of this world, and to have our hearts in
the concerns of this world. I do not know any thing more dreadful than
a state of mind which is, perhaps, the characteristic of this country,
and which the prosperity of this country so miserably fosters. I mean
that ambitious spirit, to use a great word, but I know no other word to
express my meaning--that low ambition which sets every one on the
look-out to succeed and to rise in life, to amass money, to gain power,
to depress his rivals, to triumph over his hitherto superiors, to
affect a consequence and a gentility which he had not before, to affect
to have an opinion on high subjects, to pretend to form a judgment upon
sacred things, to choose his religion, to approve and condemn according
to his taste, to become a partizan in extensive measures for the
supposed temporal benefit of the community, to indulge the vision of
great things which are to come, great improvements, great wonders: all
things vast, all things new,--this most fearfully earthly and
grovelling spirit is likely, alas! to extend itself more and more among
our countrymen,--an intense, sleepless, restless, never-wearied,
never-satisfied, pursuit of Mammon in one shape or other, to the
exclusion of all deep, all holy, all calm, all reverent thoughts.
_This_ is the spirit in which, more or less (according to their
different tempers), men do commonly engage in concerns of this world;
and I repeat it, better, far better, were it to retire from the world
altogether than thus to engage in it--better with Elijah to fly to the
desert, than to serve Baal and Ashtoreth in Jerusalem.

But the persons I speak of, as despising this world, are far removed
from the spirit of Elijah. To flee from the world, or strenuously to
resist it, implies an energy and strength of mind which they have not.
They do neither one thing nor the other; they neither flee it, nor
engage zealously in its concerns; but they remain in the midst of them,
doing them in an indolent and negligent way, and think this is to be
spiritually minded; or, as in other cases, they really take an interest
in them, and yet speak as if they despised them.

But surely it is possible to "serve the Lord," yet not to be "slothful
in business;" not over devoted to it, but not to retire from it. We
may do _all things_ whatever we are about to God's glory; we may do all
things _heartily_, as to the Lord, and not to man, being both active
yet meditative; and now let