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it grows weak, effeminate, and dwarfish, under that condition. It is good for us to bear the yoke; and it is especially good to bear the yoke in our youth. I am persuaded, that many children are injured by too much attention, too much care; by too many servants at home; too many lessons at school; too many indulgences in society; they are not left sufficiently to exert their own powers, to invent their own amusements, to make their own way: they are often inefficient and unhappy; they lack ingenuity and energy; because they are taken out of the school of providence, and placed in one which our own foolish fondness and pride have built for them. Wealth, without a law of entail to help it, has always lacked the energy even to keep its own treasures: they drop from its imbecile hand. What an extraordinary revolution in domestic life is that, which, in this respect, is presented to us all over the world! A man, trained in the school of industry and frugality, acquires a large estate; his children possibly keep it; but the third generation almost inevitably goes down the rolling wheel of fortune, and there learns the energy necessary to rise again. And yet we are, almost all of us, anxious to put our children, or to insure that our grandchildren shall be put, on this road to indulgence, luxury, vice, degradation, and ruin!

This excessive desire and admiration for wealth, is one of the worst traits in our modern civilization. We are, if I may say so, in an unfortunate dilemma in this matter. Our political civilization has opened the way for multitudes to wealth, and created an insatiable desire for it; but our mental civilization has not gone far enough to make a right use of it. If wealth were employed in promoting mental culture at home, and works of philanthropy abroad; if it were multiplying studies of art, and building up institutions of learning around us; if it were every way raising the intellectual and moral character of the world, there could scarcely be too much of it. But if the utmost aim, effort, and ambition of wealth, be to procure rich furniture and provide costly entertainments, I am inclined to say that there could scarcely be too little of it. 66 It employs the poor," do I hear it said? Better that it were divided with the poor. Willing enough am I, that it should be in few hands if they will use it nobly-with temperate self-restraint and wise philanthropy. But on no other condition will I admit that it is a good, either for its possessors or for anybody else. I do not deny that it may lawfully be, to a certain extent, the minister of elegancies and luxuries, and the handmaid of hospitality and physical enjoyment; but this I say, that just in such proportion as its tendencies, divested of all higher aims and tastes, are running that way, are they running to evil and to peril.

That peril, moreover, does not attach to individuals and families alone; but it stands, a fearful beacon, in the experience of cities and empires. The lessons of past times, on this subject, are emphatic and solemn. I undertake to say, that the history of wealth has always been a history of corruption and downfal: the people never existed that could stand the trial.

Boundless profusion-alas! for humanity—is too little likely to spread, for any people, the theatre of manly energy, rigid self-denial, and lofty virtue. Where is the bone, and sinew, and strength of a country? Where do you expect to find its loftiest talents and virtues? Where

its martyrs, to patriotism or religion? Where are the men to meet the days of peril and disaster? Do you look for them among the children of ease, and indulgence, and luxury?

All history answers. In the great march of the races of men over the earth, we have always seen opulence and luxury sinking before poverty, and toil, and hardy nurture. It is the very law that has presided over the great processions of empire. Sidon and Tyre, whose merchants possessed the wealth of princes; Babylon and Palmyra, the seats of Asiatic luxury; Rome, laden with the spoils of a world, overwhelmed by her own vices more than by the hosts of her enemies,— all these, and many more, are examples of the destructive tendencies of immense and unnatural accumulation. No lesson in history is so clear, so impressive, as this.

I trust, indeed, that our modern, our Christian cities and kingdoms are to be saved from such disastrous issues. I trust, that by the appropriation of wealth, less to purposes of private gratification, and more to purposes of Christian philanthropy and public spirit, we are to be saved. But this is the very point on which I insist. Men must become more generous and benevolent, not more selfish and effeminate, as they become more rich, or the history of modern wealth will follow in the sad train of all past examples; and the story of American prosperity and of English opulence, will be told as a moral, in empires beyond the Rocky Mountains, or in the newly-discovered continents of the Asiatic Seas!

ON THE NATURAL AND ARTIFICIAL

RELATIONS OF SOCIETY.

LUKE X. 29: 'And who is my neighbour?"

WHAT is society? And what are the ties that give to society its strength, dignity, and beauty?

Let us make the attempt, though it will be difficult to lay aside all conventional ideas of this subject, and endeavour to contemplate it in the spirit of generous philosophy, and more beneficent Christianity. What is society, not as man has made it, but in its original elements and just relations?-what is it, in the constitution of God? What did he design that man should be to man, and what the bond between them? The answer is given in words of authority: "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." It is the bond of kind neighbourhood, of gentle affinity, of gracious sympathy. And "who is my neighbour?" Again, the sacred text answers. It is the Samaritan, the sinner, the sufferer. It is he who is cast down and trodden under foot; it is he who lies by the way-side, neglected and despised. Every man is your neighbour. No matter what is his condition, his clime, his nation; no matter from what country, trodden down with oppression, he hath come; no matter in what prison-house he hath toiled, or in what mournful garb poverty or neglect hath clothed him. If he can say, "I am a man," he puts forward a sacred and venerable claim. If he who could say, "I am a Roman citizen," could rouse in his behalf the sympathies of a whole mighty people, he who can say, "I am a man," should touch the heart of all mankind.

It is the claim of a common nature which God has laid upon us. As strong as the bond of humanity itself, he has made the common tie. Nay, more; and dear as are the interests which he has committed to the sacred depository of each human bosom, and powerful as are the influences which one human being can exert upon another, has he made the obligation of love, pity, and humanity, to the common welfare. Humanity! the universal counterpart of each man's self; the multiplication of one's self into millions of suffering or happy beings!-Well might the Latin poet say, "I am a man, and nothing is foreign, nothing far from me that is human." And when a crowded Roman theatre once rose up in admiration of that noble sentiment, it was a homage as fit as it was beautiful; and fitly, from that day to this, has been borne, in the literature and on the bosom of nations, the record of that touching and noble saying.

