om this more than any thing else, viz., from heaping up
the means of enjoying this world in time to come! I really should on every
account be sorry, Gentlemen, to exaggerate, but indeed one is taken by
surprise, one is startled, on meeting with so very categorical a
contradiction of our Lord, St. Paul, St. Chrysostom, St. Leo, and all
Saints.

"No institution," he continues, "could be more beneficial to the morals of
the lower orders, that is, to at least nine-tenths of the whole body of
any people, than one which should increase their power and their wish to
accumulate; none more mischievous than one which should diminish their
motives and means to save." No institution more beneficial than one which
should increase the _wish to accumulate_! then Christianity is not one of
such beneficial institutions, for it expressly says, "_Lay not up to_
yourselves _treasures_ on earth {~HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS~} for where thy treasure is, there is thy
heart also;"--no institution more mischievous than one which should
diminish the _motives to save_! then Christianity is one of such
mischiefs, for the inspired text proceeds, "Lay up to yourselves treasures
_in heaven, where_ neither the rust nor the moth doth consume, and where
thieves do not dig through, nor steal."

But it is not enough that morals and happiness are made to depend on gain
and accumulation; the practice of Religion is ascribed to these causes
also, and in the following way. Wealth depends upon the pursuit of wealth;
education depends upon wealth; knowledge depends on education; and
Religion depends on knowledge; therefore Religion depends on the pursuit
of wealth. He says, after speaking of a poor and savage people, "Such a
population must be grossly ignorant. The desire of knowledge is one of the
last results of refinement; it requires in general to have been implanted
in the mind during childhood; and it is absurd to suppose that persons
thus situated would have the power or the will to devote much to the
education of their children. A further consequence is the _absence of all
real religion_; for the religion of the grossly ignorant, if they have
any, scarcely ever amounts to more than a debasing superstition."(11) The
pursuit of gain then is the basis of virtue, religion, happiness; though
it is all the while, as a Christian knows, the "root of all evils," and
the "poor on the contrary are blessed, for theirs is the kingdom of God."

As to the argument contained