Imatges de pàgina
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So that covetousness may

love to man has no existence. be considered as the great barrier which separates between man and his Maker, and also as the polluted fountain from whence flow all the moral abominations and the miseries of mankind.

The more obvious and direct manifestation of this principle is generally distinguished by the name of Avarice, or, an inordinate desire of riches. And what a countless host of evils has flowed from this unhallowed passion, both in relation to individuals, to families, to nations, and to the world at large! In relation to the avaricious man himself, could we trace all the eager desires, anxieties, perplexities, and cares, which harass his soul; the fraudulent schemes he is obliged to contrive, in order to accomplish his object; the miserable shifts to which he is reduced, in order to keep up the appearance of common honesty; the mass of contradictions, and the medley of falsehoods, to which he is always obliged to have recourse; the numerous disappointments to which his eager pursuit of wealth continually exposes him, and by which his soul is pierced as with so many daggers-we should behold a wretched being, the prey of restless and contending passions, with a mind full of falsehoods, deceitful schemes, and grovelling affections, like a cage full of every unclean and hateful bird,-a mind incapable of any rational enjoyment in this life, and entirely incapacitated for relishing the nobler enjoyments of the life to come. Such a man is not only miserable himself, but becomes a moral nuisance to the neighbourhood around him; stinting his own family of its necessary comforts; oppressing the widow and the fatherless; grasping with insatiable fangs every house, tenement, and patch of land within his reach; hurrying poor unfortunate debtors to jail; setting adrift the poor and needy from their long-accustomed dwellings; and presenting to the young and thoughtless a picture, which is too frequently copied, of an immortal mind immersed in the mire of the most degrading passions, and worshipping and serving the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever.

In relation to large communities and nations, this grovelling passion has produced, on an extensive scale, the most mischievous and destructive effects. It has plunder

ed palaces, churches, seats of learning, and repositories of art; it has polluted the courts of judicature, and the tribunals of justice; it has corrupted magistrates, judges, and legislators; and has transformed many even of the ministers of religion, into courtly sycophants, and hunters after places and pensions. It has ground whole nations to poverty, under the load of taxation; it has levelled spacious cities with the dust; turned fruitful fields into a wilderness; spread misery over whole empires; drenched the earth with human gore; and waded through fields of blood, in order to satiate its ungovernable desires. What has led to most of the wars which have desolated the earth, in every age, but the insatiable cravings of this restless and grovelling passion? It was the cursed love of gold that excited the Spaniards to ravage the territories of Mexico and Peru, to violate every principle of justice and humanity, to massacre, and to perpetrate the most horrid cruelties on their unoffending inhabitants. It is the same principle, blended with the lust of power, which still actuates the infatuated rulers of that unhappy nation, in their vain attempts to overthrow the independence of their former colonies. The same principle commenced, and still carries on, that abominable traffic, the slave trade,— -a traffic which has entailed misery on millions of the sons of Africa; which has excited wars, and feuds, and massacres, among her numerous tribes; which has for ever separated from each other brothers and sisters, parents and children; which has suffocated thousands of human beings in the cells of a floating dungeon, and plunged ten thousands into a watery grave;-a traffic which is a disgrace to the human species; which has transformed civilized men into infernal fiends; which has trampled on every principle of justice; which has defaced the image of God in man, and extinguished every spark of humanity from the minds of the ferocious banditti which avarice has employed for accomplishing her nefarious designs.*

• That this accursed traffic is still carried on, with unabated vigour, by the civilized powers of Europe, appears from the following statement" The boats of a British Frigate, the Maidstone, boarded, in eleven days of June, 1824, no less than ten French vessels, at a single spot upon the coast of Africa; the measurement of which vessels was

Ambition, or, an inordinate desire of power, superiority, and distinction, is another modification of this malignant principle. This passion is manifested, in a greater or less degree, by men of all ranks and characters, and in every situation in life. It is displayed in the school-room, by the boy who is always eager to stand foremost in his class; in the ball-room, by the lady who is proud of her beauty, and of her splendid attire; in the corporation-hall, by the citizen who struts with an air of conscious dignity, and is ever and anon aiming at pompous harrangues; on the bench, by the haughty and overbearing Judge; in the church, by those rulers who, like Diotrephes, "love to have the pre-eminence ;" in the pulpit, by the preacher whose main object it is to excite the admiration and applause of a surrounding audience; in the streets, by the pompous airs of the proud dame, the coxcomb, and the dashing squire; in the village, by him who has a better house, and a longer purse, than his neighbours; in the hamlet, by the peasant who can lift the heaviest stone, or fight and wrestle with the greatest strength or agility; and in the city, by the nobleman who endeavours to rival all his compeers in the magnificence of his mansion, and the splendour of his equipage; among the learned, by their eager desire to spread their name through the world, and to extend their fame to succeeding generations; and among all classes who assume airs of importance, on account of the antiquity of their families, their wealth, their exploits of heroism, and their patrimonial possessions.

