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family, notwithstanding the perpetual accumulation of experience, were perpetually retrograding, instead of advancing; and as if men and women at the present day, were like grasshoppers, in comparison with their progenitors.

It is seldom that men do not say too much, in their convivial moments. It is then that they are peculiarly apt to say something which they are sorry for on the morrow: for "when wine is in, discretion is out."

As to those persons whose staple of conversation is telling long and tedious stories, though it is hardly to be expected that they can be prevailed with either to refrain or abridge, yet the following direction from Chesterfield Travestie, may be of use to them as a general regulator:-"When you mean to introduce an interesting story, make out a kind of preface about an hour's length, by the way of impressing upon your hearers the pleasure they are about to receive. If they should be disappointed, that is not your fault. You did your best; and so much time has been past away, at least to your own satisfaction."

This rhapsody, which, notwithstanding its ungrave air, is unfeignedly meant for real and important good. I will conclude with a caution:-Let not him that talketh not, despise him that talketh. There have been some wights of the human family, both male and female, who have obtained the reputation of abilities and wisdom by their grave taciturnity-every body thinking that they could say a great deal if they would—when in sober truth, their habitual silence was owing rather to dearth of ideas or to dulness.

To be humdrum in company is as wide from the true mark, as to be garrulous.

7*

CHAP. XXV.

Of the salutary effects of the necessity laid upon man to Labor.

NECESSITY is the main spring of industry, and the mother of useful arts. The earth was given to the children of men in a rude and forlorn condition. And why? Assuredly, not because it was out of the power or beyond the benevolence of the Creator to have rendered the whole face of it "like blooming Eden fair”— and so fertile every where, as to yield a sufficient abundance for human sustenance-without any human labor, care or forethought. This did not, however, consist with the plan of divine wisdom.

Man is a being compounded of mind and matter; and a great part of his necessary employment is such as tends to evince the superiority of the former over the latter. The stubborn glebe, he meliorates, softens, and fructifies. Regions of forest he subdues, and turns them into fruitful fields and blooming gardens. The droughty soil he irrigates, and the fenny he drains.

Earth, Air, Fire, and Water, are all laid by him under contribution, and he compels them, as it were, to minister, not only to the necessities and comforts, but to the embellishments of life. In ten thousand ways, by skilful contrivance and the dint of industry, he overcomes the resistance of stubborn matter, and forces it to yield to his use to his comfort-to his adornment. And by all this busy round of contrivance and of labor, the faculties of his mind are developed, his body is made the more strong and healthy, his morals the more virtuous or the less corrupt, and his life unspeakably more contented and happy, for he rejoices in the work of his hands, nor feels he the burden of time, which hangs so heavily upon the sons and daughters of sloth.

Man is no where found more degraded, than in climes the most delicious, and upon a soil that produces, spontaneously, an abundant supply of his wants. It is there that his faculties are torpid, his mind and his heart most deeply corrupted, and his existence superlatively

wretched. If we may credit the accounts of voyagers, some of the south sea islands are earthly paradises in regard to climate and soil, but border upon the infernal regions as to customs, morals and manners: nor would it perhaps be much better with the human race over the world, if the whole world were in a condition that superceded all necessity for labor.

If it seemed meet to the all-wise Creator, that man in his primeval state, should be subject to labor-that *he should be made to dress the garden and to keep it— much greater is the urgency for industrious habits, in his lapsed state, in which indleness is sure to be prolific of vice. And, accordingly, upon the moral change of human nature, the earth, too, underwent a change. The thorn and the thistle grew up, in place of the fragrant flower and the nourishing plant. The heat consumed by day and the frost by night. The inert matter that he had to deal with became doubly intractable. Obstacles to sloth, and imperious calls to industry, multiplied-So that man was compelled to eat his bread in the sweat of his face.

