Where is it now?  Vanished and forgotten.  Be not thou afraid, though one be made rich, or if the glory of his house be increased.  For he shall carry nothing away with him when he dieth; neither shall his pomp follow him.

See—­of all Obadiah’s wealth and glory, the Bible does not say one word.  It is actually not worth mentioning.  People admired Obadiah, I doubt not, while he was alive; envied him too, tried to thrust him out of his place, slander him to King Ahab, drive him out of favour, and step into his place, that they might enjoy his wealth and his power instead of him.  The fine outside of Obadiah was what they saw, and coveted, and envied—­as we are tempted now to say in our hearts, ’Ah, if I was rich like that man.  Ah, if I could buy what I liked, go where I liked, do what I liked, like that great Lord!’—­ and yet, that is but the outside, the shell, the gay clothing, not the persons themselves.  The day must come, when they must put off all that; when nothing shall remain but themselves; and they themselves, naked as they were born, shall appear before the judgment-seat of God.

And did Obadiah, then, carry away nothing with him when he died?  Yes; and yet again, No.  His wealth and his power he left behind him:  but one thing he took with him into the grave, better than all wealth and power; and he keeps it now, and will keep it for ever; and that is, a good, and just, and merciful action—­concerning which it is written, ’Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord; for they rest from their labours, and their works do follow them.’  Yes, though a man’s wealth will not follow him beyond the grave, his works will; and so Obadiah’s one good deed has followed him.  ’He feared the Lord greatly, and when Jezebel cut off the prophets of the Lord, Obadiah took a hundred prophets, and hid them by fifty in a cave, and fed them with bread and water.’

That has followed Obadiah; for by it we know him, now two thousand years and more after his death, here in a distant land of the name of which he never heard.  By that good deed he lives.  He lives in the pages of the Holy Bible; he lives in our minds and memories; and more than all, by that good deed he lives for ever in God’s sight; he is rewarded for it, and the happier for it, doubt it not, at this very moment, and will be the happier for it for ever.

Oh blessed thought! that there is something of which death cannot rob us!  That when we have to leave this pleasant world, wife and child, home and business, and all that has grown up round us here on earth, till it has become like a part of ourselves, yet still we are not destitute.  We can turn round on death and say—­’Though I die, yet canst thou not take my righteousness from me!’ Blessed thought! that we cannot do a good deed, not even give a cup of cold water in Christ’s name, but what it shall rise again, like a guardian angel, to smooth our death-bed pillow, and make our bed for us in our sickness, and follow us into the next world, to bless us for ever and ever!