is in good health, who has a blooming
and dutiful and cheerful and happy family about him, and who passes his
day of rest amongst them, is not to be made to believe, that he was born
to be miserable, and that poverty, the natural and just reward of
laziness, is to secure him a crown of glory. Far be it from me to
recommend a disregard of even outward observances as to matters of
religion; but, can it be _religion_ to believe that God hath made us to be
wretched and dejected? Can it be _religion_ to regard, as marks of his
grace, the poverty and misery that almost invariably attend our neglect to
use the means of obtaining a competence in worldly things? Can it be
_religion_ to regard as blessings those things, those very things, which
God expressly numbers amongst his curses? Poverty never finds a place
amongst the _blessings_ promised by God. His blessings are of a directly
opposite description; flocks, herds, corn, wine and oil; a smiling land; a
rejoicing people; abundance for the body and gladness of the heart: these
are the blessings which God promises to the industrious, the sober, the
careful, and the upright. Let no man, then, believe that, to be poor and
wretched is a mark of God's favour; and let no man remain in that state,
if he, by any honest means, can rescue himself from it.

18. Poverty leads to all sorts of evil consequences. _Want_, horrid want,
is the great parent of crime. To have a dutiful family, the father's
principle of rule must be _love_ not _fear_. His sway must be gentle, or
he will have only an unwilling and short-lived obedience. But it is given
to but few men to be gentle and good-humoured amidst the various torments
attendant on pinching poverty. A competence is, therefore, the first thing
to be thought of; it is the foundation of all good in the labourer's
dwelling; without it little but misery can be expected. "_Health_,
_peace_, and _competence_," one of the wisest of men regards as the only
things needful to man: but the two former are scarcely to be had without
the latter. _Competence_ is the foundation of happiness and of exertion.
Beset with wants, having a mind continually harassed with fears of
starvation, who can act with energy, who can calmly think? To provide a
_good living_, therefore, for himself and family, is the _very first duty_
of every man. "Two things," says AGUR, "have I asked; deny me them not
before I die: remove far from me vanity and lies; give me neither poverty