elong to you, you, as well as she, are
making an idol of self, in choosing to have that which the providence of
God has denied you. "The silver and the gold is mine, saith the Lord;"
and it cannot be without a special purpose, relating to the peculiar
discipline requisite for such characters, that this silver and gold is
so often withheld from those who would make the best and kindest use of
it. Murmur not, then, when this hard trial comes upon you, when you see
want and sorrow which you cannot in justice to others relieve; and when
you see thousands, at the very moment you experience this generous
suffering, expended on entirely selfish, perhaps sinful gratifications,
neither be tempted to murmur or to act unjustly. "Is it not the Lord;"
has not he in his infinite love and infinite wisdom appointed this very
trial for you? Bow your head and heart in submission, and dare not to
seek an escape from it by one step out of the path of duty. It may be
that close examination, a searching of the stores of memory, will bring
even this trial under the almost invariable head of needful
chastisement; it may be that it is the consequence of some former act of
self-indulgence and extravagance, which would have been forgotten, or
not deeply enough repented of, unless your sin had in this way been
brought to remembrance. Thus even this trial assumes the invariable
character of all God's chastisements: it is the inevitable consequence
of sin,--as inevitable as the relation of cause and effect. It results
from no special interposition of Providence, but is the natural result
of those decrees upon which the whole system of the world is founded;
secondarily, however, overruled to work together for good to the
penitent sinner, by impressing more deeply on his mind the humbling
remembrance of past sin, and leading to a more watchful future avoidance
of the same.

It is indeed probable, that without many trials of this peculiarly
painful kind, the duty of economy could not be deeply enough impressed
on a naturally generous and warm heart. The restraints of prudence would
be unheeded, unless bitter experience, as it were, burned them in.

I have spoken of two necessary preparations for the practice of
economy,--the first, a clear general view of our probable expenses; the
second, which I am now about to notice, is the calculation of the
probable funds that are to meet these expenses. In your case, there is a
certain income, with sundry conti