ry?

We really need for ourselves and families what is necessary to preserve
life and health; we need a mental cultivation answerable to our
profession or employment; need the means of maintaining a neat, sober
and just taste; and we need too, proper advantages of spiritual
improvement. Things of mere habit, fashion, and fancy may be dispensed
with. Luxuries may be denied. Many things, which are called
conveniences, we do not really need. If provision is to be made for all
things that are convenient and pleasant, what room will remain for
self-denial? Things deemed comfortable and convenient may be multiplied
without limit--consume all of God's wealth, and leave the world in
ruins. If the world were _not_ in ruins, then it might be proper to seek
not only the comforts, but even the elegancies of life.

Take a simple illustration: In the midst of the wide ocean I fall in
with a crew floating on the few shattered planks of a hopeless wreck. I
have a supply of water and a cask of bread, but the poor wrecked
mariners are entirely destitute. Shall I keep my provisions for my own
comfort, and leave these sufferers to pine away with hunger and thirst?
But suppose I have not only bread and water, but many luxuries, while
the men on the wreck are perishing for the want of a morsel of bread and
a drop of water? And then, suppose I have casks of bread and other
provisions to dispose of, and intend with the proceeds to furnish myself
with certain of the conveniences and elegancies of life; and my mind is
so fixed upon obtaining them, that I refuse to relieve the poor tenants
of the wreck, and leave them to the lingering death of hunger and
thirst. O, who of you would not shudder at the hardness of my heart and
the blackness of my crime!

But the world dead in sin is surely a wreck. Millions upon millions are
famishing for the bread and water of life. Their cry--their dying cry
has come to our ears. Shall we then take that which might relieve them,
and expend it in procuring conveniences, elegancies, and luxuries for
ourselves? Can we do it, and be guiltless of blood?

But, perhaps here, some one may have the coolness to thrust in the
common objection, that a man's style of living must correspond with his
station in society. It is wonderful to what an extent this principle is
applied. A man, it is said, cannot be a governor of a state, a mayor of
a city, a member of Congress, or hold any high office, unless his house,
his equipa