beings that people the drops of water; determine the courses of the celestial orbs; measure the distances and magnitudes of the planets; predict the returns of comets and eclipses; convey himself along mighty rivers, and across the expansive ocean; render the most stubborn elements of nature subservient to his designs and obedient to his commands; and, in short, can penetrate beyond all that is visible to common eyes, to those regions of space where suns unnumbered shine, and mighty worlds are running their solemn rounds; and perceive the agency of Infinite Power displaying itself throughout the unlimited regions of the universe. By these powers he can trace the existence and the attributes of an Invisible and Almighty Being operating in the sun, the moon, and the starry orbs, in the revolutions of the seasons, the agency of the elements, the process of vegetation, the functions of animals, and the moral relations which subsist among intelligent beings; and in such studies and contemplations he can enjoy a happiness infinitely superior to all the delights of mere animal sensation. How unreasonable then, is it, for a being who possesses such sublime faculties, to have his whole soul absorbed in raking together a few paltry pounds or dollars, which he either applies to no useful object, or employs merely for purposes of pride and ostentation! We are apt to smile at a little boy hoarding up heaps of cherry stones, small pebbles, or sea shells; but he acts a more rational part than the covetous man whose desires are concentrated in "heaping up gold as the dust, and silver as the stones of the brook;" for the boy has not arrived at the full exercise of his rational powers, and is incapable of forming a comprehensive judgment of those pursuits which ought to be the great end of his existence. The aims and pursuits of every intelligence, ought to correspond with the faculties he possesses. But does the hoarding of one shilling after another, day by day, and the absorption of the faculties in this degrading object, while almost every higher aim is set aside, correspond to the noble powers with which man is invested, and the variety and sublimity of those objects which solicit their attention? Is there, indeed,

any comparison between acquiring riches and wealth as an ultimate object, and the cultivation of the intellectual faculties, and the noble pursuit of knowledge and moral improvement? If man had been intended to live the life of a miser, he would rather have been formed into the shape of an ant or a pismire, to dig among mud and sand and putrefaction, to burrow in holes and crevices of the earth, and to heap up seeds and grains against the storms of winter; in which state he would live according to the order of nature, and be incapable of degrading his mental and moral powers.

There cannot be a more absurd and preposterous exhibition, than that of a man furnished with powers capable of arresting the elements of nature, of directing the lightnings in their course, of penetrating to the distant regions of creation, of weighing the masses of surrounding worlds, of holding a sublime intercourse with his Almighty Maker, and of perpetual progression in knowledge and felicity, throughout an interminable round of existence; yet prostrating these noble powers by concentrating them on the one sole object of amassing a number of guineas and bank-notes, which are never intended to be applied to any rational or benevolent purpose; as if man were raised no higher in the scale of intellect, than the worms of the dust! Even some of the lower animals, as the dog and the horse, display more noble and generous feelings, than the earth-worm, from whose grasp you cannot wrench a single shilling for any beneficent object. And shall man, who was formed after the image of his Maker, and invested with dominion over all the inferior tribes of animated nature, thus reduce himself by his grovelling affections below the rank of the beasts of the forest and the fowls of heaven? Nothing can afford a plainer proof of man's depravity, and that he has fallen from his high estate of primeval innocence and rectitude; and there cannot be a greater libel on Christianity and on Christian churches, than that such characters should assume the Christian profession, and have their names enrolled among the society of the faithful.

2. The folly of covetousness appears in the absolute WANT OF UTILITY which characterizes the conduct of the avaricious man.

True wisdom consists in proportioning means to ends, and in proposing a good and worthy end as the object of our pursuit. He would be accounted a fool, who should attempt to build a ship of war on one of the highest peaks of the Alps or the Andes, or who should spend a large fortune in constructing a huge machine which was of no use to mankind, but merely that they might look at the motion of its wheels and pinions; or who should attempt to pile up a mountain of sand within the limits of the sea, which the foaming billows, at every returning tide, would sweep away into the bosom of the deep. But the man "who lays up treasures for himself and is not rich towards God," acts with no less unreasonableness and folly. He hoards riches which he never intends to use; he vexes and torments himself in acquir. ing them; he stints himself of even lawful sensitive comforts; and his sole enjoyment seems to be that of brooding over in his mind an arithmetical idea connected with hundreds or thousands of circular pieces of gold, or square slips of paper. The poor are never to be warmed, or fed, or clothed, the oppressed relieved, the widow's heart made to leap for joy, the ignorant instructed, the ordinances of religion supported, or the gospel promoted in heathen lands, by means of any of the treasures which he accumulates. He "spends his money for that which is not bread, and his labour for that which satisfieth not;" and neither himself, his family, his friends, his country, or the world, is benefited by his wealth. I have read of a Reverend Mr. Hagamore of Catshoge, Leicestershire, on whose death, in January, 1776, it was found that he had accumulated thirty gowns and cassocks, one hundred pair of breeches, one hundred pair of boots, four hundred pair of shoes, eighty wigs, yet always wore his own hair, fifty-eight dogs, eighty wagons and carts, eighty ploughs, and used none, fifty saddles, and furniture for the menage, thirty wheel-barrows, sixty horses and mares, seventy