But it is chiefly on the great theatre of the world, that ambition has displayed its most dreadful energies, and its most overwhelming devastations. In order to gain possession of a throne, it has thrown whole nations into a state of convulsion and alarm. The road to political power and pre-eminence, has been prepared by the overthrow

between 1,400 and 1,600 tons, while they were destined for the incarceration-we might say, the living burial-of 3,000 human beings !" The report to Government says- The schooner, La Louisa, Capt. Armand, arrived at Guadaloupe, during the first days of April, 1824, with a cargo of 200 negroes, the remainder of a complement of 375, which the vessel had on board. The vessel not being large enough to accommodate so great a number of men, the overplus were consigned ALIVE to the waves by the Captain !"

of truth and justice, by fomenting feuds and contentions, by bribery, murder, and assassinations, by sanguinary battles, by the plunder of whole provinces, the desolation of cities and villages, and by the sighs, the groans, and lamentations of unnumbered widows and orphans. In order to raise a silly mortal to despotic power on the throne of Spain, how many human victims have been sacrificed at the altar of ambition! how many families have been rent asunder, and plunged into irremediable ruin and how many illustrious patriots have been immured in dungeons, and have expired under the axe of the executioner ! At the present moment, the fertile vales of Mexico, the mountains and plains of South America, the forests of the Burmese, and the shores of Turkey and of Greece, are every where covered with the ravages of this fell destroyer, whose path is always marked with desolation and bloodshed. To recount all the evils which ambition has produced over this vast globe, would be to write a history of the struggles and contests of nations, and of the sorrows and sufferings of mankind. So insatiable is this ungovernable passion, that the whole earth appears a field too small for its malignant operations. Alexander the Great, after having conquered the greater part of the known world, wept, because he had not another world to conquer. Were there no physical impediments to obstruct the course of this detestable passion, it would ravage, not only the globe on which we dwell, but the whole of the planetary worlds; it would range from system to system, carrying ruin and devastation in its train, till the material universe was involved in misery and desolation; and it would attempt to subvert the foundations even of the throne of the Eternal.

Such are some of the dismal and destructive effects of covetousness, when prosecuting the paths of avarice and ambition and when we consider, that it is uniformly accompanied in its progress, with pride, envy, discontentment, and restless desires, it is easy to perceive, that, were it left to reign without control over the human mind, it would soon desolate every region of the earth, and produce all the destructive effects which, as we have already shown, would flow from a universal violation of the other precepts of God's law.

On the other hand, Contentment,-the duty implied

in this command, would draw along with it an unnumber. ed train of blessings, and would restore tranquillity and repose to our distracted world. To be contented under the allotments of the providence of God, is one of the first and fundamental duties of every rational creature. By contentment and resignation to the divine disposal, we recognize God as the Supreme Governor of the uni-. verse; as directed by infinite wisdom, in the distribution of his bounty among the children of men; as proceeding on the basis of eternal and immutable justice, in all his providential arrangements; and as actuated by a principle of unbounded benevolence, which has a regard to the ultimate happiness of his creatures. Under the government of such a Being, we have abundant reason, not only to be contented and resigned, but to be glad and to rejoice. "The Lord reigneth, let the earth be glad, let the multitude of the isles thereof rejoice." However scanty may be the portion of earthly good measured out to us at present, and however perplexing and mysterious the external circumstances in which we may now be involved, we may rest assured, that, under the government of unerring wisdom, rectitude, and benevolence, all such dispensations shall ultimately be found to have been, not only consistent with justice, but conducive to our present and everlasting interests. Were such sentiments and affections to pervade the minds of all human beings, what a host of malignant passions would be chased away from the hearts and from the habitations of men? Restless cares, and boundless and unsatisfied desires, which constitute the source and the essence of misery, would no longer agitate and torment the human mind. Voluptuousness would no longer riot at the table of luxury on dainties, wrung from the sweat of thousands ;-nor avarice glut its insatiable desires with the spoils of the widow and the orphan;-nor ambition ride in triumph over the miseries of a suffering world. Every one, submissive to the allotments of his Creator, and grateful for that portion of his bounty which he has been pleased to bestow, would view the wealth and enjoyments of his neighbour with a kind and benignant eye, and rejoice in the prosperity of all around him. Benevolence and peace would diffuse their benign influence over the nations, and mankind, de

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