But when I look more deeply into that humanity, and consider what it is, I feel that such a sentiment rises above generosity, and takes the

I see a circle drawn

character of sanctity, and even of sublimity. around each human being, which it is not only sin, but sacrilege, to invade. For what is within that sacred pale that girds about every human heart? Joy, sorrow; fear, hope; need, the need of happiness, and-more sacred and awful still-the need of virtue! There, God hath made a being, whom nothing but virtue can suffice; whom nothing but infinity and eternity will content. I speak not the language of theology, but of fact. So God hath made us. That mighty burthen of a spiritual and divine need rests upon every human heart; and nothing but the Almighty power that placed it there, can ever relieve it. It is your soul, my friend, that bears this dread charge; but it is the soul of him, whosoever he be, that standeth next you in the worldly crowd; it is every soul in this assembly; it is every man in the world. Human society is the society of beings so charged and entrusted. And if a congress of kings and potentates shall be thought an imposing spectacle, and to demand the most heedful consideration and treatment from one to the other, what shall be the higher law for beings who act for virtue, for heaven, and for eternity!

Were it only happiness that is concerned, yet in the mysterious and inexplicable feeling of individuality which we all possess, the veriest outcast by the way-side has as much at stake as the monarch on his guarded throne. Poor men and rich men have, indeed, their distinct resorts and reliances; but there are no such things as a rich man's joy and a poor man's joy. Happiness hath no respect of persons. It is as dear to one man as to another; and the feeling that makes it so is not of man's, but of God's creating; and the sharp visitation of pain, whether it finds its way through the beggar's rags or the prince's cloth of gold, is alike sore and bitter to abide. Suffering is not an accident of our condition, but an ingredient of our being. Disease, whether it knocks at the cottage-wicket or the castle-gate, sends its thrilling summons, in equal disregard of haughty grandeur and shrinking penury, The inmates of the one, when revolving, beneath their humble roof, the fortunes of their lives, feel that they have, in their happiness, as much at stake as the lofty possessors of the other; and in that essential respect they have as much at stake.

To what conclusion, then, do we arrive? Is it a strange or an unexpected conclusion?-for this it is that without any respect to external condition, one man has just as much right to have his virtue and happiness regarded as another man! Is there a man here who can look upon joy or sorrow with indifference, because they are found in a meaner garb than his own? I will not compromise, for one moment, the principle I maintain. I abhor that man, and I will say it. I abhor him, as worse than a traitor to his country, as a traitor to humanity; and I appeal, for my justification, to the most ordinary sentiments of every generous mind. Would you make that man your friend who could take pleasure in wantonly crushing an insect? What will you think, then, of the man who could coldly disregard, or carelessly wound, the feelings of a fellow-creature?

I have not wished to linger upon these preliminary steps; and therefore I hasten to observe, that we have thus come, by a direct path, to the consideration of social relationships. They are of two kinds, natural and artificial; and my purpose is, of course, not to go over the

whole ground-which would require volumes for the survey of it-but only to touch upon such points as are particularly pressed upon our notice by the present condition of society. The natural relations of society are such as spring from necessity, and may be considered as ordained by our Creator; the artificial are those which are devised and regulated by man.

Of those which are natural, or necessary to society itself, though there are many, such as those of husband and wife, parent and child, guardian and ward, brothers and sisters, I shall consider only the single but comprehensive relation of employers and employed; or, in other words, that of master and apprentice, householder and domestic, rich and poor. These are certainly among the inevitable relations of human beings; and no progress of the world, in civilization or Christianity, may ever be expected to abolish them.

Our business with them, then, is not to extirpate, but to improve them; and the questions that arise on this point are of some delicacy, and need to be touched with a careful hand. I frankly confess myself to be among the number of those, who think that the feudal distinctions of former days, the old relations of master and servant, have transmitted to us some errors, which need to be done away; and which, in this country, must be done away. But, on the contrary, I do not hold at all with those visionary persons, who expect that all distinctions in society will cease, and that men will stand on the level of perfect equality. Nay more, I maintain, that both necessity and propriety demand that the manners of different classes of society towards each other, shall differ. The manner of him who directs, must differ from the manner of him who is directed. On the one hand, there must be authority, or direction, if you please so to call it; and, on the other, acquiescence. The relation, indeed, is voluntary; no man among us is obliged to be the agent, workman, or domestic of another? but if he is such, then the relation requires that he should yield the acquiescence in question. And to that acquiescence, I repeat, a certain manner is appropriatenot slavish or obsequious, but cheerful and courteous; and I especially insist, that neither party is ever to forget the respect and kindness which are due from one human being to another.

But this great bond of humanity is, doubtless, often disregarded by both parties. Men strive and wrangle with each other, and are guilty of scorn or spite in their behaviour, forgetting what they are, forgetting that they are creatures of the same God, children of one common Father. On which side the fault chiefly lies, at the present era of American society, I confess that I am in doubt. Up to this time, or nearly to this time, I should have confidently said, that it was, where it always has been-with the class of employers. Power is ever liable to beget pride, injustice, and a haughty demeanour. But in a community, where the class of the employed has become so independent as it is in ours; where the sense of past injuries is rankling in the mind; where many false maxims tend to make all apparent inferiority peculiarly galling, and where the old conventional manners, once considered appropriate to that condition, are breaking up, the consequence is but too likely to be, in many, revolt, recklessness, discourtesy, and despite.

On which side the greatest courtesy and kindness are to be found, I

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