four ladders, two hundred pick-axes, two hundred spades and shovels, two hundred and forty-nine razors, and so many walking-sticks, that a toysman in Leicesterfields, offered eight pounds sterling to procure them.* Every one will at once perceive that this man, although he had the title of "Reverend" affixed to his name, must have been nothing else but a Reverend fool, or something approaching to a maniac; for, to accumulate such a number of useful articles, merely for the purpose of looking at them, or brooding over the idea that they were in one's possession, without any higher object in view, is surely the characteristic of folly and irrationality, if any thing ought to designate a person a fool or a madman.

Now, let us suppose for a moment, instead of money, a man were to hoard in a garret or a warehouse appropriated for the purpose-10,000 pots or cauldrons that were never to be used in cooking victuals, or for any other process,-15,000 tea-kettles, 20,000 coffee-pots, 25,000 pair of boots, 30,000 knee-buckles, 32,000 great coats, and 40,000 pair of trowsers-suppose that none of these articles were intended to be sold or appropriated to such uses as they are generally intended to serve, but merely to be gazed at from day to day, or contemplated in the ideas of them that float before the imaginationwhat should we think of the man who spent his whole life, and concentrated all the energies of his soul in such romantic pursuits and acquisitions? We should at once decide, that he was unqualified for associating with rational beings, and fit only for a place within the precincts of bedlam. But what is the great difference between accumulating twenty thousand cork-screws, or

*This singular clergyman, when he died, was worth £700 per annum, and £1000 in money, which fell to a ticket porter in London. He kept one servant of each sex, whom he locked up every night. His last employment on an evening, was to go round his premises, let loose his dogs, and fire his gun. He lost his life as follows: going one morning to let out his servants, the dogs fawned upon him suddenly, and threw him into a pond, where he was found dead. His servants heard his calls for assistance, but, being locked up, they could not lend him any help.

thirty thousand shoe-brushes, and hoarding as many thousands of shillings, dollars or pieces of paper called bank notes, which are never intended to be brought forth for the benefit of mankind? The cases are almost exactly parallel; and he who is considered as a fool or maniac, in the one case, deserves to be branded with the same epithets, in the other. Were a man to employ the greater part of his life in laying up millions of cherry-stones or pin-heads, and find his chief delight in contemplating his heaps, and continually adding to their number, he would be considered as below the scale of a rational being, and unfit for general society. But there is no essential difference between such a fool, and the man whose great and ultimate aim is to accumulate thousands of dollars or of guineas. Both classes of persons are in reality maniacs

with this difference, that the first class would be considered as labouring under a serious mental derangement, and therefore objects of sympathy and pity; while the other are considered as in the full exercise of their intellectual powers, although they are prostrating them in the pursuit of objects as degrading and irrational, as those which engross the imagination of the inmates of bedlam.

But, suppose that riches are coveted, not for the purpose of being hoarded, but for the purpose of being expended in selfish gratifications, there is almost as much folly and irrationality in the latter case as in the former. Suppose a man to have an income of £3000 a year, and that £800 are sufficient to procure him all the sensitive enjoyments suitable to his station—is it rational, is it useful, either to himself or others, that he should waste £2200 in vain or profligate pursuits, in balls, masquerades, gambling, hounding, horse racing, expensive attire, and splendid equipages-when there are so many poor to be relieved, so many ignorant to be instructed, so many improvements requisite for the comfort of general society, so many sciences to cultivate, so many arts to patronize, and so many arduous exertions required for promoting the general renovation of the world-and scarcely a single guinea devoted to either of these objects? Such conduct is no less irrational and degrading, in a moral