CHAPTER II.

GAIN AND LOSS.

PLEASURE and Pain are the mixed or alternating conditions of our entire being. They reach through all the cycles and elements of our nature, though we commonly give the names to more outward and bodily experiences. Precisely so far as capacities for these states reach, do those correspondences of the outward world reach also, by which they may be excited. Of such correspondences there are some, indeed the more numerous and the more important, which exist independently of our power, and slightly within our control. The sun shines for ever in the skies; his day rests upon the whole earth. The moon waxes and wanes, diversifying the night above all human strength. The stars look down with the same silent beauty, while generations come and go. The earth opens her bosom alike for all her children, age after age. Over the great forms and processes of nature, and the common relations which they establish with all men, there is no avarice so grasping as to think

of extending any claim of exclusive possession. Making the creation so much larger as modern discoveries have proved it, than ancient thought conceived, we still apply to the whole compass of it the word of the Psalmist :

"The earth is the Lord's, and the fulness thereof;
The world, and they that dwell therein."

But though Nature is universal boon, not individual property, yet in order to secure his share of her gifts, to avoid pain, to procure and preserve pleasure, man naturally seeks to bring certain portions of her wealth under his own control. What he thus holds under admitted control,-what he may thus use, and others consent that he may thus use, as instrument and ministry to his enjoyment, - we denominate property. He who possesses a large amount of such appropriated commodity, is called rich; he who possesses a small amount, whether less than he really needs, or none at all, is deemed poor; while the most of men are found somewhere between the extremes.

Many questions, coming down from past ages, gathering importance in our own, have been agitated within a few years in regard to the tenures, the rights, and the laws of property. Those questions must be met and answered calmly and wisely. But they do not concern our present topic. The arrangements of prop

erty being what they are, or changing either for the better or for the worse, we look not at these now, but at the persons as they come out, in the midst of them, into the activities of life, striving indeed to improve all things as they can, but, whether they can or cannot, maintaining their own integrity, nay, growing in virtue at all

events.

SECTION I.

GAIN.

THERE is a little child creeping upon the floor. He has seen an apple or a peach, and is in full speed to get it. He thinks nothing of the abstract matter of possession; he wants the fruit in his mouth, or, if he chances not to have this appetite just now, he wants it to play with.

Really that simple incident is an epitome of history. The first Rothschild had some hunger or other want, and commerce gave him his chance to gain the fruit or the toy. Rome had a somewhat larger and growing appetite, seeking one pleasure and another, and kept up her creeping until she grasped, not all she would, but all she could. Men and nations renew the

pursuit of the child, until the men die, the nations dissolve.

It is hardly worth our while to go into the question, whether property considered as property, so much held and hoarded, does ever become the object of direct desire and pursuit: be it so or not, the first element of the desire, the origin even of gross avarice, is some natural appetite; we seek the organic delight there is in gratification, we wish to secure the means of renewing it. We may strive to hinder others from interfering with us; we may procure from others, on certain conditions, aid in protecting our claim; we may shield what we have already gained by new acquisitions, and, as our needs. or our desires multiply, we may still push our accumulations forward. It is the instinct of Nature. She wishes to have all her powers exercised, all her resources exhausted; she multiplies and strengthens those powers by the exertion; she fills and deepens her fountains the more they run out.

Churchmen have been wont to declaim earnestly, sometimes severely, against the methods of business, in a way, not unfrequently, which men have thought void of discrimination, and in fact showing, it might be said, little but their own ignorance. Perhaps some occasion may have been furnished for the contempt, however the

churchman might be ready with the retort, “Ye judge after the flesh; and if we are ignorant of the world, yours is a sadder ignorance, forgetful as ye are of God and of the soul." It is high time, however, for these charges and retorts to cease, as cease indeed they must, so soon as the clear recognition of the Divine Unity takes the place of a prevalent either atheism or worship of many gods; so soon, in other words, as man and nature and all existence are thoroughly seen in their spiritual origin, their essential goodness, and the Divine presence which penetrates and hallows them. Then piety will harmonize with nature; the prayer will cease to be profaned by the deed; and business will be instinct with devotion.

Still, between the censure of the Church and the apology, not to say sneer, of the world, we must admit both the pursuit and the acquisition of gain to be full of moral and religious peril. Admit, shall we say? Rather we should proclaim it aloud, and with irrepressible earnestness. When we see the terrible instances of commercial fraud, sometimes terminating in destructive bankruptcies, sometimes hidden and made splendid by the accumulations of wealth; when in common and every-day life we see, scarcely concealed, possibly justified by the pretext of necessity, dishonest artifices and the low tricks