Truly, from its poisonous root has sprung up the deadly upas-tree of all evil, and upon it in manifold ways has been outpoured the wrath of God, showing His holy hatred and abhorrence of it. Once its workings begin in a human heart there is no end to the ruin and woe it may bring about in that soul, and then in the lives of others. There is no height of honor and holiness from which it may not pull men down. There is no depth of pitiless selfishness, lying evasion, brazen effrontery, and self-deception, into which it may not plunge men. When proclaiming the Ten Commandments from the flaming mount, God reserved the last to hurl at this sin, not because it was least of all the sins forbidden, but rather because it was a pregnant mother of them all , an instigator and ally of all evil.
Covetousness is a sin that reaches out for men of every age.
In some of its forms it makes its most successful assaults upon men well advanced in years. A man in ardent devotion to Christ may successfully resist it in his youth, and yet fall before it when his head is crowned with honors and white with the snows of many winters.