s, and
heavily-laden ships leave our shores daily for foreign ports, full of
the products of our industry. Everybody seems to be becoming richer and
more prosperous. But we do not think of whether men and women are
becoming wiser, better trained, less self-indulgent, more religiously
disposed, or living for any higher purpose than the satisfaction of the
animal appetite.

If this apparent prosperity be closely examined, it will be found that
expenditure is increasing in all directions. There are demands for
higher wages; and the higher wages, when obtained, are spent as soon as
earned. Intemperate habits are formed, and, once formed, the habit of
intemperance continues. Increased wages, instead of being saved, are for
the most part spent in drink.

Thus, when a population is thoughtless and improvident, no kind of
material prosperity will benefit them. Unless they exercise forethought
and economy, they will alternately be in a state of "hunger and burst."
When trade falls off, as it usually does after exceptional prosperity,
they will not be comforted by the thought of what they _might_ have
saved, had it ever occurred to them that the "prosperous times" might
not have proved permanent.

During prosperous times, Saint Monday is regularly observed. The Bank
Holiday is repeated weekly. "Where are all the workmen?" said a master
to his foreman on going the rounds among his builders,--this work must
be pushed on and covered in while the fine weather lasts." "Why, sir,"
said the foreman, "this is Monday; and they have not spent all their
money yet." Dean Boyd, preaching at Exeter on behalf of the Devonshire
hospitals, expressed his belief that the annual loss to the workpeople
engaged in the woollen manufacture, the cotton trade, the bricklaying
and building trade, by Idle Monday, amounted to over seven millions
sterling. If man's chief end were to manufacture cloth, silk, cotton,
hardware, toys, and china; to buy in the cheapest market, and to sell in
the dearest; to cultivate land, grow corn, and graze cattle; to live for
mere money profit, and hoard or spend, as the case might be, we might
then congratulate ourselves upon our National Prosperity. But is this
the chief end of man? Has he not faculties, affections, and sympathies,
besides muscular organs? Has not his mind and heart certain claims, as
well as his mouth and his back? Has he not a soul as well as a stomach?
And ought not "prosperity" to include the improvem