attending great dinners, lavish banquets and wedding-feasts (though one may never be found in taverns or tippling-houses), where everything is in profusion, and where the beneficent gifts of the Lord which should not be used otherwise than with great thankfulness, and of which a portion naturally belongs to the poor, are squandered and consumed without the least necessity, even by those who are considered sober and temperate, is an incontrovertible evidence of a sensual and wanton heart; and proves also that those who have much to do with these things, cannot be exculpated from living after the flesh; for which carnal life certainly has no promise of salvation, but, on the contrary, many severe threatenings of the wrath and displeasure of God, nay, of eternal damnation, are recorded in the blessed leaves of the word of God, which contains nothing but _the_ truth. Esth. 1:3–8; Dan. 5:1–3; Luke 12:19,20; 16:19. O how different is this from the life of a true Christian, who has forsaken himself and his lusts! How great the step that is between their walk and that of the holy martyrs, who delivered up, not only their carnal desires, but also their bodies and lives, unto death for the Lord’s sake! But how great a difference will also be between the two classes afterwards! when the former, having had their good things in this life, shall be shut out from the true, heavenly riches, but the latter, because they from love to God, renounced and abandoned their possessions, which might have led them into sin, be admitted to the true enjoyment of the heavenly riches and pleasures, and that for ever and ever! Mal. 3:18. Here shall obtain what is recorded concerning the end of the luxurious rich man and that of poor Lazarus: that the rich man, when he saw Lazarus in Abraham’s bosom, while he himself was in hell, received this answer to his doleful lamentation: “Son, remember, that thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things: but now he is comforted, and thou art tormented.” Luke 16:25. Appropriate is here also Wis. 5:1,2.