There is that maketh himself rich, yet hath nothing: there is that maketh himself poor, yet hath great riches. By humility and the fear of the Lord, are riches and honour and life. A man void of understanding striketh hands, and becometh surety in the presence of his friend. He that is surety for a stranger shall smart for it: and he that hateth suretyship is sure. If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him. Follow after righteousness, godliness, faith, love, patience, meekness. All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them. Call upon me in the day of trouble, and I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify me. Let your conversation be without covetousness; and be content with such things as ye have; for He hath said, I will never leave thee nor forsake thee. Such are the counsels of inspired wisdom; such the ethics of the Word of God. It is a safe and reliable guide. It meets all the exigencies of your profession. It provides for every duty and every danger. Its principles are as immutable as the throne of the Deity. Its precepts are written as with a sunbeam. Its promises breathe the benevolence of heaven. The character which is formed upon its model, will command universal homage. The life that draws from it its inspiration, will enrich and bless the community which embosoms it. Let Commerce take the BIBLE as its chart, and throughout all its teeming thoroughfares, the primeval curse of labour will be despoiled of half its severity. Enthrone the BIBLE in your COUNTING-HOUSES, and the God of the Bible will bless you and make you a blessing. HASTING TO BE RICH. Lecture Fourth. HASTING TO BE RICH. 99 SOME few years since an ingenious manufacturer of porcelain, in Persia, acquired a celebrity which reached the court, and brought him a message from the Shah, that he might make china for the royal household. Under any constitutional or just government, such an intimation would have been a fortune to a man. But what did the artisan do? Mustering all the money he could, he took it to the prime minister, and bribed him to report to the king, that he was not the person who made the china, and that the real workman had run away, nobody knew whither. The ruse succeeded. The man was discharged, and vowed that he would never make a bit of china, nor attempt any other improvement, as long as he lived. How is this conduct to be explained? The government of Persia is a pure autocracy, and the kings are for the most part insatiate tyrants. They have the absolute control of life, liberty, and property, throughout the empire. They can degrade, and even decapitate, the highest nobles, at pleasure. They can seize and confiscate any estate. For a mechanic to display any remarkable ingenuity, is only to expose himself to be coerced into the service of the crown without compensation. For a merchant to accumulate property, is to invite the most merciless exactions from the myrmidons of the throne. The mechanic just mentioned, knew that he would be compelled to spend the rest of his life in working for the king and his court, without requital; and not relishing the prospect, devised the scheme I have described to escape from it. The necessary tendency of this despotic system, is, not only to foster deceit and falsehood among the people, but to repress the efforts of industry and paralyze the powers of invention; for no man will sow where he has no prospect of reaping. Security of life and property is one of the essential elements which distinguish true civilization from a state of barbarism. There can be no real liberty in a country, the inhabitants of which are debarred from the legitimate exertion of their powers, or not protected in the possession of the property they have fairly acquired. And if these things are so, then the agrarian MUTUAL DEPENDENCE. 101 reformers of our day, who declaim against the accumulation of fortunes, and demand a distribution of all large estates among the poor, have mistaken their country. They are the types and representatives of barbarism, a foul excrescence on the fair face of Christian civilization; and their proper place is with the horde of extortioners who do the bidding of the Shah of Persia or the Grand Mogul. The attempts which men of this stamp put forth, to array the poor against the rich, to make them feel that the rich are their oppressors and the enemies of society, are of such flagitious wickedness, that any legislature would be warranted in making them a penitentiary offence. The interests of a community, certainly of any community in this country, are too firmly interlaced to be torn asunder, without inflicting irreparable injury upon the body politic. There is a reciprocal interdependence of the various classes and professions upon one another. The same principles which guard the ample wealth of the capitalist from invasion, secure to the weaver his loom, to the shoemaker his bench, to the drayman his cart, to the labourer his dollar-a-day and the little furniture which adorns his attic. The very capitalist, whom some blustering Fourierite may stigmatize in his harangues as a useless and rapacious leech whose resources ought to be thrown into a common stock, once sat, perhaps, at |