Happy necessity! the necessity that prevents a frightful mass of moral evil, and produces an immensity of good. Without it, the wickedness of man would be doubly great upon the earth; and so far from enjoyment-feeling the fulness of satiety and the intolerable burden of time-like Milton's fiend in paradise, he would "see undelighted all delight."

Among the vain sons and daughters of men, there are those who despise labor, even though their circumstances urgently need it. As if the point of honor lay in being useless, improvident, and helpless. This is Folly's pride. Whoso despiseth labor, despiseth an ordinance of heaven. Not only is labor made necessary by the law of our general nature, but it is enjoined by a positive law from above-Six day shalt thou labor and do all thy work. The truly wise, so far from despising, ever hold it in honor. To honor useful labor-to encourage the industrious to bring up children to early habits of industry and frugality-and, on the other hand, to discountenance and hold in reproach a life of sloth, of improvidence and dissipation, are indis

pensable requisites, of which the principles should be engrained in the public mind. They are truly republican sentiments and habits; and, as far as they prevail and become fashionable, so far will there be order and thrift in any free republic, and especially in this free country, in which there is such an unbounded scope for industry.

CHAP. XXVI.

Of the design and use of the Thumb.

THE whole frame of the human body so clearly evinces design, and, of course, an All-Wise Designer, that atheism would appear the extreme of folly if even there were no other arguments to confute it, than those which are in a manner forced upon us whenever we take a careul survey of ourselves.

The mechanism of the eye is marvellously complex, and yet nothing in it is superfluous; every part bearing a necessary and obvious relation to the purpose for which it was formed. Nor is the mechanism of the ear less adapted in every part to the design of its formation. These wonderful organs of sense are given us, however, in common with the lower animals, of which there are some that far excel us in clearness of sight and quickness of hearing. But the human body has one appendage, which belongs not to any of the brutal creation, and which evidences design or contrivance, as clearly as the eye or the ear: I mean the Thumb. This puny limb, which is seldom noticed, by poet or philosopher, has been the main stay of the human family, in all ages and countries.

Had the human body lacked this little limb of labor, man would have been the most helpless of all animals, and indeed the whole race must nearly have perished thousands of years ere the present time. He neither could have tilled the ground, nor drawn a fish from the water. He neither could have felled the forests, nor furnished himself with weapons of defence against the

ferocious beasts with which they were inhabited. He would have been alike incapable of making and of using any of the instruments necessary for his sustenance, clothing, or defence. Suppose the thumb, and that only, had been overlooked in the general contrivance of the human body; suppose that all the organs and members of the body, and particularly the hands, were exactly as they are now, save that instead of four fingers and a thumb, there were five fingers standing parallel to each other:-the body, in that case, would have been a machine wonderfully curious, but utterly inadequate to the purposes of human life. Suppose further, that as a recompense for the want of the thumb, man had been gifted with a double or treble portion of intellect; he, notwithstanding, must have been helpless and wretched; for it would be out of the power of finite intellect to supply that deficiency, or even so much as to provide for the mere necessary wants of the body.

But

Man, upon his expulsion from paradise, was cast into a wilderness world, and a wilderness it must have remained to this day, but for the thumb upon his hand. He was commanded to subdue the earth, and was authorised to exercise dominion over the beasts of the field;-things as much out of his power, had he been thumbless, as arresting the stars in their courses. this feeble being, through the constant aid of the thumb, what wonders has he wrought! See the forests felled; see blooming gardens, and fields waving with the golden wheat; see villages, towns, cities, the spacious and well-finished tenements of man; see his convenient and comely attire, the fulness of his cup and the comforts of his table; see thousands of ships proudly traversing the ocean, freighted with the superfluities of some countries for the supply of the wants of others; see the finer works of art, pictures, statuary, engravings, embroidery:-see all these, and a thousand other things, and you will recognize in every one of them, the agency of the thumb. Nay, all our books of Divinity, Law, Physic, Surgery, History, Biography, Philosophy, Poetry, or of whatever name or description, were first thumbed out by the laborious penmen of them. So true

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